Red Chameleon

THREE

Rostnikov didn’t get home to his apartment on Krasikov Street till almost eight. He had spent the day on the case of the old Jew who had been murdered. Normally, other cases, problems, requests, needs, public testimony, would take up his time, intrude so that a murder like this would drag on and probably be forgotten. But Rostnikov had plenty of time and no distractions, since the assistant procurator was keeping him isolated from the mainstream of activity at Petrovka.

From the records he could check and a few phone calls, Rostnikov had discovered that Abraham Savitskaya had been born in the village of Yekteraslav in 1902. Savitskaya had immigrated to the United States in 1919, just as the Revolution had begun. He had returned to Russia in 1924. Somehow Savitskaya had been given a series of minor but secure positions on the fringe of the Party. For six years he had been a clerk with the Soviet War Veterans Committee. After that he had been listed for almost a dozen years as a caretaker for the Committee for Physical Culture and Sport of the USSR Council of Ministers. In 1935, at the age of thirty-three, Abraham had been retired with a pension as the result of disability. Rostnikov had not been able to discover the nature of the disability. It was a slightly peculiar background, but Rostnikov had encountered life stories far more peculiar.

At the scarred desk in his small office, Rostnikov had stared at the photograph of the four men in a small village taken sixty-five years ago. There was so little of the dead old man in the photograph that he wondered how anyone could possibly identify one of the other men all these years later as Sofiya Savitskaya had done. They were probably all dead. The life expectancy of Russians was not officially published, but it was surely less than seventy-five years. Only the best-fed men in the government and the primitives in the Caucasus who stuffed themselves with goat milk and runny yogurt lived that long.

After a few minutes, the four young men in the picture began to look familiar to Rostnikov. First, the one on the left, the thinnest, with the cap, reminded Rostnikov of one of the men who swept the halls in Petrovka on alternate nights. The man next to him looked suspiciously like the famous clown Popoff, though Popoff was now almost two decades younger than the man in the photograph. Rostnikov had taken the photograph and left it for Zelach to have copies made. It was possible Rostnikov would never get the photograph back, let alone the copies. Even had the word not gotten out that for some unspecified reason Rostnikov was no longer privileged, the system was painfully slow unless the case had a special red stamp indicating that it was being conducted in conjunction with a KGB investigation. No one talked to Rostnikov about his lowered status. They assumed, he was sure, that he had spoken up once too often or that his Jewish wife had finally proved too great a deficit.

Getting up the stairs in his apartment building was long and difficult with an almost useless left leg, but Rostnikov looked at the daily climb as part of his training program. It was amazing how, if he wanted to do so, he could convert the difficulties of normal Moscow life into advantages. A lack of elevators in the city meant climbing stairs. In long lines at stores, Rostnikov could read his American novels. Without a car, Rostnikov had to take the subway and walk miles each week. Others argued that the hard life of a Muscovite made its inhabitants strong, tough, and hard, while Americans, English, and the French were soft from too much convenience. Why, then, Rostnikov thought, do we not live as long as they do? His thoughts had grown morbid, and his mind was wandering. He did not see the young man coming down the stairway who turned a corner on the third floor and almost collided with him.

Rostnikov staggered back, almost falling, and the boy, large, wearing a black T-shirt and American jeans, hurried past him without apology. Rostnikov, who didn’t recognize the boy, reached back with his right hand and clasped his right hand over the boy’s shoulder.

“What are you doing, you crazy old fool?” the boy said, trying to wriggle out of the firm grasp. The boy was about seventeen, the same age as the young men in the photograph he had spent more than an hour looking at that day, but this boy was bigger, better fed.

“Who are you?” Rostnikov said, still holding the wall with one hand to keep from being pulled off balance.

“Let me-” the boy began, but Rostnikov dug his hand into the shoulder and lifted the boy up, off the stairs. The face before Rostnikov changed from angry defiance to startled, pale fear.

“Who are you?” Rostnikov repeated.

“My shoulder,” the boy squealed.

“You are whose?” Rostnikov repeated, not particularly happy with himself and realizing that he might well be taking out on this rude boy his frustration with a system and situation over which the boy had no control.

“Pavel Nuretskov,” the boy said.

Rostnikov put him down but still gripped the shoulder. “You are related to the Nuretskovs on the sixth floor?”

“Their nephew,” the boy said, trying to remove Rostnikov’s hairy fingers from his shoulder with no success.

“You are rude,” Rostnikov said. “We are living in rude times.”

“Okay,” the boy said, giving up on removing the fingers.

“Okay?”

“We are living in rude times,” Pavel agreed.

“If you see me again,” Rostnikov said softly, “you will say good evening or good morning, comrade.”

Rostnikov released the shoulder, and the boy hurried down the stairs, rubbing his shoulder, and hissing back, “Only if you can catch me, lame foot.”

“You catch more with patience than speed,” Rostnikov said softly, knowing even a whisper would carry down the stairway and knowing that the disembodied whisper would be more frightening than a bellow. Rostnikov never shouted. When suspects or superiors shouted, Rostnikov always dropped his voice slightly till they wore down or became quiet so they could hear him. Patience was his primary weapon.

Sarah was home and had a meal on the wooden kitchen table: sour cabbage in vinegar and oil, smoked fish, and brown bread with tea.

Something had gone out of Sarah since Rostnikov’s plan to leave Russia had failed. She had put on a few pounds, and her generally serious round and handsome face smiled even less than it had previously. She had lost her job in a music shop and was having trouble finding another, though she was now working a bit for one of her many cousins who sold pots and pans. Rostnikov’s salary had been badly strained for almost two months.

“Josef?” he asked, hanging up his jacket and moving to the table. “Did he write?”

“No,” she said. “And we can’t tell. We haven’t the money.”

“I’ll call him tomorrow from Petrovka,” Rostnikov said, avoiding her eyes and tearing off a chunk of brown bread. “He’s all right.”

“He’s a soldier,” she said with a shrug, sitting with her hands in her lap, watching her husband eat. “I might have a job next week. Katerina knows someone, a manager at the foreign secondhand bookstore on Kachalov Street.”

Rostnikov paused, his hand on the way to his mouth with a glass of tepid tea. The prospect of his wife’s working for the foreign bookstore lightened his heart for an instant. What was it the English writer Shakespeare said? he thought. “Like lark at break of day arising from the sullen earth.” Shakespeare should have been a Russian.

“That’s wonderful,” he said, “but-”

The “but” was inevitable, part of the protective response of all Russians even when their prospects were better than those of Sarah Rostnikov. Hope was reasonable, but never expect the hope to be fruitful.

After dinner, Rostnikov lifted his weights for an hour, wearing the torn white shirt with “1983 Moscow Senior Championship” printed on it. He knew Sarah considered his wearing the shirt a childish remnant of his moment of triumph a month earlier when he had won the senior park championship. At the same time, he was sure she did not begrudge him his childishness.

The weight-lifting routine was a ritual involving the patient shifting of weights after each exercise, because Rostnikov did not have enough weights to leave them on the bars for each session. Thus, whatever weight and routine he ended a workout with became the first routine of his next workout.

He was just finishing his two-handed curls when the knock came at the door. The windows of the apartment were wide open, and a slight breeze had rippled the curtains occasionally but not altered the heat. Sarah sat across the room, watching something on television, but when Rostnikov looked up at her, he had been sure that she was absorbing nothing she saw on the screen.

His eyes had been on her when the knock came, and she had given a little start of fear.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said as the knock came again. He put down the bar and crossed the room. There was a pause and another knock. The knocks were not loud and demanding, nor were they sly and obsequious. They were not the knocks of timid neighbors or aggressive KGB men.

When he opened the door, Zelach’s hand was raised, unsure of whether to knock again. His broad and not bright face looked relieved to see Rostnikov before him, sweating, hair plastered down on his forehead.

“I didn’t mean to-”

“Come in, Zelach,” he said, stepping back.

“This is my wife, Sarah,” he said, nodding toward her.

Zelach smiled painfully.

“Tea?” she said.

“I-”

“You may have tea, Zelach, while you tell me why you are here,” Rostnikov said, returning to his workout.

“I-”

“And you may sit.”

Zelach looked around for someplace to sit, pulled out a kitchen chair, and sat straight and awkward.

“You have something to tell me, or is this simply your first social call?” Rostnikov asked, wiping his wet forehead with his sleeve as he finished his curls. Sarah handed Zelach a cup of tea.

“The photograph,” he said. “I made the calls. There is an old woman in Yekteraslav who remembers Savitskaya. I called the district police. My cousin’s wife’s brother is a sergeant. He went to the village and called me back.”

“Why didn’t you just call us?” Sarah said politely.

“I was working late,” Zelach said. “Inspector Rostnikov said-”

“I appreciate your conscientiousness, Zelach,” Rostnikov said, wiping his forehead with his sleeve and moving forward to pat the man’s shoulder. Zelach smiled and gulped down his tea. “Tomorrow you and I will take a journey to Yekteraslav on the electrichka. We’ll take sandwiches and talk to old ladies. Perhaps we’ll wander in the fields of wheat.”

Zelach looked puzzled.

“They grow soybeans in that area now. My cousin’s-”

“Poetry eludes you, Zelach. Did you know that?” Rostnikov said.

“I know,” Zelach said. “I was always better in numbers in school, though I was none too good in that.”

“Go home now,” Rostnikov said, leading Zelach to the door. “You’ve done well.”

Zelach smiled and looked around for someplace to put his empty teacup now that he was half a dozen feet from the table. Rostnikov took it with a nod and ushered the man out the door, giving Zelach just enough time to say a polite good-bye to Sarah.

When the door was closed, he turned to his wife.

“Is it important?” she said with a touch of curiosity he wanted to catch, nurture, and use.

“An old man was murdered this morning,” he said. “An old Jewish man.”

“And someone cares?” she said with what might have been sarcasm, a mode Rostnikov had seldom seen in his wife.

“I care,” said Rostnikov softly, though in truth it was less that he cared about the gnarled old man than about the man’s children, especially the woman with the bad leg and the edge of madness to her eyes. And, in truth, it was a case. Somewhere there was a man or woman, men or women, who had committed a crime. The crime had been handed to Rostnikov, and his skill was being challenged by the criminal, possibly by the procurator, and certainly by himself.

“I care,” he repeated, and moved toward the bedroom and the shower stall beyond, which he hoped would deliver warm water but from which he expected only a cool dip.

After Vera Shepovik had fired her rifle from the roof of the Ukraine Hotel, she had not wept. She had sobbed in frustration when the gun had jammed after the first shot. Vera’s plan had been to kill as many people as possible in case she was caught. She had seen the porter come through the door, weaving slightly, and had backed into the shadows, away from the edge, behind a stone turret. She had wept again in frustration, because she wanted desperately to shoot the obviously drunken little man. For a moment she even considered leaping from behind the protective bricks, beating the man to death with her rifle, and throwing him down to the street. It would have been a minor inconvenience. Vera was a robust woman, a muscular woman who at the age of forty had been an athlete, skilled at both the javelin and hammer. In 1964, she had just missed the Olympic team. That had been the highlight of her life. The lows had been far more plentiful.

First Stefan had been killed. They had told her it was an accident, but it had been no accident. It had been the first step in the conspiracy against her, a conspiracy by the state, the KGB, the police. She knew the reason, too. The steroids. They had urged her to take those steroids for competition and to prepare her for the Olympics. Now, even twenty years later, they were still warning her to keep her quiet, to keep her from creating an international scandal that might ruin the reputation of the Soviet athletic system. They had, of course, lied to her. One doctor had said she needed psychiatric help, but it was not a psychiatrist she needed; besides, the state didn’t believe in psychoanalysis.

No, there was no one to trust. First it had been Stefan they had pushed in front of the metro at the Kurskaya station. Then her father had been murdered. They had said it was a heart attack, that he was seventy-eight years old, drank too much, smoked too much, but she knew the truth. One by one, as a warning to her, they had murdered people she knew. Sometimes they were very subtle. Nikolai Repin, whom she had gone to school with, was dead of some unknown cause. She was told this by another old acquaintance she happened to meet in front of the National Restaurant on Gorky Street. Vera had not seen Nikolai for at least ten years, but this woman, whose name she could not recall, had happened to meet her, had happened to mention his death. Vera was no fool. The meeting had not been by chance. It had been planned, another warning. She had been careful, so careful not to let them know, not to let her mother know of the conspiracy around her. Vera knew they were trying to poison the air in her small apartment, and so for years she had set up a tent in her room, a tent of blankets held up by chairs and the kitchen table. There was ample air under the blanket for the night, though there was always the slight smell of poison in the room each morning, and in the summer it had been almost unbearably hot under the blanket. Her mother had survived miraculously, probably because she had grown immune to the poison. Luck.

Vera had checked her food carefully for years, feeding a bit to Gorki, her cat, before she ate it. She never ate out where they could slip something in.

And then they had gotten through her defenses. Vera wasn’t sure how they had done it, probably through special rays in the wall. It didn’t matter. They had done it. For almost a year she had kept quiet about the pains in her stomach. Once in a hospital, she was sure they would simply cut her open, remove the remnants of the steroids, and let her die, stomach open, no one caring. They would stuff a rag in her mouth and wheel her into the corner to die, possibly shunt her body into a little closet. They didn’t care. She had no use, no value. Then they had finally gotten her into a hospital when she collapsed at the box factory where she worked. The doctor who examined her said Vera had stomach cancer. Vera did not weep. No one would see her weep. They all looked at her with curiosity, as if she were some specimen, some experiment that had gone wrong and now would not quietly die so she could be swept into the garbage.

The doctor had recommended surgery, but Vera had declined. The doctor had not seemed to care. No one seemed to care about Vera. As far as they were concerned, she was already dead, taken care of, gone, swept into the garbage. But they were wrong. They had killed her, but they had made the mistake of not finishing the job.

The Moisin rifle had been her father’s in the war. It was too large, too awkward, and she wasn’t sure the rifle would work. The bullets were so old. Her father had sometimes taken her hunting when she was a child, and she had been a natural shooter. The idea was simple. She would pay them back, make them realize what they had done. Those people who walked past her, unsmiling, uncaring. She had become a pawn of the state and then had been cast out, and they had been reasonable, all of them who walked past and didn’t care what the old men who ran the country did to innocent people like Vera. If she could, she would put a bullet into every solid Soviet face in Moscow, but what she wanted most was to destroy the authorities who conspired against her-police, KGB, the military.

She wept with fury each time she climbed a hotel roof, her rifle hidden in that idiotic trombone case. She had avoided elevators and made the painful trek upward through stairways, fire escapes. And then the rifle, the damned rifle, always had something wrong with it. She had now shot five people. That she knew, but she had no idea of whether she had killed them or not. The newspapers never carried stories on such things. But she knew she had hit them. She had watched them go down. She wanted them dead. They had expected her to be dead in a few months, but it was they who had died first. Each shot was justice.

She could have leaped out that night and killed the porter, but she could not count on her stomach to allow her to make the run. In addition, had she thrown him to the street, someone below might have realized where the shots originated, and the police might come after her, catch her before she was finished.

“What are you doing, Verochka?” her mother called across the room. The old woman was embroidering near the window to catch the sun before it was gone.

Vera had told her mother nothing of the cancer, nothing of her frustration, her anger, her fear.

“Thinking,” Vera said.

“Thinking,” her mother repeated.

The two were a contrast. The mother, a small round creature with scraggly white hair and thick glasses, the daughter, massive, with a severe pink face and brown hair tied back with hairpins. Vera was more like her father, at least her father when he had been younger.

“Thinking about people,” Vera said.

Her mother shrugged, not wanting to pursue the thoughts of the daughter she had long ago given up as mad. There was no recourse, no treatment, for the mad in Moscow other than to lock them up. Vera could still work, though she had begun to look pale and had talked less and less each day. Adriana Shepovik was well aware of her daughter’s obsession with the old rifle, but she didn’t question it. The thing certainly didn’t work. The girl had probably been trying from time to time to sell the gun, though Adriana doubted if anyone would buy the piece of junk.

“I’m going out,” Vera said, suddenly getting up.

“Eat something.”

“I’ll eat when I get back,” Vera said, reaching down to pet Gorki, who had rubbed against her leg.

Vera went to the closet near the door and reached behind the heavy curtain for the trombone case. She kept her back to the old woman, though she doubted if the woman could see that far.

“I may be home late,” Vera said.

Her mother grunted and plunged the needle into the orange material on her lap.

“Very late,” Vera repeated, opening the front door and stepping out.

It was possible, Vera thought, that she might not return all night. She was determined this time not to be impatient. The pain in her stomach was growing each day, and the medicine she had been given had helped less and less. The day might come soon when Vera would not be able to go out, climb to the roofs of Moscow, and find justice.

No, tonight she would wait patiently even if it took till dawn. She would wait until she could get a good shot at a policeman.

The electrichka had been fast and not particularly crowded. It had been an off hour for travel, around ten when Rostnikov and Zelach left. The ride to Yekteraslav took about an hour, during which Zelach tried to carry on a conversation while Rostnikov grunted and attempted to read his Ed McBain book.

There was no stop at Yekteraslav. They had to get off at Sdminkov. When they left the train, Rostnikov’s left leg was almost totally numb. A taxi stood near the station, and Rostnikov limped toward it, with Zelach in front.

“Busy,” growled the stubble-faced driver whose curly gray hair billowed around his face. He did not bother to turn toward the two men.

“Police,” said Zelach, getting in and sliding over.

“I’m still-” the driver said wearily, without turning.

Rostnikov reached over after he got in and put his hand on the driver’s shoulder.

“What is your name?”

The man winced in pain and turned to face his two passengers. Fear appeared in his eyes.

“I–I thought you were lying,” the man said, the smell of fish on his breath. “Smart city people say they are everything to get a cab. I’m supposed to wait here each day for Comrade-”

“Yekteraslav,” Rostnikov said, releasing the man so he could massage his shoulder.

“But I-” the man protested.

Rostnikov was already leaning back in the uncomfortable seat with his eyes closed. He would massage his leg as soon as the man started.

“Yekteraslav,” Zelach repeated, looking out the window.

The driver looked at his two passengers in the mirror and decided against argument.

Fifteen minutes later, after rumbling over a stone road in need of repair, the driver grumbled, “Yekteraslav.”

Rostnikov opened his eyes and looked out the window at a looming three-story factory belching smoke on the town’s thirty or forty houses and sprinkling of isbas, the old wooden houses without toilets.

“Where?” the driver said.

“Police headquarters,” Zelach said.

The driver hurried on.

The bureaucracy of the local police delayed them for half an hour and did little to ease their way to the home of Yuri Pashkov. To say the home was modest would be kind. It was little better than a shack with a small porch on which an ancient man was seated on a wooden chair, watching, as the two heavy policemen ambled forward. The sad-faced younger man deferred to the slightly older man with the bad leg. Yuri was intrigued by the older man, but he showed nothing.

“You are Yuri Pashkov?” Zelach asked.

“I am well aware of who I am,” the old man said, looking away at the fascinating spectacle of the factory.

“Would you rather have this conversation at the police station?” Zelach said, stepping onto the porch. Yuri shrugged and looked up at the man.

“You want to carry me to police headquarters, carry me,” the old man said.

“Your tongue will get you in trouble,” Zelach warned, falling back on the threats of his trade.

“Ha,” Yuri cackled. “I’m eighty-five years old. What have you to threaten me with? My family is gone. This shack is a piece of shit. Threaten. Go ahead. Threaten.”

Rostnikov stepped up on the small porch into the slight shade from the wooden slats above.

“What kind of factory have you here?” he said.

“Vests.”

Rostnikov glanced at the old man in the chair. The lines on his face were amazingly deep and leathery.

“Vests?” Rostnikov asked, sensing the man’s favorite subject.

“Vests,” the old man said, pausing to spit into the dirt near Zelach, who stepped back. “We used to farm around here, and now they have us working in a factory, and what do we make in that factory?”

“Vests,” said Rostnikov.

“Exactly,” said Yuri, recognizing a kindred spirit. “What dignity is there in a man’s life when he has spent it sewing buttons on vests to be worn by Hungarians or Italians.”

“None,” Rostnikov agreed.

“None,” Yuri said. “And so they make vests without heart, spirit, need. You know what kind of vests they make?”

“Vests of poor quality,” Rostnikov guessed, glancing at Zelach, who clearly ached to shake the old rag of a man into a cooperation that would never come.

“Vests of paper, toilet paper, vests not fit to wipe one’s ass with,” the old man said with venom, spit forming on his mouth, eyes turned always toward the factory.

“It wasn’t always like this,” Rostnikov said softly.

“There were times,” the old man said.

“Long ago,” Rostnikov agreed.

“Long ago,” Yuri agreed.

“I understand you remember a man named Abraham Savitskaya who was here a long time ago,” Rostnikov said, not looking at the man.

“I don’t remember.”

Zelach stepped forward, whipped the photograph from his pocket, and thrust it in front of the wrinkled face.

“That,” said Zelach, “is you. And that is Savitskaya.”

“And you are Comrade Shit,” the old man said sweetly.

“Zelach,” Rostnikov said firmly before the sweating, weary policeman could crush the dry old man. “Walk back to the police station, arrange for a car to get us to the station in time to catch the next train.”

Zelach’s face displayed a rush of thought: first the consideration of defiance and then its quick suppression, followed by petulance, and finally resignation.

When Zelach had gone, Rostnikov leaned against the wall and said nothing.

“What happened to your leg?”

“Battle of Rostov,” Yuri said. “I still have poison gas in my lungs. I can taste it when I belch.”

They watched the factory a while longer before the old man spoke again.

“Some didn’t stay around to face the troubles, the Germans, the Revolution.”

“Some?” Rostnikov tried gently.

“Savitskaya,” he said. “Savitskaya and Mikhail.”

“Mikhail?”

“Mikhail Posniky,” the old man said. “After the first Revolution, they fled.”

“Mikhail Posniky is the third man in the photograph?”

Yuri shrugged, the closest he would come to cooperation.

“What happened to him?”

“They left, said they were going to America. Who knows? We were supposed to be friends, but they ran like cowards.”

“They should have stayed,” Rostnikov agreed.

“To make vests?” said the old man.

“To fight the Nazis,” Rostnikov answered.

“Who knew in 1920 the Nazis were coming?” the old man said, looking at his feebleminded police guest.

“Who knew?” Rostnikov agreed. “And the fourth man?”

Pashkov shrugged and shivered. “I don’t know.”

Rostnikov was sure, however, that the man did know. His face had paled, and he had folded his hands on his lap. His arthritic fingers had held each other to keep from trembling.

“You are Jewish,” Rostnikov said.

“Ah,” Yuri said, laughing. “I knew it was coming. It always comes. I fought. This village fought. And you people come and-”

“The four of you were Jewish?” Rostnikov said, stepping in front of the old man and cutting off his view of the factory.

“Some of us still are,” Pashkov said defiantly. “Those of us who are alive, at least one, me.” He pointed a gnarled finger at his own chest.

“The fourth man,” Rostnikov repeated. “Who is he?”

“I forget,” Pashkov said, showing yellow teeth barely rooted to his gums.

“You forget nothing,” Rostnikov said, looking down.

“I forget what I must forget. I’m a very old man.”

“A name,” Rostnikov said, and then softly added, “My wife is Jewish.”

“You lie, comrade policeman,” the old man said.

Rostnikov reached into his back pocket with a grunt, removed his wallet, and fished through it till he found the picture of Sarah and his identification papers. He handed them to the old man.

“You could have prepared these just to fool me?” he said, handing the photograph and papers back to the man who blocked his view of the loved and hated factory.

“I could have,” Rostnikov agreed. “But I didn’t, and you know I didn’t.”

“I know,” Pashkov said, painfully rising, using the side of the house to help him to a level of near dignity. “He was not a pleasant boy.”

“And you are afraid?”

“Vests,” Yuri Pashkov spat, coming to a decision. “His name was Shmuel Prensky. Beyond that I know nothing. He cooperated with the Stalinist pishers who came here in, I don’t know, 1930, ’31. He helped them. … I have nothing more to say.”

“You were afraid of him?” Rostnikov said, stepping out of the man’s line of sight.

“I’m still afraid of him,” Yuri whispered. “May you carry my damnation for bringing his name and memory back to me, for reminding me of those dark eyes that betrayed his own people. I damn you for bringing that photograph.”

Rostnikov stepped back and let the trembling man return to his chair and to his thoughts of useless vests and distant Italians wearing them.

There was nothing more to say. Rostnikov had two names now, and if Sofiya Savitskaya was right in her identification, the name of the killer of her father was Mikhail Posniky.

“The other man in the photograph,” Rostnikov tried, hoping to catch the old man before he was completely lost. “The little man with the smile in the photograph.”

“Lev, Lev Ostrovsky,” Yuri answered, sighing. “The clown, the actor.”

“Actor?”

“He stayed through the troubles and moved to Moscow.” The word Moscow came out like the spit of a dry, dirty word. “He left to become an actor. His father had been the rabbi here. But we had no need for rabbis or the sons of rabbis when Shmuel Prensky and his friends …”

He never finished the sentence. His eyes closed and then his mouth, hiding what little remained of lips. The sun was hot and high, and Rostnikov was tired and hungry. The walk to the police station was far and dry, but Porfiry Petrovich did not mind. He had some names to work with. He wanted to hurry back to Moscow, for it was there a survivor existed who might provide a link in the puzzle of the murder of Abraham Savitskaya.