"You're doing a great job." A mixture of vodka and cocaine slurred Kuzin's voice even further. "But I need more."
They were in one of the brothels, which to Arkadin's practiced eye looked oddly underpopulated. "Where are all the girls?" he asked.
Kuzin waved an arm. "Gone, run away, who the fuck knows where? These bitches get a bit of money in their pocket, they're off like rabbits."
Ever the pragmatist, Arkadin said, "I'll take my crew and go find them."
"A waste of time." Kuzin's little head bobbled on his shoulders. "Just find me more."
"It's getting difficult," Arkadin pointed out. "Some of the girls are scared; they don't want to come with us."
"Take them anyway."
Arkadin frowned. "I don't follow you."
"Okay, moron, I'll lay it out for you. Take your fucking crew in the fucking van and snatch the bitches off the street."
"You're talking about kidnapping."
Kuzin laughed. "Fuck me, he gets it!"
"What about the cops."
Kuzin laughed even harder. "The cops are in my pocket. And even if they weren't, d'you think they get paid to work? They don't give a rat's ass."
For the next three weeks Arkadin and his crew worked the night shift, delivering girls to the brothel, whether or not they wanted to come. These girls were sullen, often belligerent, until Kuzin took them into a back room, where none of them ever wanted to go a second time. Kuzin didn't mess with their faces, as that would be bad for business; only their arms and legs were bruised.
Arkadin watched this controlled violence as if through the wrong end of a telescope. He knew it was happening, but he pretended it had nothing to do with him. He continued to count his money, which was now piling up at a more rapid clip. It was his money and Yelena that kept him warm at night. Each time he was with her, he checked her arms and legs for bruises. When he made her promise not to take drugs, she laughed, "Leonid Danilovich, who has money for drugs?"
He smiled at this, knowing what she meant. In fact, she had more money than all the other girls in the brothel combined. He knew this because he was the one who gave it to her.
"Get yourself a new dress, a new pair of shoes," he'd tell her, but frugal girl that she was, she'd merely smile and kiss him on the cheek with great affection. She was right, he realized, not to do anything to call attention to herself.
One night, not long after, Kuzin accosted him as he was leaving Yelena's room.
"I have an urgent problem and I need your help," the freak said.
Arkadin went with him out of the apartment building. A large van was waiting on the street, its engine running. Kuzin climbed into the back, and Arkadin followed. Two of the brothel girls were being guarded by Kuzin's pair of personal ghouls.
"They tried to escape," Kuzin said. "We just caught them."
"They need to be taught a lesson," Arkadin said, because he assumed that was what his partner wanted him to say.
"Too fucking late for that." Kuzin signaled to the driver, and the van took off.
Arkadin settled back on the seat, wondering where they were going. He kept his mouth shut, knowing that if he asked questions now he'd look like a fool. Thirty minutes later the van slowed, turned off onto an unpaved road. For the next several minutes they jounced along a rutted track that must have been very narrow because branches kept scraping against the sides of the van.
At length, they stopped, the doors opened, and everyone clambered out. The night was very dark, illuminated only by the headlights of the van, but in the distance the fire of the smelters was like blood in the sky or, rather, on the undersides of the belching miasma churned out by hundreds of smokestacks. No one saw the sky in Nizhny Tagil, and when it snowed the flakes turned gray or even sometimes black as they passed through the industrial murk.
Arkadin followed along with Kuzin as the two ghouls pushed the girls through the thick, weedy underbrush. The resiny scent of pine perfumed the air so strongly, it almost masked the appalling stench of decomposition.
A hundred yards in the ghouls pulled back on the collars of the girls's coats, reining them in. Kuzin took out his gun and shot one of the girls in the back of the head. She pitched forward into a bed of dead leaves. The