Chapter 5

The era of video technology brought with it many changes. The first and most noticeable was the transformation of movie theaters from places where films were shown into showrooms for furniture, automobiles, electronics, and even wedding dresses. The spacious and once festive lobbies were now filled with computer games and neon signs advertising “Currency Exchange” and there was no reminder that once film had reigned here – once considered an art form. Unfortunately, it had long been the norm for commerce and primitive amusements to crowd out art.

The second consequence that everyone noticed was the gradual shift of teenagers from the street into apartments. Naturally, if they could have played a VCR on a bench in the park, kids would do that, because watching movies was much better outdoors, in a group, with a cigarette between your teeth and a glass of fake winelike crap in your hand, and most importantly, without parental controls. However, since technological progress had not yet caught up with the needs of minors, movies had to be watched at home. Parents were pleased – the kids weren’t out in the streets, and the kids in turn were pleased that they could relax and have fun instead of reading boring fat books about some war and peace. Inspectors from the prevention of crimes by minors units breathed a sigh of relief. Teachers shrugged hopelessly, tired of waiting for their students to deign to read the required literature. With every year, children read less and made more grammatical errors in their written work.

You could buy videotapes on every corner. And in almost each of those places you could rent videos. There were two kinds of rentals – the nameless trusting one, that is, not serious and expensive, and the registered, that is, serious and cheap. In the former, a person came to the video store, took a video, leaving a down payment equal to the cost of the video, which he got back when he returned the tape, less the cost of the rental. And you could stick whatever you wanted into the brightly labeled box, for instance, you could keep the latest hit and return something very old and non-box-office. A variant of this not very nice behavior was returning not the cassette you had received but a copy made on very poor equipment and therefore streaked, tinny sounding, and otherwise marred. The tapes were not checked when they were returned. But the cost of rental in these places was high: the owner knew his level of risk, because when he did discover a switch he was not able to find the sneaky client, and therefore he hiked the price of rental to have a financial reserve to buy new copies in these situations.

With the register system, the rental personnel actually asked the clients for their names and even asked for identification with address. And they charged almost nothing for the rental. But that was on paper. In fact, it was quite different. They did not always ask for ID, even though they did write down the name. And they charged a bit more for the rental than they were supposed to when the client showed a passport, but of course, not as much as the no-name places. Somewhere in the middle. And there were seventy-four such rental places that used registers in the capital. And Nastya was going to work on the materials from the thirty that Gennady Svalov had visited.

The day couldn’t have been better for staying home and working diligently. Just yesterday the sun had shone brightly, casting doubt on the ability of some weak-willed citizens to withstand the lure of a leisurely walk. But the weather on Saturday morning wasn’t luring anyone anywhere. Beneath the lowering clouds it was grim, gray, damp, and drizzling, and the thought of a walk did not elicit any pleasant associations.

Nastya, naturally, could not resist pampering herself a little and slept until ten-thirty. She liked sleeping late, especially on such dark rainy days. Alexei had gotten up much earlier, and when she finally forced her eyes open she saw that her husband had had breakfast and was in the kitchen working on a lecture he was giving that evening at some commercial school that prepared economists and included a required course in higher mathematics.

Dragging her feet and feeling achy all over, Nastya got in the shower and started waking up. In order to get her brain going, she tried to remember the titles of all fourteen films stolen by the strange thief. Not only the titles, but the genres as well. At the third title she turned the knob a bit, slightly lowering the water temperature. At the seventh title, the process stalled: the title was long and complicated. Angrily, Nastya twisted the knob with the blue circle and under the streams of suddenly cold water, the difficult title floated to the surface of her memory. Her body was covered in goose bumps, but she bravely tormented her half-awakened brain until she got all fourteen titles.

However, after the execution by shower, she showed up in the kitchen with rosy cheeks and glimmering eyes. Alexei pushed his papers to one side, making room for his wife’s breakfast.

“Lyoshka, why don’t I make something special for dinner tonight, your choice,” Nastya offered.

After yesterday’s talk she still felt guilty for making her husband go through so much anxiety, and she wanted to smooth it over somehow.

Alexei looked up at her with interest.

“For instance?”

“Well, I don’t know. You choose. What would you like?”

“Sturgeon. On a skewer, if possible. Can you handle that?”

“I’ll try,” she said bravely.

Nastya was not at all sure she could cook sturgeon on a skewer, but the main thing was to get started, and then she’d see – after all she could check a cookbook or ask him. She savored her two cups of strong coffee, had a cheese sandwich, and got dressed to go to the store. Alexei watched her with undisguised mockery, good-humored, of course. When the wife decides to go to the store every three months or so without the husband, it can be amusing. Usually they went marketing on the weekend together or, if Nastya was working, Alexei did it himself.

Wearing her jacket and running shoes, she peeked into the kitchen. “Lyoshka, what should I get?”

“There’s a fine howdy-do.” He made a production of exasperation. “What are you planning to use in the grilled sturgeon – veal cutlets?”

“Come on,” she wailed. “I don’t know what kind of sturgeon to get. Frozen, fresh, in a box, filets, who knows.”

Alexei sighed bitterly and gave a detailed explanation of the closest place to get the kind of fish they needed, how much to get, and how to select it.

“And don’t forget tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs, potatoes, and a can of mushrooms. And if you see any marinated julienne beets, get some.”

“What for?” Nastya asked.

“For a side dish. If we’re spending money on sturgeon, we should serve it properly. Do what your elders tell you and don’t get smart.”

“Big deal!” she snorted as she put some plastic shopping bags into her purse. “Eight months, that’s all you have on me, and you act as if…”

“Take the car, my adult darling,” Chistyakov said. “You need to get a lot of vegetables, for the whole week.”

“I don’t need it,” Nastya insisted.

“You do. Or your back will go out again. Don’t argue with me, please.”

“I don’t like taking the car to the market. It’s showing off somehow. And then, you have to find a parking space, it’s crowded, you know. I just don’t want to.”

Alexei tossed the pen down on the table and rolled his eyes to the ceiling.

“Lord, why didn’t you give me the smart woman I had chosen and waited for so many years and stuck me with this brainless dummy instead? Now I’ll have to drop my lecture, get dressed, and go marketing with her because the silly bint isn’t supposed to carry anything over 5 pounds, otherwise she gets a backache. But she doesn’t want to take the car, it’s this feeling she woke up with this morning. And because of that her miserable husband either has to go with her to carry the bags or prepare himself for several days of whining, moaning and groaning, pathetic attempts to get his pity and sympathy. Which one should I pick, oh, Lord?”

Nastya knew he was joking, but she could tell that he was beginning to be annoyed. She really did not like driving, it made her tired, but now it looked like she’d have to take the car, otherwise Lyoshka would go with her instead of working on his lecture. That wouldn’t be good.

The market wasn’t too far and the trip did not take long. An hour later Nastya was unloading her purchases in the kitchen under Alexei’s demanding eye. To her great amazement, she had picked the sturgeon properly and had gotten everything on the list, without forgetting anything or mixing things up.

“All right, go work now,” Chistyakov said generously. “I’ll do the cooking. You’re bound to destroy an expensive dish.”

She gave her husband a joyous kiss on the cheek and rushed to the bedroom. The unpleasant but necessary part was done, now she could get on with the pleasant, interesting, and satisfying part – her job.

Nastya turned on the computer and began by creating a chart with fourteen columns – one for each stolen film. She put the title at the top of each column and then made lines. Ten administrative districts. The name at the left of the lines. Then we take each rental place, check the address to see which police district it’s in, and enter the data in the right box. For now there were thirty video rental places, but by Tuesday she hoped to have another forty-four.

When Nastya worked on something, she did not like to think that she might be doing it in vain. She firmly believed that there was no useless work. Even if it did not yield the desired result, there would definitely be some result that she had not expected at all. The film-loving thief could have rented where it was more expensive but no name was required. He could have. Easily. And then Nastya’s attempt to find him among the multitudes who rented in cheap places was doomed to failure. But she kept in mind the fact that he had stolen them, when it was simpler to buy them. And if there were financial reasons for it, then he probably rented where it was cheaper. Of course, the theft might not be connected to money, but the criminal’s mind. In any case, she had to work with the names. If she got nothing, it meant the thief rented where it was more expensive, or did not rent at all, getting tapes from another source. That would mean different working hypotheses and more work for her. There was no useless work. A negative result was still a result, as Nastya Kamenskaya liked to say.

* * *

It had warmed up, and Kirill Esipov, general director of Sherkhan Books, decided to start the dacha season. He left for his dacha, or summer house, outside Moscow along the Yaroslavl Road on Friday evening, expecting his two colleagues – Grisha Avtayev and Semyon Voronets – for lunch on Saturday. Esipov was not married, but he had a relationship with the same woman for the last two years. Tall, a full head taller than him, long-legged Oxana was a model. Esipov’s six-foot-six bodyguard Vovchik had been eying her for a long time.

The central heating had warmed up the house, and Oxana was walking around in shorts and a thin-strapped T-shirt, which exposed a rather broad expanse of smooth skin on her taut belly.

“What time are they coming?” she asked, coming over and sitting on Kirill’s lap.

“Three. Why? Do you have plans?”

“No plans, I just want to get dressed before they get here.”

“Why the modesty?” Esipov chuckled.

“Because,” the girl replied in an injured tone. “I don’t like the way your idiot Voronets undresses me with his eyes.”

“He undresses you?” Kirill asked, still lazily.

“Haven’t you noticed? Or maybe you think just because the three of you are so rich and such close friends, I’m supposed to belong to all of you? You get first dibs since you’re the captain of the team, and then they get sloppy seconds. Is that what you think?”

“Oxana, Oxana.” He caressed her back and shoulders with a gentle, soothing rhythm. “Don’t be like that. You’re a beauty and it’s not surprising that men drool over you. It’s completely natural, and you shouldn’t take offense. Just as you shouldn’t get mad at me that I don’t punch every man who looks at you. I can’t beat up half of Russia, now can I?”

“But you have to tell your Voronets to stop staring at me,” Oxana insisted, cuddling closer. “He’s disgusting and I don’t like it.”

“Now, Oxana, darling, that’s silly. And really, it’s unprofessional. You’re a model and you have to be used to everyone looking at you, not just those you find personally attractive.”

“All right.” She made a joke sigh and kissed him on the top of his head. “I’ll put up with your Semyon in the name of the majesty of my profession.”

Oxana was no dummy, even though she liked to coo and act the little fool. Behind the broad calm forehead without a single line lay the pragmatic mind of a girl who knew what was what, and what the value of various services and favors cost. She was tactful and educated enough so that Esipov could take her to social events. At the same time she had a good sense of social distance. After all, she could lodge the same complaint about Vovchik as about Semyon, but she never complained about Vovchik to Esipov. Vovchik was a servant, the lower class, and if she said one word he’d be fired without regrets or severance pay. And why should the guy suffer? For having a normal, male reaction that did not distinguish between an ordinary girl and boss’s girl? Semyon Voronets was another matter. Nothing threatened him, Kirill wouldn’t part with him for anything, they were old friends and business partners, so she could complain about him. It did Semyon no harm, but at least she got it off her chest, she couldn’t carry it around inside all the time. And then, it was a shame to complain about Vovchik, he was a nice guy, and most importantly, he knew that he didn’t have a chance against his boss. While Semyon Voronets thought he was irresistible and for some reason saw nothing wrong with screwing the girl of his friend and partner. And there was nothing irresistible about him.

By the time Avtayev and Voronets arrived, Oxana had changed into jeans and a heavy, long-sleeved T-shirt. After the requisite ten minutes with the guests, she politely excused herself, smiled sweetly, and left the room.

Vovchik the bodyguard was in the spacious kitchen working assiduously on the crossword puzzle. Hearing steps, he looked up and smiled welcomingly.

“Did they say when they were going to eat?” he asked, giving the girl a carnivorous look.

“In about twenty minutes. They’re having drinks. They’ve picked up all these European habits, but they still haven’t learned to eat in the evening,” Oxana said with a snicker. “Do you need help with lunch?”

“No thanks, it’s all ready. Sit with me. Let’s do the crossword together. Sit on my lap, you’ll have a better view.”

“And what am I supposed to see better? The letters or your passionate love?” she said sarcastically. “I’ve told you a hundred times, keep your hands off.”

“I am.”

He extended his hands and waved them playfully. “I’m inviting you to sit on my lap. As for my hands, here they are.”

They laughed at the silly joke. It never occurred to Oxana to respond to the bodyguard’s desire. Even when she argued with Kirill, even when she felt unjustly and bitterly hurt, she never thought about cheating on Esipov with his bodyguard for revenge or plain nastiness. Her beautiful slender body was a professional weapon, a tool, it existed to wear extravagant fashion, making it even more attractive, even more striking. She became a model while she was still in school and she was accustomed to use her beautiful body for work and not for getting even or any other inappropriate goals.

Oxana poured tea into a large beautiful cup with golden tulips and moved a pack of crackers closer. Vovchik was not surprised, he knew that she was on a strict diet and never, except in the most necessary times, joined the guests at the table. She had a healthy appetite, and sticking to her diet required significant stress and will power, and so Oxana tried to avoid temptation by avoiding the sight of such delicious, such accessible and such harmful dishes. Vovchik understood and was sympathetic, as if it were a serious disease that it would be tacky to make fun of. He loved eating heartily and he truly pitied the girl who had to deny herself one of life’s pleasures.

“Turn around,” he said in a while. “I’m starting to bring it out.”