Stalin’s Ghost

3

A heavyset man in underclothes sat at the kitchen table, his head resting on his forearm, a cleaver standing in the back of his neck. One forensic technician videotaped the scene while another peeled the dead man’s hand from a water glass. Vodka was still in it, Isakov told Arkady. A tech poured half the dead man’s glass into a vial to test later for rat poison, which would show premeditation. Crusted dishes, pickle bottles and glittering empties of vodka were piled in a corner to make room on the drain board for open packages of sugar and yeast, and in the sink for a pressure cooker, rubber hoses and plastic tubing. Alcohol formed at the end of a tube, hung and dripped into a jar. Otherwise, the kitchen was decorated with a mounted wolf head and bushy tail, a tapestry with a hunting motif and a photograph of the dead man and a woman as two people younger and happier. The refrigerator hummed, speckled with blood. Snow fidgeted with a loose windowpane. For the moment no one smoked, despite the flatulent stink of death. According to a cuckoo clock it was 4:55.

Arkady waited at the door with Nikolai Isakov and Marat Urman. Arkady had imagined Isakov so many times that the real man was smaller than expected. He wasn’t particularly handsome, but his blue eyes suggested coolness under fire and his forehead bore interesting scars. His leather jacket was scuffed from wear and his voice was almost whispery. Arkady’s father had always said that the ability to command was innate; men would either follow you or not. Whatever the quality was, Isakov had it. His partner Urman was a Tatar built round and hard, with the broad smile of a successful pillager. A raspberry red leather jacket and a gold tooth revealed a taste for flash.

“It seems to be a case of cabin fever,” Isakov said. “The wife says they hadn’t left the house since it started snowing.”

“Started like a honeymoon.” Urman grinned.

Isakov said, “It appears that they could drink vodka faster than they could make it.”

“At the end they were fighting over the last drop of alcohol in the house. Both so drunk they can barely stand. He starts hitting her…”

“Apparently one thing led to another.”

“She slices him between the sixth and seventh vertebrae and right through the spinal cord. Instantaneous!”

The cleaver had been dusted with gray powder and the ghostly print of a palm and fingers was wrapped around the handle.

“Does he have a name?” Arkady asked.

“Kuznetsov,” said Isakov. Selecting a professional tone, he commiserated with Arkady. “So you got stuck with Stalin’s ghost.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Chasing a phantom through the Metro? Urman and I prefer ordinary cases with real bodies.”

“Well, I envy you.” Which hardly told the whole story, but Arkady thought he was controlling his bitterness fairly well. He stole a glance at the clock: 4:56. His watch said 5:05. “I had a question about the phantom, as you put it. I was wondering, did either of you search the subway platform?”

“No.”

“Open any maintenance gates or doors?”

“No.”

“Why did you let the platform conductor leave the station?” It came out more brusquely than Arkady had intended.

“That’s more than one question. Because the conductor didn’t see anything.” Isakov was patient. “People who weren’t crazy, we let go.”

“What else, besides seeing Stalin, did they say or do that was crazy?”

Urman said, “Seeing Stalin, that’s crazy enough.”

“Did you get the number of the car?”

“Number?”

“Every car in the Metro has a four-digit number. I’d like to see that car. Did you get the name of the driver of the train?”

Isakov was categorical. “We were ordered to ride the last car, whatever its number was, and observe. We were not told what to watch for or at which station or to get the driver’s name. When we pulled into the Chistye Prudy stop we saw nothing and heard nothing unusual until people started to shout. I don’t know who shouted first. As instructed, we separated the positive witnesses from the rest of the passengers and held them until we were called out on this case.”

The forensic team announced that they were finished with the kitchen and moving to the bathroom, where shiny surfaces beckoned.

Arkady waited until the techs had passed before saying, “Your report was a little sketchy.”

“The prosecutor didn’t want an official report,” Isakov said.

Urman was puzzled. “Why all the fucking questions? We’re on the same side, aren’t we?”

Don’t complicate things, Arkady told himself. This wasn’t his case. Get out of the apartment.

A whimper sounded from another room.

“Who is that?”

“It’s the wife.”

“She’s here?”

“In the bedroom. Take a look, but watch where you step.”

Arkady went down a hall littered with newspapers, pizza boxes and KFC tubs to a bedroom where the squalor was deep enough it seemed to float. A redheaded woman in a housedress was handcuffed to the bed. She rose out of an alcoholic stupor, legs and arms spread, hands in plastic bags. An array of blood spots covered the front of her dress. Arkady pushed up her sleeves. Her flesh was slack but by a comparison of forearms she was right-handed.

“How do you feel?”

“They took the dragon.”

“They took what?”

“It’s our dragon.”

“You have a dragon?”

The mental effort was too much and she sank back into incoherence.

He returned to the kitchen.

“Someone took her dragon.”

“We heard it was elephants,” Urman said.

“Why is she still here?”

Isakov said, “Waiting for an ambulance. She already confessed. We hoped she could reenact the crime for the video camera.”

“She should be seen by a doctor and in a cell. Save the housedress. How long have you two been detectives in Moscow?”

“A year.” Urman had lost his good humor.

“You moved over to detective level direct from the Black Berets? From Hostage Rescue to Criminal Investigation?”

“Maybe they bent the rules for Captain Isakov,” Urman said. “Why the fuss? We have a murder and a confession. It’s two plus two, right?”

“With one swing. She must have had a steady hand,” Arkady said.

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“Do you mind?” Arkady stepped behind the dead man for a different perspective. One arm still stretched out for the glass. Without touching, Arkady studied the wrist for bruising from, say, being clamped down by a stronger man while a blow was struck.

Urman said, “I’ve heard about you, Renko. People say you like to stick your dick in. We didn’t have time for people like you in the Black Berets. Second guessers. What are you looking for now?”

“Resistance.”

“To what? Do you see any bruises?”

“Did you try a UV scan?”

“What is this shit?”

“Marat.” Isakov shook his head. “Marat, the investigator is only asking questions born of experience. There’s no reason to be taking it personally. He’s not.” He asked as if making sure, “You’re not taking this personally are you, Renko?”

“No.”

Isakov didn’t smile, but he did seem amused. “Now, Renko, you’ll have to excuse us if we work our own case our own way. Is there anything else you want to know?”

“Why were you so certain the glass held vodka? Did you just assume it?”

There was still some in the glass. Urman dipped his first and middle fingers and licked them. He dipped the fingers a second time and offered them to Arkady. “You can suck them if you want.”

Arkady ignored Urman and asked Isakov, “So you’re satisfied what you have here is an ordinary domestic homicide due to vodka, snow and cabin fever?”

“And love,” Isakov said. “The wife says she loved him. Most dangerous words in the world.”

“So you think love leads to murder,” Arkady said.

“Let’s hope not.”

Snow packed on the windshield. At five minutes before the Metro doors opened, Arkady didn’t have time to stop and brush the wipers clear, but he decided that as long as he followed taillights he was on the right side of the road and headed into Three Stations, as everyone called Komsomol Square for the railroad stations gathered there. Traffic lights swung, lenses packed with red and green snow. Leningrad Station’s Italian pomp, Yaroslavsky Station’s golden crown, Kazan Station’s oriental gate: the windshield wipers smeared them together.

Arkady left his car in a snow drift in front of Kazan Station. A few passengers had already come out to search for taxis. Most arrivals streamed next door toward the Metro: oilmen from the Urals, businessmen from Kazan, a ballet troupe returning home, day trippers with caviar to trade, families with small children and huge suitcases, commuters and budget tourists following a dim path of half-smothered streetlamps. They hurried in the steam of their breath, hats pulled low, bags and packages tightly clutched, perhaps more eager to leave than arrive someplace else. Snow had driven away the usual pimps and Gypsies and wholesome country women who sold their poisonous homemade brew and drunks who gathered empty vodka bottles to pay for new. A hazardous undertaking. The year before, five bottle scavengers had their throats slit in and around Three Stations. For bottles. Until the Metro doors opened, people would be pressed against a dead end in the dark. There were militia officers assigned to outdoor posts; they were inside the train station checking tickets and fighting Chechen terrorism where it was warm.

Part of Arkady was back in the Kuznetsovs’ bloody apartment, where he and Isakov seemed to have exercised a gentlemen’s agreement not to mention Eva. No, neither of them took things personally.

Arkady searched between shuttered kiosks and flushed out a pair of drunks so unsteady they couldn’t stand except against a wall.

“Stay together!” he told people. Present a solid front, even yaks knew that much, he thought.

But it was each for his own. People closest to the Metro doors clung to their position; those behind pressed harder to the fore, while the crowd further back began to scatter. It was like watching wolves cull a herd as boys flowed out of the dark in packs of five or six, wearing black garbage bags and balaclavas that made them virtually invisible. Old people they plucked where they stood. Bigger game they swarmed; a monk was pulled down on the ice by his cassock and stripped of his gilded cross. One moment he had two boys in his grasp, and then nothing but trash bags.

Arkady was circled by boys. The leader wasn’t more than fifteen, not afraid to show his moon face and wispy mustache. He pulled up his bag to produce a slim revolver he aimed at Arkady. Arkady was not amazed that a kid could get a firearm. Railroad police, the lowest level of law enforcement, were still issued hundred-year-old revolvers. Had Georgy come upon a drunken guard sleeping in a boxcar and stripped him of his gun? At Three Stations stranger things had happened.

“Bang,” the boy said.

Melting snow coursed down Arkady’s back.

“Hello, Georgy,” Arkady said.

“How would you like a hole in the head?” Georgy asked.

“Not especially. Where did you find that?”

“It’s mine.”

“It’s a real antique. It outlasted the Soviet Union.”

“It still works.”

“Where’s Zhenya?”

“I could blow your brains out.”

“He could,” said the smallest boy in the circle. “He practices on rats.”

“Isn’t that what you are?” Georgy asked Arkady. “Aren’t you a rat?”

After two days without sleep anything was possible. The pistol was a Nagant, a double-action, and the hammer was cocked. On the other hand, the trigger demanded a serious squeeze; Georgy wouldn’t fire accidentally. Arkady couldn’t see how many rounds were in the cylinder, but you can’t have everything.

He rolled back the cap of the smaller boy. “Fedya, you’re up early today.”

Georgy prodded Arkady with the gun. “Never mind him.”

“Fedya, I just want to talk to Zhenya.”

“You’re not listening,” Georgy said.

“He plays chess,” Arkady told Fedya. “You should ask him to teach you how to play chess.”

“Shut up!” Georgy said.

Fedya stole a glance at the dark of a doorway, where a foot stepped back beyond the reach of the light. He felt Zhenya’s gaze and saw the scene from Zhenya’s point of view: the snow-covered battlefield, casualties nursing their dignity and winners dragging off packages like Christmas presents.

A chorus of police whistles promised that authority was on its way. The militia had clubs but, in the dark, who could tell whom to beat? They did their best. Meanwhile, the boys disappeared, not so much retreating as dissolving into shadows. Georgy backed off, the gun still pointed at Arkady, who watched the boys gather and slip away.

“Zhenya!”

Georgy’s group slipped between trash bins, climbed a chain-link fence, and in a moment were gone in the direction of the railroad yard, a confusing array of sidetracks and trains on any night and now a white maze. Arkady followed their prints through the snow until all the footsteps went in separate directions and left him spinning.

Arkady retreated to the station. He staggered into the still atmosphere of the station’s great hall, the suspended breath of the chandeliers, the rows of motionless bodies. As if sleep were the first business of the station, train departures were not announced. Take me to romantic Kazan, Arkady thought, to the land of peacocks and the Golden Horde. He was coughing so hard he dropped his cigarettes. Disgusted, he crumpled the pack and tossed it aside.

As he came out the front of the station he saw-briefly, before snow obscured his view-Georgy and Fedya with a boy that could have been Zhenya crossing the traffic island in the middle of the square. Arkady stumbled down the steps and squeezed between parked cars onto the street. Even blinkered by snow the lights of the square were bright. No trolleys out yet, although overhead cables hummed. By the time Arkady reached the island the three boys were halfway to the opposite sidewalk, but he had caught his breath and was gaining with every step when the blast of a horn brought him up short.

The three turned at the sound.

“Zhenya!”

Arkady retreated out of the way of a snowplow. The machine traveled in a haze of headlights and crystals, snow spewing from the blade. Arkady couldn’t run in front because a second plow followed at an angle, and a third, lumbering and grinding, walling off the sidewalk with snow.