Jaak hadn’t checked in yet. Polina had called, but the last place Arkady had wanted to start the day was the morgue. Didn’t she ever get her fill of gore? On the other hand, watching boys pummel each other was proving no cure for a headache. Master of Sport Antonov gave the impression of a man whose brains had long since been pounded into more solid stuff. He had a gray crew cut and flat, utilitarian features, and in his fists, so knotted that he seemed to have extra knuckles, he held a bell mallet and a watch. The boys in the ring wore leather helmets, tank tops, shorts. Their skin was as pale as potato flesh except where they had been hit. Sometimes they looked like they were boxing, the next moment as if they were dancing badly. Besides the ring, the Leningrad Borough Komsomol gymnasium also gave room to wrestling mats and weights, so the walls resounded with the puffing of wrestlers and lifters. There were two different psychological types, Arkady thought; weight lifters were soloists of grunts, while wrestlers couldn’t wait to get tangled. A dim light penetrated whitewashed windows, and an ancient reek clung to the air. Wrestling and boxing ladders framed the door and a sign that said CIGARETTES AND SUCCESS DON’T MIX!, which reminded Arkady that he had unconsciously put on the jacket with Borya’s two packs of Marlboros, so there was a bright side to things.

“Rudy was a sports enthusiast—that’s why you asked me to come? You had a trophy for him?”

Antonov asked, “He’s really dead?”

“Absolutely dead.”

“Follow up, follow up!” Antonov shouted up at the ring. To Arkady he said, “Forget the trophy.”

“Forget the trophy?” Antonov had called the office twice a day about the trophy.

“What’s Rudy going to do with a trophy now?”

“That’s what I wondered,” Arkady said.

“I don’t want to be disrespectful, but I had a question. Say, in a cooperative, the person who signs the checks dies. Does that mean the other partner in the cooperative gets whatever money is left in the account?”

“You were partners with Rudy?”

Antonov sneered as if the question were ridiculous. “Not me personally, no. The club. Excuse me. Don’t switch leads! If you’re right-handed, stay right-handed!”

Arkady started to wake up. “The club and Rudy?”

“Local Komsomols are allowed to be in cooperatives. It’s only fair, and sometimes it helps to have an official partner involved when you want to bring in certain stuff.”

“Slot machines?” Arkady took the happiest guess.

Antonov remembered his watch and whacked the mallet on a pail. The fighters reeled away from each other, neither able to raise a glove.

“It’s perfectly legal,” Antonov said and lowered his voice. “TransKom Services, with a capital K.”