the destination address. Having called the dispatcher, he announced his address and requested that he be taken to the same destination where his “daughter” had been taken that same morning.
This was how Alex Bayukin found himself in front of the same sixteen-story building where the tragedy had occurred. He instantly noticed the car with the dented roof. The girl’s body had already been taken away, but the impressionable housewives were happy to describe the deceased and even provided her name – Katya!
Alex called his father. The general spent a long time swearing, then ordered Alex to make sure that this was the same thief who had robbed him. To this end, he revealed a distinguishing feature of the girl to his son.
One call to the emergency services and Alex Bayukin found himself at the doors of the morgue he needed.
Alex felt his anger roiling inside of him, and he didn’t feel it necessary to hide his mood from the lanky orderly in the blue scrub cap and the bespattered oilcloth apron.
“My girlfriend was brought here today. She fell off a roof.”
The lanky orderly perked up.
“For sure. Do you want to arrange a funeral? I know a great funeral parlor – here’s their business card!” He offered Alex a black card embossed in gold.
“I’d like to see her,” Alex squeezed through clenched teeth.
“For sure. We can arrange that. How do you want her prepared? You want the premium job or the regular?”
“What?”
“Premium costs more, but the client will look like a perfect peach. As for regular… well, regular is more like a carrot from the vegetable patch.”
“I want to see Katya right now!” Alex could barely contain himself.
“For sure,” shrugged the orderly. It seemed that this phrase suited anything that happened in his life. “Go on through. Though keep in mind that before we’ve had a chance to work on “em, the clients, they don’t look so great.”
The mortuary cold chamber – with once-white tiled walls, drains in the floor and dim dome lights on the painted ceiling – exuded a suffocating smell of formaldehyde. The orderly pulled on rubber gloves as he led Alex over to a metal gurney on which rested the body. He pulled the sheet from the head of the corpse. The girl’s lusterless face revealed a swollen eye and a dried trail of blood emanating from her contorted mouth.
“I warned you,” the orderly apologized, noticing the visitor’s initial reaction.
Alex suppressed the spasm in his stomach and ripped the entire sheet from the body. Despite the internal fractures and the splotches of hematoma, he could appreciate the girl’s body. Dad’s bouncing around with young girls – the dog – while I’m forced to hit on some fat-ass sales girl.
“Flip her,” Alex nodded to the orderly.
“For… are you sure..?”
“Flip her, I said!” Malice flashed in the visitor’s eyes.
The orderly groaned a bit but did as he was told. Alex was trying to avoid looking at the fractured head and the legs which were positioned unnaturally relative to the torso. His eyes fixed on the tattoo on the girl’s lower back. He aimed his phone and took a large photo of the butterfly.
“Where’s her clothes?” Alex asked, once they had emerged from the cold chamber.
“She’s not going to catch a cold in there, you know,” scoffed the lanky orderly, unhappy with having had to flip the bag of bones.
His abrasive reply, however, was the final straw for the already-irate Alex. He punched the orderly in the stomach. The orderly sighed and doubled over and Alex brought his joined hands down on the back of the poor man’s head. The orderly collapsed. Alex began to kick the fallen man, demanding he show him the girl’s clothes.
An unshaven and muscle-bound orderly came running in response to the racket. Striking Alex from behind, he knocked him off his feet and twisted his arm, stiffly pinning him with a knee to the back.
“Keep it up and we’ll find a berth for you too,” threatened the stubbly orderly and turned to his injured colleague, “What does he want?”
The lanky orderly got up from the floor and wiped some blood from his lip.
“I don’t know! He’s a psycho!” Outraged, he kicked his assailant as hard as he could. “He wanted to see the stuff of the girl that came in today.”
“A psycho, eh?” The unshaven orderly looked Alex in the eyes.
“For sure!”
“Better let him see it then.” Before releasing the violent visitor, however, the beefy orderly twisted Alex’s arm to its limit and warned him, “You get one look and then you get the hell out.”
The lanky orderly tossed Alex a large black bag. Alex looked through the jacket pockets, went through the rest of the clothes and even stuck his hand into the boots. The envelope was nowhere to be found. Alex cast a glance at the orderlies who had remained standing over him.
“Where’s her purse?”
“Will you just look at this guy? Bud, that dead hooker there is the subject of a criminal investigation. You should ask the detective – or the pimp. Leave us alone. We work here, man.”
Recognizing that any further fight would not be a fair one, Alex made his way out. When he emerged into fresh air, he sent his father a message with a photo of the tattoo. His dad called him back almost instantly.
“That’s her, that’s Katya!” the father grew animated. “I remember the butterfly on her waist pretty well. Was the envelope on her?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“It’s not among her clothes. But she had a purse too. Ask your lawyer who the detective in charge of the case is.”
“You think that they already got the purse?”
“Either the detective has it or the pimp does. I’ll try to find the pimp. What do you know about him?”
“The girl mentioned some kind of Birdless Boris. But I’ve never seen him.”
“Well, how’d you find her?”
“I came across that damned thief through the Gentle Lily modeling agency. They offer either modeling services or escort services or some other kind of services – but, hey, either way, they have grade-A whores. I found them on the Internet.”
“Then I’ll find them too,” Alex reassured his father.
7
In the bar located on the 31st floor of the Radisson Royal Hotel, formerly known as Hotel Ukraine, a sixty-year-old gentleman sat at a glass table situated beside a panoramic window. His rare, obviously dyed hair was slicked
