A Whisper to the Living

11

Aleksandr Chenko had awakened after a fitful night.

Over the last five years since he had pushed his rival out of a window-he could no longer remember the name of the lean, weak young man-Aleksandr had not had a troubled night of sleep. Indeed, he had seemed to sleep more soundly with each drunken, homeless, or surly lout he lured into the park and struck from behind with his hammer. The feel of steel against skull, the shatter of cracking bone, the last sounds without words from each victim had given Aleksandr days and even weeks of near perfect peace. After marking off each attack, he had always returned to his daily ritual, breakfast of hot or cold kasha with a little milk.

But last night, last night had been different. He had dreamt; the dream had the feel of a nightmare. He had sat on a stone bench in the park across from a man to whom he could assign no face. The chessboard between them had only a few pieces left. Each empty space was trickled by a drop of blood that shimmered with each hand placed on the table.

“Your move,” the man had said.

It was quite vivid, even now, in the light of a sunny day.

“Your move,” the man had said patiently.

Aleksandr had raised a hand toward his remaining knight when the man said, quite calmly, quite certainly, “With that move you will lose.”

Aleksandr had withdrawn his hand. He had looked at the board, the remaining pieces, the spots of blood, and none of it had made any sense. He did not know whether he was ahead or behind.

It was then he had awakened with no doubt that the man across the way, the policeman with one leg, was the man of his dream.

Aleksandr Chenko needed a plan. It was his move.

But first he forced himself to shave, shower, and dress before deciding to boldly throw open the curtains to be sure that he had not also dreamt of the policeman he had seen last night.

As soon as he had opened the curtains, he saw the policeman, cup of steaming coffee or tea in his hand, sitting in the opposite window. The policeman did not look Aleksandr’s way but continued to read, or pretend to read, a paperback in his hand. The policeman was dressed and looked quite awake.

Should Aleksandr try to get his attention or should he too act as if this were all very normal? He decided to wait out the block of a man across from him. Aleksandr would not crack. The man who had calmly killed more than sixty people was not going to crack. He would not allow the lawyers, judges, newspaper reporters, television news crews to see a broken man. Of course this all depended on whether or not he was going to be arrested. He was determined to hold out. He was determined not to give them what they wanted. Now, if only the policeman with the false leg would understand. Aleksandr did not want forgiveness because he did not feel that he had done anything that needed to be forgiven. But understanding would be acceptable, and it was possible this bulk of a policeman could understand that Aleksandr was not the Bitsevsky Maniac, that calling him a maniac was to dismiss him as simply having acted insanely. Aleksandr knew that he was not insane.

When he exited his apartment building, the first thing he saw was a bus moving toward the corner. If he hurried, he could catch it and it would bring him to within a few hundred yards of the Volga Supermarket II. Even during heavy rains when he carried an umbrella or deep snow and frigid cold when he had to wear his down jacket and hood, he had not chosen the bus. The park was his.

But this morning he was tempted by that bus, for the second thing he saw was the policeman sitting across the street in front of the park on the bench that faced the apartment building.

Aleksandr, pretending he had not seen the policeman, did not hurry toward the bus. He hitched his backpack, in which was packed his lunch of beef soup in a thermos, and crossed the street. He entered the familiar park path certain that he hardly had to hurry to outdistance the policeman.

When Aleksandr emerged from the park, he saw the one-legged policeman again sitting on a bench, a book in hand. As Aleks moved, he was within ten feet of Rostnikov. No one was in sight but a woman a half block down, her back to the park. The element of surprise was with Aleks. He could kill the policeman here and now during this break in late-morning traffic. The only question was how did the man get here so quickly? Was there a police car lurking, watching? No. This was neither the place nor the time. Aleks decided to acknowledge the policeman.

“Good morning.”

Rostnikov finished the sentence he was reading and looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun with his right hand.

“Good morning.”

“Do you plan to haunt me night and day?”

Rostnikov did not answer and so Aleks continued with, “Are you trying to get me to say something I will regret? Nyet, no, never mind the question. You will either give up in time or arrest me for something. Meanwhile, I must get to work.”

“Tell me,” said Rostnikov as Chenko started to step away. “Do you like birds?”

“Birds?”

“Yes. When I go to the coast of the sea on vacation, I sit and watch the long-beaked, long-legged white creatures that step with the grace of Bolshoi ballet dancers. And when they soar, it is a thing of great beauty. Do you find anything beautiful?”

“Beautiful? Perhaps a neatly lined-up and stacked display of some fresh fruit. Oranges, apples, melons. The ones that give out a sweet smell. But vegetables also-”

He stopped abruptly.

“What?” asked Rostnikov.

“What did you do with the old couple whose apartment you sit in?”

“Moved them out for a while,” answered the policeman.

The next reasonable question was, “Why?” but since Aleks knew why, the slayer of dozens did not ask.

Aleks hurried away wondering if the one-legged policeman would emerge during the day, at the end of a display in the produce department, down the aisle of canned soups and canned vegetables, seated on a bench at the end of a checkout aisle.

Aleks paused a moment to look back at the policeman, who was now in the distance. The man had gone back to reading his book.

Lydia Tkach did not expect her grandchildren to run to her arms. Lydia knew that her voice was high and shrill and her manner that of a Gulag prison camp commander. Still, they were well behaved and suffered themselves to be hugged. The hug was long and the children were patient.

“Other room,” said Maya.

Lydia’s daughter-in-law had changed, and definitely for the better. Her dark beauty had returned. There was confidence in her manner. The small apartment in the heart of Kiev was clean, comfortable looking, and bright.

Both children headed back across the living room and entered a room at the rear of the apartment.

“Please sit. I’ll make some coffee.”

“Maybe in a little while,” said Lydia, who was, reluctantly, wearing the hearing aids her son had purchased for her.

Maya sat on a modern-looking chair with arms and rested her folded hands in her lap.

“No,” Maya said.

“No? You don’t know what I was going to ask,” said Lydia.

“I do,” said Maya. “The answer is ‘no.’ You will always be welcome in my home because of your grandchildren, but I do not want to hear the reasons why the children and I should go back to Sasha.”

“I have come far and spent much to talk to you of such things. At least listen. Time me. Ten minutes. No more.”

“Ten minutes.”

“Yes, ten minutes, well, maybe fifteen.”

“Begin,” said Maya.

And Lydia did.

“I am a pest, I know,” said Vera Korstov.

She had knocked at the door seven times before it opened. In front of her now stood Albina Babinski dressed in tan pants and a buttoned long-sleeve red shirt. For an instant, Vera thought she had knocked at the wrong door, but when the woman spoke, Vera knew she had not. Fully made up, the widow of Fedot Babinski looked almost pretty.

“I do not intend to contradict you. You are a pest. What do you want?”

“To find something, someone, to prove Ivan did not murder his wife and your husband.”

“I told you what I know.” She hesitated, sighed, and held the door open. “Oh, come in.”

She stepped out of the way and Vera stepped in. Albina closed the door and motioned toward the couch, where Vera sat down. The room had been cleaned.

“A drink?” Albina asked.

“Maybe. Yes. I have been running everywhere,” said Vera. “Now I am going back, looking for a small sign.”

“Fedot was a womanizing devil of no character,” said Albina as she sat in the armchair facing Vera.

“You used to be a boxer,” said Vera.

“I used to be a boxer,” Albina confirmed.

“A good one?”

“Yes, but there was little market for women boxers in Russia at the time. Is there a point to this question?”

“Your hands, particularly the left one, are covered in makeup.”

“Are they?”

“Yes. You showed them as little as possible the last time I was here.”

“Very observant. Do you have some point to make?”

“Your knuckles are red and raw.”

“Yes. I have a skin condition. I use a lotion from the Dead Sea. Would you like some tea?”

“I think you killed your husband,” said Vera.

Albina Babinski coughed. The cough was followed by a sigh.

“That he deserved destruction I do not deny,” she said. “That I did the deed I do deny. I’m having tea. You may join me. Or you can simply get the hell out.”

The latter was said gently and with a smile.

“I have a word that will prove your crime,” said Vera.

“Speak it,” said Albina, moving across the room and into a small kitchen from which she continued to address her visitor.

“DNA,” said Vera, still seated.

Albina was back in the living room, a blue ceramic teapot in her left hand.

“I plan to tell the police to check the DNA at the crime scene. I am sure they already have it, but they have had no reason to check it against yours.”

Albina weighed the ceramic pot and considered what to do.

“You watch too many American television police shows.”

“I watch none of them,” said Vera.

Albina moved across the room, teapot now at her side. Vera considered moving quickly to the door. The woman with the teapot was much bigger than Vera and, besides, she had been a boxer. Vera had entered the apartment looking for further information. She had talked herself into finding a murderer.

“Do you plan to kill me?” asked Vera.

“Plan? I have no plan. I do not want to go to prison. Not for killing that bag of lying, cheating filth. I do not wish to hurt you. I do not wish to hurt Ivan. I followed them to that room, called Ivan, and told him to hurry to the hotel room. Then I heard the sounds inside. They were not screams of ecstasy. The door was open and they were in the middle of the room. He was beating her with his fists. He did not even notice my presence. I picked up the vase or whatever it was, hit him. He let her go. She crumpled to the ground as if her bones had turned to water. I hit him three or four times and then I punched him in the face. I do not know how many times.”

“Maybe you can convince the police and a judge that you lost your mind for a. .”

Albina was shaking her head “no.”

“I knew what I was doing.”

“Soon the police will check the DNA even without my asking them to. Then you will have to answer for two murders. And what will you do with my body?”

“Get something to wrap you in and carry you out of here tonight.”

Albina towered over her guest with a look of great sadness.

“I will scream.”

“Few will hear and those few will not respond. You are not in a luxury high-rise building, not even a fully respectable Stalin concrete tower.”

Vera looked around for something with which to fight back. Nothing was close enough to get to before the larger woman could beat her to death with teapot or fist.

It was at this point that Albina raised the pot high. Vera held her arms over her face and tried to rise with no plan but to get to the door. But the blow did not come. Slowly, cautiously, Vera lowered her arms.

“I cannot do it,” said Albina, looking at the pot in her hand. “Can I get you some tea? A glass of wine?”

“Tea will be fine,” said Vera.

Albina nodded and moved back to the kitchen, her voice now coming to her visitor as if she were in a cave.

“Where was I? Oh yes. He did not even notice I was there.” I picked up something, I do not remember what, and hit him in the side of the head. I hit him hard. I watched the blood come as he turned his head to look at me. There was so much blood. I had seen a great deal of blood when I was a boxer, but this was different. This was Fedot. I would say he was astonished. It came to me that he had sinned and now knelt before me in prayer. Do you take sugar?”

“Yes,” said Vera.

“I waited for someone to come and count him out. A fight without a winner.”

Albina Babinski returned and continued.

“The pot is on. It does not take long.”

Once again she sat across from her guest. This time Albina folded her hands in her lap. Was her makeup giving way? Vera thought so. The two women were quiet for a while.

“I met Fedot Babinski in Gomel; that is in-”

“Belarus,” Vera added.

“Yes. I was working in a hair salon. I went to see the fights one night. Fedot was in the main event. He won. After the fight I went for a drink with my friend. Fedot came in. I was not as you see me now. I was considered to be a beauty of sorts. Maybe I can go back to hairstyling if I am not hanged.”

A high-pitched whistle came from the kitchen. There was time enough to get up and run to the door when Albina rose, but Vera simply continued to sit.

Minutes later, the tea was on a trivet on the table and the two women were silently drinking.

“Fedot taught me to fight. I did well, far better than he. He enjoyed the additional money but complained about my ability. Gradually, he wore me down and I stopped boxing while he continued to both box and be the Giant’s sparring mate. He also continued to bing-bang every willing woman of even passing good looks. I complained, but it did no good. Oh, I am sorry. I do have some cookies to offer you.”

“No, thank you.”

Albina’s head turned as if on command and she looked at the television sitting on top of a table across the room.

“I watch a lot of television,” she said. “I spend most of my days looking at that little screen and waiting, waiting for him. I cheated on him just once, three years ago. A young boxer with a fine body and a nose already flattened. I cheated once and felt guilty. Fedot Babinski cheated often and felt no regret.”

“Perhaps you could argue that you were trying to save the woman. After all, she was beaten to death by him.”

“I hit him two or three times with whatever I had in my hand and then I pummeled him with my fists.”

“You could have followed him to the hotel intending to confront him, but you came upon him killing the woman.”

Albina poured the tea and considered her options.

“That is exactly what did happen,” she said. “But I was not there to save her.”

“I suggest you call a lawyer and then turn yourself in to the police. I assume you are full of regret for what you have done.”

“No,” said Albina with a very small smile. “Are you sure you will not have some cookies?”

Ivan Medivkin, a man of considerable height, strength, and weight, was subdued, cuffed, and seated in the interrogation room with the two detectives.

“When I get up, I will get free and kill whoever beat Fedot Babinski after I get him to confess.”

Iosef sat in a wooden chair. He tugged his shirt from under his arms. He knew he was sweating in the room that reeked of the smell of human bodies.

“I do not think much of your plan, Ivan Medivkin,” said Iosef. “You proclaim your innocence and plan a murder.”

“Not a murder. An execution,” Ivan amended.

Iris Templeton put on a clean white blouse and a comfortable blue cotton skirt. She straightened her skirt and stood up. Then there was a knock at the door. She almost asked who it was when Sasha, gun in hand, emerged from the bathroom and motioned for her to be quiet and move to the bathroom as he walked slowly to the door and slowly opened it as the knocking continued. During the night, Sasha had changed rooms, moved into the room directly across from that of Iris Templeton, but he had awakened at her side.

Sasha threw the door open. In front of him now at the threshold stood a very muscular man with a shaved head and another man, a thin man with very white hair.

“Breakfast?” said the man with white hair.

He sounded cheerful, cheerful enough that Sasha hesitated, but only for an instant, only long enough to see the guns suddenly appear in the intruders’ hands.

“Come in,” said Sasha, dropping to the floor. The two men came in firing at the bed and looking toward the bathroom. Then Elena came out of the room across the hall behind them firing her weapon. Sasha did the same. The noise was familiar but not welcome to the two men in the doorway. Then both intruders fired, the white-haired one at Elena, the bald one at Sasha.

At this point, Elena stepped back and three SWAT-uniformed policemen armed with automatic weapons came out from behind her. The bald man dropped his gun and went to his knees.

The white-haired man dashed toward the open doors of the elevator at the end of the corridor. He had propped the doors open with a small wedge of wood so that he and the bald man could get away quickly after they killed Iris Templeton.

The man hobbled, grunting, leaving a trail of blood on the gray carpet. Sasha went after him. The man had a foot in the door of the elevator when Sasha landed on his back. The man twisted his hand behind him and fired his weapon. Sasha tore the gun from his hand, battered his face against the floor, and rolled onto his back.

“Are you all right?” asked Elena, who stood over Sasha as he moved over onto his back, from which vantage point he could see a small, old chandelier.

“I am,” he said. “Iris Templeton?”

“Unhurt. She crawled to the bathroom when the shooting began. The two men with guns were remarkably poor shots.”

“Just like in an American movie.”

Sasha was fascinated by the dozens of lights in the small chandelier in the ceiling directly above him.

A pair of policemen in protective wear hurried down the corridor dragging the bald prisoner, who looked back over his shoulder at Sasha.

“I think they will both live,” said Elena. “I will have them put into separate small cells.”

“The older one, make him comfortable. The bald one, give him some food and water and something to drink. . ”

“I know,” said Elena.

They would play the two men against each other. Maybe Chief Inspector Rostnikov would take care of that part of this. If they were lucky, one of them might turn Pavel Petrov in and with the tape from Sergei Bresnechov, Tyrone, they might be able to arrest Petrov.

Over Elena’s shoulder appeared the face of Iris Templeton.

“Are you shot?” she asked the fallen detective.

“No,” Sasha said. “I just want to lie here for a while. I like the view.”