A Fine Red Rain

CHAPTER FIVE

Precisely seven o'clock the next morning. A Tuesday, Emil Karpo did not bother to knock at the door on the second level below ground in the Petrovka Police Station. He turned the handle and pushed the door open with his right hand and was greeted by a metallic whirring sound like the drill of a dentist. Karpo, his left hand holding a frayed, black leather briefcase filled with the neatly written notes he had spent the night writing, stepped m Hid closed the door.

The room looked more like a way station to the garbage dump than a laboratory. Its clutter irritated Karpo, to whom symmetry, reason, and order were essential. But this was Paulinin's lab, and Paulinin was an enigma to the policeman.

Karpo stepped past a headless dressmaker's bust of a portly woman, avoided a cardboard box full of bottles on the floor, squeezed by a table piled high with books and metal pieces that looked as if they came from inside some mechanical children's toy.

A man in a blue smock with his back to the door leaned over a table in the corner of the windowless room. The man's hands rose delicately, as if he were engaged in a surgical operation or were conducting a particularly difficult piece by Stravinsky.

"I'm busy, Inspector," Paulinin cried over the whirring sound with a wave of his hand, his back still turned.

Karpo took a step closer and stood patiently, silently, in front of Paulinin's desk, the top of which was covered by books and the miscellany of past investigations. The set of teeth that had been on the desk the last time Karpo had visited the laboratory was still there, grinning atop a small abacus stained with dried blood.

"Inspector Karpo," Paulinin sighed, his back still turned. "I'm… ah, ha. There." The whirring sound stopped.

With a triumphant look on his face, Paulinin, a bespectacled, nearsighted monkey with an oversized head topped by wild gray-black hair, turned to face his visitor for the first time. In his hand he held something that looked to Karpo like a human heart. Behind Paulinin, on the table, was a metal tray filled with blood and a small white machine with a glass bowl attached to it.

"A centrifuge didn't — work," Paulinin said, looking around for someplace to put the organ in his hand. "A three-hundred-ruble centrifuge."

His glasses were in danger of falling off the end of his nose, but Paulinin had no free hand with which to adjust them. He tried to push the glasses back with his shoulder and failed.

"And do you know what worked?" he asked, balancing the heart hi one hand and grabbing a plastic bucket from the floor.

"No," said Karpo.

"That," Paulinin said in triumph, nodding back at the metal-and-glass object on the laboratory table. The plastic bucket contained something that looked like coffee grounds. Paulinin dumped them into the metal tray on the table and just managed to drop the heart into the now-empty plastic bucket.

"Paulinin" Karpo began, but the scientist held up a hand to stop him as he pushed his glasses back on his nose, which brought a smile to his simian face and a streak of blood to his forehead.

"Do you know what that is?" he asked Karpo, glancing at him and then moving to the small sink in the corner of the room. "Huh?"

"No," said Karpo patiently.

Paulinin pushed some rubber tubes and a glass beaker out of the way and turned on the water. As he washed, he looked back at Karpo and said, "A food processor. The French and Americans use them for chopping food into pieces so small that they turn to paste almost. You can put anything except solid mineral products in it. Well, almost anything."

He turned off the water and faced Karpo as he dried his hands on his smock.

"I got it from a KGB man named… a KGB man I've done some things for," Paulinin whispered, though his laboratory was almost certainly not wired and the door was soundproof.

"Interesting," said Karpo at near-attention, waiting.

"They were through with this heart," Paulinin said, biting his lower lip and looking down at the plastic bucket affectionately. "Through with it. Case closed. Autopsy finished. X ray failed to show anything. Natural death. They gave me the heart. And do you know what I found in that heart? Do you know what that French food processor and I found in that heart?"

"I do not know, Comrade," said Karpo.

"Gold, gold, gold. Tiny fragments of gold," Paulinin said with a smile on his bloody face as he absently reached up to push down his hair. "Someone injected gold into his bloodstream. It blocked his vessels. A man with a heart condition. Gold. Can you imagine?"

"I" Karpo began.

"And you want to know what I'm going to do with this information?" Paulinin asked, moving behind his desk and clapping his hands together as he sat.

"No," said Karpo.

"Nothing," said Paulinin, blowing out air. "I think our political people may know something about this. The old Cheka eliminated two politicals hi a similar manner for symbolic reasons in 1930. And then various murders have been committed involving the introduction of small particles of metal orally or through an orifice. One particularly interesting case in Syria last year involved the introduction of a catheter into… But I sense a certain disinterest in you, Comrade Emil. So, if the KGB finds out I have the heart, they may ask why and wonder what I found. I will tell them I used it for experiments on tissue, that I discovered nothing, that I chopped the pieces up and flushed them, which is what I will do. I don't want certain people with a strained sense of humor to inject gold into my urinary system so that some morning I would wake up pissing away hundreds of rubles in gold."

Paulinin looked up at Karpo expectantly.

"I made a joke, Comrade Inspector," Paulinin said.

"I know," replied Karpo.

"Why do I like you, Inspector?"

"I had no idea you did," said Karpo.

"I really did find gold in mat heart," said Paulinin softly, turning to look at the food processor. "Now I've sifted it and have enough gold to pay for a second food processor. Why would anyone kill with gold?"

"I don't know," said Karpo.

"Aren't you curious?" asked Paulinin, starting to get up, looking over at the bucket, and sitting down again.

"No," said Karpo.

"What do you want?" Paulinin asked.

Karpo opened the battered briefcase and removed the stack of papers held together by a large spring clip. He found a place on the desk atop a book in a foreign language and placed the stack on it.

"You have a work process report?" Paulinin said, adjusting his glasses and reaching for the papers.

"No," said Karpo.

"And no 3245 approval?"

"No," said Karpo. "The case is not officially mine. Just as the death of the former possessor of that heart is not officially your responsibility."

"Unlike you, I am always curious," said Paulinin. "I am not always temperate, either, or, as you know, I would have more space, more equipment, more responsibility. But am I bitter?"

"Yes," said Karpo.

"A little, perhaps," Paulinin agreed. "What do you want?"

"I have the names of a number of people on these lists with some information about each of them," Karpo explained. "Each person should be in the central computer file with more data. I cannot have access to the computer without a case report. In addition, I do not know how to program for the answers I need."

"And you want me to…?" Paulinin began, reaching up to touch his bloody forehead. He brought his hand down and looked a bit puzzled by the sight of blood on his just-washed hands.

"Put these names into the computer. Ask the questions I tell you to ask. I want to narrow mis list down."

Paulinin picked up the clipped papers and began to flip through them.

"I recognize these names, most of these names," said Paulinin, almost to himself. Then he put the pile down and looked at the set of false teeth. With a fresh sigh, he moved the teeth and picked up the abacus. "How many names?"

"I've got it down to forty-one," said Karpo. "Do you want to know why I want this done?"

"No," said Paulinin. "What I don't know, I can't tell later. This eccentricity of mine offers protection only as long as I prove to be a creative source of information. You understand?"

"Perfectly," said Karpo.

"You need this"

"Immediately," said Karpo.

"How many questions do you have about each of these?"

"Five," said Karpo.

"Five," said Paulinin, who glanced at the first sheet of the pile of papers Karpo had given him and began to make some calculations on the abacus. The beads clicked quickly under his fingers for a few seconds and then he looked up. "Maybe an hour. Maybe two. You want something to eat, drink, while you wait?"

"No," said Karpo.

"Then," said Paulinin, putting down the abacus and rising, "let's narrow your list."

As Paulinin sat at the computer terminal in his laboratory and Karpo watched over his shoulder, nine floors above them the morning meeting of Colonel Snitkonoy's staff was about to end.

The Gray Wolfhound had listened with a knowing shake of his head to Pankov's and Major Grigorovich's reports. Something about the Wolfhound's manner alerted Rostnikov. Snitkonoy was not listening to the reports. That was clear from his knowing nods, the inappropriateness of the moments at which he decided to grunt or smile with approval. His uniform neatly pressed, his hair very recently cut, Snitkonoy was putting on his act. Pankov sweated and didn't seem in the least aware that the Wolfhound had another prey in mind. Grigorovich noticed. He relaxed his back slightly after he began his report because he quickly knew that he, too, was not the focus of the Wolfhound's real attention.

Not once had Snitkonoy mentioned his visit the day before to the factory. Not once did he say anything about his influence, his busy schedule. What was even more disturbing was that he gave no words of wisdom to the trio that sat as he paced. In addition, he had made no lists and drawn no diagrams on the blackboard.

"Inspector Rostnikov," the Wolfhound said in his deep voice mat had been known to carry throughout Dynamo Stadium without benefit of a microphone. "You have several concurrent investigations."

"Yes, Comrade," Rostnikov agreed, alert, anticipating but keeping his voice low and a bit lazy. "The gang of youths defacing transportation centers, the pickpocket, metro stations with paint seem to be"

"The tsirk" Snitkonoy said, suddenly leaning forward over the table, his medals jangling on his chest. "What is going on with the circus business, the accident?"

"I made some preliminary inquiries"

"And found what you believe to be a connection between the fall of the man in Gogol Square and the aerialist?" the Wolfhound said, leaning even further forward toward Rostnikov. Grigorovich, who sat between the two men, was ramrod straight and still.

"Possibly, Comrade, possibly," agreed Rostnikov.

"And you took an officer on standard patrol and assigned him to protect a woman from the circus?" said Snitkonoy with a smile directed at Pankov, who shrank back and smiled in return.

The woman was distraught and, possibly, a potential victim of the person who may have killed or induced the deaths of the two circus performers," said Rostnikov.

"They were accidents," said Snitkonoy, standing up and clasping his hands behind his back in the familiar pose of his frequent photographs.

"Possibly," said Rostnikov with a shrug as he watched the colonel begin to pace.

"You will remove the officer from that assignment and you will cease this investigation," said the colonel, pacing but not looking at Rostnikov.

"As you say, Colonel," Rostnikov said, looking down at his pad and fighting the urge to fill in a quick caricature of the prancing fool. The urge was followed by a weaker but distinct urge to grab the colonel, lift him up, and shake him like a toy till his brains were rearranged in a more functional manner or ceased to work altogether.

"You have done it again, Inspector Rostnikov," the Wolfhound said with a shake of his head. "Once again. You have blundered into something mat…doesn't concern you. Do you understand?"

"The KGB has an interest in the case." Rostnikov sighed, put down his pencil, and sat back.

"I was unaware of the interest of another investigative branch when I approved the assignment," said the Wolfhound. "This morning I was fully briefed on the situation. You are to drop the investigation."

Which meant that Snitkonoy knew nothing, had been told nothing other than that he should have Rostnikov back away from whatever he was doing. It meant that the case, which had been deemed to have some importance, was far beyond the petty nonsense the Gray Wolfhound was allowed to handle. It wasn't at all unusual for the KGB to pick up a case once preliminary investigative reports had been tiled and decide that the situation was political or economic.

It was also clear to Rostnikov that the Wolfhound had probably been treated with no great respect by whoever had ordered him to pass the word on to Rostnikov.

"Find the metro painters, Comrade Inspector," the Wolfhound said, turning his back to the seated trio. "Find the pickpocket."

"Yes, Comrade Colonel," Rostnikov said, putting his hands below the table so that the others would not see his fists tighten, his knuckles go white.

"That is all, gentlemen," the Wolfhound said with a dismissing wave of his right hand, his back still to them. Pankov gathered his papers and was out of the meeting room almost instantly. Major Grigorovich moved deliberately and just slowly enough so that Rostnikov might not think that he was hurrying away to escape the wrath of the Wolfhound. Rostnikov took a deep, silent breath, stood up, gathered his notes, and limped toward the door. As he touched the handle, the deep voice behind him said, "Rostnikov."

Rostnikov turned to the colonel, whose back was still to him. The tightly gripped fingers of Snitkonoy's hands, clasped behind his back, were as white as Rostnikov's had been under the table.

"You were in the war, weren't you, Inspector? That's how you got your limp."

"Yes," said Rostnikov, wondering where they were going now.

"I was one of the youngest field officers in die Great War," said the Wolfhound, turning to face Rostnikov. There was a look on the older man's face Rostnikov had never seen before.

"Younger people who have no experience with combat, have never faced death, now tell those of us who know something of what it means how we should react to it," Snitkonoy said. "Do you understand what I am saying here, Comrade Inspector?"

The Wolfhound was clearly apologizing for his behavior during the meeting, which made Rostnikov wonder if Snitkonoy were quite the fool he thought him to be. Most likely he was a fool whose massive ego had been pierced by a young KGB agent who had no time for or interest in the egos of old men.

"I understand, Colonel," Rostnikov said.

"Good," said Snitkonoy with a deep sigh, raising his head and his voice. "Good."

There was nothing more to say. Rostnikov left the room, picked up the plumbing books from the drawer in his desk in which he had put them, and headed for Lenin Prospekt and the apartment of Karya Rashkovskaya, As Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov left the meeting room, two floors below him Felix and Osip Gorgasali sat on a wooden bench outside the office of Deputy Procurator Khabolov. They had been waiting for almost two hours while others came and went. They had been escorted up the elevator and to the bench by a uniformed MVD officer who said nothing to them, did not even look at them. He had simply pointed at the bench in the dark hallway, and they knew mat they were to sit.

Osip had suggested that they dress shabbily, two lowly merchants just able to make ends meet. Felix, being older, prevailed, however, and they had worn respectable suits with ties, though the doming was not new. In fact, both men had complete wardrobes of imported Polish clothes and even some American clothing. Osip owned two pairs of American Wrangler jeans.

They said almost nothing as they sat. From time to time the dark and hairy Osip played with a shaving cut on his chin. He was afraid of bleeding in front of the deputy procurator, but he couldn't keep his fingers from his face. Each time the office door hi front of them opened, Osip jumped slightly and let out a small groan. Both men needed a toilet. Neither would rise or ask.

And then, at a little before ten, a burly man in a shaggy suit stepped out of the deputy procurator's office and motioned to the brothers Gorgasali to enter. The burly man stepped past them and walked down the hallway. Osip was reminded instantly of the moment in The Wizard of Oz when the scarecrow, the lion, and the tin woodsman walk with Dorothy into the lair of Oz. The Wizard of Oz was one of Natalya's favorite tapes. His daughter had seen it twenty or thirty times before Felix and Osip sold it to a Pravda editor for 250 rubles. Osip had, however, made a copy, which wasn't as good as the original but that

"Sit," said the man behind the desk, breaking in on Osip's thoughts of the Emerald City.

The brothers sat on the two straight-backed wooden chairs facing the desk white the man behind it, his head down, continued to write on a pad of yellow paper. The man wrote for about five minutes, reread what he had written, gave the two men an icy look of appraisal, and then placed the yellow pad to the side of the desk.

"Do you know why you are here?" asked Khabolov.

"No, Comrade," said Felix. "We're just merchants, booksellers. We've witnessed no crime, committed no crime. We are honest citizens of the Soviet Union trying to make a living for"

Khabolov's hand went up and Felix stopped. Osip was filled with a sudden fear that he would be asked to speak and would be unable to do so. He was the frightened lion.

"We know all about you," Khabolov said, looking over at his yellow pad. "I plan personally to inventory your entire collection of tapes and machines."

Osip couldn't help himself. A burst of fear let loose within him and released a loud sob. Felix looked at him angrily, but Osip could think only of prison, of his wife, daughter. Had he remained a simple bookseller, had he ignored mis brother who had always ordered him around, gotten him into trouble, he would be breathing normally nowpoor, but facing life.

Khabolov ignored the sobbing Gorgasali brother and looked at the older one with the white hair who might be pissing in his pants but was able to hold on to a facade of confused innocence. The two men before Khabolov were ripe. This same scene had worked well before, in Odessa with the typewriter thieves, and was working even better now.

"It was all my idea," Felix said, his shoulders dropping, at the same instant his sobbing brother pointed to him and burst out with, "It was all his idea."

With mis, Felix instantly abandoned his ill-conceived moment of martyrdom, pointed at his brother, and shouted, "He lies. He threatened me to take responsibility. He beat me. It was his doing. I tried to get out but"

"He tried," Osip said sarcastically, looking at Deputy Procurator Khabolov for support and getting none. "He forced my poor wife, my beautiful little daughter. Wait. I have a picture of my Natalya right here."

Desperately, Osip fumbled in his pocket and came out with his wallet while Felix said, "What does that prove? That proves nothing. He beats his wife and daughter."

"I… never. I love them both. Here, here," Osip cried, pushing his brother's restraining hand away and passing the wallet to the unsmiling man behind the desk.

Khabolov took the wallet, and Osip sat back with a small sense of frightened triumph.

"This is a very nice wallet. Canadian," said Khabolov.

"Canadian, yes," said Osip. "A gift to me from an old friend. I'd like to make it a gift to you for your kindness, your understanding."

Felix snorted in disgust and put his head down as Khabolov threw the wallet back to Osip.

"Are you attempting to bribe an officer of the state?" Khabolov said, fixing his eyes on Osip, who was now completely panicked, without any sense of response or direction. All he could do was shake his head no as he clutched the wallet to his stomach with both hands. Osip looked to his older brother for help, but Felix was looking at the floor, defeated.

"Comrades," Khabolov said, "I want you to do some-flung."

Osip didn't hear the words. He simply sobbed and clutched his wallet, but Felix lifted his eyes at the words of the deputy procurator.

"Anything," said Felix.

"I want you to do some work for me in an investigation. I want the two of you to take part in a long-term government investigation of illegal marketing of videotapes and machines," said Khabolov, meeting Felix's eyes. There was an electric instant of understanding, and Felix sat up with new hope.

"We would be honored to help in any way we could serve the state, Comrade Procurator," Felix said over his brother's sobbing.

"Good," said Khabolov. "Your entire inventory will be taken over by the state. You will be permitted to continue to operate and keep a reasonable percentage of your profits. Let us say…"

"Seventy-five percent," said Felix, reaching over and digging his nails into his brother's calf to shut bun up.

"Forty percent," said Khabolov.

"Forty percent," agreed Felix.

"You will report directly to me, deal directly with me," said Khabolov. "You will never return here again. All contact will be made through me or my son, Andreyev, who will take reports on all of your customers and all transactions. It will be necessary from time to time for us to confiscate certain pieces of equipment and tapes that Andreyev or I will select for investigatory purposes."

"Our inventory is small," said Felix with a sigh.

Osip had stopped sobbing and was beginning to realize that the nature of the conversation had changed, that Felix was sounding like himself, that some kind of deal was being made.

"It will have to sustain itself if you and your brother are to remain a useful part of the undercover operation I am planning."

Which meant, Felix understood, that as long as he and Osip supplied the deputy procurator with all the free video equipment and tapes that he wanted and made him their senior partner they would remain free and in business. The price was high, but the alternative was prison, possibly even execution, and certainly poverty. Besides, the protection of the deputy procurator might be very comforting.

"We will do exactly as you say," said Felix.

"Exactly," echoed Osip as Felix reached over to tug at his brother's sleeve.

"Good," said Khabolov, with what may have been a slight smile. "Your patriotism will be rewarded. Perhaps there will even be a medal awarded at the end of this investigation, though, I must tell you, it looks as if the investigation may turn out to be a very long one."

"Whatever we must do to serve the state and the people will be done." Felix sighed.

Osip's sobs had departed, first replaced by a bland, open-mouthed incredulity and then by a slight, hopeful smile, as his eyes darted from his brother to the deputy procurator and up at Lenin, who did not look down from the picture behind the desk.

Felix did not smile. The terms had been made clear. Osip and Felix would continue to operate as long as it was safe for Khabolov. At the first sign of trouble, the deputy procurator would produce whatever doctored records he had prepared showing mat he had conducted a patriotic investigation of their black market operation. He would turn in those whom it was safe to turn hi and deny any allegations of payments in equipment or money from the lying black marketers, who would certainly be imprisoned, if they were lucky enough to make it to prison. Still, thought Felix, it was better than what they could be facing.

Being a Muscovite was dangerous at best. Better to be a wealthy Muscovite on the brink of disaster than a poor one.

"My son will be in touch soon," said Khabolov without rising, as he pulled the yellow pad back in front of him. "You are dismissed, Comrades, with the thanks of the state for your zeal in volunteering to serve."

"We are very honored…" Osip began as he rose, but Felix stopped him with a squeeze of the arm and led him out the door.

In the hall with the door closed behind them, Felix looked around to see if anyone could see them. When he was sure it was safe, he sagged against the wall and began shivering.

"We're safe," whispered Osip with a laugh. "Safe."

Felix looked at his brother, wanted to tell him how safe they really were, wanted to remind him that brother had denounced brother only moments ago, but he did not have the strength.

"Safe," he said, pushing himself away from the wall as two women in dark suits came around a corner talking and looking at them.

Felix moved on shaky legs to the elevator door with Osip at his side wanting to talk, celebrate. Felix didn't hear what Osip was saying. He looked back at the door to Khabolov's office, praying that it wouldn't open, that the deputy procurator would not come out, change his mind, ship them across Moscow to Lubyanka. When the elevator arrived, he hurried in past a uniformed officer and leaned against the rear wall. Osip had stopped talking but wore a relieved, happy smile that infuriated Felix, whose stomach tumbled as the elevator went down. He needed a toilet badly now, but knew he would not ask for one in Petrovka. Others got on the elevator and some got off. When they came to a sudden jerking stop at ground level, Felix felt like letting out a shriek of relief, but as the doors opened the thought of a shriek caught in his throat.

Standing ten feet away from the elevator, facing them, was a young man who seemed familiar. He wore a suit and carried a briefcase, and he looked directly at Felix and Osip. And then Felix recognized him, the student who had bought the Beatles record the day before. What was he doing here? Was the world full of informants and policemen?

"We're free," Osip, hoarse, whispered as they strode toward the glass doors of the entrance past the armed guard.

"Yes," said Felix, looking back over his shoulder at the young man with the briefcase, who was watching the brothers move toward the door. "Free."

"Vadim Malkoliovich Dunin, you are relieved from duty," Rostnikov said to the young man who opened the apartment door.

Dunin was holding a teacup in one hand and the door handle in the other. Someone with a gun could have eliminated young Dunin and stained the floor of Katya Rashkovskaya's apartment with a single bullet.

"Yes, Inspector," Dunin said, stepping back to let Rostnikov in. "I have been unable to repair the toilet for Comrade Katya, but I did manage to turn off the water."

"Admirable," said Rostnikov, looking around for Katya. "Where is…?" " "She went down the hall to a neighbor to use the toilet," Dunin explained, placing his teacup on the table and straightening his collar.

"You were supposed to remain with her." Rostnikov sighed.

"Even on the…?"

"You could have waited in the hall. It doesn't matter. You are relieved. Now."

"My duty officer would like you to sign my report, Comrade Inspector," Dunin said, pulling out his notebook. "I've made my morning entry."

Rostnikov removed the books from under his arm, placed them on the table next to Dunin's cup, and reached for the report book.

"I didn't" Dunin began.

Rostnikov held up a hand to stop him and signed his name to the bottom of the report. He could have added a slight reprimand, or a stiff one, for Dunin's lack of caution in opening the door and his failure to stay with Katya. He added nothing, but he looked at young Dunin's face when he returned the notebook.

"Thank you, Comrade," Dunin said, aware that no written comments had been made by the inspector.

"You were lucky, Vadim Malkoliovich," said the inspector, with eyes fixed on the younger man's face.

"I know," agreed Dunin.

"You have an explanation?"

"None," said the young officer.

"Good," said Rostnikov, moving away to sit in a straight-backed wooden chair. "There is hope for you."

Dunin smiled uncertainly and hurried out the front door.

For the first few minutes after Dunin's departure, Rostnikov sat looking around the room and waiting for Katya Rashkovskaya to return. He knew from his previous visit that it was a large apartment with two bedrooms. He knew from previous experience that circus performers were among the privileged, the lower privileged perhaps, but privileged nonetheless. The furniture was comfortable, rather modem, and, Rostnikov was sure, not cheap. He got up and began to wander around, first looking at the bathroom, where the toilet sat silent and wounded. Then he moved to the small first bedroom, which held but a single bed and was decorated with circus posters, colorful posters, of clowns, bears, acrobats, dancers, elephants. Each poster was covered by clear plastic, and if one were to lie in the small bed one would be surrounded by a world of color and movement. The single window in the room let in a bright rectangle of sunlight that fell on the poster of a man precariously balanced on five barrels. The man was smiling, his arms outstretched. It was the room and poster of the man who jumped from Gogol's head. No doubt. It was not a woman's room, and there was something of the energy of Valerian Duznetzov in the posters. Rostnikov pulled open the top drawer of the dark dresser against the wall and found his judgment confirmed by the clothes it contained and by an album of circus photographs, most of which included a smiling Duznetzov. The end of the book included many photographs of the beautiful Katya, whose smile, in contrast to Duznetzov's, was a mask. Rostnikov concluded that the third man hi the photograph, the older bald man with the great chest, must be Pesknoko, the catcher.

"You find it interesting?" Katya Rashkovskaya said with irritation as he flipped to the final page of the album.

He had not heard her enter, a sign of her acrobatic lightness or his own age.

"Yes," said Rostnikov, without turning to look at the woman. "Interesting, sad."

He looked at the last page and slowly returned the album to the drawer.

"You frequently snoop in other people's drawers, the drawers of dead people," she said.

"Frequently," Rostnikov said, turning to face her. "It's my job."

"You enjoy it," she said.

"Usually," he agreed.

She stood hi the doorway to the room, her arms folded in front of her once again, protecting herself. She wore a white dress and a light gray sweater, and her hair was loose and full around her face.

"It is an unpleasant job, a dirty job," she attacked.

"Sometimes unpleasant, sometimes duty," he agreed, again moving toward her. She stepped out of the way as he approached and followed him as he moved to the other bedroom.

"What are you doing now?" she cried, as he opened the second door.

"My job," he said. "I'm trying to find out who killed Pesknoko and frightened Duznetzov to death."

The room he was hi was larger than the other bedroom. No posters, but over the bed a large framed color photograph of Katya and Pesknoko hi white tights. His arm was around her waist, and her smite, unlike that hi the other photographs, was sincere. The blanket on the bed was a soft brown with a flower pattern and looked as if it might be silk.

"I don't want you looking in my drawers," she said.

"I won't."

Rostnikov glanced around the room and backed out into the living room, where he crossed to the small table.

"What do you want?" Katya demanded.

"I brought you the plumbing books," he said, handing her the books. "I also dismissed Dunin. The pistol I will have to keep."

She reached over to take the books from him, a quite puzzled look on her face. The man in front of her was an average-sized, dark crate of a man with a typical Moscow face: flat, dark-eyed, weathered. There seemed to be nothing unusual about him at first glance, but she could see a melancholy irony in his eyes as if he were about to tell a sad but poignant tale. And his words, his words were disarmingly honest. He was, she decided, a man to be wary of.

"Thank you," she said, taking the books and clutching them to her breasts as a schoolgirl would.

"I made a call before I came here," he said. "There is a small park on Leningrad Prospekt just past the airport."

"Near Alabyan Street?"

"Not mat far, but you know the area. On the front page inside the book closest to your heart is the address and name of a woman who will get you a new toilet, will even have her sons deliver it if you can pay the price."

"I can pay the price," Katya said. "Thank you again. Do you want some tea, coffee?"

"No," Rostnikov said.

"Then?"

"I want," said Rostnikov, moving back to the wooden chair, "the name of the person you believe is responsible for the death of Oleg Pesknoko."

"Accidents," she said.

Rostnikov shook his head and looked at his short, knobby fingers laid flat on the table.

"I don't know," she said, angrily dropping the books on the table so that he had to pull his hands back quickly. "What do you want from me?"

'To save your life," he said, setting the books neatly and rising. "But I may not have the time. I am no longer investigating the accidents of yesterday morning. When I leave this apartment, the case will be closed, at least until whoever is responsible kills you."

His eyes met hers again, and she seemed on the verge of speaking but once again held back.

"Then there is nothing to be done," he said, moving to the door. "I'll return for the books in a week. I hope you are alive when I come for them."

"You are trying to frighten me," Katya said.

"Yes," Rostnikov agreed. "But I'm also telling the truth. I have a son in the army. He's just been sent to Afghanistan."

He had paused at the door to say this and turned for her reaction.

"I'm sorry, but… you are a confusing man. Why did you tell me about your son?"

Rostnikov shrugged.

"I don't know," he said. "I really don't. I thought it might somehow persuade you to let me help you. In my work there are far too many failures. Maybe it was as simple as thinking that my son would find you very pretty."

She smiled, showing even teeth.

"I like older gentlemen," she said teasingly.

"Pesknoko," he said.

The smile dropped from her face and she bit her lower lip.

"Yes," she said. "Why is this so important to you? Are you like this about all your investigations?"

"No," he said softly. "Perhaps it is the circus. Perhaps it is the memory of Duznetzov on Gogol's head, the rain splashing against his face. Perhaps it is simply you. I've never known anyone who has shot a toilet. It's an act of outrage I can understand."

Rostnikov left without another word. He had nothing more to say. He walked slowly down the hall because his leg permitted him to walk no faster. He did not really expect that she would open the door and call him back, and she did not.

The morning was warm as Rostnikov crossed Lenin Prospekt and found a street bench from which he could see the entrance to Katya Rashkovskaya's apartment building. The bench was far enough away on the even-numbered side of the street so that she probably wouldn't notice him. Following her would not be easy. She was young, swift, an acrobat, but if she did not know she was being followed, he was confident that he could keep up with her.

Rostnikov looked up at the tall buildings and the sun, pulled a day-old copy of Izvestia from his coat pocket, and pretended to read as young mothers with baby carriages, old men heading for the park and each other, and babushkas with avoskas for shopping strolled past him. No one looked at him for more than a glance. It would be hours before anyone found it strange that this man had nothing to do for so long but read his paper. No one would bother him. They'd assume he was either a madman or a policeman and stay out of his way, but he preferred not to be noticed. As it was, he waited only seventeen minutes till Katya Rashkovskaya came through the entrance of her building. She did not look around to see if anyone were following her. She turned to her right and began to walk quickly away from Rostnikov's bench.

At this pace he was sure he would never keep up with her. There were no real crowds at this hour of the morning, so he would have trouble hiding, staying close. He stood up quickly, put his newspaper in his pocket, and turned to follow her at the same moment that a dark automobile pulled out of traffic, moved from the left lane into oncoming traffic on the right, shot across the street, and bumped over the curb toward the back of the unsuspecting Katya.

Rostnikov cupped his hands and bellowed above the sounds of traffic. His voice carried, heads turned to look at the madman, and one of the heads was that of Katya Rashkovskaya. An average person would have had no chance with the oncoming car, but Katya was an acrobat. She leaped backward instinctively, a graceful, high back flip that brought her down just beyond the fender of the dark car, which bumped over the curbing, missed an approaching bus, and joined the line of automobiles racing outward from the city.

Rostnikov lumbered forward, professionally stopping traffic with his outstretched hands as he had done as a young policeman. When he reached Katya's side, she was being comforted by an old woman who seemed to be no more than four feet tall and wore a black babushka over her head.

"Crazy mad," the woman said, holding Katya's hand. "A drunk. They tell us that all this drunkenness will stop, but does it stop?"

Katya was staring blankly at the building across the street.

"You poor… And the police. Where are the police? There used to be police everywhere," the old woman lamented.

"I'm the police," Rostnikov said.

The old woman looked at him as if he were drenched in acrid lemon juice.

"I'll take care of the young lady," he added.

Reluctantly, the old woman let go of Katya's hand, which, instead of falling to her side, remained extended as if still in the firm grip of the tiny woman.

"He could have killed her. You know that?" the old woman said, accusing Rostnikov.

"I know that," Rostnikov said, watching Katya's face. "I know that."

The old woman stood for a moment and then spotted someone not unlike herself across the street. She pulled herself away with a final shrug of disgust and hurried to tell the tale to her crony.

"I have nothing to say," Katya said through closed teeth, hyperventilating.

'This, too, was an accident?" he asked, ignoring the pedestrians who slowed down to look at this frightened young woman and the barrel-shaped man.

"An accident," she said.

Summoning a hidden reserve, the young woman forced her eyes away from the building across the street, pushed away from the protection of the brick wall behind her, and looked at Rostnikov defiantly.

"An accident," she repeated.

"I cannot always be present to prevent accidents," he said.

"I know. Spasee' ba, thank you, but I'll do what I must do to see to it that there are no more accidents. You told me you were no longer investigating yesterday's… accidents."

"I'm not," Rostnikov said as she pulled herself together. "I'm now investigating a case of drunk driving and a near-fatal accident resulting from it. Premier Gorbachev wishes to eliminate drunkenness and I plan to help him. My first task will be to locate that drunk driver."

"You…" the young woman began and then changed her mind. She scanned the traffic coming and going, looked at the faces of people on the street, and hurried away much faster than Rostnikov could possibly follow.

Emil Karpo paused under the awning of a restaurant-bar off Kalinin Prospekt. The Belgorod was small and the service was poor even by Moscow's standards. The food was decent. The prices were not bad. There was no atmosphere to speak of, only a dozen tables in a dark main room and flimsy wooden tables with thick, brown, cotton cloths. The walls of the Belgorod matched the tablecloths, or came reasonably close, not by design but by chance. On the walls were indifferent paintings of imaginary landscapes. But most people did not come to the Belgorod for the food or the atmosphere. They came to discuss business, frequently illegal, or to meet one of the prostitutes who were known to check in with the bartenders and waiters.

The windows of the Belgorod were covered with lace curtains, making it impossible to see inside, though a bit of light managed to penetrate from the narrow street. It happened occasionally that a wandering tourist or a visitor from out of town might chance on the Belgorod and mistake it, because of the lace curtains, for a tearoom. Once he was inside, however, the smoke-filled room of suspicious-looking people would cause him to depart after fifteen or twenty minutes of nonservice.

Emil Karpo opened the door of the Belgorod and stepped into the near-darkness and the sound of voices. A man's deep, laughing voice turned into a cough. A woman giggled. It was still early, no later than noon, but every table was full, with couples and groups of men talking, drinking, leaning forward to conspire. A room of cheap suits and bright ties, made-up women. Several conversations stopped when Karpo entered, stopped because people looked up at the tall, pale figure whose head hardly moved but whose eyes looked them over and recorded them. The owner of the Belgorod was Serge Ivanov, who tended the bar. Normally Ivanov moved very slowly, as befitted an owner, but now he hurried toward his new customer and wiped his hands on his pants as he advanced with a little smile on his lips;.

"Inspector," Ivanov whispered. He started to hold out a hand and then pulled it back. Ivanov was a thin man with a potbelly and a nervous twitch of the head that made it seem he was telling you to look to the right or that he was frequently saying no at the oddest of times.

Karpo said nothing.

"May I say," Ivanov began, the smile fixed, the head nodding, "I hope I can say, that I've known you long enough or at least been acquainted with you… The fact is that you are not… I mean, when you come in… How can I put this? My patrons, they feel, some of them feel a little uncomfort… uneasy, when a policeman, you… You understand?"

"Mathilde," Karpo said, without looking at Ivanov. The policeman's eyes continued to scan the room. The noise level had dropped perceptibly since his entrance. A few men tried to engage him in a staring duel. Karpo paid no attention.

"Mathilde, as you can see," said Ivanov, looking around the room, "is not here today." He cleaned his palms once again against his trousers.

For the first time, Karpo looked into the eyes of the potbellied proprietor, and Ivanov wilted instantly.

"I'm just a small businessman," Ivanov bleated like a sheep. "I… in the back. A private party. What can I tell you? I forgot for a moment. It's been busy here like Bastille Day. Bastille Day is our busiest…"

Karpo moved past the tables of people who had been having a good time before his arrival and were now seriously thinking of all the work they had to do elsewhere. Ivanov followed him, smile fixed, head twitching.

"A small, private party," Ivanov said. "What's the harm?"

Karpo said nothing as he moved behind the bar and past a new waiter, who seemed about to step in front of the advancing ghost and then changed his mind.

"At least let's knock," said Ivanov, moving to Karpo's side. "It's only polite, reasonable, common courtesy to"

Karpo reached down and opened the door with his left hand. The hand responded well, with little pain, and Emil Karpo was pleased.

The room he stepped into was remarkably large, almost as large as the outer room through which he had just come, but this inner room had only two tables and a dozen chairs. The tables were no more substantial than the ones in front, but they were larger. Two large blue sofas, badly contrasting with the brown walls, rested in the comer. The room reeked of tobacco and alcohol. There were only four people in the room when Ivanov and Karpo entered. They were seated at one end of the table farthest from the door. Two men and two women. The two men and one of the women looked up, surprised. The other woman glanced at Karpo and Ivanov and shook her head wearily.

"I tried," Ivanov said to the large man who stood up to face Karpo.

The big man had a pink face and a recent haircut. He was wearing an expensive jacket with medals. As he lumbered toward Karpo, the policeman could read the red enamel print on the largest medal: "Participant in the Achievements of the Economy of the Soviet Union."

"This is a private party," the big man said, clenching his fists. "I am drunk and this is a very private party."

"Inspector Karpo is a policeman, with the Procurator's Office," Ivanov said, his head twitching.

The big man did not seem impressed. His face was pink. He was drunk.

"I am an achiever," the big man with the pink face and fresh haircut said, thumping his chest with his already clenched fist. "My factory meets quotas and I'm on vacation."

Karpo ignored the man and took another step forward, which brought him almost face-to-face with the florid man, but the policeman was looking at one of the two seated women, a woman in her thirties, tall, with billowy brown hair, handsome, firm, but not quite pretty.

She shook her head, smiled without humor, and stood up.

"I'm talking to you," said the man with the pink face. "Policeman, I'm talking to you."

The woman grabbed her small bag and stepped around the table toward the policeman.

"There's no need" Ivanov pleaded, grabbing the big man's arm.

The big man flung the owner away without looking at him. Ivanov stumbled to keep his balance and miss a nearby chair. He was either very graceful or very lucky, because he hit nothing and came to a stop not far from the wall, where he stood panting.

The woman walked past the two men to the door.

"I'm…" the big man said, grabbing Karpo's left arm.

"Boris!" cried the man who had not stood up, but Boris had gone too far to back down.

Pain ran through Karpo's arm and hand. The pain, like all pain, was good because it tested, confirmed, or denied.

By chanceluck, good or badthe drunken man had grabbed Karpo at the most vulnerable point of his healing arm.

"… talking to you. Answer me, damn you. What are you doing here, breaking into a private" The man stopped speaking when he realized that the gaunt, possibly insane, policeman had gripped his right arm just above the elbow. It was as if the policeman were about to embrace this man who was confronting him.

"There's no need…" Ivanov whimpered from the wall, afraid to step in again.

The other man at the table rose now. He was as cleanshaven as his friend, but was dark, not pink of face. He looked much more sober than did the man gripping Karpo's arm. The big man squeezed and Karpo tightened his own grip.

"Get out," said the big man to Emil Karpo.

Karpo said nothing.

The other man approached from the table and said, "Boris, mis is ridiculous."

The woman who was still seated sat back to watch.

Karpo could see a half-finished bottle of Tvishi, a sulguni cheese that was definitely no longer hot, a bowl of red cabbage, and a large platter of what looked like chicken giblets on the table.

"Gentlemen!" cried Ivanov.

"Boris," whispered the other man.

The woman at the table reached over for a giblet, popped it into her mourn, and smiled at Karpo, who did not react. He felt nothing but the breath of the pink-faced man who panted like a hot terrier.

"Never," said Boris through clenched teeth. "Never."

Never came quickly. Boris suddenly let go of Karpo and backed away with a scream of pain that sounded something like "Ouosuch." He grabbed his arm where Karpo had squeezed it, grimaced, and stepped backward. The second man moved to help him. The seated woman continued to eat giblets, and Ivanov stayed out of the way. Karpo couldn't see Mathilde behind him at the door, but he was sure she had not left. He turned, ignoring the electric ache down the left side of his body and his left arm, and took a step toward her. Suddenly, behind bun, he heard the pink-faced man plunging forward. Karpo turned to face him directly, to look into his eyes. What the charging man saw in Karpo's face was enough to put fear into him and send his alcohol-filled stomach tumbling. The big man stopped, stood panting, threw up his hands, which made him wince from pain, and turned back to his reduced party.

Mathilde led the way through the outer restaurant in which those patrons who had stayed after Karpo's entrance had been facing the private door and wondering. Mathilde and Karpo wound their way through the tables and out the door into the street.

"It's not Thursday," Mathilde said on the street, facing him.

"No," Karpo agreed.

For slightly over seven years, every other week on Thursday afternoon, Emil Karpo had come to Mathilde Verson, the prostitute. They seldom spoke. Even after all these years it was difficult for Emil Karpo to acknowledge what he did with her. It was not that the act of sex confirmed him as an animal, that much he knew and accepted. The animalism was a distraction, one his body would not let him deny. It got in the way of his duty, but it demanded that he respond, demanded that he acknowledge the un-asked-for ache, and threatened to keep him from his work. He acknowledged and controlled this need with Mathilde Verson. What bothered Emil Karpo was that his sexual encounters with Mathilde were illegal, counter to the needs of the state. The crime was not a particularly serious one, but the fact that it was a crime was a source of discomfort for Karpo. It also disturbed Karpo that he felt something beyond sexual need when he was with Mathilde.

Rostnikov, who knew about Mathilde, considered Karpo's reluctant acceptance of illegality one of the few antidotes for the hubris of the zealot.

"That was your bad arm he was playing with back there," Mathilde said, walking by his side. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," he said.

"Yes," she repeated. "What else could I expect you to say?"

Two young women holding hands moved toward, around, and past the strange couple.

"I would like your help," Karpo said, looking ahead as they walked, feeling an electric sensation returning to his arm and side.

"I thought you only needed that once every other week," Mathilde said with a smile, looking at him.

Karpo did not smile back.

"You misunderstand," Karpo said.

"I was making a joke, Emil Karpo," she said, shaking her head.

"I see," said Karpo, flexing his fingers. He wondered, not for the first time, why people found it necessary to make jokes in his presence.

A man in a white shirt with an open collar glanced at the pale man flexing his fingers and then hurried past.

"What help do you want?"

"The prostitute killer," he said. "I may know who it is."

"Ah," she said as they walked.

"I know it is probably one of three people," he added as she paused to look into the window of a hat shop on Kalinin Prospekt.

"And how am I to help?" she asked.

"You want us to catch this killer," he said.

It was not a question, so she did not answer. She simply said, "I want you to catch the killer. I knew one of… I knew die second victim, Illyana Osnakovich."

"She was the third victim," Karpo corrected.

"An important revision," she said, still looking at the "It might be. Information must be kept in order or" "Do you like mat hat?" she interrupted. "That…" he said, looking at the red hat with the wide brim. "It does not look particularly functional."

"It is very functional," Mathilde said. "I would like that hat. You would like that hat on me."

"You are asking for a reward to do what you should do as a duty to the state," he said seriously.

"No," she said, squinting into the shop window and shielding her eyes with her hands to see if there were a salesperson inside. "I'll help, but I'd also like the hat."

"You'll have the hat," he said, wanting to massage his left arm with his right hand but resisting the urge.

"You plan to use me to lure this killer, to identify him when he tries to kill me."

"Yes," Karpo said.

A car skidded on the street somewhere behind them. They did not rum to look.

"It will be dangerous?" she asked.

"Perhaps," he answered.

'The red hat?"

"Yes," Karpo said, looking at her. "The red hat."