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society began its critical meltdown. Words like reket (racket, as in criminal), keelir (killer), and mafia singed themselves into the vernacular. In fact, many Leningraders seemed to take a dark, Dostoyevskian pride in playing up their city’s apocalypticatmosphere, even if its outward reputation as being one big mafia operation was exaggerated. Most ordinary people were not personally affected by the growing mob. At least Vova wasn’t, because he had become part of it.
    ON THIS PARTICULAR day, we had agreed to meet at the Petrogradsky Metro stop. As usual, Vova was a few minutes late.
    I didn’t mind. Petrogradsky had always been one of my favorite Metro stations. The entrance had extremely heavy metal doors that were impossible to push or pull fully open. I couldn’t understand if this was a deliberate design defect to save on hinge repairs, or some sort of sadistic ploy. One had to sort of prop the door open and squeeze through before releasing it, and the door would often swing violently backwards and lash the next poor soul in line in the face. Across the street from the station, there was a store selling posters emblazoned with Soviet-style propaganda exhortations. I remembered it as two years earlier having been full of classic Communist, anti-American bombast, such as a lithograph of a US missile with a picture of Ronald Reagan’s head in the form of an atomic warhead. But Glasnost and Perestroika had taken their artistic toll during the ensuing years, and most of the more hilarious, rabidly anti-Western pictorial rants had been replaced by posters promoting sobriety, advocating ecological consciousness or, even more surprising, preaching touchy-feely peacenik stuff.
    As I gazed into the shop window, I saw a shadow growing larger in the glass. I turned around without recognizing the man in the glass. It wasn’t until he flashed his fossilized smile that I knew it was Vova. He’d shaved his head, revealing nicks, cuts, and divots around the perimeter of his tightly wrapped skull. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of an oversize, crème-colored trench coat. He looked menacing.
    We exchanged a hug. I asked some requisite questions about his family and work, including the Button Factory. Vova screwed up his face.
    “I don’t work at the Button Factory,” he snarled, waving his hand as if to swat away a mosquito. “I’ve got a new job now.” Then he flashed agrin so wide that the brown rot between his gums shone like shiny bits of rust.
    “Let’s go,” said Vova, grabbing me by the arm and leading me toward the street. We stopped a Lada-1—a Soviet knockoff of an early-1970s Fiat—and climbed in. “Kupchino,” Vova told the driver, the name of a grimy expanse of factories and faceless apartment blocks in the south of the city.
    “Why aren’t we taking the Metro?” I asked. “It’s faster—and cheaper.”
    “The Metro? What for?” countered Vova, as if the notion of a subway were suddenly beneath his dignity. “Kupchino!” he told the driver again. Then he turned and spoke to me in a conspiratorial whisper, just loud enough for the taxi driver to hear.
    “You see, I’ve got a new system,” hissed Vova. “I just wait until the driver approaches a red light where there’s a lot of traffic. I tell him to get in the left lane.”
    “So?” I ask.
    “Then, when the traffic starts to move, I jump out, slam the door, and run away!” snickered Vova. “The taxi driver is stuck. He can’t get out and chase me with cars behind him. If he does, his car might get ripped off. He can’t get over into the right lane either, because it’s blocked with moving traffic. By then, I’m long gone.”
    I saw the driver jerk his neck slightly as Vova explained his fare policy for cabbies. Maybe the driver thought it was just a joke from a shaven-headed thug in a trench coat.
    We sped south, over the elegant iron drawbridges across the Neva River. We had a perfect view of both banks, clad in granite