In the meantime the ventilation system automatically cleaned the air. Champagne was chilled and the icemaker filled to the brim. The owners could walk in and have their casino up and running within an hour.

For Zhenya the casino was a theme park. In the daytime he could lie down on the carpet and take in sparkling chandeliers and murals of virgins preparing for a visit from Peter, who claimed a monarch's right to sample the beauties of his empire, from hot-eyed Circassian exotics to buxom, blue-eyed girls of the Ukraine. The painter had captured each in a state of high anticipation.

At night the carpet was softer than some beds he had known. The slot machines were musketeers in caftans with recorded encouragement like, "One more for the czar!" Zhenya lifted the cloth off the roulette table and found everything in place: blue baize, plaques, winning markers, croupier rakes.

He spun the wheel and tossed a silvery ball counter to the blur of red and black numbers. While the ball rode the rim the sound was circular, and as the ball lost momentum it clicked off diamond-shaped studs, hopped erratically from one slot to another and finally came to rest on "0," the house's number.

He picked up the ball again and threw it the length of the gaming room. Swept a stack of candy-red $50,000 plaques to the floor. Kicked a box that exploded into poker chips.

Arkady expected that when he returned to Yaroslavl Station he would find the trailer lit like a circus tent. Instead, his headlights found only Victor with a bloody nose.

"The trailer's gone." Victor pressed a handkerchief against his nose. "It was Colonel Malenkov and his men. They towed it away. Malenkov said it was a public nuisance."

"Did Malenkov know he was towing away a crime scene?"

"The colonel says there was no crime. That you can sit on your dick and spin, because he is still carrying our Olga on the books as an overdose. He likes his statistics the way they are. How does the nose look?"

"Crusting up nicely. What happened?"

"Some pushing and shoving."

"The colonel can't make all the evidence disappear. Willi found clonidine in her stomach and a lethal dose of ether in her lungs. What's the matter?"

"I don't see a lot of official backup around here. I just see you and me out on a limb."

"This is a good case, Victor."

"Then why are we alone?"

"It's an advantage."

"An advantage? Do you appreciate the futility of one man talking to a hundred prostitutes and crazies to find a single sober, reliable witness? If I'd asked, 'Has anyone seen a giant lizard?' I might've gotten somewhere. We have no identification, no witness, no scene of the crime and no support." Victor looked wistfully toward a kiosk with shelves of vodka. Arkady felt the plunge in Victor's mood and could feel the power of his thirst.

"Have you got a good suit?" Arkady asked.

"What?"

"Do you have something appropriate to wear to the Nijinsky Fair tonight? We have an invitation but we have to blend in."

"You and me with millionaires?"

"I'm afraid so. They've had some bad times lately."

"Huh. What should I say to a bloodsucker who's lost a million dollars?"

"You express compassion."

"I could kill him and feed him to the pigs."

"Well, something in between."

Apartment lights came on in the high-rise across from the station. Wives would be dressing themselves, pulling clothes on children, making breakfast. Men would be sitting on the edge of the bed, smoking the first cigarette of the day and wondering what had happened to their lives.

Eva, for example, had disappeared from Arkady's life like an actress who, in the middle of a play, decided that if her lines in Act I were poor, her lines in Act II were no better. She sent Arkady a note that said, I will not wait around until they kill you. I won't be the grieving widow of a man who insists on teasing the executioners of the state. I will not be there when someone shoots you in your car or answering the doorbell and I won't walk in your funeral cortege.

Arkady thought that was a little harsh. Backward even, considering she was a medical volunteer who answered the siren call of every disaster. That they had met at Chernobyl was a bad sign. They loved each other, only the half-life of that love was shorter than he had supposed.

Victor said, "We're back where we started with Olga. I checked with Missing Persons. Nobody's missed her yet."

"We can cover the apartments together."

"Do we have to? I mean, what's the point? No one cares about a dead prostitute."

"What if she's not?" Arkady asked. "What if Olga was not a prostitute?"

"You're joking."

"What if she's not?"

"Excuse me, but the only thing we know for certain about this case is that Olga was a prostitute. She dressed like a prostitute, was tattooed like a prostitute and she pulled off her panties like a prostitute in a trailer no normal person would set foot in."

"What everybody notices about her is that she doesn't have a scratch or a bruise. No needle tracks. Victor, show me a prostitute here that isn't damaged one way or the other."

"She was new in the game is all. See, I know what you're up to. You're trying to keep me too busy to drink. I'm not a dog you keep busy chasing a ball." Victor had a vicious grin. "I'd kill for a drink."

"Where are her rings? From her tan lines she had five rings on her fingers. They weren't in her bag."

"Probably the man she was with took them. Maybe that's what was going on, a robbery."

"For a streetwalker's jewelry? Did you get any pictures?"

Victor produced a pocket-size video camera.

"Enjoy."

The first image on the view panel was Olga as she was found half naked on the mattress, her head turned, her legs crossed so that her right heel touched her left toe. Her right arm was raised overhead as if she were a bride tossing her bouquet over her shoulder. Victor had carried out some interviews. The prostitutes were righteously pleased that an interloper had been eliminated. Pimps turned away. Street boys were disappointed that the body was not on display. The homeless asked for loose change. Drunks screwed up their faces in confusion. All in all, they constituted a human menagerie, not a witness pool.

Arkady rewound back to Olga.

"That's an unnatural position."

"So?"

"As if he killed her and arranged her body. He pulled her panties off so that we would gape. Gape and not see." Arkady thought there was just a chance that someone in the dark glowed with pride. He looked up at the apartment building on the other side of the station, at balconies with a perfect view.

The building was eight stories high, six one-bedroom apartments to a floor. Victor and Arkady only called on the five apartments that had been lit when they first answered the radio call.

Apartment 2C. Volchek and Primakov, bear-size Siberians with furtive eyes. Both loggers, thirty-five years of age, in rooms so cold the air conditioner shivered. The scent of something rotten was coated by the floral spray of an air freshener. A saw lay in the bathtub. In the refrigerator, mold and a case of beer. They said they had played cards and watched DVDs all night. Arkady pictured them swatting salmon in a stream.

Apartment 4F. Weitzman, ninety, widower, retired metallurgist, observant Jew who took seriously the Torah's injunction against operating equipment during Shabbos. From sunset Friday to sunset Saturday even flicking an electrical switch or turning a dial was forbidden. If he wanted to take the elevator, he had to ride it until someone went to his floor. He had shaped his life to take into account every possible misstep, but he had nodded off during a television documentary on Putin's early years- Just Another Boy! -and awoke to a rebroadcast of the same show. He had seen the documentary six times so far. When Arkady turned off the set it was like cutting a man down from the rack.