Moscow, Russia
Arkhip Mishkin arrived at his desk in the Criminal Investigation Department after spending much of the early morning feeling like a dog chasing his tail and losing ground. Uniformed officers canvassed the establishments and apartments near the Yakimanka Bar, especially those overlooking the alley. No one had heard or had seen anything. Like most Muscovites, they did not want to complicate their lives with a police matter. Arkhip had advised the officers not to mention it could also be a mafiya matter, which would have only exacerbated his predicament.
Upon the decedent’s identification, Arkhip issued a gag order on the medical examiner’s office and instructed that the ME’s preliminary report be expedited and for his eyes only. He had issued a similar order to the Criminal Investigation Department’s Technology Center. The video from the designated CCTV camera outside the bar was to be for Arkhip’s eyes only. Despite these precautions, he suspected the decedent’s identity would leak sooner rather than later.
It had been sooner.
Arkhip wiped his handkerchief across his brow. All the exertion that morning in the muggy Moscow air caused him to perspire profusely.
“You look like you could already use a shower, Mishkin,” Faddei, another criminal investigator, said as Arkhip blew past his desk.
Arkhip smiled but did not slow.
Faddei turned and leaned back in his chair. “I heard you caught a homicide, and so close to your retirement. Maybe someone is trying to screw up that perfect record of yours, eh?”
In his twenty-five years as an investigator, Arkhip had not once left a crime unsolved. Some investigations took longer than others to resolve, but he fancied himself the tortoise more than the hare. Persistence and determination. The thought had crossed his mind, though, that this case, were it not quickly resolved, could delay his forced retirement.
“Anything of interest?” Faddei asked.
“Just a shooting in a bar.” Arkhip pulled out his desk chair and sat.
“You need to learn to slow down, Mishkin. You move like a man getting zapped with a cattle prod. What will you do in retirement when you don’t have a case to chase?”
He had no idea.
Arkhip removed his sport coat and porkpie hat, sat, and picked up the phone, hoping to dissuade Faddei from further questions for which Arkhip had no answers. He didn’t have time to think about his future. Already he was behind. Veteran uniformed officers working the Yakimanka District had found the prostitute, Bojana Chabon, a.k.a. Isabella. Unfortunately, someone else found her first, though it had been made to look otherwise. Arkhip had climbed three flights of stairs in a dilapidated and soon-to-be-demolished apartment building only to find Chabon on a bed, a tube wrapped around her emaciated bicep, and a needle and syringe stuck in the crook of her arm. Having worked narcotics as a young investigator, Arkhip surmised the drug in the syringe had likely been heroin, and likely laced with a deadly poison such as strychnine or fentanyl. He’d know for certain when the labs were completed, though it wouldn’t help his investigation any.
While at Chabon’s apartment, Arkhip received a second call from uniformed officers who had obtained the address for Pavil Ismailov, Eldar Velikaya’s bodyguard. Ismailov lived in an upscale condominium complex, also in Yakimanka, but light-years away from Chabon’s apartment in terms of condition and cost.
Ismailov did not answer his door, though his neighbor in the adjoining apartment did open his door. The middle-aged man, holding a yappy dog, complained that Ismailov played heavy metal music at all hours of the day and night. After a three-minute rant, Arkhip got in a question and learned Ismailov was not at home, at least the man had not heard the music or Ismailov’s footsteps late the prior evening or early that morning. He said it surprised him because Ismailov’s car was in the underground garage and “The man clomps around like a draft horse.”
Arkhip found Ismailov’s car in the garage, an expensive black Mercedes. He found Ismailov in the trunk, with a bullet hole in the back of his skull. If Arkhip were a betting man, he’d wager Ismailov had been shot as he opened the trunk, then pushed inside, dead before he knew what had hit him. Much easier than trying to lift a man of Ismailov’s size. Arkhip had the entire car, including the body, towed to the forensic team at Petrovka Street for processing.
Either Arkhip was in the midst of a mob war, or someone was cleaning up a mess. What mess, exactly, Arkhip didn’t have a clue. But he would.
He always did.
Twenty minutes later, Arkhip waited in one of the Criminal Investigation Department’s windowless, seven-foot-square interrogation rooms. A table and three chairs dominated the space. The chairs had nicked and scarred the pale-green walls, and years of traffic had worn the uneven linoleum squares. A high-powered fluorescent light bulb hung over the table, as bright as day. When left alone, a suspect could hear the tube buzz, like an annoying fly. Everything was intended to intimidate by simulating the cramped confines and loneliness of a cell. The room held the aroma of body odor and fear, poorly masked by a chemical disinfectant.
Arkhip could have opted for more comfortable surroundings—one of the division’s conference rooms, or a table in the cafeteria—but it was well known the vory, Russian mafiya, had informants on their payroll working inside the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the shit would hit the proverbial fan soon enough. The longer Arkhip could keep news from the press, the more opportunity he had to obtain information untainted by bribes and favors. As it was, two of his three witnesses had already been silenced. He needed to find the unknown third man quickly, but first he needed to better understand what he was up against, and that was the reason for this meeting.
The door pushed in without a knock. A man, balding in a horseshoe pattern, stuck his head in the door as if uncertain he had the right place. “Senior Investigator Mishkin?”
“Arkhip, please. You must be Investigator Gusev. Please come in. I would stand but it seems that space is at a premium.”
Gusev stepped to the side to shut the door, and the two shook hands. Gusev’s eyes roamed the room as he placed a thick maroon file on the table.
“Ah. Good. You brought your file on the Velikayas.”
Gusev smiled, but it was patronizing. “I would need to be a magician to bring you the files on the Velikayas. They would not all fit in this room. This is my personal file.”
“Of course,” Arkhip said. “Please take a seat.” The linoleum squealed as Arkhip pulled the table toward his side of the room to allow Gusev space to sit.
“You have worked for the organized crime control department for many years?”
“OCC,” he said. “And yes, for more than two decades.”