A Whisper to the Living

4

“This is foolish,” Elena Timofeyeva said, peering through the window of the bistro on Kalinin Street.

Elena looked at Sasha for support. He intended to give it, but a look from Iris Templeton tempted his resolve. He had not been with a woman for almost five months and here was a pretty, smart, famous woman regarding him with obvious intent.

“It is not a good idea,” he said in compromise.

Iris Templeton smiled at Sasha and said, “Perhaps not, but I’ve made my career by doing foolish things that others were afraid to do. You are police officers. There must be many times when you tread when there might be danger.”

The meaning of her words was not lost on either Elena or Sasha.

“Besides, you will be right behind me.”

“But-” Elena began.

“But,” Iris Templeton continued, “your orders are not to give me advice, but to provide me with protection. Is that him?”

Iris nodded at a lone man who sat drinking from a coffee cup at a small, round table against the far wall of the crowded bistro.

“Yes,” said Elena.

The man they were looking at was well built, fair skinned, with prematurely white hair. He could not have been more than forty years old. He wore a blue button-down shirt and on his chair was draped a leather jacket so fine that it shined with the reflection of the overhead lights.

“I’m going in. Stay here,” said Iris, examining her reflection in the window.

“We are not under your orders,” said Elena. “We decide where we must be to protect you.”

“It would be better if we were friends,” said Iris. “Sasha and I are going to be friends.”

Sasha resisted the urge to brush back the unruly lock of hair that dangled down his forehead.

Iris Templeton entered the bistro. When the door opened, the two police officers could hear the sound of music from a CD player inside. As the door closed, they heard the somewhat familiar sound of some popular singer shouting loudly. Neither Elena nor Sasha recognized the performer. Both knew that Zelach could immediately identify the song, the performer, and his complete discography.

“It is not a good idea,” Elena said with mocking sarcasm as the door closed. “If something happens to her, we will be held responsible.”

Sasha did not respond.

He watched Iris Templeton move to the table of Daniel Volkovich, who half-stood in greeting. He was smiling as he took Iris Templeton’s hand and held it for a few seconds longer than Sasha thought necessary.

Iris Templeton sat across from the pimp. She was in profile. White light danced on her face. It was a cameo that attracted Sasha, who well knew the danger of responding to what he was feeling. Yet he could not control it.

“Let’s go in,” said Elena, pulling the collar of her jacket around her neck. “I’m cold.”

Sasha felt neither hot nor cold. He felt bewildered.

“Yes,” he said.

The two entered the bistro. There were two empty tables, only one of which had a clear view of where Iris and Daniel sat talking. A fat man with a red face had to move in tightly to allow Sasha to sit. The fat man looked annoyed. He was about to speak, but something in the near baby face of the man who had forced him to move warned him that it would not be a good idea.

The police officers were too far away and the music too loud to let them hear what was happening at the table where the reporter and the pimp were sitting. What Sasha could see was that the two of them were getting along very nicely, with smiles, words, and nods of agreement.

Elena wanted to say, You are jealous, Sasha Tkach. How many times must you be misled by your sex? This woman plans to use you.

“Jealousy and love are sisters,” Sasha said as if reading her mind.

Elena knew the proverb. It did not impress her. She had experienced jealousy with Iosef, but it had been under her control and did not deter her from the wedding. Was it really only two days away?

Daniel Volkovich leaned across the table and rested his hand over that of Iris Templeton.

The familiar demon within Sasha banged at his chest and in his brain. It took a great effort to control it, to keep from walking over to the table and sitting next to Iris. He had only known the woman for hours, but there were factors that made her difficult to resist. Perhaps the most important factor was that she was definitely interested in him. Next, she was pretty. Next, she was smart. He was not looking for love or even for sex, but when it presented itself so openly he knew resistance was impossible.

Elena saw no waiter moving from table to table, nor did she see anyone behind the bar who might be a waiter.

“You want a drink?” Elena asked, rising.

“Beer. American or German,” he said, his eyes fixed on the couple at the table against the wall.

He willed Iris to pull her hand from under that of the charming seducer. She did not move it.

Elena had no need to tell Sasha to keep a close watch on Iris. She moved through the random harvest of crowded tables to the bar determined not to drink anything that might blur her senses or add unneeded calories. Iosef said that he liked her the way she was. She was sure he would like her even more if there were less of her.

Ten minutes later Daniel Volkovich took a cell phone from a pocket of his leather jacket and punched in a number. He did it all with one hand so he would not have to relinquish Iris’s hand. Daniel spoke briefly and put the cell phone back in his pocket.

During the phone conversation, Volkovich had glanced at Sasha and nodded. Sasha averted his eyes.

Both Sasha’s beer and Elena’s coffee were long finished when there was a noise at the table of the fat man behind them. The fat man shouted. A chair was pushed into Elena, who stood facing the disruptive table. The fat man stood on unsteady feet and toppled against Sasha, who struggled not to be blown from his chair.

Sasha pushed the man away.

“Not your business,” the fat man said, his large red nose inches from Sasha’s face.

Sasha threw an elbow into the man’s face. The fat man tumbled backward into his already-overturned table. A pair of men, one with a bald head and large, bushy mustache, came to calm things down and usher the fat man and his party out the front door.

It was only after some sense of order had been restored that Sasha looked toward the table in the corner. Elena did the same.

Iris Templeton and Daniel Volkovich were gone.

“This is what it comes to,” Paulinin said, changing his gloves.

On the two tables deep below Petrovka lay the bodies of Lena Medivkin and Fedot Babinski.

“Comely in life, serene in death,” Paulinin said, scalpel in hand as he looked down at the naked bodies that lay side by side on their backs only a few feet from each other.

Paulinin had the urge to help them reach out and clasp each other’s hands. They made an interesting couple. She was young, dark, and when the blood was cleansed quite beautiful except for the bruises on her face and the crushed right cheekbone. He was a man of no more than forty-five. His was a muscular body with no chest hair. There were a few scars, one on his stomach, another on his forehead. His face was roughly handsome, with a much-broken nose that made him more interesting than he might otherwise have been. The blood had also been cleansed from his face, but the man’s fists and knuckles were quite bloody. He must, Paulinin tentatively concluded, have fought back and done some damage to whoever had beaten him to death. Paulinin did not clean the knuckles. The blood of the killer might still be on them.

“Do you have secrets, my pair of lovers? Secrets that you will share with me as we talk?”

Paulinin reached for the cup and drank lukewarm coffee. He had been working for more than forty hours straight, taking time off only to eat, shower, change his bloody and fluid-stained whites. He could have taken pills that would guarantee that he would stay awake, but it wasn’t necessary, at least not yet. The sight of this pair in front of him woke him with great interest.

“What shall it be?” he said, addressing the man and woman whose eyes were closed. “What have I not listened to yet in the last days? Ah, Mussogorsky, Night on Bald Mountain. Perhaps Pictures at an Exhibition. Yes? Good.”

Paulinin put down his coffee cup and, scalpel still held up high, moved to the new CD player on the cluttered desk a dozen paces away.

As the first eerie strains of Bald Mountain came through the speaker on the shelf just beyond the heads of his guests, Paulinin tried to decide with whom he would begin. He turned the woman’s head to her right and the man’s head to his left. They were now facing away from each other as if to hide the shame of the desecration to their skulls.

Paulinin leaned forward under the strong light looking first at the woman and then at the man. He repeated the look at each leaning closer, this time with a magnifying glass. He began to hum along with the music as he leaned ever closer.

He did not know how long he moved from one body to the other, but when he did stand upright his back signaled a familiar ache.

“Thank you,” he said to the pair. “I shall wake the Chief Inspector and Emil Karpo in the morning with the news you have given me. I admit that I am rather given to professional surprises when I am the one presenting them and not the one receiving. I would prefer you not pass on that truth. I am trusting you not to do so.”

He did not remind them that they were dead. It would spoil the mood.

Now, with music around him and the smell of alcohol and blood to give him encouragement, Paulinin began his work.

“The girls are sleeping over tomorrow night,” Sara Rostnikov said as she watched her husband eat the Zharkoe pork she had prepared for him.

The dish was one of Porfiry Petrovich’s favorites, pieces of pork sautéed with onions, mushrooms, potatoes, herbs, and pickles. Tonight it tasted particularly good and the news of the two girls was welcome.

“Galina has the opportunity to work the night shift at the bakery. She will make double her salary.”

Laura, now eleven, and her sister, Nina, now nine, lived in an apartment with their grandmother Galina, one floor below the Rostnikovs. Until a few months ago, the three had lived with Sara and Porfiry Petrovich in their one-bedroom apartment.

The girls’ mother, Marina, had run off with a petty crook after trying to sell them. And then Galina herself had spent time in prison after shooting her abusive boss at another bakery. It had been his gun. She had wrestled it from him. In the struggle, he had been shot. Galina spent almost a year in prison. Without Rostnikov’s intervention, she might yet be working in the bakery of the women’s prison. During her imprisonment, the Rostnikovs had gladly taken in the two girls.

There were days like today that Sara and Porfiry Petrovich missed having the girls from early morning until they fell asleep on makeshift bedding on the floor of the living room only a dozen feet from where Rostnikov now sat.

“Good,” he said.

“The news or the food?”

“Both. How are you feeling?”

He paused in his eating and looked at his wife. It had been the crucial nightly question in their lives for years, particularly since the successful surgery to remove a tumor from her brain three years ago. The wound had healed, but her once vibrant red hair had quickly lost its flare and settled for a more subdued hue. Her face was still round and pretty. Her lips were full and her voice was still as husky as when he had first heard it almost forty years ago.

“I have an appointment with Leon tomorrow,” she said.

Leon was her doctor and Porfiry Petrovich’s. Leon was also her cousin.

“The headaches?” Rostnikov asked.

“Yes, but they could be caused by many things.”

Rostnikov nodded and resumed eating. They both feared the return of the tumor or a new one, but there was nothing to say that would enlighten them or give them hope.

It was almost midnight. Rostnikov would have to be up early and he had yet to do his weights, remove his leg, and quite literally hop into the shower to shave and wash. He hoped the water would at least be tepid. He had done his best to ease the flow of heating gas. His efforts had proved to have dubious success.

Rostnikov’s hobby was plumbing. Plumbing fascinated him. The pipes in the wall, the sinks, were all part of a system not unlike that of the human body that disposed of waste. Pipes and sinks were things that he could repair. There were many things he as a policeman dealt with every day that he could not repair.

The entire building in which the Rostnikovs lived counted on him and not the post-Soviet owners to take care of everything from leaking faucets to major assaults on the rusting system.

When they could, the two little girls accompanied him in his efforts. Nina was particularly fascinated by his efforts and tools. The older sister, Laura, joined them when she had nothing else to do.

He finished the food in his bowl and wiped it clean with a piece of heavy grain-filled bread.

“More?” Sara asked.

“Yes, please.”

She brought him more and smiled as he began working on another bowl.

“You are a great cook,” he said.

“When we first married, I believed that, but I have learned that you will eat almost anything and declare that it is delicious.”

“Your cooking is special,” he said. “Your chicken tabak is so good it would even make Vladimir Putin smile with gastronomical delight. Ask Iosef.”

“Our son is as undiscerning about food as you are. Almost every morning when he still lived with us he had the same breakfast as you, a large bowl of hot kasha with milk and sugar, and declared it delicious.”

Rostnikov said nothing. She was right. He too thought the morning bowl of kasha was delicious. He had thought so since childhood.

“Finished,” he said with a grin. “It was delicious.”

“And I am a great cook.”

“The greatest in all of Russia and all the former member states of the Soviet Union.”

Getting up took great effort. It was not just his leg but also a weariness in his bones. For some reason he thought of the boy on the bench that afternoon. What was his name? Yes, Yuri Platkov. He wondered if the boy would be back the coming afternoon. Rostnikov had enjoyed their conversation. The coming day was supposed to be mild, without either rain or snow. Trusting forecasts could be disappointing in Moscow.

He still had the chance of six hours’ sleep if he moved quickly and efficiently. Six hours would be fine. He would be one hour short of that goal. At 5:00 a.m. the phone would ring to inform him that the Maniac had struck again.

Aleksandr Chenko had eaten not one but two sandwiches of radishes and sardines. He had turned on the television when he came home but absorbed almost nothing that passed in front of him.

Aleksandr could not stop thinking of the man, the barrel of a detective who had looked right at him in Bitsevsky Park. It would be right to make him the next victim, but when would that be? The need was there and the passion was in him. He needed to kill again soon. His chessboard called to him. He needed it as others might need a third sandwich. He felt the need in his stomach, his heart, his throbbing head.

If he was to make a place for himself in history, he would have to act quickly. The policeman would have to wait. Aleksandr’s watch told him it was almost midnight. He moved with certainty to the hook on the wall near the door to the hall. He removed his jacket from the hook and put the jacket on.

Aleksandr locked his door behind him and moved down the silent stairwell to the basement. He encountered no one. He wouldn’t have been surprised to run into one of the other tenants in the building wandering in drunk and loud. There were several who would have made excellent additions to his list, but he did not want the police to be this close, not yet.

Aleksandr turned on the light. Behind a pile of boxes against the wall was a loose brick. He flattened himself between boxes and wall and removed the brick, first with the tips of his fingers and then with his hand. He reached into the now-open space and found the handle of the hammer. He closed his eyes as the familiar feeling of almost sexual pleasure electrified his hand and moved over his entire body. He shuddered as he carefully withdrew the hammer and placed it on top of the boxes. It took him only seconds to put back the brick and slither back into the light.

As he stepped toward the light, he looked back knowing that he would see his shadow, bent in half by the juncture of floor and ceiling, clutching the hammer.

It was midnight now. He turned off the light and headed up the stairs and out the building to head for the park to find a stranger to murder.

Taras Ignakov was content, as content as a homeless man in the park could be on a cold day in Moscow. He wore a brown sweatshirt that had the words “Property of the Cleveland Browns” written across the front. Over the brown sweatshirt he wore a heavy black wool coat two sizes too large for him. He had gotten the sweatshirt and coat by telling the rabbi in the little black Jew cap at the synagogue on Poklonnaya Gora that he was a Jew. Maybe the man was not a rabbi. He had no beard. It did not matter. The man told Taras he did not have to be a Jew to get used clothing that had been donated by the small congregation. The Jew had looked at him carefully when he came to the door. Synagogues had been bombed and attacked in the past year. Taras had learned that from an overheard conversation.

Nonetheless, Taras had wandered around wondering if he could or should trade the very nice coat to the fake Catholic priest who was always willing to look at decent clothing, jewelry, shoes. The coat would surely be worth a bottle of vodka. The one thing Taras would not trade was the watch in his pocket. It was the vestige of humanity to which he clung. When he had sunk so low that he had to exchange it for vodka, he would no longer have the right to think of himself as anything but an animal. He was reasonably sure that day would eventually come, eventually, but not tonight.

Taras had for the moment forgotten where to find the man who pretended to be a Catholic priest. It would come to him. Yes, in the bar off the Arbat. The pretend Catholic priest would not be there at this hour. Besides, it was too far a journey for tonight. Now Taras needed a place to sleep.

Taras walked, walked in thick socks and heavy army boots. He could not remember where he had found the boots. There was a hole the size of a large coin in the toe of the left boot. Taras had filled it in from the inside with newspaper. He had wrapped both feet in newspaper. The boots, like the coat, were too large.

But Taras had hope. With three newspapers, fished from the garbage behind a restaurant where he sometimes delved into the garbage for something edible, he walked. His boots sloshed through shallow puddles made by melted snow.

The reason Taras Ignakov was filled with hope as he trudged through the night was the bottle in his coat pocket. Luck had been with him. A parked car. The door open. The almost full bottle on the floor. And it was Putinka vodka, the vodka claimed to be good for relaxing and overcoming fatigue. Good. He had drunk most of it while standing in the doorway of a bookstore far from the car. There was still a lot of vodka remaining in the bottle.

He touched the watch in one pocket and then caressed the bottle with his hand in the other pocket. He decided he would drink half of the remaining contents slowly and save the rest for tomorrow. He would do this when he got to a spot where he could sleep for the night without being disturbed by the police.

Normally, Taras walked with his shoulders slumped and head facing down. Now he looked up, wondering where he was. He had walked for hours, many hours. He needed to abandon his plan and drink the rest of the vodka.

He found himself in front of a vaguely familiar park. The wind was blowing, but not hard. The leaves of the many trees were whispering to him to stop.

Taras moved into the park but did not use the path just beyond the bench. He walked into what seemed like total darkness. He stopped, almost fell, put a hand on a tree to balance himself. It took a long time for his eyes to adjust.

Taras reached up to pull his hat down and discovered that he had no hat. He knew several others who endlessly roamed the streets and had lost ears to frostbite. Taras touched his ears to see if they were still there.

“They are intact,” he told the darkness.

He tried to remember the name of the park he had entered. He could not. It would come to him.

He trudged on, his eyes now capable of seeing outlines and shadows. Trees, bushes, a fence, a man.

The man was in front of him. Taras could not judge how far away the man was. The man was not moving. Taras took a step to his left and began walking away from the man.

“Wait,” the man said.

Taras waited.

The man approached and said, “I did not think I would find anyone in the park this late.”

The man looked neither old nor young from what Taras could see in the dark.

Taras began walking again. The man kept pace with him.

“I often come to the park at night just to get out, sit on a bench, and drink a bottle of wine. Sometimes I find someone with whom I can share it. Do you like wine?”

“Do I look as if I would turn down wine?” asked Taras. “Where is a bench?”

“This way,” said the man, walking just a bit ahead of Taras on his left.

“I really do not feel like drinking wine tonight. Here, you take the bottle. I have brought some juice for me.”

“Please yourself,” Taras said, taking the bottle.

The cork was already halfway out. Taras pulled it the rest of the way out and dropped the cork. No matter. He had every expectation of drinking the entire bottle. It continued to be a very good day.

The stone bench was cold against his rear end even through two layers of pants.

“I am fifty-nine years old. I was born in Omsk. I was a dealer in expensive watches, a writer for a newspaper, a tire thief. I had a wife and two daughters. I have not seen them for a very long time.”

“You miss them,” the man said sympathetically.

“No,” said Taras, taking a long drink from the bottle. The wine was not bad. It was not vodka, but it would do.

Taras held out the bottle with little enthusiasm.

The young man declined, saying, “Maybe I will take it later.”

“Must I tell you more of my biography?”

“No,” said the man.

“My health history? I have but one tooth left. It will not last much longer. I am fond of it. I wiggle it a great deal with my finger. I shall miss it when it is gone. My heart functions adequately, as do my other organs, with the likely exception of my liver. My right arm does not rise above my waist. An accident when I was stealing tires in Omsk. . Is that enough for you?”

“I said I did not want to hear any more about your life.”

Taras shrugged his shoulders and stopped talking.

It was then that the young man lifted his hand from his jacket pocket and showed Taras a hammer.

“I am in Bitsevsky Park,” said Taras.

“You are.”

“And you are the Maniac?”

The man did not answer.

“Once, not many years ago, I was tall and strong and I would have taken that hammer from you and shoved the handle down your throat. Now I am shorter and weak. And I am drunk, but I will fight you.”

“You think you can beat me?”

“There is not a chance that I could, but I want to live.”

Taras pulled the coat around him. A cold wind had suddenly been brought to life to dance through him.

“You are very drunk,” the man confirmed.

“Well, I will still fight you and try to get that hammer from you. This is probably the last few minutes of my soul in this almost worthless body. Until my death this had been a very good day for me.”

Taras lunged toward the man, swinging the wine bottle at his head. He missed by at least two feet and landed facedown on the cold, wet grass. He thought about crawling away, but he knew that effort would be of no use. Instead, he reached into his coat pocket and managed to touch the watch.

Akardy Zelach lay on his bed in the living room. In the lone bedroom of the apartment he could hear his mother cough, a moist, rattling cough. She had gotten home from the hospital that morning. He was afraid, afraid of losing her, afraid of being alone. There was nothing he could do. He did not know if she was awake and he did not want to wake her at this hour to offer her tea or medicine.

She coughed again and again, and through the door he could hear her sitting up. He got out of his bed and went to her bedroom. He knocked gently.

“Yes, come in,” his mother said hoarsely.

Akardy entered.

“Would you like some tea?” he asked.

“Do we have any brandy left?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“Raspberry tea?”

“Yes.”

“Tea with a little brandy,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Anything else?”

“Are you tired, Akardy?”

“No,” he lied.

“You could perhaps read to me a little while.”

“Yes,” he said. “Tea with brandy and a book. Which book would you like?”

“I’ll get it. You make the tea. Make a cup for yourself. I’ll read the leaves.”

When he had finished making the tea, Akardy Zelach carefully brought it to his mother on a wooden tray. He had also made himself a cup of tea, but he had added no brandy to his.

Her eyes were closed, but when she sensed him in the room they opened. He placed the tray carefully on the table next to her bed.

“Thank you.”

She touched his cheek when he sat on the bed next to her.

“Don’t look so frightened. I’m going to be fine.”

He nodded and smiled, not knowing what to say. He had no gift for words and he knew it. This may have been the reason he was so drawn to those who could create words, poets, novelists, politicians, rock musicians, and rappers. He took the book she held out and he opened it to a place she had marked with a red feather, all that remained of a hat she had worn once almost thirty years ago.

Zelach read the poem by Anna Akhmatova she had marked.

He loved these three things.

White peacocks, evening songs,

And worn-out maps of America.

No crying of children,

No raspberry tea,

No women’s hysterics.

I was married to him.

“The tea is good,” she said, patting his hand.

“I’m glad.”

“Have you finished yours?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Let me look at your leaves.”

She took his cup and held it at a slight angle to catch maximum light from the bedside lamp. She looked at it long, perhaps a full minute.

“What do you see?”

Both mother and son knew they were endowed with certain connections to thoughts and events that others did not have. These visions, feelings, were not controlled by intent. They just came. Akardy Zelach knew his mother was not reading the leaves but looking to them to give her a flash of insight. She and her son had no great intellect, but they did have the insight.

Akardy’s mother felt the shudder of connection and put down the cup.

“What did you see?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “Sometimes there is nothing. Another poem please.”

He obliged and she lay back with closed eyes, listening and wondering about the shadowy specter she had just seen. The vision was too dark to really see, but the dread, the certainty of death that clung to her son now, was evident not in images but in a certainty that pervaded without giving its name.

In the vision, the creature of dark dreams had been looking at her.

“You are still happy with the wedding plans?”

The studio apartment of Iosef Rostnikov was almost dark. The lights were out, but moonlight and street lamps managed to penetrate the drawn shade and thin drapes over the lone window. This was the way Iosef liked it when he slept, just a little light. He retained a dread of total darkness when he slept from an incident during his days in the army. The barracks held memories of a sleepwalker, Private Julian Gorodov, who appeared at Iosef’s bedside babbling. Then there were thieves: Private Ivan Borflovitz had reached gently under Iosef’s pillow looking for his wallet. Iosef had grabbed Borflovitz’s wrist and twisted until the arm of the transgressor strained with a pain that would endure for weeks. Sergeant Naretsev was not so gentle, and Iosef, a light sleeper, awakened to grab him by the neck and whisper a death threat.

“Yes,” said Elena, who lay at his side.

Both Elena and Iosef, on their backs atop the blankets, were looking up at the shadows on the ceiling. Elena wore one of Iosef’s gold T-shirts with the words “Lightning in the Woods” in crimson on the front. Lightning in the Woods was one of the plays Iosef had written, produced, directed, and acted in during the years after his military service.

Iosef, shirtless, wore a pair of gray sweatpants that he had cut off at the knees.

“We are too old for the nonsense,” she added.

“I know,” he said.

“Two days of eating and drinking and warding off drunken people I don’t know.”

“I agree. So do my mother and father.”

“And then,” Elena went on, “the ridiculous ritual of my being kidnapped and you having to get past guards to rescue me and find a way out of this apartment. Why can we not just go to our appointment at the marriage office, sign our papers, and have a small party at your parents’ apartment?”

“I agree with you completely,” he said. “That is what will happen. It will be as you wish. My mother and father and the guests know that.”

“The point of the wedding is to make us happy, not to make us miserable. And the cost of food and drink. .”

“Do you hear me doing anything but agree with you?” he asked, reaching over to touch her shoulder and move his hand down to her smooth stomach.

“No,” she said, moving his hand and turning away.

“I propose we make love one more time and then get up to greet the sun. I will make breakfast.”

“I accept that proposal,” she said, turning back to face him as she considered whether it was the right time to tell him.

Iris Templeton entered the darkened tobacco shop not far from the Kremlin. Daniel Volkovich had opened the door with one of several jangling keys taken from his pocket. He had held it open so she could enter in front of him and have to touch him as she moved.

“You are not afraid,” he said as he closed and locked the door.

“Should I be?” Iris asked, turning to him.

There was a single low-wattage lamp on the counter of the shop.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “You do understand why I could not bring you here with your police escort?”

“Yes.”

They had paused in the middle of the shop. Iris smelled an almost dizzying array of tobaccos. She had ceased smoking fourteen years ago while her father was dying from what he called “the last whacks of the Marlboro coffin nails.”

“Good,” Daniel said, and moved to a door at the rear of the small shop.

The door wasn’t locked. She followed him through it and into another room not much larger than a closet. Still another door, but when this one opened there was a flow, not a rush, of light and the light was a golden haze. Inside the room, eight girls stood or sat talking and smoking. When the door opened, they looked at Daniel and Iris and stopped talking. It was not the first time Daniel had brought a female client. All the girls welcomed female clients. The risks of disease were diminished, and extra money could be earned from voyeurs at peepholes or watching on television monitors. One wealthy customer had a video hookup to all three rooms in the back. The girls knew that the price of such a selection in one’s own home was enormous.

None of the girls were scantily clad. Most wore skirts and blouses or sweaters that accented their breasts. Others had the lean, slick, boyish look of models.

“You may talk to whichever one of the girls you wish,” Daniel said. “But I suggest Svetlana. She is the best educated and probably the smartest.”

He was looking at one of the svelte boyish girls. Svetlana paused in talking to another girl and looked at Iris openly with a smile.

Daniel motioned for Svetlana to come closer. When she did, her brown eyes were wide and fixed on Iris.

“Miss Templeton is not a client,” he said. “She is a reporter from England. You will answer her questions and Miss Templeton will compensate you for your time.”

Svetlana nodded.

“Room Two,” he said.

As Svetlana led her through yet another door, Iris looked back at Daniel, who met her gaze and grinned, a dinosauric grin that Iris definitely did not like. She followed the prostitute to a dark hallway and into an unmarked room. The room had a bed, a comfortable chair, a hat rack, and a small painting of an early-nineteenth-century Russian village street on the wall. The yellowish light in the painting was the same as that in the room from which they had come.

“You’re sure you don’t. .?” the girl asked, touching her red lips.

“Certain,” Iris said. “No offense.”

The girl looked puzzled.

“It means ‘please do not be offended.’ ”

“Your Russian is quite good. I wish I could speak English that well. I am learning.”

She motioned to the chair. Iris sat. The girl moved to the bed and sat facing her.

Iris looked around the room.

“Yes,” said the girl. “We are being watched and listened to. What do you want to know?”

Iris took out a small pad of paper and a click pen.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

“Are you ever seen by a doctor?”

“We are all seen every two weeks by a doctor to inspect us for AIDS and other diseases. We urge our clients to wear condoms, and they almost always do if we put it to them correctly. You know, we say, ‘I’m much more stimulated by a man with a condom,’ or some nonsense like that.”

“Why are you a prostitute?”

“Money. I am from a very small town where there are few jobs and those that exist pay little and usually require that a girl please a boss or a foreman. I can make in one month here what it would take me a year to make in my town.”

“Do you plan to stop being a prostitute someday?”

The girl shrugged.

“I do not know. I may save enough in three years to go to school here in Moscow and become a hotel manager or a pastry chef.”

“Do you have any goals while you continue to work as a prostitute?”

“To move up.”

The girl lifted her hand gracefully with palm down and wrist bent, reminding Iris of a swan. She made a note of the movement.

“Up?”

“We are above the lowest level, the girls who line up in tunnels, maybe twenty of them, in rain, cold, standing all night, hoping to catch the eye of a customer brought by one of the men whose job it is to bring them.”

“And where. .?” Iris began.

“Do they take the customers? To reserved rooms in nearby hotels.”

“So what is ‘up’ for you?”

“To be one of the women with their own hotel room or one who goes to hotel rooms of visiting businessmen from all over the world. We get double what the tunnel girls get, but the hotel room girls get more than double what we get.”

“How would you get to be a hotel girl?”

“By being selected for looks and a certain sophistication and acting ability. Much of what we do is acting.”

“I would guess that you have a very good chance at going up. Who do you work for?”

“Daniel.”

“No, I mean who else? What is this operation called? Who runs it?”

“That I do not know,” said the girl with an apologetic smile.

“You are acting now?”

“Perhaps. I do not know anyone involved but Daniel and the other girls. I do not wish to know. If you talk to any of the other girls, you will get less from them than you have gotten from me.”

“Do you have regular customers?”

“A few.”

“Do you know their names?”

“Only first names. Never last names. Just Sergei, Boris, Igor, never a Pavel Petrov or-”

“Pavel Petrov?” Iris jumped in.

“Random example of the anonymous names of my clients,” Svetlana said, nervously glancing up at an air vent on the wall.

“I see,” said Iris, displaying nothing and not writing the name in her notebook.

Pavel Petrov, unless this was a different Pavel Petrov, was a deputy director of Gasprom. Government-owned Gasprom was the largest provider of natural gas in the world, and possibly the largest corporation in the world. It was the economic razor that could be and had been held to the neck of Ukraine and Western Europe, and Pavel Petrov was one of Gasprom’s principal spokesmen, a family man with a loving wife and three beautiful children. Iris knew this because she had interviewed Pavel Petrov the last time she had come to Russia for a story.

The dropping of Petrov’s name was news on which Iris Templeton might be able to hang a scandal.

She wanted to place the name into the conversation, though she really had no more questions.

“Are you fed well?”

“We are not prisoners,” Svetlana said. “We go out. We pay for our own food.”

“You have friends among the other girls?”

“Not really. It does not pay. They move up or down or out quickly. It does not pay to have friends.”

The door opened and Daniel Volkovich came in smiling.

“Time is up,” he said. “You have one last question?”

“No,” said Iris, rising but keeping her eyes on Svetlana, who was looking at Daniel with apprehension.

“Then we will thank our little Svetlana,” he said. “And perhaps reward her for her valuable time.”

“How much of a reward?” Iris asked.

“I would say two hundred euros would be sufficient. You agree, Svetlana?”

The girl said, “Yes,” and tried to hide the quiver in her voice.

“If you don’t have-” Daniel began.

“I have it,” Iris said, opening her purse, putting the notebook inside, and removing her wallet.

When she finished handing the girl the money, Iris followed Daniel Volkovich toward the door. Daniel paused in the corridor just outside Svetlana’s room.

“So,” he said. “You have what you need?”

“I have what you want me to have,” she said.

“I do not understand.”

“Svetlana’s a fine actress,” Iris said, facing him.

“Yes, but I do not understand.”

“Pavel Petrov,” she said.

His grin turned into a nervous laugh.

“How did you know?”

“She’s too smart to make a mistake like dropping the name of a powerful client. You want me to have Pavel Petrov’s name. Why?”

The man looked at the painting on the wall for about fifteen seconds and then made a decision and spoke after a sigh.

“You will write your story and expose Petrov. I will be left out of your story and emerge as the logical choice as his successor.”

“We use each other,” she said.

“Precisely, and if you want to seal the enterprise in Room Four just down the hall I will be happy to help you do so.”

“A tempting offer,” she said, “but I don’t want to be on tape and get blackmailed as we are trying to do to Pavel Petrov.”

“As you please,” he said, opening the door to where the other prostitutes in the glow of a lamp were looking toward Iris. “I’ll take you to your hotel.”

“Thank you,” she said as he went from the yellow room filled with the smell of women and perfume through a door into darkness and the pungent smell of tobacco.

On the drive to her hotel, Daniel did all of the talking. She absorbed little of it. There had been times in her career when she had been awake for three days and there had been others when she had grown tired and in need of sleep after a few hours. She had anticipated a three-day buzz. It had turned into an eight-hour day that rested heavy within her. But still, she had something she wanted to do.

“Do you still want to pretend to be a prostitute?” he asked as he pulled into the small driveway in front of the Zaray Hotel.

“No,” she said, reaching for the door handle.

As pretty as her face was and well tended as her body was, she was no match for any of the girls in that yellow room. The only men who would select her instead of one of them would be either blind or in search of something Iris did not want to consider.

“Would you like company for a while?” he said.

“You are persistent,” she said.

“And charming?”

“Not really.”

His grin almost faded, but he held fast to his image.

“Good night,” he said.

“Good night,” Iris replied, standing at the open door.

“Tomorrow?”

“I’ll see,” she said.

“You would like Pavel Petrov’s phone number?”

“I have it,” she said. “Thanks.”

“Be careful,” he said.

She closed the car door and he drove away. In the lobby sat Sasha Tkach. Iris smiled. She had been about to call him on her cell phone.

“Do not come on the desk,” Emil Karpo commanded gently.

As soon as he said it, he realized that he had just spoken to a cat and had some expectation that the animal would understand. Karpo had never addressed an animal before, not that he remembered, and his memory was nearly perfect. He had no pet as a child and none as an adult. He neither liked nor disliked dogs, cats, and domesticated birds. They were simply there.

The black cat had wandered in through the open window of his one-room apartment on a warm night four months earlier. She, for it was definitely female, had reappeared every week or so for a month and then once every nine or ten days and now almost nightly. In spite of a slightly lame right front leg, the black cat somehow made her way over roofs and down a treacherously steep slate roof to the open window.

She never made a sound. She simply wandered around the room and came to a halt next to the chair Karpo sat in at his desk. The cat remained there silently, curled up, sometimes looking up at him, sometimes appearing to be asleep. If he approached the cat, her large green eyes would open wide and she would then say something that sounded like nyet. She would also lift her lame leg and paw as if offering it to be shaken.

There were few places for a cat to go in the room. A bed stood in one corner near the open window. A dresser of unknown antiquity rested against the wall that held the door to the hallway. A wood and wicker wardrobe stood next to the dresser, and on the floor there stood a two-foot-high refrigerator. In the dresser were three pair of slacks, all black, two dress jackets, also black, two pair of black shoes, three white and two black long-sleeve pullover shirts, and a black zipper jacket.

His clothes, Karpo thought, were as black as the cat that had entered through the window.

The desk upon which Karpo did not want the cat to tread was one he had built himself. Its two-foot-wide polished wooden top extended from wall to wall, and behind the desk where he could reach over and remove a book was a four-tiered shelf filled with neatly arranged pages. Karpo had notes on every investigation he had been a part of, and each night after finishing whatever work he had for that day he took down his notes and revisited unresolved cases, some fifteen years old. The only things directly on the desk were a computer, a paperweight, a can filled with pens and pencils, and a pile of lined paper, some blank, some with the detective’s current notes.

The pencils in black, red, and blue were always freshly sharpened; the paperweight was a half sphere in which there was imbedded a deep red beetle.

“Are you hungry?” Karpo asked the cat, telling himself he was not talking to the cat but to himself.

Karpo rose and moved to the refrigerator.

Karpo had stopped on his way home, telling himself he was purchasing the three cans of sardines in water for a lunch meal.

Emil Karpo took out a can, opened it, and tapped the sardines out onto a white saucer with a soft tap-tap. Then he moved back to his desk and pressed the button that brought the computer back to life. When the machine was purring, not unlike the cat, he punched in his access code and watched the screen fill with folders.

He worked till the clock in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen told him it was two in the morning. He was no more tired than he had been when he first sat down, but he put his notebooks back on the shelves and turned off the computer.

When he turned, the cat was curled atop his dresser asleep. Karpo took his toothbrush, tooth powder, and plastic container with his soap inside, plus a towel, opened his door, and closed it tightly behind him, after which he plucked a single hair from his head and placed it against a small invisible gummy dot on the door. If someone was to enter the room, the movement of the hair would betray them. It was a ritual Karpo followed whenever he left the room for whatever reason.

He walked with even paces to the washroom at the end of the corridor. There was no one inside. He washed, brushed his teeth, and shaved.

When he returned to his room, the cat was still sleeping on the dresser. Karpo stripped and put on a solid black T-shirt and boxer shorts. In the morning, when he rose, he would take a shower and shave again. He would do this in four hours, before anyone else on the floor was awake except for Adamski, who worked in the fish market. When Adamski had moved into the building almost eight years ago, he had run into the detective in the washroom well before the sun rose. Adamski had gone back to his room. He had never made the same mistake again.

A breeze kicked the shade. Karpo lifted the shade. He would be up while darkness still reigned. Karpo turned off the light next to his bed and lay atop the neatly tucked-in blanket.

Seconds after he lay down with his eyes open, the insight had come. The Maniac had made a mistake. Most humans would need to rise and make a note of their discovery or run the risk of losing it. Karpo had no such worry. The morning was soon enough to check his finding and to tell Rostnikov.

“Spakoynay nochi, good night,” he said aloud, realizing less than a second later that he had actually spoken to the cat.

The cat did not reply. Seconds later Emil Karpo was asleep.

“It is almost midnight,” Ivan Medivkin said when Vera Korstov entered her apartment.

“Yes,” she said, placing her red mesh grocery bag on the table. “I have been talking to people, searching for whoever killed your wife and Fedot Babinski.”

She took off her coat, hung it on the hook on the wall between the kitchen area and the front door. She had been gone for eleven hours, yet to Ivan she looked as if she had just arisen. He knew the look, the flow of adrenaline when he met people in the ring who thought they could get past the giant’s paws. Surely the huge man must be slow, easy to hit. Surely they were wrong and paid for it, as they would with Vera.

“What have you found?”

“Four outstanding suspects about whom I would like to ask you some questions.”

“These are. .?”

“Two women who were involved with Babinski and two men who were, apparently, involved with your wife.”

“With Lena? She would never-”

He stopped himself, realizing not only that she would do it but also that she had done it with Babinski. Why not with others?

“I brought vegetables and eggs,” Vera said. “Would you like an omelet?”

“No, yes, not now. In the morning maybe. You know how to find these people?”

“I do. I spoke to them, Ivan Ivanovich,” said Vera, taking the few things she had purchased and putting them away in the kitchen. “Phone numbers, addresses.”

“And you think one of them killed my Lena?”

“And your Fedot Babinski. Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“Ivan, I know people. I have learned to smell fear, anger, regret. I would wager much of what I own that one of them is a murderer. I am going to have bread and gooseberry jam. You sure you do not want any?”

“I will have some.”

“Good, and coffee.”

Vera moved to the small kitchen area where she could prepare the food and see him as they continued to speak.

“Were you all right here?” she asked.

“No,” he said, getting up and looking around the room.

“I will pass what I know on to the police anonymously, and perhaps they will dig a bit more and pick out the murderer from among those on our list. Then you shall be free again.”

“I want to get some sleep,” he said.

“We shall eat our bread and jam and you may go into the bedroom and sleep.”

“Yes,” he said, rubbing his closed eyes with thumb and finger.

“May I ask you a question?” she asked from the kitchen.

“Anything,” he said, folding his huge hands on the table.

“Would you like company in bed?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” he said, accepting knife and platter.

She placed a plate of sliced brown bread and a large jar of jam on the table.

It was at this point that, without understanding why, he had decided to follow through on the enterprise that to this point had only been a vague thought.

If it worked, Ivan Medivkin might soon be either a free man or in prison. He wondered which it would be and then, when he had finished three slices of bread and jam, he thanked Vera and went into her bedroom, where, despite the undersized bed, he fell asleep less than two minutes later.