Вечер в Балет, Глава I

In formal evening dress – white tie and tails with a crimson-enameled Maltese cross on a blue ribbon about his neck – Gennady Kuznetsov looked more like a diplomat at a royal cotillion than the caricature of a police inspector who had bumbled about Clem MacDougall’s office the day before. At the stroke of seven Saturday evening, he rang the bell at the front door of Claudia Aikens’s townhouse in Excelsior Villas. At the sound of the bell, she peered through the peephole, gasped and considered locking the door and hiding under the bed. But, when he rang the bell again, she opened the door despite her misgivings. There he stood, wearing a forty-mile-an-hour pompadour and holding a dozen long-stemmed blood-red roses adrift on a sea-wrack of baby’s breath. She wore tight pants and a black leather jacket. On her head was a squashy little mushroom-shaped black leather hat, emblazoned with a Harley-Davidson emblem and a grinning skull and crossbones in chrome-plate. She reeked of hard booze. “Captain Kuznetsov – Gennady!” She looked over his shoulder at the battleship-gray Daimler-Benz limousine parked at the curb, flanked by four troopers on motorcycles with lights flashing. “Umm. You’re early. Come in, come in.” She saw neighbors gathering around the car; Gumph, the chauffeur, an off-duty vice cop dressed in parade uniform wearing white gloves, harangued and gesticulated and tried to wave them away. “Come in, please. I was just dressing for the opera.” She giggled and patted her hair, which cascaded like Rapunzel’s tresses halfway down her back. “Good evening, Claudia. Not opera. Ballet. Vecher v balyet. Very significant difference.” Gennady Kuznetsov handed her the roses. “Pretty flowers for a pretty lady. Forgive my early arrival.” He pulled on a gold chain from his white satin waistcoat pocket a jeweled gold watch in the shape of a Fabergé egg. He flipped it open, glanced at it and clicked his tongue. “But I did say seven, did I not? Ah. No matter. If you like, I will wait in the car. I have chilled vodka and caviar.” Claudia Aikens tossed the roses on the coffee table and looked wildly about the room, taking in the litter of pizza boxes and empty Rebel Yell bourbon bottles from last night’s Bacchanalia with Buster Bezorkenflatz, the White Knight of the Harley Hog. Her head thumped with the mother of all hangovers. What’s happening to me? Twenty years of riding buses, reading bilge, bound in servitude to an arrogant swine – and now this. Well, to hell with him. Russian ass. Never thought he’d show up. Now that he has, I guess I gotta play out the charade. “No, no, no. I’m sorry. I lost track of time. Come in. I won’t be a minute.” She pointed to a cabinet labeled Hard Booze. “Fix yourself a drink, if you like.” “Thank you, no. I will wait for you here. Curtain is in forty minutes, so we will have a police escort to the theatre – Excelsior City’s finest. On Harley-Davidson most excellent American motorcycles!” He laughed and pointed to her hat. He pointedly looked at everything in the room except the mess. Claudia Aikens darted down the hall to her bedroom and slammed the door. This man is a case of things not being as they seem. She stepped into a closet the size of a small industrial warehouse and rummaged among the hangers – severe tailored business suit after severe tailored business suit; sensible shoes in serried ranks; tight pants and leather jackets; Buster’s engineer boots with swastikas; whips, straps, chains, mesh stockings, daggers, switchblades, brass knuckles. What to wear? What to wear? I’d have to dress like a grand duchess to go anywhere with this guy. At length her eye fell on a gown she’d worn for a New Year’s Eve . . . uh, no. Oh, what the hell does it matter? I’ll never see this man again. Will I? No. What do I know about ballet? Cheap matinee seats in the second balcony. Who cares what the peasants wear? But this guy looks and talks like a cross between Cary Grant and Count Dracula. Where’s that rumpled clown I was flirting with – when? – was it just yesterday? Ten minutes later, Claudia Aikens appeared in the living room. She wore a floor-length batik print wraparound cotton skirt and a silk blouse the color of the roses which Gennady Kutnetsov was arranging in a Waterford crystal pitcher he’d found on the sideboard. She handed him a simple gold chain, which he fastened about her neck. “I’ll put my face on in the car, if you don’t mind. Don’t want to miss a minute of this opera, ballet – whatever. Nice job with the roses, by the way. Sweet of you to bring them.” “It is my pleasure, dear lady.” Gennady Kuznetsov took the faux fox-fur coat she handed him and held it for her. “Shall we go, then?” TO BE CONTINUED