The Sin Collector

ANDREY

Andrey had put the fear of God into that reporter. He got everything he needed, including Alma Kutiyeva’s address. Now he was pushing his way through another Moscow traffic jam. The drive wasn’t just torturous because it was slow. He knew that his meeting with Alma Kutiyeva, the mother of a soldier whose body had been sent home hollowed out, would not be an easy one. Andrey was one of the many people in the world who didn’t know how to express his sympathy. He stuttered, he blushed, and he felt terrible, he had tears in his eyes and a lump in his throat, but he could never find the right words. What could you say to a mother who’s lost her son? That he was killed by a professional, so it probably didn’t hurt? Would it help to tell her that her boy had been avenged, that the hitman appeared to have been executed by a homicidal maniac, drowned under the ice on the Moskva in accordance with some medieval Russian custom?

Andrey returned over and over again to his conversation with Karavay and her dapper boyfriend, and he tried to find some discrepancy that would prove all of this had nothing to do with creepy stories out of medieval mysticism. Maybe it was just dirty money, dirty politics, dirty passion, the three pillars that normally supported the logic of murder. But those banalities didn’t line up with the ice, the freezer, the cut-out tongues at the electric station, the cut-off arm at St. Basil’s, the quartered governor’s wife at Kolomenskoye. On the other hand, John the Prophet with his Revelations? Ivan the Terrible? They fit just right. He wanted nothing to do with this mess. But Masha had already plunged him through a hole in the ice, into a place where there were neither fish nor plants, just the thick, sluggish water, filled with insanity. He would have to face it head-on if he wanted to stop these crimes.

A murderer’s logic is really killer, thought Andrey, punning badly in his head, and finally he turned his car off the crowded ring road.

Alma Kutiyeva’s place was on the outskirts of the city. The apartment looked like a Gypsy camp, full of people all bustling around at top speed in the small space, talking at top volume. Alma locked herself and Andrey in the bathroom so they could talk. The room was full of damp laundry, and there were red rags floating in a tub of pink foam. Andrey was repulsed, at first, until he realized it was just cheap dye.

Alma offered him a low stool, and perched herself on the edge of the tub.

“Sorry about this,” she said, nodding at the door. The many-voiced clamor of the big family rumbled on outside their refuge. “What did you want to ask me about?”

“Well, you see,” said Andrey, pulling some paperwork out of his briefcase, “I’m investigating a case that might be connected to your son’s death.”

“Did they cut up another soldier?” Kutiyeva asked with a bitter laugh. “Or is this about the money?”

“What money?” asked Andrey, frowning.

“They already offered me money,” said Alma, lifting her head. “Must have felt bad, I guess.”

Andrey, worried, said nothing.

“You didn’t know?” Alma shoved a hand into the pocket of her old green robe. “A detective came to see me, someone from the Military Prosecutor’s Office. He had a suitcase. He asked me very nicely to forget about it, but my brother and I kicked him out. We don’t sell out our dead.”

Andrey could see her clenching her hand into a fist under the ragged flannel.

“They brought my boy home without his insides! Gutted like a chicken! And they claimed he killed himself! What do they think, that we live out in the provinces, we’d never come here to Moscow to fight back? Did they think his mother wouldn’t figure it out? That nobody would speak up for him?” Alma was shouting now.

Outside the bathroom, on the other hand, things had gone suspiciously quiet. Andrey pictured them all standing out there and listening. He frowned again, hard.

“I found other mothers! Their sons served in the same places mine did. All boys without fathers, too! Who’s going to protect them? Well, I am. I’ve been in Moscow six months already, and I got them to put a good detective on the case. One from Khabarovsk, like us.”

Andrey pulled out Yelnik’s photo and handed it to Alma.

“Could this be your detective, the one from the Military Prosecutor’s Office?”

Alma quieted down for a moment and slowly drew her hand out of her pocket. She took the picture, then gave it right back to Andrey, as if just looking at it made her sick.

“That’s him,” she said, her voice suddenly tired.

“All right,” said Andrey. “Was anyone else at home when he came by?”

“Just me.” Alma thought a bit. “Then my brother came home. Like I said, we kicked him out.”

“All right,” said Andrey again. Then abruptly, he took her hand. “I’m really sorry.”

Alma jumped and pulled sharply away from his touch, and Andrey berated himself. Here she was a Muslim woman, and he was a strange man, sitting with her in these intimate quarters. A bathroom full of laundry! Andrey stood up and tucked Yelnik’s photo away.

“I’m very sorry. Thank you. I think I’ll be going.”

She led him silently out of the bathroom, guided him past her relatives into the hallway, and saw him off with a “good-bye” as emotionless as the sound of the door locking behind her.

Andrey sat awhile on the bench outside the building and smoked. So, then, one more piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. Yelnik had come here himself. Why? Andrey looked thoughtfully at the lilac trees waving in the breeze. Someone had planted them around the neighborhood garbage heap, and they had bloomed early this year. After seeing in the paper that one of the mothers had figured it out, that she was coming to Moscow and making a stink, Yelnik had come here to buy her off—then kill her if she refused the money. But Alma’s brother had shown up and Yelnik had put off finishing his plan. Then someone had finished him off instead. Alma had escaped death thanks to a medieval riddler. Andrey tossed the butt of his cigarette in the trash bin and rubbed his eyes.

It was time to go home to Marilyn Monroe.