Dangerous Evidence

“You gotta pay extra for that, friend!” the girl warned.

Alex removed his hands and suddenly noticed that Boris had vanished.

“Where’d he go?”

“No third wheels. He ordered you a private dance, handsome.”

“Where’s Birdless?” Pushing away the stripper, Alex jumped up from the sofa.

“Easy!” the stripper became upset. “You won’t even thank me?”

Alex grasped her implication and stuck two thousand-ruble bills into the garter on the girl’s thigh.

“Where did Boris run off to?”

“He went downstairs, I think. We have a sauna down there.” The girl pointed and licked her finger suggestively with her extended tongue. “Wish I had someone with your energy – just maybe in a more capable body, bunny.”

Downstairs, Alex found himself in a lounge dimly illuminated in red light. A door led to a VIP-only sauna from which wafted the scent of dry lavender and music filled with female moans. Standing next to a small but well-stocked bar, a cute, plump girl in a skintight black leotard smiled at him politely. She was wearing riding boots, leather shorts and a vest that was doing its utmost to rein in the silicone implants struggling to get out.

“You are expected,” the little donut cooed through puffy lips, pouring a glass of champagne.

Alex thirstily gulped down the cold drink and opened the door to the indicated room. Here, he found two bronze-skinned girls in white bras and stockings, writhing alluringly from a giant bed with a coffee-colored cover. Various animal skins and rugs lay covering the floor. Like a cat, one of the bronze-skinned girls began crawling towards Alex. She rubbed herself playfully against his leg and began to unfasten his belt. As the female fingers slipped beneath his clothes, Alex’s breathing became halting. As if by miracle, the bachelor’s most improbable fantasies were coming true.

At this moment, something fell softly onto the bearskin rug. Terror distorted the girl’s dark face. Alex turned around and saw his fallen gun. Like a frothy wave against a cliff face, his reveries came shattering against reality.

Zipping his zipper, Alex darted out of the room and stuck his gun into the silicone implants of the donut in black.

“Where’s Birdless at? Start talking, bitch!”

“He ran out!” The girl glanced at the emergency exit at the end of the hallway.

“Did he tell you to distract me?”

“A customary surprise for our favorite customers.”

Enraged, Alex headed for the emergency exit. His mind was having difficulty coming to terms with the realities of living in the city. Everything here is so goddamn customary. He wished he could shoot holes in the girl’s over-inflated balloons and shout “Surprise!”

In the meantime, outside in the parking lot, Boris Manuylov had reached his white Honda. He plunked down behind the wheel and checked to see if the psycho from the club was still chasing him. Seeing no one, he took two deep breaths to calm himself and slid the key into the ignition. The psycho had been diverted, while he had managed to keep his envelope. It was time to get the hell out of dodge.

At this moment, a dark figure rose from behind the driver’s seat. A garrote fashioned from a rope slipped around the pimp’s throat and pulled tight, binding him tight to the headrest.

“Here we are then,” a sinister voice whispered in his ear.

13

Lisa Malyshko had made up her mind. Her new life was going to be beautiful. She would go to Sochi in the nicest train available. But first, she would dress herself up in the best boutiques. Money she would have aplenty. But, to actually get her hands on it, she would have to remain in Moscow a day or two longer.

Lisa returned to the computers at the station. It was stuffy here, in the corner under the low ceiling. Lisa pulled off her hat and unbuttoned her jacket. The guy in charge of the Internet kiosks smiled upon seeing the bright-red lips plastered across the girl’s sweater. The girl instinctively turned in profile and opened her mouth a little. She knew this posture embellished her sexiness.

But, damn! This wasn’t one of her clients. It was about time she started dropping this stupid habit.

Both her reflexive reaction to the guy’s wolfish look as well as the sweater that triggered it – which she had often shared with her now-dead friend – all reminded her of her former occupation. Both girls had been brunettes. Both had similar bodies. Even their past lives resembled each other.

Katya Grebenkina had been born in the small town of Grayvoron. Her mother had conceived her as a result of a fling with an officer stationed at a nearby base. She had given the girl her father’s last name in the hopes of collecting alimony. Half a year later, the officer was transferred to Transbaikal. He vanished without a trace. Katya thought her mother unlucky. She cursed her provincial little town and dreamed of becoming a famous model. Her mother never missed a chance to rebuke her and blamed her daughter for her inability to find a new husband.

Having barely graduated, Katya went to Moscow and applied at a modeling agency. The agency’s handsome manager, who later turned out to be a pimp, filled her head with a bunch of nonsense. He seduced the ignorant and provincial girl and convinced her that without a portfolio, makeup, a first-rate hairstylist, brand-name clothes and shoes, no one would take her on as a model. Of course there was only one way to earn the money she needed and, luckily, it wasn’t even very tedious work – one could say, it was even pleasant. That was how seventeen-year-old Katya became a prostitute.

Meanwhile, back home, Katya’s mother met a foreign gentleman on the Internet and eloped to Greece. From her first letter, Katya figured out that her mom had traded the backwoods of Russia for the backwoods of Greece, where she was forced to dote over a Greek retiree and beg him for money to go see a dentist. Katya did not write back.

Lisa Malyshko had been born in Voronezh Region – in a village beside the Don federal highway. The entire life of the village revolved around serving truckers at the motel, the café and the sauna. Lisa never knew her father. Her mother would concoct a different story about him every day. Most likely, she had become pregnant by a random driver, whom she could no longer recall. The good-looking woman liked to have a drink and had a mischievous laugh. The neighbors would quietly remark that she “put her balls before her brains.” She was constantly hanging around the roadside café where little Lisa was allowed to take whatever she liked from the kitchen.

Lisa’s mother died between the wheels of a truck when she tried to cross the highway drunk one night. Lisa was sixteen at the time. The café’s owner seized his opportunity at the wake: He plied the girl with alcohol and then raped her.

“Now you’re going to serve me instead of your mom,” he told the shattered Lisa the next morning. “What, you thought I was going to feed you out of the good of my heart?”

Lisa endured the rape for two weeks, until the owner of the cafe decided to let one of his relatives have a go. The relative – who had just been released from prison and who, besides being starved for women, turned out to be somewhat of a sadist – did quite a number on the girl. After that, Lisa made her decision. She cleaned out the café’s register and hitched a ride to Moscow. She had no illusions about who she was going to be. It was better to work as a prostitute and get paid for it than endure being raped over a bowl of soup for the rest of her life.

Lisa Malyshko was certain that if she had had a father, he would have defended her and her life would have turned out otherwise. However, finding her mythical father seemed impossible. Katya Grebenkina’s situation was not even worth comparing: At least she knew the exact age of officer Igor Vasilevich Grebenkin – and where he worked.

“What if he’s a general by now?” Lisa would goad her friend. But Katya would simply wave her off. Finally, Lisa took the initiative herself and located Igor Grebenkin on the web.

This was how the newly-uncovered father came to Moscow to see his daughter. Their long-expected reunion, however, had turned into a horrific tragedy.

Recalling these things, Lisa also remembered that it was forty days since the death of Stella, with the funny last name of Sosuksu. Stella had only been eighteen and never laughed at anything. The first time Lisa saw Stella smile was when – having told Birdless Boris and his preoccupied clients to go to hell one evening – all three girls had gone to Sparrow Hills to see a grandiose fireworks show.

A crowd had gathered. In the sky overhead, bright flashes burst and broke into thousands of shimmering fires. Katya and Lisa were warming themselves with gulps of brandy and yelling, “Because we feel like it and not because it’s what the client wants.” They kept prickling Stella, trying to get their impassive friend to loosen up. Stella tripped, flailed her arms and struck a skinny young man, knocking off his glasses. Mumbling an apology, she replaced the broken glasses onto his flummoxed face and could not contain her smile. The young man replied in kind.

His name was Oleg Deryabin. He was a PhD student – a botanist – who was doing his research right there in Moscow State University’s Botanical Garden in Sparrow Hills. He was the kind of guy who got mocked in school, but Stella fell for him. After that, she would take any opportunity she could to run off and spend time with Oleg.

One day in the fall, Stella showed her girlfriends their humble little lovers’ retreat in the botanical garden – a derelict conservatory nestled among ancient apple trees. The girls munched on apples they found on the ground and fantasized about all kind of impossible nonsense that only happens in romantic comedies. The naïve rustic girl from sunny Moldova was the most vocal of the three. She went on in detail about her future plans for her future happy life.

And yet dreams come true much more often in the movies than in real life. Birdless Boris located Oleg Deryabin and showed him photos of Stella participating in orgies. “Professionals don’t spread their legs pro bono,” the pimp told the botanist – mostly to scare him. “You owe me, fellah.” The young man, who hailed from an intellectual family, could not forgive his girlfriend’s betrayal. When he saw her again, he called her words that Birdless himself would use in times of anger.

Overcome with grief, Stella stepped off the roof.

Lisa forced herself to forget her friends’ deaths and typed yet another query into Yandex. She had goals and she wasn’t about to abandon the path she’d settled on. Yandex returned the addresses of three specialized stores. Lisa chose the first one and wrote it down.

Her hand checked the envelope in her pocket. It was almost empty, and yet even these dregs would more than suffice for her immediate plans. Tomorrow she would be rich, but for now she needed to find a place to sleep. It would be too dangerous to go back to her apartment and the train station was patrolled by pushy cops who had a sixth sense when it came to prostitutes – they would find something to make a problem out of and then try to get a free ride.

Then it came to her. Not for nothing had Lisa recalled the pavilion in the botanical garden in Sparrow Hills.

“Thanks, Stella. Now I know where I can spend the night.”

14

Feeling fooled and seething with rage, Alex Bayukin stormed through the emergency exit and out of Wild Kitties.

Wait till I get my hands on you, Birdless.