Red Chameleon

NINE

As the car had struck Posniky, a thought had struck Rostnikov. The driver’s face had been covered with a scarf even in the hot evening, but Rostnikov was sure of two things about that driver. First, that it was a man and not a woman. Second, that it was not an old man. He was also certain, even as the car deposited the body before him, that it had been no accident. The eyes of the driver had not been shrouded by drink. They had been quite cold, quite firm, quite professional.

There was a silent fraction of a second when the world stopped and everyone and everything froze, everything but the dark car speeding away down the avenue. Rostnikov knew from experience that the silent moment was so slight, so nearly imperceptible, that only those who had learned to experience it even noticed it existed. He had never discussed that halting of time with anyone, had savored it secretly, wondered at how many thoughts, ideas, insights, came during that hush. And then it was over.

Women were screaming. The handcuffed American lurched forward and tripped, sprawling hard on his face and smashing his nose. Tkach leaned over to pick him up as Zelach shambled over to the woman who had been hit by the car that had ground the old man to rags. People rushed out of the hotel. One man actually ran down the street after the disappearing automobile. The world, following the silent moment, rushed by, and Rostnikov felt himself moving slowly, letting madness wave past him. He knelt and removed the candlestick from the old man’s dead hand.

“Call an ambulance,” shouted Zelach from the stricken woman whom he was tending. “You,” he said, pointing to one of the hotel clerks who had rushed out. “Call now.”

Martin was on his knees, his nose crushed, eyes wide open, and Tkach was using his own handkerchief to stop the bleeding.

“I must go, Sasha,” Rostnikov said, tucking the candlestick under his right arm.

Tkach looked up from his prisoner with a question but held it back when he saw Rostnikov’s face. The Washtub was somewhere else. For a moment Tkach thought that the chief inspector might be in shock from the hit-and-run, the crushed body, the near miss, but he was sure that what he saw in that worn face was a disturbing thought.

“Where can I reach you?” Tkach said. Already down the street a police car was screeching through the night.

“I’m not sure. I may be at the home of Lev Ostrovsky or at the Moscow Art Theatre, the old one. Old men are dying.”

That old men were dying seemed perfectly normal to Tkach, who was a young man, but he looked at the pieces of bone and flesh that had once been Mikhail Posniky, and he nodded.

Five uniformed policemen appeared from nowhere and began to hold the crowd back. Rostnikov and the candlestick moved past the policemen and into the small crowd. He broke through and found himself moving through a traffic jam.

“What happened?” a fat woman in a gray dress asked him.

“An old man died,” he said absently, and walked on.

He had Lev Ostrovsky’s address in his pocket, but he was closer to the theater and decided to head there first. He was probably too late, but he had to try. Of course, he might be wrong. There were many possibilities. The black car could already have visited Lev Ostrovsky. Or it might now be on its way to find him. Or someone else might be taking care of Ostrovsky. Or Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov might be entirely wrong.

The taxi driver looked at him suspiciously, eyed the heavy package under the arm of the square man with the bad leg, and wondered whether it was a gun or a bar to hit him with and take his money. The driver, whose name was Ivan Ivanov, was very sensitive to the commonness of his name, the anonymity of his existence. There were times when he wondered if anyone would miss one more or less Ivan Ivanov.

“Where?” he said, shifting his roll of rubles from his pocket to the space under the seat cushion.

“Moscow Art Theatre,” Rostnikov said. “I’m a policeman. Hurry.”

Ivan Ivanov looked up in his mirror, examined the face of the man, decided that he was a policeman, and hoped that the five bottles of vodka he had under the seat would not rattle as he drove. He did hurry to the theater, not so much because he wanted to please the dour policeman but to get rid of him.

Rostnikov removed his tie when he got out of the cab and paid the fare. He shoved his change into his trouser pocket along with the tie and headed for the same door through which he had gone before.

This time a pair of men sat at a table just inside the door. One man, lean and gray, wore a cap on his head. The other man, younger, fine featured, sat against the table, his arms folded.

“Police,” Rostnikov said, holding up his identification card.

The gray man shrugged.

“They’re that way, stage. Remind them there’s a performance tonight and we have to set up,” he said, turning back to the younger man, who looked as if he had been interrupted in the middle of a story he wanted to get back to.

“Who’s that way?” said Rostnikov.

“The other policemen.”

“Maybe it’s a police festival, a cultural evening,” said the younger man, looking away from Rostnikov.

“How many of them?” Rostnikov asked. “How many policemen?”

“Two,” said the gray man, rubbing his stubby chin.

Rostnikov hurried down the narrow hallway, following the turns, remembering the way. Behind him he could hear the sound of the younger man’s voice saying something sarcastic, but he couldn’t make it out. When he made the first turn, Rostnikov ripped the brown paper from the candlestick and threw it in a corner. He hurried as quickly as his leg would allow him to the small door that lead to the stage. He held the heavy candlestick up, imagining Posniky using it before Rostnikov was even born to smash the skulls of his victims on the road, imagining Abraham Savitskaya bringing the brass weight down on Posniky on the dock at Riga.

He opened the door as quietly as he could and heard nothing, just the creaks of an old theater. He worked his way up the stairs, which ached beneath him and whimpered his presence like the lyre of Bulba, which gave away the presence of the holy thief in the fairy tale. He held the magic candlestick and followed the dim light, avoiding rope, chairs, and lights as he moved, listening to his own breathing, hearing no voices.

There were a dozen lights on the stage, and the audience area was once again dark. The stage was set. It looked like a garden, a summer-house garden with artificial acacia trees and lilacs covering most of a small house with two windows and a little glass-enclosed porch.

Rostnikov moved slowly onto the stage and put his foot on the steps leading up to the porch. Then he heard something stir inside the door in front of him. He took the next step, held the candlestick above his head in his right hand, and opened the door with his left.

He came very close to bringing the candlestick down on the head of Lev Ostrovsky, who stumbled forward into his arms with a groan. He was bird light, and Rostnikov didn’t even step back from the impact. Rostnikov looked around quickly and knelt to place the old man against the steps.

“Who did this?” Rostnikov whispered, for what had been done was quite evident to Rostnikov simply by looking at the bleached white old face. He had been beaten by someone who had been careful not to touch his face. The thin body was broken around the rib cage. A busy medical examiner would probably think the ancient man had simply stumbled and fallen.

“‘I know,’” he smiled, using his ebbing strength to put his finger to his nose. “‘I’m a cunning fellow. Life gets to be very difficult unless you dissemble. I often play the fool and the innocent who doesn’t know what he’s doing. That helps a lot in keeping all that’s trivial and vulgar at arm’s length.’ ”

“What are you-?”

Ostrovsky looked around, wisps of hair dangling down his forehead. “We’re doing Queer People tonight. Gorky. My favorite. I’m doing Mastakov’s final lines. They suit me.”

“Ostrovsky,” Rostnikov asked again, cradling the old man’s head in his lap. “Who did this?” But the old eyes turned toward the dark seats, and his voice quivered into lines remembered.

“‘Sometimes I appear ludicrous, in spite of myself. I know that. But knowing it, when I notice I’m being ludicrous, I turn this to my advantage, too, as a means of self-defense. You think it’s wrong? Perhaps it is. But it saves one from trivial worries.’ ”

He paused, looked at Rostnikov for a moment, and went on. “‘Life is more interesting and more honest than human beings.’ ”

“Are you still Mastakov?” Rostnikov said gently.

“You couldn’t tell?” asked Ostrovsky in a fading voice, a tiny smile on his lips.

“I couldn’t tell,” said Rostnikov.

“Shmuel Prensky,” the old man said, closing his eyes and licking his dry lips. “Shmuel sent them to kill me. I knew it would happen, but I got to play a death scene.”

“Yes,” said Rostnikov. “You played it beautifully.”

“One more line,” said Ostrovsky, his voice almost gone, his eyes still closed. “Mastakov’s final line. ‘Don’t forgive what I did, but forget it-will you?’ ”

Rostnikov sat, silently feeling the man’s breath grow shallow. The old eyes fluttered, and the detective had to lean forward, his ear almost touching the dry mouth to hear.

“You get the final line,” the old man said. “Elena’s line.”

“What is the line?”

“‘I will,’” came Ostrovsky’s final breath.

“I will not forget,” said Rostnikov to the dead man, placing his head gently on the steps.

In the rear of the dark theater a door opened. A square of light showed two figures who had apparently been listening from the rear of the theater. One of the shadows turned for an instant and faced Rostnikov. It may have been a trick of the distance or the light or his state of mind, but Rostnikov thought the hands of the figure came together in a slow mockery of applause. Then the door closed, and Rostnikov was alone.

Anna Timofeyeva lived not far from the Moscow River in a one-room apartment with her cat Baku. As a deputy procurator, she could have had a larger apartment, a better address, more privacy. The only concession she had made to her status was to request her own toilet and bath. She had used her power for this convenience.

Since her third heart attack, she had received conflicting medical advice on what she should do. Two doctors told her to rest, relax, do as little as possible, lull the damaged heart into dreamy function, not demand too much of it, not make it angry. Treat it, in short, like a delicate bomb implanted in her chest. She preferred the advice of the doctor Porfiry Petrovich had sent, a sullen Jew named Alex who had looked at her dumpy body, examined her stock of food, and told her to get out and walk more each day. First a mile. Next two miles. Eventually four miles. She would not have to do what so many Muscovites were doing-buying American-style jogging suits made in Italy and dashing around the streets almost before the sun came up.

And so she had taken to walking, to seeing Moscow, which she had really never done till now. She would walk, eat carefully, as Doctor Alex had prescribed, and have long talks with Baku. She read, watched a bit of television, and adjusted reasonably well to her idleness after a lifetime of eighteen-hour-a-day dedication to her work, a dedication that had exhausted her body. She didn’t regret her life. On the contrary, she had treated herself like a machine, knowing that the machine could not last forever, would have to be replaced by another machine. She was, however, not particularly pleased by Khabolov, the nonmachine that had replaced her, but that was not her responsibility.

At first, Anna Timofeyeva had worn her uniform on the few occasions when she had reason to go out in public since her last attack. The people in her apartment building who knew her slightly continued to call her comrade procurator, but it soon seemed an act to her, and she had given up the uniform, content instead to wear slacks and loose-fitting men’s shirts. She owned a few dresses but never wore them. Even hanging in the closet, they looked like the clothes of a laundry sack. The thought amused her. Rostnikov was a washtub and she a laundry sack. They had worked well together.

She was sitting at her small table near the window, sharing a dinner of potato broth, bread, and sliced tomatoes with Baku, who purred, closed his eyes, and paused to rub his heavy orange body against her. Then came the knock and she said, “Come in, Porfiry Petrovich,” and in he came.

“You know my knock?” he said, stepping in. Baku looked up suspiciously, recognized him, and went back to his broth.

“That, and I was thinking about you. You want some soup?”

Rostnikov shrugged and placed the candlestick on the table as she got up, pulled a bowl from the nearby small cupboard, and poured him a bowl of soup from the pot on the small burner.

She didn’t ask him if he wanted bread, simply gave him a dark slice.

“A present?” she said, looking at the candlestick.

“You wouldn’t want it,” he said. “If I were religious, I would say it is haunted. Perhaps it must be returned to its rightful owner, but I think that owner is dead.” He dipped a piece of bread into the soup, sopped up the liquid, and then ate it. The soup was unseasoned, though hot. Anna Timofeyeva was not a good cook.

“That’s what you have come to tell me? A fairy tale about a brass candlestick?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve come to ask your advice, perhaps for your help. Three old men are dead. It is somewhat complicated, but two of them were killed by another old man named Shmuel Prensky, a fourth man.”

He paused, but the name of Prensky meant nothing to her.

“Your successor has told me not to pursue this case, that I have been denied access to central files.” He finished his bread by placing a slice of tomato on it and downing the half sandwich in two bites.

“And …” she said while he swallowed his food.

“And I want to get into the files. I want to find Shmuel Prensky.”

He told her the entire story, from the moment he was assigned the case through his finding of the body of Lev Ostrovsky. A look he recognized had come over her. He imagined her back in her office, uniform tight, the picture of Lenin in his monastic room over her head as she weighed possibilities.

“If you go back to Petrovka, you will have to drop the case. Khabolov will dismiss you.”

Rostnikov agreed and reached over to pet Baku, who lay on the table watching him.

“You have dropped the Savitskaya case,” she said. “You can call in and so report. The killer confessed and was run down by a hit-and-run driver. The case is closed. I still have a phone. You can do it from here.”

“And then?” he said.

“Then you pursue the case of the murdered old actor. It is a different case. He gave you the name of Shmuel Prensky.”

“I need the files,” Rostnikov said, sighing.

“And you want me to get them for you,” she said, standing up to remove the dishes. “I have taken to drinking one glass of wine each night. Your doctor, Alex, prescribed it. You’ll have a glass?”

She brought two glasses and a dark bottle from the cupboard.

“It’s Greek wine,” she said. “A gift from the chief procurator, who has, I’m sure, dismissed me from his mind, which is understandable. He has not, however, revoked my privileges, as you well know.”

“So,” he said, taking the wine she poured for him in a kitchen glass.

“So, I will do it. We will get a taxi after you call in, and I will go to the central files. If the name of Shmuel Prensky is there, I will find it. I warn you, I am very poor with those computers. If the information is new, I probably will have difficulty with it.”

“This is an old man, comrade Anna, a very old man. His deeds are buried in Soviet antiquity.”

She shrugged and smiled, happy to be active.

“Make your call and watch the television. I may be an hour or more.”

Before she left, he called Petrovka and left a message for the assistant procurator, indicating that the killer of Abraham Savitskaya had almost accidentally fallen into his lap and that the case was now ended and he was going out for dinner and a movie. The operator at Petrovka indicated that Procurator Khabolov was trying to reach him, but Rostnikov sighed and said he would come to see the assistant procurator first thing in the morning.

After Anna Timofeyeva left, he stroked Baku, who leaped heavily onto his lap, sipped Greek wine, and watched a travel show on the television. The show was about Hong Kong and made the Oriental city look like a vast, noisy illuminated toy. He wanted to visit Hong Kong now almost as much as he wanted to see America.

After an hour he called home and told Sarah he was working late. She told him Josef had called and would be in for a short visit in a few days. She sounded genuinely happy, and Rostnikov sensed that things were going better for him at home. Sarah also said that calls had come every half hour for Rostnikov to get in touch with Procurator Khabolov.

“I have called in,” he said. “I will see Comrade Khabolov in the morning. Meanwhile, I must eat, perhaps take in a show, and pursue another case for at least a few hours.”

Sarah said, “I understand,” and by the way she said it, he was sure that she did, indeed, understand. Their phone had been tapped since his unsuccessful attempt to blackmail the KGB into letting him emigrate to the United States. While the tap was often an inconvenience, it could sometimes be used to bolster his lies and deceptions. He hung up the phone to wait.

Anna Timofeyeva came back almost three hours after she had left and found Rostnikov dozing in a straight-backed chair with Baku asleep on his lap. She sat down in front of him and shook his right leg.

“I’m awake,” he said without opening his eyes. “You had trouble?”

“I had trouble,” she said, and his eyes opened. “The traces of Shmuel Prensky are very old, comrade, very old. References to him exist going back to 1932. He held minor positions in the Stalin rise, and then he disappeared. He was a Jew. Many Jews disappeared. You know that.”

“But now he has appeared again.” Rostnikov sighed, placing Baku gently on the chair he vacated.

“I’ll do more tomorrow,” she said. “The records are old. The strings are thin. The boxes heavy. The clerks irritable.”

“Thank you, Anna Timofeyeva,” he said, going to the door.

“We’ll talk tomorrow, Porfiry Petrovich,” she said. “It felt good to be active. I’ll walk an extra mile tomorrow.”

He waved his candlestick to her and the cat and left.

Rostnikov’s initial plan was to walk home. It was about four miles, but the sky was now clear and the evening cool. He walked, candlestick under his arm, unaware of the people who moved out of his path, deep in thought. He had gone no more than a mile when he knew his leg would permit no further exercise. Besides, he longed for, needed, his weights, needed the strain of muscle to clear the wine and confusion. As he turned his head, looking for the light of the metro station he had just passed, a cab pulled up to the curb.

Through the open window, the cab driver, wearing a black cap, called, “You want a cab?”

Rostnikov opened the door, got in wearily, sat back with his candlestick, and closed his eyes. The cab eased into the night traffic and jostled him comfortably. Less than ten minutes later, the cab pulled up in front of Rostnikov’s apartment building. Instead of paying, Rostnikov sat silently waiting, looking at the back of the cab driver’s head. Rostnikov had not given the driver a destination, had not given his address. He had waited for the man to ask, but when the question had not come, he had sat back to absorb and wait, the candlestick ready in his hand.

“Tomorrow morning at six, no later,” the driver said. “You are to report to KGB headquarters. You are not to leave your apartment tonight. Colonel Drozhkin will be expecting you.”

Rostnikov got out of the cab without offering to pay and made his way wearily through the door and up the stairs.