Dmitry Gardin. Love on Call. Volume One: A Minder's Story

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This book was once conceived as a how-to manual. Quite literally.

By the late nineties, the life paths of the bandit-racketeer and the prostitute had been worn deep by a generation of young people making their way through the wreckage of the USSR. For their peers who still hesitated, few other options seemed to exist.

Both choices played out in plain sight. On the streets, on television screens. Even the free classifieds papers ran sprawling sections titled something like "Leisure" — often with a rider: "girls wanted."

For former Soviet citizens, especially the young, the question was no longer "what do you want to be?" but something far more basic: "how do you survive?" How do you make it to tomorrow? And, if possible, make that day feel like something resembling a life? Banditry and prostitution were seriously considered not merely as options but as practically the only real ones — alluring in their apparent accessibility and outward glamour, terrifying in their cruelty and murky underside.

Both had suddenly ceased to be seen as eternal but marginal ways of life.

The "bandits" of the nineties were not the Five Families, not the Corleone clan — not a career, not a destiny. The shaved-headed young men in black leather jackets were not professional criminals. They didn't even have a culture of concealment — no learned instinct for hiding their actions or managing encounters with police. The violence was entirely open. During that period, the only limit on simply walking up to someone and squeezing money out of them through sheer brutality was the presence of others who wanted to do the same. And that opportunity, to my lasting bewilderment, recruited an astonishing number of young men — I still cannot understand where so many inhuman monsters came from among the people who only yesterday had walked the same streets as me, going to school or to the cinema.

By the same token, the "prostitutes" of those years were not isolated individuals with weak wills or particularly unlucky lives. More precisely: the pressure on any person's will had multiplied many times over, and the most ordinary life had become a particularly unlucky one. Picture a young girl or woman from a Soviet working-class family — a family sitting without work — who can either earn meagre money through pointless, humiliating and nerve-shredding labour like small-time trading, or respond to an advertisement promising an entirely different kind of money for something that, with a measure of self-deception, might even be made to look like a romantic adventure.

At the time I was running one of the editorial divisions of a commercial publishing house. And I decided to make my contribution to the public conversation about whether or not to become a bandit or a prostitute — by publishing two manuals. Self-help guides, to be precise. It was rapidly becoming fashionable: people were learning from books how to be entrepreneurs, politicians, spiritual gurus. I understood how grotesque all of this looked. But I knew exactly what I was doing and why.

I wanted to put on the cover what many people wanted to see — those who, while understanding perfectly well that such a life was not for them, nonetheless found their thoughts drifting there from time to time. But I knew that the moment a real writer, someone born to work with language, began to speak about these things in earnest, the language itself would lead him to a truth that might return some readers to a normal life, and would certainly put many, many others off the prospect announced on the cover.

And so it proved. To this day I know of no book that could so quickly and irrevocably show the reality of what is called "prostitution" — stripping it of every last trace of romance and laying out the price paid in this "business" by everyone involved, regardless of the "market segment." The book makes the essential point not only about cheap prostitution but about any kind at all. And not only for the women, but for everyone caught up in it, including the clients. I personally believe this book has the power to open the eyes of many who think about prostitution not as a career but as a service.

For How to Become a Bandit I never found a suitable author — though the meetings I had in the search would fill a memoir of their own. But the author of How to Become a Prostitute found me — he simply walked into the office. The publishing house was well known in the city. And besides, things were simpler then.

A young man appeared at the door and offered to write a book about prostitutes: real ones, local ones, contemporary ones. There was no risk for us whatsoever — if it was good, we'd publish it; if it wasn't, we'd forget about it.

He wrote it. And he wrote it well. First, because he is a writer — born one, raised one, living as one still, even if he never puts a single line on paper. His nature is to tell stories. To live with passion and to share that life with equal passion. Second, because this time the book was strictly documentary.

The author, perhaps without knowing it at the time, employed in a single book every method known to the masters of documentary and witness literature. The American Arthur Hailey — author of Airport, Hotel, The Moneychangers — conducted hundreds of interviews, spent months at airports, hotels and banks, worked through mountains of research. The Soviet original Ilya Shtemler worked in a taxi depot to write The Fare, in a supermarket to write The Supermarket. And the star of German journalism Günter Wallraff significantly changed Germany's labour laws for immigrants after spending two years working undercover as a Turkish migrant worker.

Gardin did all of the above in a single stroke. He spent two years working the calls as a minder, survived everything that can happen — though not everyone survives it — and heard hundreds of stories from prostitutes, drivers, other minders, bandits, clients, dispatchers and madams. With one difference from those world-renowned figures: he went into it simply to survive, went in to become a pimp — and came out a writer.

The book is written in the first person — the voice of the man who escorts the girls to their appointments and makes sure everyone walks away with their money rather than their bruises. Everything in it is a laboratory-precise account of the situation as it existed in a large Russian city at the end of the nineties. I doubt it differed significantly from Moscow or anywhere else.

One can only hope that fewer people now enter this trade without knowing what awaits them — fewer driven by desperation or deceived into it.

This book is the first in the Love on Call series. The next book, by the same author, presents a prostitute’s story as recorded by the author — a completely different perspective on the same world. It is considerably harder to bear. Because Gardin himself, though immersed in this "business," always had the option to leave — he had somewhere to go. And above all, his nature as an observer and storyteller may have protected him from the most devastating consequences — unlike the women, who are often left with nothing but their imagination to place some kind of veil over the bleak and primitive reality of their situation.

AUTHOR'S NOTE



By contemporary standards this work would be classified as 18+ and most likely 21+.

The text is full of profanity and obscene language, the language of social and gender chauvinism, scenes of physical, sexual, psychological and moral violence, and flagrant contempt for all the fashionable trends — tolerance, feminism, racial and ethnic sensitivity, multiculturalism and so on.

Quentin Tarantino, for instance, who places no such restrictions on himself either, explains this by the natural development of his characters. The author of this book has an even better explanation: he saw and heard all of it himself. These people live this life right beside us.

All events described in this book actually took place; all characters genuinely exist or existed. For reasons obvious to everyone, the author has taken the liberty of changing names, surnames, nicknames and place names, and of softening and slightly obscuring certain minor details of what occurred.

And let it not seem contradictory that the author sincerely asks that any resemblance to real names, surnames or events be considered coincidental and not taken personally. The book aims to show a phenomenon — not to single out or, still less, accuse specific individuals of specific things.

Nevertheless, as a consequence of all of the above, this text is STRONGLY NOT RECOMMENDED for children, sensitive adolescents in the throes of puberty, pregnant or nursing women, highly strung individuals who faint at the word "arse," and people with fragile or unstable psychology, those unshakeably "happy" and "enlightened" souls adrift in the pink clouds of their own delusions, and so on and so forth.

Addressing the aforementioned categories of citizens, I hereby solemnly declare:

YOU ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN FROM READING THIS.

Having issued this warning, I wash my hands in good conscience of all responsibility for your moods, your states of mind, your menstrual cycles, your wounded feelings, your shattered psyches, your desecrated souls, your damaged karmas and the like.

And before you write your furious comments and call down universal curses upon our heads — please remember: we didn't merely warn you, we actively and repeatedly tried to talk you out of reading this book. If you have nonetheless sustained moral injury, the responsibility for that lies entirely with your hypocritical curiosity, your slobbering illusions, and your morbid prudishness.

CHAPTER ONE

How Business Is Done

A cock up the ass… carry two.

From recreational mathematics

So. You pick up the phone and dial one of the numbers listed under "recreation" or "escort services." Any one you like — the classified papers are full of them.

A pleasant, smoke-cured voice on the other end answers something along the lines of "Hello, Wild Orchid" or "Babylon Agency, how can I help?" All you need to do now is give your address and you're set. Most likely they'll also ask how many girls you'd like and roughly how long you're planning to keep them.

Sit tight and wait. They'll be there soon. But if you want to be absolutely certain they haven't forgotten you, your best bet is to call several agencies at once. Then, after a little while, your apartment or hotel room will play host to something resembling a beauty pageant.

They'll bring girls from all corners of the city. Each one lovelier than the last. Every type and taste. Take your pick.

Then follows a brief ritual of selection and payment, after which the minders disappear from your premises along with the girls you've turned down. More bookings are waiting — ones where their girls will be in demand.

If you're alone and a single girl is all your soul requires, the pleasure will cost you a mere three hundred wooden rubles per hour — "wooden" being what Russians called their own currency, a word that said everything about what it was worth: not gold, not dollars, not anything solid. Just wood. (All prices here and throughout are based on the Rostov region as of July–August 1999.)

When the paid time runs out — say, after two hours — there's an insistent knock at the door. The minder has come back for his "merchandise." If you're still unsatisfied and your soul demands an encore, simply pay the additional sum — however long you want to extend — and the minder will disappear as happily as he came.

I strongly advise against giving the minder grief. For instance, you might feel the time flew by too fast, or that you paid too much. Or the girl turned out to be useless in bed despite her looks. In short, you're not satisfied.

In such cases it might occur to you to have a go at the poor minder, or to inform him that in compensation for your moral suffering you intend to extend the entertainment without additional payment. Or worse still, simply tell him to go fuck himself and be done with it.

Don't. Even if at first glance you look big and strong and the minder looks small and unremarkable — so unremarkable that not telling him to go fuck himself would practically be a sin... He'll leave, of course. He'll go quietly. He won't argue. But don't congratulate yourself too soon.

Because that nondescript little fellow won't be going where you sent him.

He'll walk to the nearest working payphone. Carefully insert his phone card. And make one small, very small, very short call.

And then things will happen in your modest dwelling that — unless you happen to be a serious criminal authority — will cost you your head. And your balls, for that matter. You might be lucky and keep your dick. Then again, you might not — they've been known to take that too.

So if you want to avoid unnecessary headaches and serious problems, try not to upset the working girls or their dear minder. Do that and everything will be fine. The minder will treat you like an old friend, the girls will love you like a father, and the grateful agency will put you on their famous "white list." After that you'll never have any trouble calling love to your door.

What I've just described is the ideal version of how these transactions go. In practice, things look somewhat different.

In reality, situations where everyone leaves happy are about as common as original teeth in the mouth of a hundred-and-twenty-year-old. Everything running smoothly — the sheep safe and the wolves fed — that's a rare event in our line of work.

In ninety-eight cases out of a hundred, something goes wrong. That means out of a hundred calls, maybe two go the way I just described. The other ninety-eight are an unbroken chain of completely unpredictable, utterly varied problems.

Problems can come from anywhere, at any time, for any reason — you never know what's waiting for you ahead. Trouble lurks around every corner for the mobile crews. It can come from the girls themselves — the same self-destructive drift that brought them here in the first place. Or from the minders and their couldn't-give-a-shit attitude to the job. Drivers cause endless problems too — their cars breaking down at the worst possible moment. The dispatchers sitting on the phones; the scheming madams trying to grab as much cash as possible; the escort agency owners who are never out of trouble and debt... And who knows what anyone else might take into their heads? It's a large team, and not especially stable.

And that's just the internal problems — which account for no more than twenty percent of the total.

Then there are the external ones. The ments — the word Russians used for the Soviet militia, and kept using for the police that replaced it. Not quite the same as "cops." You distrust a cop because he gets in your way, because he enforces rules you don't like. That's personal. A ment is something else: a servant of a system designed from the start to work against ordinary people. Soviet ments enforced the will of an anti-people state. After the Soviet collapse, when everyone expected things to change, the ments simply switched masters — or rather, stopped pretending to have any master at all and started working openly for themselves: ignoring the crimes of officials, carrying out the repressive functions of whoever held power, taking their cut. There was a phrase — "an honest ment" — used for the rare exceptions, the ones who actually tried to apply the law in people's favour. The phrase existed precisely because it described something almost impossible. Gangsters. Hooligans — not criminals by trade, just men who are rough, provocative, and quick with their fists. Late-night traffic checkpoints. Grifters — men who don't rob you clean, they con you: inventing reasons not to pay, sometimes trying to turn it around and squeeze money out of the minder himself, claiming a girl stole from them. Rival gangs — other outfits' protection, showing up on behalf of their own girls or looking to muscle out the competition. The bespredel — men for whom no rules exist, not even the criminal code that governs other gangsters; they need no reason to refuse payment, to humiliate, to beat, or to kill, and the possibility of punishment doesn't stop them, nothing does. And the sting gangs — crews who call in girls like any other client, then rape and beat them, sometimes to permanent disability, sometimes to death; they don't pay, the ments won't come, and there are enough of them to hold off whatever protection shows up. For the gangsters of that time, this was normal entertainment. Just what you did.

In short — the list goes on.

But the biggest and most serious problems come from the clients themselves. And there's nothing to be done about that. It's just the nature of the work.

In this chapter we won't dwell on all of these various afflictions. We'll talk about them a little later. There's plenty to say.

For now let's look more closely at how business is actually done. Not from the angle you're used to watching prostitution from, but from the side of the prostitutes and the minders themselves.

So: you've called an escort agency. What happens next? Between your phone call and the knock on your door?

Many people, I'm sure, have never given it a moment's thought — they consider it completely irrelevant. And fair enough. For the ordinary punter, all that matters is the result: you call, you get what you ordered. How your little fuck machine works inside is no concern of yours.

That's exactly right. But I can promise you: the processes that unfold inside the agency after your call are far more interesting than most people imagine.

Picture a small, smoke-filled room containing nothing but a battered table and a low stool. Suddenly the phone rings. The startled dispatcher — usually a worn-looking woman of around thirty — leaps to the phone and, nervously grinding a still-smoking butt into a glass ashtray, yanks the receiver from its cradle.

"Yes, this is Krasotka," she says brightly, holding the receiver in one hand while quickly writing down the phone number that's just appeared on the caller ID display.

"Yes!" she says. "Yes, yes, of course! We don't keep bad girls. How many do you need? When? May I ask how you found our number? Ah, right, good! Your address, please..."

The address appears on the notepad beside the number she's already written down.

"Thank you for calling," the dispatcher smiles into the receiver. "We'll be there soon. Please wait."

The moment the brief call ends, she doesn't put the receiver down — she presses the hook switch with a manicured finger, waits for the dial tone, and calls the pager service.

Meanwhile, from the next room, a noisy, excited swarm of girls who've been hanging around pours into the smoky dispatch room. These are the ones who didn't make it into the main crew or the standby crew today. They're on reserve — a last resort in case everyone on the main roster has already been sent out and clients keep calling. More often than not, the reserve girls never get to work at all. So they spend almost an entire twenty-four hours lounging on the sofa in the dispatch room, which doubles as an office and a bedroom — the gang's den, the beating heart of the escort agency.

At the sound of another phone call, the girls all rush together toward the kitchen of the safe house, where the phone is kept and the dispatcher is on duty around the clock.

"Well? Who? Where? How many?" they all ask at once.

"Private booking. One girl," the dispatcher waves them off, not stopping for a second in her assault on the long-suffering telephone.

The girls sigh sadly. Only one needed — which means they can rest. Back to the other room to watch TV. At least the place has its comforts.

Meanwhile the dispatcher, after a little persistence, gets through to the pager company and dictates something along the following lines:

"For subscriber 12-43. Got it? Good. Message: 'Call in, there's work.' Got that? Good. Sign it — Lisa. Got it? Good. And now for subscriber 33-11... Same message! Got it? Also signed 'Lisa.' And with a repeat, please. What? Yes. Repeat in three minutes. Thank you. Goodbye."

She puts down the receiver and immediately opens two thick notebooks lying on the table. These are the so-called black lists and white lists — no self-respecting escort agency goes without them. Not if it cares about the safety of its staff.

Let me explain.

The fact is, as I've already said, not every booking goes smoothly. On many of them, problems arise. A client refuses to pay; one of the girls gets beaten for having too much to say for herself; sometimes you spend a whole night on some abandoned warehouse floor as a hostage in the company of shaved-headed gangsters. All kinds of things happen. That's considered more or less normal. But...

...Every such incident is carefully and meticulously recorded in a special log. Not one of them can be missed or ignored. Because every time a minder gets stiffed, or the girls are taken by force and dumped somewhere at the edge of the city, or the driver gets beaten half to death and his car wrecked, or one of the top girls gets her face slashed — every single time, the agency loses its nightly earnings. And the owner pays the price. He can't explain to his protection that someone did him over, spreading his hands like that. Nobody will believe him, and even if they do, he'll be punished anyway. Owners, when you think about it, are the most subordinate of all of us.

That's what the black lists are for. So the minder knows what might be waiting for him on the next booking. And takes extreme care. We'll talk about what precautions he takes a little later.

In some of the older and more experienced agencies, these lists contain up to a thousand black addresses and numbers. Some of those addresses the crews simply won't go to, no matter how many bookings come in from there. Among the particularly notorious blacklisted venues are several Rostov saunas and two or three establishments on the left bank of the Don. I won't name them — I'd like to live a little longer. I'll only say that several people from our world have already paid with their lives there. Within my memory: three minders and at least four girls. They died for nothing. Simply because that was their job.

But I've let myself get carried away. Time to continue. As one gangster of my acquaintance used to say: "No point getting all weepy when you're in it up to your neck."

So: the dispatcher quickly scans the black numbers, and if the address in question isn't on the list, she enters all the details into the new-clients log. Good, experienced dispatchers know these lists almost by heart, so the whole process takes no more than a minute. The fate of the new entry will be decided by the crew's visit. If everything goes smoothly, the address will migrate to the white list. If there are serious complications — straight to the black catalogue.

Now that all the necessary calls have been made and the preliminary checks are complete, the dispatcher can allow herself to relax a little, smoke a cigarette or two, and wait for the minders to call back.

The process has been set in motion. And it's irreversible now. A precise, well-oiled, carefully thought-out machine called "Escort Services" — or, in plain language, love on call — has begun to turn.

The information sent by the dispatcher, recorded on the monitors of the pager companies, covers enormous distances in fractions of a second and reaches its recipients very soon.

Picture a car speeding through the night city. It flies past shop windows blazing with neon light, past sleeping houses swallowed in darkness, past scattered pools of lamplight.

As a rule it's a Volga or an ordinary Lada with tinted windows. Behind the wheel sits a heavyset, lecherous-looking driver of around fifty-five or sixty. He knows this city like the back of his hand. A true professional.

In the front passenger seat, crammed in beside the driver, sits a young man. His eyes carry a permanent expression of anxiety and chronic suspicion. This is the minder.

In the back seat, spread across half the interior, sits a lone girl. Tonight she's having no luck. All the other girls have already been sent out to bookings. They're earning their money. But there's no demand for her. Apparently not much to look at. She sits there, the poor thing, bored out of her mind.

Suddenly the minder grabs at his chest.

"What, another message?" asks the driver. Nothing escapes his attention.

"Looks like it," the minder replies tiredly, and pulls a small black pager from his breast pocket.

The pager is set to vibrate, so nobody hears a thing. Only the minder, feeling the persistent tremor against his chest, knows a new message has come in. He has to be the first to know everything.

The car continues to tear through the streets of the night city. A cool fresh breeze pours through the open windows, filling the interior with the smell of green things and dust. It moves pleasantly across the face, through the hair.

In the back seat, the unwanted girl shifts and turns.

"Shit. Close the windows," she grumbles with disgust. "My pussy's going to blow away."

Neither the minder nor the driver pays her any attention. As if she isn't there at all.

"Hey, Vasilich, give me some light," the minder says quietly. "The backlight on my pager's fucked."

Vasilich reaches under the dashboard. A quiet click. The interior fills with a dim, sickly light. The minder holds his pager up toward the source and presses the read button.

"Well then, Dima? Another job?" asks Vasilich.

"Uh-huh," Dima replies, studying the lines. "Pull over somewhere, need to make a call."

The driver nods and the car, brakes squealing, swings sharply into one of the side lanes. These men are professionals. They know every corner of the city where there's a working payphone.

"Close the bloody windows," the frozen girl shouts from the back. And again nobody hears her.

"They're doing my head in," Vasilich complains. "Booking after booking and what's the point? One girl, one hour here, one girl, one hour there. We'll burn more in petrol than we make. Now if it was three or four girls, through to morning—" he adds dreamily. "Right, Dimka?"

"Uh-huh," Dimka agrees, his face blank. He's a realist — he deals only with what's in front of him, right here and right now. No time to dream.

He deletes the message — it's in his head now, like a hundred other messages, phone numbers and addresses. The pager goes back into his breast pocket, right against his heart. A plastic phone card has appeared in his hand.

"What the actual fuck, are you two out of your minds? Close the fucking window, you pricks!" comes a trembling, furious cry from the back. This time they hear her.

"Why are you yelling?" Dima asks calmly, without turning around. "Can't you ask normally?"

And he begins to slowly wind up the window. Vasilich does the same on his side.

"Go fuck yourselves," the girl continues, outraged. "You can't talk to you two normally, you deaf idiots. Bastards. I'd like to see you in my place. And another thing—"

"Ira, shut your mouth," Vasilich snaps, neatly cutting around a parked refrigerator truck. "Miserable enough without you. If nobody fucked you tonight, just say so. No need to screw Dima's and my heads about it."

Ira's face flushes with hurt, but she goes quiet.

It's just been a very hard day. Everyone is worn to the limit. Hence the frayed nerves. But it's fine — no more than four hours until the end of the shift, that is, until six in the morning. Although who knows what might happen in that time.

Finally the headlights pick out from the darkness the facade of a crumbling building with payphone booths on its wall. They all look broken and handset-less from the outside. But Dima knows that one of them still works.

"Pull over, Vasilich," he says, and without waiting for the car to fully stop, jumps out on the move and slams the door behind him.

While he runs to the payphone, Vasilich reaches across and pushes down the door lock pin. One of the necessary precautions. All doors must be locked from the inside. Always. Both driver and minder do this every time, even if one of them has stepped out for a single second. A crucial and by now almost unconscious reflex, honed over long months working in escort. You simply cannot survive in this world without habits like these.

The minder runs up to the only surviving payphone, tears off the receiver and feeds in his phone card. Only then does he discover that the phone, which was working perfectly yesterday, is today deaf and dumb.

He jerks the hook switch furiously a few times. Nothing. He pulls his card back out, swears viciously, and runs back to the car.

The engine is running. Vasilich doesn't turn it off. His foot rests on the gas pedal the whole time. Just in case. You never know. What if, while the minder is out making a call, a car full of cheerful thugs comes swinging around the corner?

Those boys can smell the pussy wagon from a distance and will never miss a chance to roll a car like this. For them it's a goldmine — cash, a free pager, someone to knock around, and best of all, free girls.

Yes, with the thugs you keep your wits sharp. If the driver spots a criminal car on the horizon and sees they've been clocked, there's only one thing for him to do — leave the minder to his fate and put his foot down. Maybe I can lose them. That's his job, and he has to do it without hesitation. The minder will take care of himself. The main thing is to keep the firm's money safe and get the girls back to the base in one piece. A new minder can always be found. Girls are always in short supply.

But this time they're in luck. The streets are dark and empty. No thugs, no ments.

By the time Dima reaches the car, the door is already unlocked.

"Come on, Vasilich, go!" The exhausted minder drops heavily into the front seat, and the car, tyres shrieking, tears away again, past thin lampposts wrapped in a light pre-dawn mist.

"Didn't work?" Vasilich asks.

"Fucking pigs," — irritation and frustration in Dima's voice — "knocked out the last working payphone in the whole district, the bastards."

He's badly on edge, because they're already very late with the call-in. In this work, time is everything. And there's never enough of it.

"You're the idiot," Irka accuses from the back. "Didn't you know there's no working phone around here?"

"I called from it yesterday," the minder says through clenched teeth, staring dead ahead at the road uncoiling in front of them. He's a barrel of petrol about to go up.

And then Vasilich adds fuel to the fire.

"We need to pick up Masha from her booking pretty soon," he mentions casually, glancing at the dashboard clock. "She's got ten minutes left."

"I know," Dima says in exasperation. "I know, Vasilich. I know. But what can I do? We're already doing a hundred through the city. We can't fly."

"Of course you can't," Irka cuts in, her reasonable tone thick with sarcasm. "It's not you getting fucked, is it."

Dima flares. This time he actually turns around and, staring straight into Irka's drunk face, hisses with pure hatred:

"Shut up. You have pushed my last fucking nerve today. You hear me? MY LAST FUCKING NERVE."

"Oh, you do everybody's head in, you windbag prick. So shut up yourself."

"Ira, I'll hit you. You're pushing me to it."

"Oh, you won't do shit to me, you piece of filth."

"I'll—"

At that moment Vasilich, deafened by the screaming, loses it too.

"Shut up! Both of you, shut up!" he roars, his spit spattering the windscreen. "Shut up or I'll smash both your faces in right now."

Silence falls in the car. When Vasilich kicks off, it's serious.

A savage brake — and the car jerks to a stop as if planted in the ground.

"Right, Dima, get out. There's a phone over there," Vasilich mutters, scowling.

This booth turns out to be working, and soon through the receiver comes the anxious voice of the dispatcher: "Hello, this is Krasotka."

"It's Dima," says the minder, still angry.

"Why so long, Dima" — the dispatcher's tone is deeply unhappy. "I sent the message fifteen minutes ago."

"Yeah. I know."

"What happened?"

"Later. Let's get to it. What's the job? Where am I going?"

"Where are you now?"

"Selmasch area."

"Good. Head for Chkalovsky. Such-and-such street, such-and-such apartment — got it?"

"Got it. But I've got nobody to take. I've only got one girl, and she's drunk out of her mind."

Pressing the receiver to his shoulder, Dima takes a cigarette from his pocket and lights it, cupping the match flame against the wind.

"Remind me who you've got left?" — the dispatcher's voice still unhappy.

"Just Irka. That's it. I can't send her in alone."

"One is all they need," — a note of doubt in the dispatcher's voice. "Listen, could you swing by the base and pick someone up?"

"Lisa, I don't have time," the minder says desperately. "I need to pick up Masha already. And Lenka and Tanya are nearly done too, and God knows where I have to go for them. Can't you send the backup crew?"

"They've just come up empty too. They've only got one left as well," — clearly Liza is very stressed. "They're on their way. But they're far. You understand? And the booking was urgent."

"All right, no panic!" Dima cuts back sharply. "I'll go. I'll take Irka on her own, what else can I do. With any luck Misha's car will pull up too."

"Okay, go," — Liza has calmed down slightly. After all, they only need one. "But just — Dima!"

"Yes? I'm listening, Lizochka."

"Be careful — it's a new booking."

"Okay." And the minder drops the receiver.

A minute later the pussy wagon is tearing flat-out toward the destination. Strained silence inside. The atmosphere is still far from friendly.

But not for long. The moment they arrive, the passions and grievances subside. They dissolve. There's a job to do. The stupid argument over nothing is instantly forgotten. What occupies Irka, Vasilich and Dima now is just one thing: how this new booking is going to go.

"Right, Vasilich, pull up and kill the lights." The minder takes the pager from his pocket and puts it on the dashboard. You don't go into a booking with the pager on you.

"Well then, Dimulya, God go with you," Vasilich sends the minder off, stopping the car a block from the indicated building. Another precaution.

Dima smiles faintly and steps quickly out into the cool, foggy night. He walks fast, heading straight for the client's building. Taking several deep drags, he pulls his lungs full of smoke and with a sharp flick sends the butt flying. In the darkness you can see it hit the pavement and burst into a thick spray of yellow sparks.

The minder approaches the building. He walks all the way around it and stops for a moment on the far side — the entrance side.

Quiet and stillness. Not a soul around. The backup car hasn't arrived yet. Far to come, as Liza said. No pussy wagons from other agencies to be seen either. No beauty pageant tonight, then. Small mercies.

Dima tilts his head back. Up there, on the seventh floor, a single window is lit. Presumably his. Right then — time to act.

Moving soundlessly along the path, the minder approaches the entrance, steps inside, and stops under the stairwell for a few moments. He stands there, listening carefully to the silence, and to whatever he can feel inside himself. The building seems quiet. His gut is quiet too.

He starts up the stairs quickly and silently, like a shadow. The lifts in this part of town run all night, but he won't be taking one, despite bone-deep fatigue. There's still something to check.

He runs up the stairs to the top floor, carefully examining every corner, looking into the rubbish chute alcoves on each landing. Only when he's fully satisfied that there is nobody else in the building — above or below — only then does he approach the apartment he's looking for. Sometimes he goes on tiptoe, and then stands at the door a little longer, listening hard to the sounds from inside.

Seems quiet. Dima exhales loudly, says a short silent prayer, and presses the doorbell.

The door opens almost instantly. In the doorway stands a thin, dishevelled young man with a nervous face and greasy eyes. In response to his questioning look, Dima explains in a quiet, level voice: "This is Krasotka. You called?"

The young man's eyes light up with eager excitement.

"We did, we did," he says happily. "Come in! Hey, Vityek, get out here! They're here!"

From the depths of the apartment, like a ghost, emerges an angry and unslept Vityek, looking very much like a man with a brutal hangover.

"What took so long?" he demands in a vodka-ruined bass, addressing no one in particular, and without waiting for an answer disappears back into the room.

"Ah, never mind him," the first man waves a hand. "He's always in a foul mood, always hungover. So come on, who've you got?"

"First I need to look round the apartment," the minder says, politely but firmly. "Those are the rules. Sorry."

"No problem," the man agrees readily. "Come in and look. Everything's fine here."

Dima steps over the threshold and bends to remove his shoes.

"Don't bother," the man stops him. "Place is empty anyway. We've been trying to sell it for two weeks."

His accent, the way he shapes his words, marks him out as a Muscovite.

Outsiders, the minder thinks to himself. That means no trouble. He relaxes slightly and begins his inspection. It goes quickly. The Moscow lad follows Dima through each room in turn.

The apartment is unusually large — five rooms — but completely empty. Only one small room has any furniture: an old battered sofa, where the comatose body of Vityek is sprawled.

"Hey, you useless piece of work!" the young man shouts cheerfully, kicking Vityek's leg. "Get up, you drunk. The girls are here."

"Fffuck off," Vityek mumbles unintelligibly, and turns his face to the wall.

"He'll come round," the Muscovite reassures the minder. "It's for him, the bastard — I'm the one who ordered the girls. I don't need them."

Meanwhile Dima finishes his inspection and, already understanding that everything here is in order, opens the storage cupboard door more out of habit than necessity. Nobody in there either.

"Does that actually happen?" the Muscovite smiles. "I'd never have thought of that."

"All sorts of things happen," Dima says grimly. He doesn't smile. He doesn't try to please. He's too tired.

"Right, all done? Good. Go and get the girls. I'll try and wake this ox up."

"There's a small problem," the minder interrupts, and at the client's questioning look explains: "I've only got one girl. The others are all on bookings. I didn't know there'd be two of you."

The Muscovite thinks for a moment, scratching his two-day stubble.

"One is fine," he says at last. "I'm not going to — it's that horse over there who needs it." He waves a dismissive hand toward the room where Vityek lies snoring. "Is she at least decent?"

"So-so," the minder answers honestly. "The decent ones have been working all night."

The client's eyes instantly lose their eager gleam and cloud over.

"All right," he says, deflated. "Bring what you've got."

Dima nods and is about to leave when suddenly there's a loud, insistent knock at the front door.

The Muscovite slides past the minder, undoes the complicated lock, and — on the threshold stands Misha, a minder from the backup crew.

"Krasotka agency, you called?" he begins, but spotting Dima, switches immediately: "Oh, you're already here! How did I miss your car? Vasilich, you partisan."

"Is he yours too?" asks the Muscovite, glancing from the new arrival to Dima in the corridor.

"Mine, mine," says Dima. "Right, Misha. Everything's fine here. Go and get the girls. Who've you got left?"

"Just Isolda."

"Perfect. Go get Isolda, and pick up my Irka too. Vasilich is parked across the road."

"Yes, yes," the Muscovite chips in. "Hurry it up, how long do we have to wait?"

Misha looks his colleague in the eyes for a moment, sees no warning signal, and nods.

"Be right back."

"I'll wait here," Dima calls after him and pulls the door shut.

"Tea?" the young man asks.

"Sure, why not," the minder agrees.

The two of them go through to the kitchen. The Muscovite puts a pack of Marlboro Lights and a Zippo lighter on the table.

"Have one, mate."

"Thanks, I've got mine." Dima takes his own pack — Donskoy Tabak — from his shirt pocket, picks up the Zippo and lights up.

"What took you so long?" the man asks, fussing with the kettle and tea.

"Traffic," the minder jokes and smiles. The Muscovite gives him a puzzled look, then, seeing the broad, genuine smile, laughs too.

"Traffic, he says. That's a good one, mate."

Now Dima feels completely at ease. He knows — no complications here.

And yet there's a dull needle lodged in his chest. He glances at the clock on the kitchen wall. Half past two in the morning. He should have picked Masha up from her booking ten minutes ago. Ten whole minutes they've been fucking her overtime, for free. And he, her personal minder and protection, is sitting here in some kitchen drinking tea with a Muscovite he's never met. And how much more time will the meet-and-select and the money take? Another ten minutes at least, and that's if Mishka hurries. Plus fifteen minutes' drive.

So Masha is looking at close to an hour. A whole hour of free fucking. How the girls hate that. And Dima feels rotten about it too. Like he personally took it up the arse. Irka was very wrong about that.

The nameless Muscovite notices the worry on his guest's face.

"Why so tense? Relax. We're not going to bite."

"I'm not tense on your account," Dima stubs out one cigarette and immediately lights another. "Need to go and pick up the girls soon."

"Ah, right, of course," says the Muscovite. "Don't worry, we'll sort it out fast."

At that moment the front door opens and Irka and Isolda tumble into the hallway, escorted by Mikhail.

"Oh, here are the girls," the client springs to his feet. "Right then. You — the redhead," he says to Irka, "turn around. Back to me."

Irka wrinkles her nose in distaste but turns around anyway, showing the Muscovite her provocatively rounded backside.

"Nice," he concludes, and spinning toward the bedroom yells: "Hey, Vityek, you fucking idiot! Get out here and look at these girls!"

But Vityek has already crawled into the hallway, woken by the endless comings and goings and women's voices. He stands in the middle of the corridor, eyes wide, trying to work out who all these people are in his apartment. Finally it dawns on him.

"Eh, fuck," he says, wrinkling his face, kneading his balls through the fabric of his wide boxer shorts. "Why are they so shit? Couldn't you bring better?"

"What do you mean shit?" his friend comes to the girls' defence. "I like this one," he says, pointing to Irka, who at that moment has her back to him and so can't see her stick her tongue out sideways in a look of pure you must be joking.

"You like her?" Vityek grumbles. "Then you fuck her." And with those words he disappears back into the bedroom.

"Right," the Muscovite concludes. "You're free to go," he tells Isolda. "And you — turn around and let me get a proper look at you. Hold on. You're wasted. What are you on, sweetheart?"

Dima, standing in the hallway next to Misha, looks at his client in bewilderment.

"Nobody here is on anything," he says, quite genuinely. "She might be a little drunk. That happens. It's nearly morning. The girls have been working almost twenty-four hours straight."

"Don't give me that rubbish," the client snaps angrily. "You're all full of shit. I'll get my gun out and put holes in all your heads right now. That'll make you nice and cooperative."

The two minders stand completely stunned. Mood swings like that mean one thing only — serious mental instability. A rapid exit plan begins to form in their minds.

"Relax," the Muscovite suddenly laughs, noticing the alarm on their faces. "I'm joking. I'll take the redhead. What's your name?"

"Ira."

"Irochka it is. Two hours. What does that come to?"

"Six hundred rubles," Dima's voice is still shaking from the tension.

"Hang on," the Muscovite smirks and disappears into one of the back rooms. A minute later he returns holding a wad of worn dollar bills. "You know what, lads," he says, still smiling, "leave both of them. Maybe I can get this drunk idiot moving. What's your exchange rate for greenbacks?"

"Twenty-four," Mikhail answers quickly.

"Twenty-four... Let's see. Two girls at three hundred an hour, two hours — that's twelve hundred. Fifty bucks exactly. Right?"

"Right," Misha agrees.

"Lovely," the Muscovite grins unpleasantly, pulling a fifty-dollar note from the wad. "Here you go, lads. Who handles the money?"

"Take it," Dima tells the other minder. "Drop it off at the base. I haven't got time."

Misha takes the note, folds it, and puts it in his back pocket.

"Right then, boys, see you in two hours," the client drapes his arms around Irka and Isolda. "Come on, girls."

"Wait," Dima stops him. "We need to call in."

"Call away, nobody's stopping you," the Muscovite shrugs. "Phone's on the nightstand."

Dima goes to the phone and dials the office number.

"Well? How's it going?" comes Liza's anxious voice.

"All fine. Write it down — Ira, two hours, and Misha's Isolda. Also two."

"They took both?"

"Both. Misha and I are both empty now."

"Come back to base, there are more girls here. And a few new bookings already."

"I can't, I need to pick up the girls ages ago. Misha'll come in now, bring the money too."

"Oh right, okay," Liza responds, then quietly and anxiously: "Everything definitely all right?"

"Yes, Liza, everything's fine."

The dispatcher at the other end of the line can relax now. The minder used her real name. That means the deal really did go through without any problems.

If something had gone wrong, he would have called her a different name. Tanya, for instance. And that would mean one thing only: the crew had walked into a serious ambush and were speaking to her with a gun to their heads. In which case the protection would need to be raised immediately and an attempt made to save whoever could be saved.

But this time, thank God, everything was fine.

"Bye, Liza, I'm off," Dima says and is about to hang up.

"Call in as soon as you've picked up the girls," she calls out.

"Will do." The minder drops the receiver.

"All done?" the client asks. "Shall we?"

"Let's go," says Dima. "By the way, what time is it?"

The Muscovite raises his wrist to his eyes and peers at the gleaming dial.

"Exactly quarter to three."

"Then at exactly quarter to five we're back," says Mikhail.

"Make it five!" the client smiles. "Give or take fifteen minutes, what's the difference..."

Misha is already opening his mouth to agree, but Dima steps in:

"Quarter to five. Not a minute later." His tone is firm — and he catches the warm gaze of the girls who are staying behind. A gaze full of wordless gratitude.

The car is already running, raring to go. It tears away the moment Dima pulls the door shut behind him.

"What took so long?" Vasilich asks nervously, pressing the accelerator to the floor. "Any problems?"

"No problems," the minder says, and wipes the back of his hand across his forehead — drenched in cold sweat.

"So Misha's girls were taken too?"

"Both."

"How long?"

"Two hours."

"Nice," Vasilich is visibly pleased. Despite the hard night, their crew has put in solid hours. Which means good money in the morning.

"What kind of men were they? Normal?"

"Muscovites, I reckon. Five-room flat, empty, trying to sell it. They killed someone, took the apartment. Big business in Moscow, that sort of thing."

"A hundred percent," Vasilich agrees. "Well, if that's who they are, no trouble from those boys. You think, Dima?"

"I don't think there will be," Dima says, lights a cigarette, and slumps back wearily against the seat.

"Dima, don't smoke, for God's sake," Vasilich waves through the curling blue smoke wrapping around him like phantom tentacles. "We've been smoking this car out for twenty-four hours already. Enough, I swear."

"Just one, Vasilich. Don't be annoyed."

"Fine," Vasilich concedes. "Right then — Mashenka first?"

"Yes," the minder nods. "Mashenka first."

The car roars away into the night. It's in a hurry. Someone is waiting for it. Several fragile and gentle girls are waiting, their damp eyes holding an expression of submission and grief.

These are wise and knowing eyes. They have seen too much in this life, and too much is still waiting for them.

And so they know: whatever happens, their minder will come back for them. Whatever occurs, he will pull them out of this filthy pit. Because he is their brother. Brother by nature, if not by blood. He is part of their family — an inseparable piece of their terrible life. They know he loves them. Just as they love him. They know he worries about them, just as they always worry about him.

They wait for him like a god. But if he doesn't come back for them, it just means he can't, or he's running late, or something has happened to him.

And they don't blame him for it. Even though they've been fucked for free for a whole hour now.