With concentration, Gary drew a stick figure with trembly limbs. He added a box with wheels: “Truck with electronic goods.” Between him and Rudy, a blacked-in figure: “Kim.” A box with a cross: “Ambulance.” A second box: “Maybe a van.” Lines with heads: “Gypsies.” Smaller squares with wheels: “Chechen cars.”

“I remember a Mercedes,” Jaak said.

“They were already gone.”

“They?” Arkady asked. “Who was they?”

“A driver. I know the other one was a woman.”

“Can you draw her?”

Gary drew a stick figure with a big bust, high heels and curly hair. “Maybe blond. I know she was built.”

“A real careful observer,” Jaak said.

“So you saw her out of the car, too,” Arkady said.

“Yeah, coming from Rudy’s.”

Arkady held the paper a couple of ways. “Good drawing.”

Gary nodded.

Arkady thought so, too. With his blue body and busted face, Gary looked just like the stick figure on the page, rendered more human by his picture.

The South Port car market was bounded by Proletariat Prospect and a loop of the Moscow River. New cars were ordered in a hall of white marble. No one went inside; there were no new cars. Outside, gamblers laid cardboard on the ground to play three-card monte. Construction fences were papered with offers (“Have tires in medium condition for 1985 Zhigulis”) and pleas (“Looking for fan belt for ’64 Peugeot”). Jaak wrote down the number for the tires, just in case.

At the end of the fence was a dirt lane of used Zhigulis and Zaporozhets, two-cylinder German Trabants and Italian Fiats as rusty as ancient swords. Buyers moved with eyes that scrutinized tire tread, odometer, upholstery, dropping to one knee with a flashlight to see whether the engine was actively leaking oil on the spot. Everyone was an expert. Even Arkady knew that a Moskvitch built in far-off Izhevsk was superior to a Moskvitch built in Moscow, and that the only clue was the insignia on the grille. Around the cars were Chechens in warm-up outfits. They were dark, bulky men with low brows and long stares.

Everyone cheated. Car sellers went to the market clerk’s wooden shack to learn—depending on model, year and condition—what price they could demand (and on which they would pay tax), which bore no resemblance to the money that actually passed between seller and buyer. Everyone—seller, buyer and clerk—understood that the real price would be three times higher.