A Fine Red Rain

CHAPTER SIX

Maya held Pulcharia's cheek against her own as they stood in line in front of the shoe store on Gorky Street. She cooed something meaningless into the baby's ear and bounced her gently, almost backing into the couple behind her. The man was wearing denim pants, a checked shirt, and a white American cowboy hat. He had thick eyebrows and a thick beard. The woman was dark, thin, pretty, with long black hair. She carried a large colorful handbag that clashed with her blue-and-pink long skirt with a zigzag white pattern, which in turn clashed with the tight knit blouse with horizontal green stripes. The woman's shoulders were bare and brown.

"Eezveenee' t'e, pashah' lsta" Maya said to the woman.

The woman smiled, brushed her arm where the baby might have touched her, and said, "It's nothing. The baby is very beautiful."

"Thank you," said Maya, looking at Pulcharia's sleeping face to reassure herself.

"I hear the shoes are Korean," the woman said.

"I heard Polish," said Maya.

"Polish," agreed the bearded cowboy.

The line moved forward, and Maya glanced across the street, where Sasha had been pacing as she waited in line. He should have been working. This was not a normal day off. He said that he had been assigned a new case, something to do with a gang of youths who were involved with some kind of extortion against shopkeepers beyond the Outer Ring Road. He shouldn't have come home to play with the baby. He shouldn't be pacing the sidewalk while she waited in line for a pair of Korean or Polish shoes. She wasn't sure they could afford shoes, but Sasha had absently told her to go ahtad, get in line. They would manage.

Maya wanted to put the baby back in the buggy, but she was afraid Pulcharia would cry. The people in line would begin by being sympathetic and understanding and end by being irritable and giving her nasty looks. The morning was hot. The line was slow. The woman behind her was young and pretty, and Sasha was brooding. Maya reached back and pulled the buggy with one hand, holding the baby tightly with the other, as the line moved again.

Across the street, Sasha approached the cart of a white-clad ice-cream vendor, gave her some coins, and waited while she opened the metal door on her cart, reached in, and pulled out two ice-cream pops. Maya watched as he carefully crossed Gorky Street, dodging traffic. Maya watched him and was struck by the feeling that this moment had happened before. That she had stood here before now and that now the moment was happening again. Perhaps she had not stood here but had been a baby like her daughter and had seen her own father crossing the street with two ice creams. She knew the word for it, deja vu, but this wasn't quite it.

"Ice cream," Sasha said, holding one out to her. "I read a report only weeks ago that said Muscovites eat a hundred and seventy tons of ice cream every day, summer and winter."

Maya took the ice cream and Sasha took the baby, who stirred drowsily. Sasha handed Maya his own ice cream and gently put the baby in the buggy. Pulcharia made an irritable sound, and Sasha began to rock the buggy with one hand as he took his ice cream back from Maya with the other. A babushka farther up the line turned around with a frown to see what was going on, saw the carriage, approved, and turned back to face the shoe store with her bag in her hand.

"I feel very old," said Maya after a small bite of the ice cream.

She looked back at the cowboy and the pretty girl in the clashing colors, who were engaged in a head-to-head whispered discussion.

"So do I," Sasha said. "The problem is that neither of us looks old or is old. It's a feeling that goes away."

"But it comes back," Maya said, taking another bite.

She had no trouble digging her teeth into ice cream, which sent a shiver down Sasha's back when she did it but also intrigued him, reminded him somehow of her independence, her strength. Maya's teeth were very good. His own were acceptable, except for the Romanian space between his top front teeth. His mother, Lydia, had the same space and she said that someone in each generation had it, that somewhere in antiquity there must have been a Romanian in her family. Sasha wondered if his daughter would have the space.

"You should be working," Maya said.

"I am working. That gang might be considering a move into the heart of the city, onto Gorky Street. I'm exploring that possibility," he said with a smile, trying to avoid being splattered by the ice cream, which had begun dripping in the late-morning heat.

Sasha looked at the pretty woman with the cowboy, and Maya saw him looking. Maya's and Sasha's eyes met and they both smiled. She handed him the stick from her ice cream. He took the last bite of his own, accepted her stick, and let her rock the buggy as he moved to deposit the sticks in the trash.

He wouldn't have the nerve to do what he was going to do without Rostnikov. Rostnikov seemed so confident, so quietly certain, not only that this was the proper course of action but also that it would work. Why Rostnikov should risk so much for him was something Sasha could hot fully understand. Part of it, certainly, was Rostnikov's dislike for Deputy Procurator Khabolov, but something else was going on in the Washtub. Though he knew how to survive, there was a defiant, independent edge to the inspector that Tkach admired and feared.

"What?" Maya said as he returned to her in the line.

"What?" he repeated.

"What is wrong? Your eyes…"

"Work," he said. "The streets are full of criminals. If mis line moves fast enough, you can put on your new shoes and we can walk to the park and lie in the grass. I don't have to be anywhere till noon."

"All right," she said. She felt better but not younger, for there was something in her husband's behavior that made her feel that this was a particularly important day and noon a particularly important tune.

Dimitri Mazaraki parked his car and checked his watch. His schedule was off, and things were not going quite right. He had failed to hit Katya and he had seen in his rearview mirror the crippled policeman hurry across the street toward her. He got out, 'breathed deeply, touched his fine mustache, and grinned at nothing. He would survive, succeed. He had done so for this long. He would continue to do so. He was confident, sure of his cunning, his strength, his ruthlessness. He had no loyalty except to himself, and no dependencies. In Klaipeda, the coastal Lithuanian town on the Baltic Sea where he had been born and from which he had escaped through the tsirk, he had relativesa sister, several cousins. He needed them and they needed him when he and the circus came to the area, but it was a need born of money and security, not of affection. As he had for years, Mazaraki had scheduled a circus tour to Lithuania and Latvia. The circus director had never questioned his scheduling, had even liked the idea, because he liked the Baltic beaches in the summer.

The tour would begin in a few weeks. Mazaraki was beginning to think that it would be his final tour to Lithuania. Killing Katya would, perhaps, give him time, enough time, but that policeman who loved the circus had unrelenting eyes. Mazaraki was sure about those eyes. He saw such eyes hi his own mirror each morning when he admired his body and his fine mustache.

Mazaraki entered the New Circus building through the side door and moved toward his office. His footsteps echoed through the corridor that circled the building, and light streamed in from the tall, modern windows. Yes, he would get another chance at Katya, probably before the day was over, and if he did not he was fairly certain that she would say nothing, that she could say nothing. He had to, he would, protect himself.

And now he had work to do, a new act to schedule in, performers to talk to about extending their performances tonight to fill the show now that the Pesknoko act no longer existed. He would wear his red-and-black suit when he announced the acts. He would stand tall, meet the eyes of the crowd, introduce the performers as if he owned them, as if he were personally responsible for their very existences. It was a feeling he loved and would hate to lose. Perhaps, he thought, this will not be my last trip. It would be dangerous, but perhaps, just perhaps, he could keep it going for a while longer. In his office, Mazaraki checked his messages, found that the Circus School had called him about the act he wanted to recommend to the New Circus's director when he returned. Mazaraki sat behind his desk, surveyed his small office with satisfaction, and picked up the phone. Ten minutes later he had permission from the circus director, who was in Minsk, to bring in the new act at least on a temporary basis.

"Tragedy," said the director on the crackling phone line.

"Tragedy, indeed," echoed Mazaraki sympathetically.

"We'll have some kind of special dedication to Pesknoko and Duznetzov when I return," the director said. "What do you think?"

"An excellent idea, Comrade," said Mazaraki. "And I'll have the final tour plans ready."

"You are a zealous worker, Dimitri," the director said.

"I do my best," said Mazaraki, running his tongue over his white teeth as he examined his reflection in the window.

Five minutes later Mazaraki was in the locker/shower room in the rear wing of the building. He opened his locker, examined his black tights and short-sleeved black sweatshirt to be sure they were clean, and began to undress. Three men, the Stashov clowns, came in arguing. They were wearing loose-fitting work clothes and each was trying to outshout the other about some nuance of their act involving a pail of paint.

"Go back and see it again, and look carefully this time," said the oldest Stashov, the father. "Chaplin is handed the bucket. He doesn't bring it in."

"No, no, no. Never!" cried the middle Stashov, the one with red hair. "They do it to him. The old clown starts plastering him."

The middle Stashov was about to say something else but saw Mazaraki seated on the bench in the corner and shut his mouth. Mazaraki had that effect on the performers and was quite pleased with it.

"Comrade Mazaraki," said the Stashov father.

"Comrade Stashov," answered Mazaraki, putting on his American Puma shoes. "I have a videotape of The Circus if you want to see what Chaplin did. You can look at the scene in my office after I work out."

The Stashovs looked at each other furtively, surprised at this unexpected offer from the usually forbidding assistant director.

"We'd be very grateful, Comrade," said the older man.

"We are here to help each other," said Mazaraki, standing, a giant in black. "Like a big family."

"Yes," said the father with a nervous smile.

"Noon in my office," said Mazaraki, moving out of the locker room.

When he closed the door, the voices of the Stashovs resumed but they were quieter, wondering.

Mazaraki, back straight, walked across the hall to the rehearsal room where he had his weights. The sound of an accordion greeted him as he opened the door. The room was the size of a handball court, with echoes and cream walls. The carpet was green and thin. The accordionist was sitting on a pile of exercise mats in the corner. He wore street clothes and the red hat he used in his act. His partner, an incredibly beautiful thin young girl with long blond hair, sat beside him, her legs encased in tight jeans and pressed against the accordionist, who played and grinned at her. His teeth were too large. His face was also too large, but he had a way with bears and an act that always brought laughs. The girl was perfect for the act, a perfect contrast to both the bears and the homely accordionist. Mazaraki wondered what the girl thought when the accordionist made love to her. He wondered what it would be like to see the bear make love to her or to make love to her himself, balancing her on top of his flat, scarred belly.

The girl looked at Mazaraki and sensed something of his thoughts. She tugged at the sleeve of the accordionist, who had not looked up, and he pulled out of his reverie to smile at her and follow her gaze to Mazaraki. The music stopped.

"Go on playing," Mazaraki said, finding the chalk and powdering his palms.

"I was just… We were just finishing," the man said, his smile still fixed on his face but having lost its bemusement.

"Of course," said Mazaraki, looking at the girl, who pushed her long hair behind her back and avoided his eyes. The accordionist pretended not to notice the assistant director's look as he led the girl by the hand to the door.

"What was the song you were playing?" Mazaraki asked, reaching down for a pair of fifty-pound dumbbells.

"Just a… a French song," the accordionist said, opening the door.

"I like it," said Mazaraki, lifting a weight in each hand, feeling his biceps tighten. The girl tried not to look at him but turned and saw him grin under his huge mustache. She stared in fear and fascination for an instant before the accordionist led her out.

Alone, Mazaraki sighed deeply, straightened his back, and began to curl the dumbbells.

Ah, he thought, it feels good to be powerful.

The policeman had said something about lifting weights, Mazaraki remembered. The policeman, yes. Mazaraki was quite sure that he would be seeing that policeman again.

In less than a minute the sweat began to flow, and Dimitri Mazaraki sighed a sigh that echoed like the voice of a satisfied lover.

Rostnikov was looking at a book when Sasha Tkach arrived at the Gorgasali brothers' bookstall just off Lomonosov Prospekt. The crowd, mostly students carrying their own textbooks or purses, was large. Since it was noon, some of the people browsing chewed on sandwiches they carried or ate ice creams. The woman behind the flat table of books watched warily to protect her wares from theft and food stains. Sasha looked for the little girl who had been standing next to the trailer the day before, but she wasn't there.

"Sasha," said Rostnikov in greeting as he put down the book and limped away from the small crowd. The inspector hooked his arm around his young colleague and guided him to an open space where they could look across the university toward the Lenin Hills. On a clear day one could see the ancient and modern towers of Moscow across the hills and the Moscow River. This day was warm and clear.

"You know the history of the hills?" Rostnikov asked, looking toward the city.

"Somewhat, from school." Tkach pushed his hah" back from his eyes. With Rostnikov he always felt as if he were a student about to learn some magical truth. He glanced through the crowd at the woman behind the tables to see if she recognized him, but she had no reaction.

"Look out there," Rostnikov said, biting his lower lip and shaking his head. "There's plenty of time. Some good will come of this day. I was following a young woman, thought I would not be able to join you, but she had no trouble eluding me. She was young like you, fast, a circus performer. You like the circus?"

Tkach looked at Rostnikov, whose eyes were fixed on the hills. If this conversation were going somewhere, its direction was a puzzle to Sasha, who wanted simply to turn and get their business over with. Rostnikov, however, appeared to be in no hurry and to have no interest in coherence.

"I haven't seen the circus since I was a boy," Sasha said.

"You'll want to take the baby there when she can understand, even before she can speak," Rostnikov said, sighing. "She may understand no more than the colors, the lights, the smells, but you will understand, will see the spectacle and see her wide eyes."

"I'd like that," said Tkach.

Rostnikov's eyes moved to the tall tower of the university.

"I would have liked Josef to go to the university," he said. "He would have liked it, too."

Sasha did not know what to say, so he said nothing as Rostnikov went on.

"The Lenin Hills used to be the Vorobyevy Hills, the Sparrow Hills, named for the village that used to be here. You knew that?"

"No, or if I did I didn't remember," said Sasha, looking back at the bookstall nervously.

"Patience, patience," said Rostnikov without looking at the nervous young man at his side. "A calm before we act. History has a calming effect. When I was a boy, I used to feel dwarfed by history, insignificant. I was nothing, a speck. That was what we were encouraged to believe and still are. I believed it. I still believe it. It frightened me as a boy, to be insignificant, one among millions and millions, lost in repeated history. And then one day, when I was almost killed by a drunk with a knife, I suddenly felt that the reason for my fear was the importance I attached to myself, my body, my thoughts. Are you following this?"

"I don't know," said Tkach.

Rostnikov patted him on the back.

"I've not gone mad. There's a point. Pay attention. I've not forgotten why we're here or why you think we're here. So, at the moment when I thought I was going to die I suddenly gave up any sense of the importance of my thoughts and body and I was set free. I was no longer bound by fear. Whatever I was, and I'm still not sure what that is, was, I knew, part of something far greater than I could understand. I was liberated by that moment, could smell, taste, feel, and not carry the burden of having to protect the fragile shell that, ultimately, I could not protect. And once I no longer protected, I could enjoy life. Food smelled better. My wife looked better. I loved my son without sadness. I could almost taste the iron when I lifted weights. Unfortunately, the understanding tends to fade a bit each day."

"I see," said Tkach with a nod.

"You mean you do not see." Rostnikov sighed. "All right. When I was sixteen a tank almost ended me and I had no revelation. Maybe it will come to you, maybe not. Let's go."

Tkach led the way around the book table to the rear of the trailer and knocked at the door.

"Who?" asked a quivering male voice.

"Police," said Rostnikov.

Another male voice inside the trailer muttered, "Oh, God. Oh, God," and the door opened. Rostnikov and Tkach climbed in and Tkach closed the door behind them.

The Gorgasali brothers were in approximately the same positions they had been in the last time Sasha had been in the trailer. The trailer seemed warmer this time, and Sasha was more aware of the smell of human sweat. He-wondered if this warmth was harmful to the tapes in the cabinets.

The hairy younger brother was wearing a shirt and pants. The shirt was flapping out on the left side. His hair needed combing. The older brother sat behind the small table near the rear of the trailer, light coming through the heavily curtained window haloing his white mane. The older brother's face was pale with fear.

"You are a policeman," Osip said, looking at Tkach. "I saw you at Petrovka."

"We just said we were the police," Rostnikov reminded him. Then he turned to Sasha to add, "This is a man who would never understand the very hills on which he dangerously thrives."

"What? What did you say?" asked Felix, who was dressed as he had been at Petrovka: shirt, tie, jacket.

"We are here to save your lives," Rostnikov announced. "You would like your lives saved?"

Osip touched his stubbly cheeks with both hands, and his mouth opened to reveal teeth that should have been much better considering the money he and his brother apparently had made from their videotape operation.

"We are working for an important member of the Procurator's Office," Felix said, pale, veined, pulsing hands flat on the table. "We are patriots doing an important service for our"

Rostnikov shook his head and Felix stopped.

"I have no time to play, no need to play with you," Rostnikov said, looking around the trailer. "Deputy Procurator Khabolov plans to become your partner, to share your profits, take home dirty American movies, and view them on the machines you will supply to him. When and if someone gets suspicious or he needs a success to save his job, he will turn the two of you in and you will be dropped into Lubyanka. No one will listen to your tale of betrayal. No one will believe it."

It was clear to Tkach from the faces of the Gorgasali brothers, particularly that of Felix, that this scenario was one that upset but did not surprise them.

Osip removed his hands from his face, hugged himself, and moaned as he looked at his older brother for help.

"I can't take any more," Osip groaned. "I'd rather be poor again."

"Why do you want to help us?" Felix asked, his voice thin and dry.

"Because if you go to Lubyanka," said Rostnikov, "my colleague here might go with you. Deputy Procurator Khabolov will need someone to blame for letting you operate after a report had been given. My colleague here would be the scapegoat, accused of being your partner."

"Now I understand," said Felix, blowing out a puff of air and reaching for a drawer. He opened the drawer and pulled out a half-full bottle of vodka. "Osip."

Osip nodded his head and for an instant didn't move. Then he roused himself and hurried to the front of the trailer, returning almost instantly with four glasses. He gave them to Felix, who began filling them.

"None for us," said Rostnikov.

Felix nodded and poured drinks for himself and his brother. Both brothers drank with trembling hands.

"What will we do?" asked Felix, pouring himself a second drink.

"You have equipment for videotaping?" asked Rostnikov, touching a metal cabinet nearby.

"Yes," said Osip, eagerly moving to a cabinet farther down, assuming the police would take the equipment as a bribe and go away.

"You know how to use it?"

"Yes," said Felix, perhaps beginning to understand.

"Good," said Rostnikov. "Good. Show us."

For the next half hour Osip demonstrated how to use the Japanese equipment. Rostnikov paid little attention but knew that Tkach was absorbing everything. The inspector was deciding how to set the scene, where to put the blankets. Felix watched him while Osip spoke, partially losing his fear in his absorption with the machines.

"I know what you plan to do," said Felix as he downed his fourth glass of vodka. His gray face was perspiring, his mane of hair limp. "It could fail, get us all killed very quickly."

"Or it might succeed," said Rostnikov. "Success, failure, quickly, or a slow wait till the inevitable moment when the knock on the door will not be from two policemen who have an interest in saving you."

"…the tape for longer periods," Osip was saying as Rostnikov turned.

"Sasha," Rostnikov interrupted, "I've got to go find the circus woman. You finish here and tell these gentlemen what they must do next."

Tkach looked at him steadily and nodded. Rostnikov patted his friend's shoulder and went through the side door of the trailer and into the sun.

Yuri Pon was not having a good morning. First, his head hurt, a pulsing pain the source of which was surely the vodka he and Nikolai had drunk the night before. There had been too many nights like this recently. At first the idea had been to dull Yuri's nights, get him through without the dreams, the images, the longings. But last night he had simply drunk to blot out Nikolai's snoring. Yuri had already decided that he had to find another prostitute, had already met with enough failure. He needed a clear head tonight if he were to find one, to get some relief.

Second, while he had concluded that whoever had looked at the file on the eight killings the day before had probably only been involved in a routine check on something else, he could not really be sure. Inspector Karpo had made no appearance, had given no further evidence of his interest in the file.

Third, the small screw on the right side of his glasses was loose, very loose. He had tried to tighten it with a tiny screwdriver but it barely held, and every hour or so it needed tightening again. Getting his glasses repaired or replaced would be hell, take days. He took them off for the fifth time that morning and tried to tighten the small screw with his thumbnail. It moved a bit.

Fourth, Ludmilla Kropetskanoya, that dark pole of a creature, had dumped extra work on him, had told him to begin the end-of-the-year inventory and cost projections for paper, folders, and nonhardware items. That should be her job, not his. Couldn't she see, didn't she know after all these years, that the efficiency of the files was his doing? Wasn't it evident to her that all the computerizing of files was on schedule because of Yuri Pon? By the end of the current year, if he were not bothered with tasks that could be done by a bookkeeper, and if he were allowed to keep the three clerks who were assigned to the task, he would have all files transferred to the computers.

"… if we keep down the order for manila twos because we won't need them when we turn to the computers," she said, leaning over Yuri, her foul breath in his ear. What did she eat each morning? What rotting fish clung to her yellow teeth?

"I thought we were going to maintain the paper file system as a backup," he said, twitching his nose to push his glasses back. He wanted to push her back, away. God, how his head screamed.

"The latest thinking is that there will be no need for written files at all," she said. "Backup tapes will be kept. Our primary job will be to copy the written reports into the computers, file them properly, and destroy the paper."

"I see," said Yuri, but he didn't see. He didn't see why he had to be told this way, told so casually, that his records, the records he had worked on for more than half his life, were to be destroyed and that he was going to be turned into a way station between policemen and a computer. There was no art to that, no skill. He could see that the computers were more efficient, but there were nuances one couldn't program. He had seen them, the way an officer wrote something, emphasized it by bearing down, or the space that was taken, the Size of the letters. One could tell something by the writing, the individuality. Each report was different, but they would all seem the same on the computer: each letter the same size, each line the same length, only material programmed that could be retrieved.

"I see," he repeated, but if his glasses fell off, if his head began to hurt any more, if this feeling of rage and the need for relief were not controlled, he would be able to see nothing.

"Good," she said with no further explanation as she left for her office.

Yuri was sweating, his hands folded in his lap, as he looked at the long inventory sheet Ludmilla had placed on the desk in front of him. He got up and walked around the row of file cabinets that stretched for fifteen rows. In the corner, where he couldn't be seen, Yuri sat at the computer terminal, closed his eyes, and clenched his teeth. The clenching brought more pain to his head. He opened his eyes, turned on the machine, listened to it hum to life, and punched in the file number he wanted, the one for the serial prostitute killings. Then he called up the file itself and watched the names and reports go by, letting each name, each situation, recall the feeling.

Ludmilla, Nikolai, his own mother, thought of Yuri as an almost fat, dull minor bureaucrat. He was that. He knew he was that and he didn't mind, but he was more. He had watched for years as the state did nothing about these women, these women he saw everywhere. He, Yuri Pon, whom no one thought of. Ha, he didn't even think of himself. He, Yuri Pon, was slowly, systematically, ridding Moscow of a class of criminals. Jack the Ripper, the Englishman, seemed to have had something of the same idea. Jack had succeeded in changing some things, bringing down a corrupt police system. Yuri had read about him. The same thing would happen for him. The city would have to recognize the existence of prostitution, do something about it as he was doing.

The feeling he had when he did it, stalked, found, was a patriotic frenzy. He couldn't deny its sexuality but he didn't have to admit it, either. Oh, God, tonight. It would have to be tonight. He couldn't wait. And then he stopped, his eyes fixed on the screen, the words before him. Someone had recently called up this file. That was normal, but the system showed a cross-check file still hi the computer. Someone had coordinated data from other files with this one. Yuri pressed the indicated code and the letters on the screen began to roll down. It was a series of names, five names, and the personnel coordinates on each, including days off for illness, nonworking days, hours worked each day. One of the names was his.

Someone had.linked Yuri's name to the file, to the killings, but who and why? It was the same person who had pulled the paper file on the case, his file. It must be Karpo. It was not a routine check. There was no initial on the access code, though there was supposed to be. Everyone, including filing personnel, was supposed to initial any program or any use of a program. He sat looking at his name on the gray screen, and then methodically, letter by letter, the file began to disappear. Yuri looked back over his shoulder. There was no one there. He looked at the screen, panting. Someone, somewhere, was erasing the file that included his name on a list. Someone had seen what he wanted to see and now was eliminating the information. Yuri wanted to climb into the screen, follow the wiring, be led by electricity, until his own face appeared on the screen in front of whoever was doing this. He wanted to look at that face, frighten it with a grin. He put his hand on the screen to slow down the ping-ping-ping removal of each letter. Then his name started to disappear, N-O-P-I-R-U-Y. It was followed by the others, and then the screen was blank, the computer humming.

Yuri looked at his watch to see how many more hours he had to work. Seven. His glasses fell from his nose and clattered to the floor.

From beyond the files, somewhere near his desk, the voice of Ludmilla Kropetskanoya called irritably, "Comrade Pon, where are you?"

The walk from the Gorgasalis' trailer to the New Circus was a short one, but Rostnikov had taken it slowly, pausing frequently to rest his aching leg. He arrived just before noon and was let in by the same old man who had let him in before.

"You're the policeman," said the old man, who clutched a mop in his left hand.

"I'm the policeman," Rostnikov confirmed. "I'm looking for Katya Rashkovskaya. Have you seen her?"

"The flyer?"

"The flyer," Rostnikov confirmed.

"I'm not sure," said the old man. "Might have been this morning. Might have been yesterday. I think it was today. I think it was just a little while ago. When you do the same thing every day, it's sometimes difficult to tell one day from the other."

"Yes," agreed Rostnikov as he watched the old man dressed in gray work clothes try to remember on which day he had seen die woman. "Assuming it was today, where did you see her?"

The man smiled and pointed upward with his free hand.

"Going to the offices, not rehearsal rooms, not the ring," he said. "Performers don't practice as much today as they did when I was a performer."

Rostnikov waited for the man to tell him more, but the old man was leaning on his mop, his eyes far away, remembering some old day, some old act. Rostnikov walked in the direction of the nearest stairway and started up slowly. A chattering familymother, father, young girl, and boyall dressed in blue suits, came hurrying down the stairs. Rostnikov moved to the side to let them pass.

On the second floor above the lower corridor Rostnikov found a series of offices. There was the distant echo of music deep inside the building and the sound of a woman's voice. Rostnikov followed the voice and not the music and found himself hi front of a solid wooden door marked in black letters: ASSISTANT TO THE DIRECTOR.

He paused, tried to listen, but could make out only die voice and not the words. There seemed to be an edge of hysteria to the voice. Rostnikov knocked and the voice stopped. He knocked again and the door opened.

Facing him was Mazaraki, who grinned broadly and stepped back to let him enter. In a corner stood Katya Rashkovskaya. She was not grinning broadly. She was not grinning at all.

"Tavah/reeshch, Inspector," Mazaraki said a bit too loudly. "It is good of you to visit us again. To what do I owe the pleasure of your return?"

Rostnikov looked at Katya, whose knuckles were white against her oversize purse. Her eyes met his but showed less than her pink cheeks. Porfiry Petrovich turned to Mazaraki with new interest. Mazaraki looked just as big as the detective had remembered him, but was there not a dancing in his eyes as if the moment were of great consequence?

"I was looking for Comrade Rashkovskaya," Rostnikov said, watching the smiling mask of a face of the assistant director.

"Fortuitous," Mazaraki said, leaning back against his desk and folding his hands across his chest.

"Perhaps," agreed Rostnikov. "I would have been here earlier but I no longer have access to an official automobile. I have to take a bus or the metro or, in an emergency, a taxi. Do you have an automobile, Comrade Mazaraki?"

"Yes, a little Moskvich," answered Mazaraki, his head tilted slightly to the right like a curious bird. "Very economical."

"It's important to drive carefully," Rostnikov said, looking around at the office. "May I sit?"

"Please," said Mazaraki, unfolding his arms and waving an open hand at a dark wood-and-leather chair.

Rostnikov moved the chair slightly, just enough to be able to see both Katya and Mazaraki at the same time. And enough to survey the room, which was furnished in dark wood and leather, like something out of a magazine. The desk was large and a television sat on the wide lower level of the bookcase along with a machine that was attached to it and that Rostnikov assumed was a videotape player.

"I have a modest collection of films, Inspector," said Mazaraki, moving to the bookcase cabinets and opening one. "Even some American nuns, which I trust are not illegal to own."

"I'm not interested in legal or illegal movies," Rostnikov said, looking at the neat row of tapes. He wondered if Mazaraki were a client of the Gorgasali brothers, whose trailer was less than a mile away. Perhaps he would find out.

"I've got Keaton, Chaplin, Grease, Gone With the Wind, Blue Thunder, even Raiders of the Lost Ark" said Mazaraki.

Mazaraki was running his large right hand over the tapes and looking over the policeman's head at the silent woman, who remained motionless in the corner.

"Someone in the MVD has the idea that Pesknoko was murdered," Rostnikov said, watching Mazaraki's eyes, which remained on Katya, revealing nothing. His lips, however, tightened.

"Someone?" said Mazaraki, closing the cabinet and moving his right hand up to play with his mustache. He pulled a longish patch above his lip downward and bit at it with his teeth.

"Someone," Rostnikov said, examining his lap.

"You?"

Rostnikov shrugged. It was a possibility.

"And you are investigating?"

"No," sighed Rostnikov. "The case is closed. I am investigating a hit-and-run this morning. It seems Katya Rashkovskaya was almost killed by a motorist outside her apartment building."

"No," said Mazaraki, moving behind his desk and looking up at Katya. "Katerina, you said nothing. After all that has happened, this is quite terrible."

Rostnikov turned awkwardly, deliberately, to face the young woman, who still had not spoken.

"You had other things to discuss," said Rostnikov. "Business, Katya's future."

"Yes," said Mazaraki behind him.

The young woman nodded yes.

"Is it not a bit unusual," continued Mazaraki, "that a full chief inspector is investigating a drunken driver who accidentally"

"Your car is parked outside?" Rostnikov cut in.

Mazaraki's smile disappeared for an instant and then returned, more fixed, more artificial, than before, the broad smile of a performer who wanted the smile to be seen forty rows back in dim light.

"My car is parked outside," Mazaraki said, playing with his mustache.

"Well, this has been an interesting, though brief, visit," Rostnikov said, using both arms of the chair to raise himself. "Comrade Rashkovskaya, if you are finished here, perhaps I could have a few words as you walk wherever you"

"I'm going home," she said softly, her eyes turning away from both men.

"Good," said Rostnikov. "We can talk on the way."

Mazaraki rose quickly and hurried around the desk and to the door to open it.

Rostnikov looked up at the bigger man as Katya stepped into the hall.

"Would you like to see the circus tonight, Comrade Inspector? As my personal guest?"

"I like the circus," said Rostnikov, looking into the hall at the woman, whose eyes were fixed on the big man.

"I'll leave your name at the box office. Would you like to bring?"

"My wife and I would very much like to see the circus," Rostnikov cut in.

Mazaraki bowed his head slightly, perhaps mockingly.

"I would like to see you working," said Rostnikov. "I have the impression that you are an outstanding performer."

"Thank you, Inspector," Mazaraki said, and Rostnikov stepped into the hall. The door closed slowly behind him.

In the hall, he caught up with Katya.

"You'll have to walk more slowly if I'm to keep up with you."

"I'm sorry. I really don't want company."

"You might find it comforting, protective."

"I need no comforting or protection," she said, increasing her pace.

At the bottom of the steps, about ten feet below him, she stopped and turned.

"I will take care of my business," she said.

"I am a patient policeman," Rostnikov said softly so she would have to strain to hear him. "At some point I will hear this story. I prefer to hear it from you, but if you are not around to tell it, I will hear it nonetheless."

"Thank you for the plumbing books," she replied and hurried to the front door past the old man with the mop. Her hard heels clacked and reminded Rostnikov of some piece of music, the memory of which passed almost as quickly as it had come. He watched her go out the door into the sunlight and turn to her right.

"She's good," said the old man as Rostnikov limped forward.

"I know," said Rostnikov.

"You've seen her?" asked the old man.

"No."

"Then, how…?"

"Where does the assistant director park his car?"

The old man looked at Rostnikov with uncertainty, but answered. "Back behind the building. There's a small lot. His space is right near the door."

"Thank you," said Rostnikov, turning toward the rear of the building.

He found the rear door with no trouble. And the car. It was black. As he stepped into the lot, he looked up at the side of the building and found the window of Mazaraki's office. He had thought for a moment that Mazaraki's office was farther down a bit, but the angry, smiling face of Dimitri Mazaraki, his arms folded, framed in the window, made it evident that Valerian Duznetzov had made a slight drunken mistake before he leaped from Gogol's head. It was not a man who saw thunder whom he feared but a man who saw Blue Thunder.