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the bay. Excuse me." As they walked to the bike, Arkady noticed a cardboard sign taped to the saddle: don't touch this bike, I am watching you. Grisha borrowed a pen from Arkady and underlined "watching." "That's better."
    "Quite a machine."
    "A Kawasaki. I used to ride a Uralmoto," Grisha said, to let Arkady know how far he had come up in the world.
    Arkady noticed a pedestrian door next to the bay. Each entry had a separate keypad. "Do people park here?"
    "No, the Farts are all over them, too."
    "Saturday, when the mechanics weren't on duty?"
    "When we're short-staffed? Well, we can't leave our post every time a car stops in the alley. We give them ten minutes, and then we chase them out."
    "Did that happen this Saturday?"
    "When Ivanov jumped? I'm not on at night."
    "I understand, but during your shift, did you or the receptionist notice anything unusual in the alley?"
    Grisha took a while to think. "No. Besides, the back is locked tight on Saturdays. You'd need a bomb to get in."
    "Or a code."
    "You'd still be seen by the camera. We'd notice."
    "I'm sure. You were in front?"
    "At the canopy, yes."
    "People were going in and out?"
    "Residents and guests."
    "Anyone carrying salt?"
    "How much salt?"
    "Bags and bags of salt."
    "No."
    "Ivanov wasn't bringing home salt day after day? No salt leaking from his briefcase?"
    "No."
    "I have salt on the brain, don't I?"
    "Yeah." Said slowly.
    "I should do something about that."
     
     
    The Arbat was a promenade of outdoor musicians, sketch artists and souvenir stalls that sold strands of amber, nesting dolls of peasant women, retro posters of Stalin. Dr. Novotny's office was above a cybercafe. She told Arkady that she was about to retire on the money she would make selling to developers who planned to put in a Greek restaurant. Arkady liked the office as it was, a drowsy room with overstuffed chairs and Kandinsky prints, bright splashes of color that could have been windmills, bluebirds, cows. Novotny was a brisk seventy, her face a mask of lines around bright dark eyes.
    "I first saw Pasha Ivanov a little more than a year ago, the first week in May. He seemed typical of our new entrepreneurs. Aggressive, intelligent, adaptable; the last sort to seek psychotherapy. They are happy to send in their wives or mistresses; it's popular for the women, like feng shui, but the men rarely come in themselves. In fact, he missed his last four sessions, although he insisted on paying for them."
    "Why did he choose you?"
    "Because I'm good."
    "Oh." Arkady liked a woman who came straight to the point.
    "Ivanov said he had trouble sleeping, which is always the way they start. They say they want a pill to help them sleep, but what they want me to prescribe is a mood elevator, which I am willing to do only as part of a broader therapy. We met once a week. He was entertaining, highly articulate, possessed of enormous self-confidence. At the same time, he was very secretive in certain areas, his business dealings for one, and, unfortunately, whatever was the cause of his..."
    "Depression or fear?" Arkady asked.
    "Both, if you need to put it that way. He was depressed, and he was afraid."
    "Did he mention enemies?"
    "Not by name. He said that ghosts were after him." Novotny opened a box of cigars, took one, peeled off the cellophane and slipped the cigar band over her finger. "I'm not saying that he believed in ghosts."
    "Aren't you?"
    "No. What I'm saying is that he had a past. A man like him gets to where he is by doing many remarkable things, some of which he might later regret."
    Arkady described the scene at Ivanov's apartment. The doctor said that the broken mirror certainly could have been an expression of self-loathing, and jumping from a window was a man's way out. ''However, the two most usual motives of suicide for men are financial and emotional, often evidenced as atrophied libido. Ivanov had wealth and a healthy sexual relationship with his friend Rina."
    "He used Viagra."
    "Rina is much