Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith Page A

apologize personally, face-to-face. Who would that be?”
    “Do you have it?”
    Rina called out from the casino. She shone in a silver jumpsuit in the spirit of the day. “Arkady, are you missing someone?”
    Zhenya had vanished from Arkady’s side only to reappear at the gaming tables. There were tables for poker and blackjack, but Rina’s friends had opted for classic roulette, and there Zhenya stood, clutching his book and dourly assessing each bet as it was placed. Arkady excused himself to Timofeyev with a promise to return.
    “I want you to meet my friends, Nikolai and Leo,” Rina whispered. “They are so much fun, and they’re losing so much money. At least they were until your little friend arrived.”
    Nikolai Kuzmitch, who had cornered the nickel market, was a short, rapid-fire type who placed straight-up and corner bets all over the baize. Leonid Maximov, the vodka king, was heavyset, with a cigar. He was more deliberate—a mathematician, after all—and played the simple progression system that had ruined Dostoyevsky: doubling and redoubling on red, red, red, red, red. If the two men lost ten or twenty thousand dollars on a bounce of the roulette ball, it was for charity and only gained respect. In fact, as the chips were raked in, losing itself became feverishly competitive, a sign of panache—that is, until Zhenya had taken a post between the two millionaires. With every flamboyant bet, Zhenya gave Kuzmitch the sort of pitying glance one would bestow upon an idiot, and every unimaginative double on red by Maximov drew from Zhenya a sigh of disdain. Maximov moved his chips to black, and Zhenya smirked at his inconstancy; Maximov repositioned them on black, and Zhenya, with no change in expression, seemed to roll his eyes.
    “Unnerving little boy, isn’t he?” Rina said. “He’s almost brought the game to a standstill.”
    “He has that power,” Arkady admitted. He noticed that, in the meantime, Timofeyev had slipped into the crowd.
    Kuzmitch and Maximov quit the table in disgust, but they put on matching smiles for Rina and a welcome for Arkady that said they had nothing to fear from an investigator; they had been buying and selling investigators for years.
    Kuzmitch said, “Rina tells us that you’re helping tie up the loose ends about Pasha. That’s good. We want people reassured. Russian business is into a whole new phase. The rough stuff is out.” Maximov agreed. Arkady was put in mind of carnivores swearing off red meat. Not that they were Mafia. A man was expected to know how to defend himself and own a private army if need be. But it was a phase, and now that they had their fortunes, they firmly advocated law and order.
    Arkady asked whether Ivanov had mentioned any anxieties or threats or new names, avoided anyone, referred to his health. No, the two said, except that Ivanov had not been himself lately.
    “Did he mention salt?”
    “No.”
    Maximov unplugged his cigar to say, “When I heard about Pasha, I was devastated. We were competitors, but we respected and liked each other.”
    Kuzmitch said, “Ask Rina. Pasha and I would fight over business all day and then party like best friends all night.”
    “We even vacationed together,” Maximov said.
    “Like Saint-Tropez?” Arkady asked. Bomb and all? he wondered.
    They winced as if he had added something unpleasant to the punch. Arkady noticed Colonel Ozhogin arrive and whisper into Prosecutor Zurin’s ear. Guards started to move in the direction of the roulette table, and Arkady sensed that his time among the elite was limited. Kuzmitch said that he was piloting his plane to Istanbul for a few days of relaxation. Maximov was coming along with six or seven agreeable girls, and Arkady could come, too. Things could be arranged. There was an implicit suggestion that there might be too many girls for two men to handle. Rina, of course, was more than welcome.
    “They’re like a boys’ club,” she told Arkady. “Greedy little