Red Chameleon

FIVE

Since Sergeant Petrov was a police officer, a member of the military police and not the procuracy, Colonel Snitkonoy, the Gray Wolfhound, had to be dealt with. Colonel Snitkonoy was outraged, incensed, furious, and prepared to fuss and fume for hours if need be until serious attention was paid to him.

There was a time, Rostnikov knew, when the colonel had indeed been a wolfhound, had pursued criminals with vengeance in his heart and blood on his teeth. The Gray Wolfhound was a marked contrast to Porfiry the Washtub, his counterpart. Snitkonoy was tall, with distinguished gray temples, slender but not thin, the sculpted features of a Rublev painting. He was impressive, never a line askew on his bemedaled uniform. Even the medals were lean and orchestrated, not a double line of cartoon festoonery but a discrete trio of ribbons chosen for their color rather than their import.

The Gray Wolfhound was indeed impressive, but he had become essentially hollow. The administration of the military police had changed around him; it had, in the course of fifteen years, become more bureaucratic and, in some ways, more efficient. Snitkonoy looked like, and was, a remnant of a past era. The chiseled Sherlockian profile now seemed almost comic, and Snitkonoy found himself being used increasingly as a figurehead for public gatherings, an actor to be presented to visiting dignitaries.

Foreign visitors, at least those not experienced at such deception, left Moscow, after having met Snitkonoy, convinced that they had experienced the rare privilege of an audience with a great and busy man. One enchanted Bulgarian had even gone back to Sofia and penned a novel using a distinctly Snitkonoy-like figure as the protagonist.

Porfiry Petrovich sat quietly, hands folded on the conference-room table, and listened to the Gray Wolfhound. It was still early on Friday morning, though Rostnikov had already met with Zelach, Karpo, and Tkach briefly in his own small office. He had assigned Zelach to a new task that would keep him out of the way, had impressed Tkach with the importance of finding Comrade Khabolov’s Chaika, and had offered his assistance to Emil Karpo, who had indicated that he would do whatever the procurator thought best in the case of the weeping sniper. Rostnikov’s stomach had rumbled, bringing a nervous laugh from Zelach. It had been the only moment of levity in the brief meeting before Porfiry Petrovich and Karpo had to attend the meeting in the conference room in the second tower of Petrovka.

“The resources of the entire militia will be mobilized for this effort,” the Wolfhound said, striking his palm against the polished table for emphasis. Rostnikov had already lifted his cup from the table in anticipation of the gesture. He had been to other conferences hosted by the Wolfhound, and he knew it was coming. Karpo, at his side, had no tea, and most of the others in the room, five of them, had also been to conferences with the most famous member of the military police. Only one drowsy newly appointed man of about fifty with a pink face and round cheeks was taken in by the performance. His full cup of tea tottered and overflowed. The pink man leaned over to wipe the table with his sleeve.

Porfiry Petrovich leaned over to make a note on his pad of ragged paper, a move that pleased Snitkonoy. The note read, “The entire militia running around on Gorky Street, bumping into each other, possibly killing more people than the Weeper.” He drew two stick figures of uniformed policemen bumping into each other and then he crossed them out. The image of Petrov’s face began to form on the paper. Rostnikov sighed and found himself drawing a candlestick.

“Questions?” the Wolfhound said, folding his arms and looking around the table.

“What, precisely, is the militia doing?” asked the newcomer with the pink face.

The proper question, Rostnikov thought, was “What are we wasting our time here for?”

The Gray Wolfhound smirked knowingly, as if the pink-faced man’s question was the one he expected. He turned to the map of Moscow behind him on the wall and began to point to buildings as he spoke.

“For the next three weeks an armed officer will be placed atop the Ukraine Hotel, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance Building, the Mir Hotel on Kalinin Prospekt, the Moskva Hotel on Sverdlov Square, the Izvestia building on Gorky Street, all the buildings from which it is believed the Weeper had fired. This, on the assumption that he will return to one of them as he has apparently returned to the Ukraine Hotel. Further questions?”

“Did Sergeant Petrov have a family?” Rostnikov asked, looking up from his doodles.

“I don’t know,” said the Wolfhound, rubbing his palms together. “How is that relevant?”

Instead of answering, Rostnikov merely shrugged. The Gray Wolfhound was not someone he had to appease.

“We will catch our sniper within the week, two weeks at the latest,” Snitkonoy said, right palm to his chest. “This I personally promise.”

“We are reassured,” said Rostnikov, putting the finishing touches to the cube he was shading in. Snitkonoy had made such promises before. On one or two occasions, he had actually succeeded in keeping the promise, though the success had little to do with the colonel.

“We’ve talked enough,” Snitkonoy said, glancing at Rostnikov, whom he clearly could not fathom. “Comrades, it’s time to work.”

The pink man rose and then looked around in embarrassment when no one else moved. He sat down quickly as everyone else in the room except for Karpo and Rostnikov got up. The others had expected Snitkonoy to try to hold on to his audience, but possibly the disturbing presence of the Washtub had dissuaded him. The Wolfhound was the first out of the room. His gait had been martial, determined, as if he were on the way to do personal battle with the Weeper. In fact, as everyone but the pink man knew, the Wolfhound would head back to his office to wait until he was needed to perform another ceremonial public act.

When the room had cleared, the pink man stood and addressed Rostnikov and Karpo.

“We have not been introduced, comrades. I am Sergei Yefros of the Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee.”

And what, thought Rostnikov, are you doing at this meeting!

“I don’t know why I was told to come to this meeting,” the pink-faced little man said apologetically in answer to the unstated but obvious question. “I think there may have been some mistake.”

“Impossible,” said Rostnikov sternly. “We don’t make mistakes. Colonel Snitkonoy makes no mistakes.”

“No,” the man said, shuffling sideways toward the door and pointing to his own chest with his open palm. “I meant I made a mistake. I … made … I made a mistake. Do you see?”

“That,” Rostnikov conceded, “is possible.” And the man plunged through the door, leaving Rostnikov and Karpo alone in the room. For a full minute the two men sat in silence, Rostnikov with his lips pursed, looking for the answer to a murder in the crude candlestick he had drawn; Karpo trying to think of nothing-and almost succeeding.

“Two questions, Comrade Karpo,” Rostnikov said with a sigh. “First, why would someone murder an old man and take only a brass candlestick.”

Karpo did not for an instant consider that Rostnikov’s question might be a joke. Karpo had no sense of what a joke might be. He knew that other people engaged in non sequiturs, incongruities, insults, physical misdemeanors, at which they laughed or smiled. He had never understood the process or function of comedy. And so he answered where others might have been wary.

“It is unlikely that the murder was committed for the candlestick,” Karpo said, looking straight ahead, “but that you know.”

Rostnikov nodded and kept drawing.

“Was the candlestick new, old, very old?”

“Very old,” Rostnikov said. “Perhaps a hundred years or more, but probably not an antique of any value, certainly not enough value for a well-dressed foreigner to covet.”

“Then,” concluded Karpo, “it could have been a trick, a ploy to lead us into thinking that it was important, to send us looking in the wrong direction, which would be very foolish and very clever at the same time.”

“Foolish?”

“Because,” said Karpo evenly, “we will pursue both the candlestick and the man. We will rely on no assumed link between the two but pursue both. We have the advantage of not tiring.”

Rostnikov looked at Karpo and the map of Moscow. Almost eight million people, the fourth largest city in the world, Moscow on the map looked like the cross-section of a log or tree stump, the rings of which tell its age-the Kremlin at the center, around it five rings, each historically marking where the city’s boundaries were centuries ago, on which were built wooden palisades, stone walls, and earthen ramparts. In those days it was only possible to enter Moscow through special gates built into the battlements.

The second ring, the Boulevard Ring, is lined with trees and is a band of lush green in the summer. The third ring, the Garden Ring, is the transport artery, sixteen kilometers around the center of the city. Farther out is the fourth ring, which two centuries ago served as the city’s customs boundary and on which now runs the Moscow Circular Railway. Finally, the fifth ring, a modern ring, the Moscow Circular Motor Road, marks the city’s present boundary.

“I get very tired, comrade,” Rostnikov said.

“Individually, yes,” Karpo responded seriously. “But we are not individuals alone. We are part of a determined whole.”

“Which,” said Rostnikov, putting his pencil down and turning awkwardly to face his pale subordinate, “brings me to my second question. When will you admit that your arm is no longer capable of function? When will you let it be examined by a competent doctor?”

As long as Karpo had known Rostnikov, almost fifteen years, he had frequently been lulled by the man’s manner into making mistakes. Karpo vowed to himself each time to be more careful, but he also took pride in his superior’s ability to penetrate, to trick sympathetically. If the individual was not so important, why did Karpo not admit his handicap and step down for a more able investigator? Was not the loss of the use of an arm sufficient cause to step down, to recognize that there could well be situations with which one could not cope?

“Perhaps never,” Karpo said, unblinking eyes fixed on his superior.

Rostnikov rose with a sigh, holding the table with his right hand till he could straighten his left leg under him.

“Never?”

“When I catch the Weeper, perhaps,” Karpo amended. The amendment was necessary. Karpo lived by reason and dedication. It was only reasonable to come to this conclusion.

“You don’t have to retire even if you discover you have one arm,” Rostnikov said, shaking his head. “I have, in effect, only one leg, and the Gray Wolfhound has but half a brain.”

“I do not wish to be a detriment to-”

“Ha,” Rostnikov interrupted in mock exasperation. “With one arm you are the best man in the procuracy. See, now you have forced me to embarrass both you and myself by extending flattery. You keep on like this, and I will soon be cordial, then polite, and we will find ourselves in a situation in which we are like that pink panda who just shambled out of here.”

Karpo rose and nodded in agreement. “I will take your suggestion under advisement,” Karpo said.

“The Weeper,” Rostnikov said, holding back a morning yawn.

“The Weeper may return to any of those hotel roofs,” Karpo said softly.

“He appears to be a creature of habit,” Rostnikov prodded.

Karpo nodded and went on. “The attacks are coming more frequently. I believe the Weeper is on some time schedule, some constraint. I believe the Weeper is no longer shooting randomly but that Sergeant Petrov was an intended victim. I’ve examined the reports of the incidents, spoke to those who were nearby. For every attack there was at least one nearby witness in uniform, military or police. The Weeper has simply grown confident or angry enough to fire at the real intended victims.”

“And you conclude from this?” Rostnikov said with a small smile.

“That another attack will take place soon where people in uniform can be readily found.”

“That could be-”

“Many places,” said Karpo. “I am well aware of that. I would like to post men who would be well hidden atop the high buildings facing military establishments within Moscow and perhaps a man atop the Destky Mir children’s shop across from KGB headquarters. And, of course, atop this building.”

Rostnikov pocketed his doodles, shook his head, and smiled. “You have no evidence,” he said. “This is all concoction.”

“I remind the chief inspector that in the past I-”

“-have been right about such things,” Rostnikov finished. Karpo’s statement about his own record had been given without ego. He spoke not out of pride but confidence, a willingness to pursue. He might turn out to be quite wrong, but Rostnikov knew that Karpo would not mind, that he would simply formulate another theory, and another and another, and pursue until he caught the Weeper or someone else did so.

“You will have your men atop buildings, but I cannot take responsibility for placing anyone across from KGB headquarters,” Rostnikov said, reaching for the door. “It would be difficult to explain why we had not informed the KGB about our plan if we were caught. No, the KGB will have to rely on its reputation. Besides, they are more expendable than we are. There are so many more of them.”

Karpo gave no sign that he recognized irony in the Washtub’s words or manner. He simply nodded in agreement and moved to follow Rostnikov out of the now-open door.

“One final thing,” the Washtub said. “Why do you think the Weeper might be a woman?”

“I didn’t say-” Karpo began.

“You carefully avoided gender in describing the Weeper. I conclude-”

“The Weeper may be a man or woman,” said Karpo. “It might have been a man weeping in a high voice or a woman.”

They were standing in the hall now near a window open to let in some touch of air in the summer heat. The moist taste of coming rain prickled Rostnikov’s cheek and gave him a curious satisfaction. The sound of barking German shepherd dogs in the police kennels below the window gave a faraway sense of melancholy to the scene.

“Emil,” Rostnikov said, walking at the side of the taller, gaunt man whose limp left arm was plunged into the black sling under his jacket, “have you ever read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?”

“No,” said Karpo as they stepped aside to let a uniformed young man carrying a stack of files hurry past them. “Should I?”

“There is a passage in which the drifting young boy hears the faraway sound of someone chopping wood,” Rostnikov said. “The sound of something far away, the echo of each plunge of the ax blade into the wood. It is a passage of great beauty, Emil. It is a passage which vibrates like a summer day in Moscow.”

“I see,” Karpo said, unable to fathom the cryptic turns of mind of the limping, near block of a man at his side. Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov was an enigma in the life of Emil Karpo but one that the younger man accepted, for he respected his superior’s abilities.

But Karpo knew that Rostnikov was not infallible. Occasionally, he failed to see something, to detect. The example was immediate. Rostnikov obviously had no idea that Karpo planned to make himself the next target of the rooftop Weeper.

Sasha Tkach had a headache. He was not much given to drinking vodka. He was well aware of the damage it did to those around him, and he often had the impression that at night Moscow was a vast matrix of drunks who staggered about like giddy or morose zombies. He had heard that it was worse in other countries-Iceland, the United States-but Moscow surely had a high percentage of those who sought escape in alcohol. One of those who did so was his neighbor Bazhen Surikov, the carpenter. Surikov liked to suggest that he was a painter. He wore a small beard like a caricature of a 1920s Parisian artist and even dabbled in painting, though Sasha thought the few works he had seen by the wiry man were at best mediocre. However, Sasha did not consider himself an art expert. He did, however, consider himself a man with many problems.

He and Maya had not exactly quarreled the night before. She had attempted to talk about their future, and he had attempted to avoid it. He was tired, sore from the bout with the blacksmith, angry at his assignment, and unable to think of a solution to the problem of what to do when the very visible child in Maya’s stomach decided to face the world.

Sasha’s mother, Lydia, offered no help, only her usual wisdom. “It will work out. Each day passes, and a new one comes. We have bread on the table, shoes on our feet, a bed to sleep on.”

One could not quarrel with such wisdom, especially when one’s mother was nearly deaf and interested in preserving platitudes rather than coping with reality.

And so when Bazhen Surikov had suggested that Sasha join him in his apartment to look at a new painting, Sasha had gone, leaving mother, wife, and soon-to-come child in their two-room apartment. And when Bazhen had shown him the idiotic painting of a horse or a boar or a bear on its knees, Sasha had been properly complimentary, which resulted in the offer by Bazhen of a shared bottle of vodka. Nearly two hours later, when Sasha had managed to return to his apartment, Maya looked at his smiling face and put down her book, undecided about whether to get angry or weep. She did neither but turned to go in the bedroom, realized her mother-in-law was in there, and then faced Sasha with a pleading look that said clearly, “See, I have no place to go when I am hurt, angry. And soon there will be a baby, your baby.”

The next day, the vodka was no longer in effect, the sun was hot, and Sasha had no heart to pretend that he was the spoiled son of a member of the Politburo. He had some sense, he thought, of how an actor must feel who has a hangover, an ulcer, a nagging wife, and a dying friend and who must still step upon the stage to pretend for two hours that he is Alexander the Great.

Sasha had already had a meeting with Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov; he had gone to two locations on his list and crossed out both, convinced that they were not what he was searching for. He had been especially disturbed by the fact that in his early-morning meeting, Porfiry Petrovich, who usually gave suggestions and attention and consideration to even minor cases, seemed to be indifferent to Sasha’s investigation in spite of the fact that pressure was now being exerted because “an important official” had been the victim of the car thieves.

Sasha had taken the green metro line, the Gorkovsko-Zamoskvoretskaya line, to the end, gotten off at Rechnoi Vokzal, and wandered in unfamiliar territory in search of the building from which it had been reported that a large new car had been seen. The report was almost two weeks old and had come from a woman who, the report noted, was a notorious local busybody, the kind who would come up to you on the street and tell you to straighten your tie. Sasha Tkach knew the type; one of them had married his father and now lived in Sasha’s small apartment.

Finding the building was difficult, but he continued. The directions had been poor, but find it he did, a one-story brick building that looked as if it had once been a small factory. There was a large car or truck entrance with a sliding metal door closed over it. The windows of the building were dirty, and one could not see because the curtains were closed. It meant nothing, this twenty-third location he had checked in two weeks while others were seeking snipers who shot policemen and mysterious old gunmen who stole candlesticks. Life was not always fair.

Sasha found a door at the side of the building, blinked once, sighed deeply, feeling sorry for himself, knocked, and entered before someone could say, “Come in,” or, “Stay out.”

Beyond the door, Tkach found himself facing a quite beautiful blond young woman, full and athletic looking, who wore no makeup and needed none.

“That door is supposed to be locked,” she said, her eyes meeting Sasha’s. “This is a private club for potential automobile mechanics.”

Tkach looked past her without letting his eyes roam. There was a wooden partition behind them, a dirty wooden partition painted gray, behind which he could hear the scraping of machinery, the clanking of metal on metal. There was something defiant and attractive about the young woman holding a small wrench in one hand, her other hand on her hip. Even the smudges of dirt on her dark overalls were somehow appealing. A shiver of fear and physical attraction passed through the detective, and he felt confident that if he had not finally found what he was looking for, he had surely stumbled upon something the woman was trying to hide.

“My name is Pashkov,” he said as the woman grabbed his sleeve to turn him toward the door. “Your address was given to me by a mutual acquaintance who made me promise not to reveal his name.”

“I don’t know what you are raving about,” she said, her face close to his, close enough for him to smell her and close enough for her to sense his slight trembling, the trembling of a wicked hangover.

“My father is a member of the Politburo,” Sasha said quickly and thickly as she opened the door and pointed out with her wrench.

“How fortunate for you,” she said sarcastically.

“I’m looking for an automobile,” he tried, standing in front of the door. “A very good automobile.”

She didn’t slam the door. He tried to fix a slightly vapid smile on his face as he examined her. Her fine smooth face almost hid her emotions, but Tkach had been an investigator for almost six years, and he saw suspicion flicker in her eyes. He saw no sign, however, of fear and decided that in many ways this was a most formidable and admirable woman.

“Who sent you here?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No names. I don’t want yours. You don’t want mine.”

“I already have yours.”

“I forgot,” Tkach said. “I was drinking with a friend last night-”

“Come back in,” she said, reaching out to lead him back through the door. Before she closed it, she stepped out and looked around. Tkach watched her with admiration. A woman like this could take charge, find apartments, cars, get things done, and have time left over for massive warmth and babies.

“I’m looking for a car for myself,” he said when she faced him. He spoke above the noise beyond the gray partition. “I’m willing to pay reasonably, and if things work out, I have friends who might also be willing …”

She was examining his face intently. Sasha was well aware of it, but he did his best not to reveal what he was seeing.

“If you are the police,” she said slowly, “then you can simply have this building examined when you leave here. In that case, there would be no point in denying what we have here.”

“Wait,” Sasha said, stepping forward, uncomfortably warm, wanting to loosen his absurd tie.

“If you are who you say you are, however,” she went on, paying no attention, “then we might as well attempt to negotiate. You are good-looking enough, but you don’t strike me as either discreet or terribly intelligent.”

Tkach’s vodka tremor turned to anger, but he controlled it, recognizing that the woman might be testing him. In one sense, it didn’t matter. She had as much as confessed, and she was quite right: all he had to do was force his way past her, go to the nearest phone, and have the place surrounded in a few minutes. But now he wanted to play this game through, to beat her. If it was chess they were to play, he wanted her respect when the game was over.

“I’m not accustomed to insults,” he said, letting some of his anger out. “I went to Moscow University. I am certified in economics. I-” he fumed angrily, hoping that he was playing his role with indignation.

A smile touched the quite lovely full lips of the woman. Tkach did not like the smile or the words she spoke.

“Come,” she said. “I’ll show you some cars, and perhaps we can make a deal.”

At this point Tkach considered that it might be wiser to concede the chess game and win the war, but he did not get beyond the consideration. He felt the presence behind him and knew it was confirmed by the woman’s blue eyes that glanced over his shoulder. Someone was behind him, someone who would surely stop him or attempt to stop him if Sasha went for the door.

“Good,” Tkach said, sighing. “Do you have a drink of something? I’ve come a long way.”

He turned toward the wooden partition from beyond which the noise continued to come and found himself almost nose-to-nose with a man with a flattened, slightly red nose, a burly, rugged-looking man, and straight black hair falling over his forehead. He was well muscled, surly looking, and not at all pleased by the look that the woman was now giving to Sasha Tkach, whom she was beginning, apparently, to accept as someone she might well enjoy playing a game with.

On Gorky Street, across from the Central Telegraph Office, is the Moscow Art Theatre. The building is decorated with reproductions of the Orders of Lenin and the Red Banner of Labor awarded to the company. There is also a banner with the image of a seagull, the emblem of the theater, adopted from Chekhov’s play, which had its premiere at the Moscow Art Theatre. There are two other buildings of the Moscow Art Theatre, one on Moskvin Street, the other on Tverskoi Boulevard.

The Moscow Art Theatre was founded in 1898 by the theoretician-director Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Both Chekhov and Gorky were associated with the theater, which continues to specialize in the plays of the two authors.

Rostnikov had been in the theater only three times before this Saturday morning’s visit. It wasn’t that he disliked theater. On the contrary, he enjoyed the idea of theater, but his interest lay not in traditional performance but in those works that generated the energy of other places.

He had left word in Petrovka about where he was heading and had taken advantage of his temporary restoration to authority by ordering a car and driver and indicating that it was by order of the deputy procurator. The police garage had not questioned him, though the car had been five minutes late, during which time Porfiry Petrovich had stood in the street, making people uncomfortable by trying to imagine what crimes they were capable of. Murder, he knew, was within the scope of anyone, given the proper motive or circumstances. He never searched faces for murder. It was the pickpockets, robbers, and car thieves he tried to imagine behind the somber passing faces.

Tracking down Lev Ostrovsky had proved to be quite easy. The All-Russia Theatrical Society had furnished an address and the information that Ostrovsky, though he was eighty-three, still worked at the Moscow Art Theatre. So Rostnikov had sat back, watching the tall streetlamps hum past as the faceless driver went down Gorky Street and turned at the Art Theatre passage.

Getting inside proved slightly difficult. He had told the driver, a young man with a bulbous nose, to wait at the car. The man, in uniform, had nodded without expression. It had not only occurred to Rostnikov that the driver might be either a KGB man or an informant for the deputy procurator; it had been a certainty. Since Porfiry Petrovich’s unofficial demotion, he was watched, reported on, considered by various offices, each working separately, building files, wasting the time of many people. But, Rostnikov mused as he limped away from the locked front door and searched for a stage entrance, what useful work might they otherwise be performing, these people who spied on him? Perhaps they could be loaded on a truck and sent to Yekteraslav to work in the vest factory.

Washtub, he thought to himself, finding a heavy wooden door that did open, you fantasize too much. It will make you dream. Dreams will turn to hopes. Hopes will turn to longing. Longing will turn to despair. Despair will turn to laughter. And laughter will get you in trouble.

Beyond the wooden door, Rostnikov entered a dark world. A vast, high, dark world in contrast to the burning summer brightness of the outside. The smell of theater struck him. It was like old wood and comfortable carpeting and paint. His eyes adjusted and turned to the voice addressing him.

“What is it you want?” The speaker was a young woman in a black dress, her hair pulled back and tied with a black ribbon. She was vulpine beautiful, a type of face that suggested weary cleverness, of having seen so much that a little more would not be surprising. Her words challenged him to come up with a tale.

He reached into his rear pocket and grunted out his identification, noticing that his leather wallet was bulging and frayed. The bulge came partly from the bills he carried for needed purchases and partly from his unwillingness to part with little bits of paper on which notes were written to remind him of various things he never got around to doing.

The young woman’s eyes darted at the wallet and back to his face. He had no doubt that she had actually looked at the card. She appeared to be quite unimpressed. “I repeat, comrade inspector. What is it you want? We are in production at the moment and have-”

“Lev Ostrovsky,” he put in, looking around now that he could see. He was standing in a narrow corridor with a string of lights heading deep inside the building. To each side of the corridor were doors, but he could make out no sounds within them.

“I don’t-” She began with a sigh, which Rostnikov recognized as the prelude to dismissal.

“You will,” he assured her, cutting in again. It was time to assume a new role. “Lev Ostrovsky is here. I wish to see him immediately. I do not have time to watch you perform. I am in a good mood, a remarkably good mood considering many things I have no desire to share with you, but that mood can so easily become-” He held up his thick right hand palm down and let it flutter like a wounded bird.

The young woman folded her arms across her small breasts and let out her third sigh of the brief conversation. Rostnikov decided that she was not an actress. Her repertoire of mannerisms was too limited. Either she was without experience or simply had not cultivated her talents.

“Down this corridor,” she said through closed teeth and over a very false cordial smile. “Turn left at the end and then right.”

With that she turned and walked to a door, her heels clicking on the wooden floor, and made her exit.

Rostnikov, uncertain of the directions she had given, limped down the corridor, listening for the sound of a voice, a movement. When he had turned the second corner and was headed toward a door to his right that said Stage Entrance, he heard the sound of music.

He went through the door to the stage, following the music, moved up a low flight of stairs, and found another door. Beyond this door was the rear of the stage. The music was louder, an orchestra. It was familiar and not familiar. The backstage area was even darker than the corridor. Rostnikov moved carefully toward a light ahead that accompanied the music. Beyond a chair and a bank of switches for lights, Rostnikov found himself to the right of the stage of the theater. On the stage, illuminated by an insufficient light from high above, stood a man with a mop. On a chair near the old man was an old record player. The volume was very high and the man very old.

“Lev Ostrovsky?” Rostnikov shouted over the music, but the bent man simply soaked his mophead from the pail in front of him and kept his back to the policeman. Rostnikov could see in the dim light the drying soapy trail on the polished wooden floor of the stage. Beyond the dim light in darkness were hundreds of seats. He listened to his voice break against the far wall of darkness.

The old man did not turn immediately as Rostnikov stepped forward and turned off the record player. Silence thundered, and Rostnikov was suddenly aware of the mop squeaking over the floor.

It took the old man a beat or two to realize that the music was gone. He straightened and turned to face Rostnikov. There was a slight smile fixed on the ancient face, a smile that Rostnikov recognized as not one of amusement of the moment but the permanent mask some people wore. He was a short man in trousers held up by suspenders over a long-sleeved blue work shirt. He grasped his mop in two hands and pursed his lips as he examined the heavy man in front of him.

“What was that music?” Rostnikov asked, but the old man simply continued to stare. So Rostnikov shouted his question again.

“The soundtrack from Rocky,” Ostrovsky said in a willowy voice as he looked at the record player.

“Rocky?” asked Rostnikov, feeling as if he were in some absurdist play and that hundreds of first-nighters were just behind the light, trying to suppress coughs of laughter.

“An American moving picture,” Ostrovsky explained. “I bought it from an American. Actually, I traded for two tickets to Vassa Zheleznova. I got the better deal.”

Rostnikov nodded in agreement, partly to preserve his voice and partly because he could think of no appropriate rejoinder.

“‘He reminds me of a policeman’,” the old man said, his smile still fixed, his right hand leaving the mop to point at Rostnikov. “‘A policeman I once knew. In our theater in Kostroma we used to have a policeman-a tall fellow with bulging eyes. He didn’t walk. He ran, didn’t just smoke but practically choked on the fumes. One got the impression he wasn’t so much just living as jumping and tumbling, trying to reach for something quick. Yet what he was after, he himself didn’t know.’”

“I’m-” Rostnikov said, but he had forgotten to shout, and the old man continued, no longer looking at the policeman but out into the audience.

“‘When a man has a clear objective, he proceeds toward it calmly. But this one hurried. And it was a peculiar kind of haste-it lashed him on from within-and he ran and ran, getting in everybody’s way, including his own. He wasn’t avaricious. He only wanted avidly to do all he had to do as quickly as he could. He wanted to get all his duties out of the way, not overlooking the duty of taking bribes. Nor did he accept bribes. No, he grabbed them in a hurry, forgetting even to thank you. One day he got himself run over by some horses and was killed.’”

The old man turned to face Rostnikov, who was now convinced that he was dealing with senility and had best be simply polite and depart.

“Did your policeman have a name,” Rostnikov said. “This one does.” He pulled out his wallet and displayed it, though the man had obviously recognized him for what he was.

“There was no policeman,” Ostrovsky said, shaking his head. “I was acting. You couldn’t tell I was acting? That’s the goal, the very thing all these young actors miss the point of. That business about the policeman was one of Tatyana’s speeches from Gorky’s Enemies. Have you ever seen it? “

“No,” Rostnikov admitted. The stage was cool, and the chief inspector half expected the ghosts of past audiences to reveal themselves and laugh at his confusion.

“Too much talk,” the old man said, holding up his arthritic right hand and opening and closing it to show what talk was. “But I got you, huh? I can still act circles around these people today, these actors.”

He demonstrated his ability to act circles around those who frequented the stage by swirling his mop in a circle on the floor.

“I can see that,” Rostnikov said.

“I actually met Anton Chekhov when I was a boy,” Ostrovsky said, pointing to a spot on the stage where he presumably met Chekhov. “Right here.”

“Chekhov died before you were born,” Rostnikov said.

“Then it was Tolstoy I met,” the old man said with a shrug.

“Abraham Savitskaya,” Rostnikov said. His leg was beginning to stiffen. He shuffled to the single chair on the stage, moved the record player to the floor, sat, and looked up at the old man, who had been struck dumb by the name from antiquity.

“He’s dead,” said Ostrovsky, his permanent smile going dead.

“How did you know?” Now Rostnikov was directing, acting to the nonexistent audience. He was back in his familiar role.

“Everyone’s dead.” The old man shrugged. “I have a stage to mop.”

“Mikhail Posniky,” Rostnikov shouted as the old man made a move to resume his work. The name stopped his motion. Rostnikov had a few more he could pull out if need be.

“Dead,” Ostrovsky said.

“No, I think he murdered Abraham Savitskaya two nights ago here in Moscow.”

“I haven’t seen either of them for … a thousand years,” Ostrovsky said. “Who can remember-”

“You remember lines from old plays.”

“Ah,” the old man said, his smile strong and crinkly. “That is fantasy, easy to recall. Reality, now that is not nearly as real to an actor.”

How long could an eighty-year-old man stand up? It was an experiment that Rostnikov might have to make to get some answers.

“A brass candlestick,” Rostnikov said. “Do you remember a brass candlestick that Abraham Savitskaya owned?”

The old man’s face looked blank, and he began to shake his head when an image came, a memory. He shuffled a foot for new balance.

“No, it was Mikhail who left with the candlesticks,” he said, seeing some vague image in the past. “Mikhail and Abraham left together, going to America, they said. Each had a little suitcase, and Mikhail had the candlestick. His mother had given it to him just before he left. Why do I remember such things, such details? Who wants to remember such things?”

Rostnikov had no answer, only questions. “And have you seen either of them since they left the village, left Yekteraslav?”

“Who?”

“The men, Posniky or Savitskaya.”

Ostrovsky shrugged. “Rumors-I heard rumors from people I ran into from the village, just rumors, rumors, rumors. You know rumors?”

“I know rumors,” Rostnikov admitted to the parched mask of a smiling face that moved slowly toward him. “What kind of rumors?”

“That Mikhail had become a big gangster in America, just like the movies. Tiny Caesar, the Godfather. Guns. Everything. It was possible. Who knew? He was a hard boy, a hard young man. I was a clown.”

“Savitskaya?”

“Ah,” Ostrovsky said, moving close enough to whisper. “A macher.”

“A macher?”

“That’s Yiddish,” Ostrovsky confided. “A dead language for dead Jews like me. Savitskaya was a dealer, a man not to be trusted.”

“One more name,” Rostnikov said, standing up. “A fourth young friend of yours from the village. Shmuel Prensky. What became-”

Rostnikov had simply been finishing the routine, looking for another step, another lead. He had not anticipated the reaction. Lev Ostrovsky went an enamel white and trembled. The smile became a grimace of pain or fear.

“Dead,” Ostrovsky said, holding his mop handle, his knuckles twisted and white.

“When did he-”

“Long ago. He is dead, quite dead. Buried. Long ago.”

“Yuri Pashkov still lives in Yekteraslav,” Rostnikov pursued, walking over to the old man, ready to grab him if he should fall. “Pashkov-you remember him. He also seemed afraid of the name of Shmuel Prensky.”

“Afraid? Me?” Ostrovsky said with a false laugh. He was acting quite poorly now. His reviews, if he survived the terror he was going through, would not be approving. “Shmuel Prensky is dead. I’m a very old man in case you haven’t noticed. I have nothing to be afraid of from anyone on this earth. I’ve played the great roles. On this very stage I played Grigory Stepanovich Smirnov in Chekhov’s The Boor. And I’d still be acting if they let Jews have decent roles. See, I’m not afraid to tell a policeman such things. So how could you-”

Rostnikov closed his eyes and opened them with a little shrug. “Perhaps I was mistaken,” he said.

“Mistaken,” the old man said vehemently. He began to mop the floor without bothering to dip it into the water. Then a thought struck him, and he turned, trembling.

“Gorky himself,” he said, sweeping the darkness with his hand, “said the Art Theatre is as marvelous as the Tretyakov Gallery, St. Basil’s Cathedral, and all the finest sights of Moscow. It is impossible not to love it.”

“I can see that,” Rostnikov said, watching the man justify himself to himself.

“It’s enough to simply be in here, to be on this stage, to play out a little scene between soaping. To live out my last days with no trouble.”

“I understand,” Rostnikov said.

“‘Life,’” said the old man almost to himself, “‘has gone by as if I had never lived. I’ll lie down a while. There’s no strength left in you, old fellow; nothing is left, nothing. You addle head.’”

“Firs’s final speech in The Cherry Orchard,” Rostnikov said. “A fine performance.”

“Thank you,” Ostrovsky said, some of his spirit and color returning. “But-”

The old man was looking over Rostnikov’s shoulder behind the stage, and Rostnikov turned to watch his uniformed driver hurry toward him. The man or the uniform had brought the fear back into Ostrovsky’s eyes.

“Comrade inspector,” the young man with the flat face said, ignoring the setting and the ancient actor. “You have a message, an urgent message from Investigator Zelach.”

“Coming,” Rostnikov answered, and then to the old man, he said, “Perhaps we will discuss ancient history and the life of the theater at some point in the future.”

“My pleasure,” said Ostrovsky, his smile broadening, his manner making it clear that such an encounter would not be a pleasure at all.

Rostnikov followed the driver toward the wings. He couldn’t keep up with the younger man, not with his bad leg. Instead, he relied on that which he always relied on, his steady movement. He would bear in mind Gorky’s detective from Kostroma; he would endeavor to move with caution and not get himself killed by runaway horses.

Behind Rostnikov, Lev Ostrovsky waited, waited a full five minutes, waited cautiously in case it was some trick and the policeman was hiding in the darkness. He forced himself to finish the floor, to make straight lines of soapy water, to set up the record player again, to listen to the martial music from Rocky, to control himself, to act out the role of cleaning man, a role he wanted to continue for whatever days he might have left. He waited a full five minutes, and then, when he was confident that he was again alone, he put down his mop, turned off the record player, and hurried off to find a telephone.

“Old, it’s an old rifle. What can I say?”

Karpo watched Paulinin searching through the drawer of his desk in the laboratory on the second level below ground of Petrovka. Paulinin was wearing a blue smock and looked more like a flower seller in Dzerzhinsky Park than the eclectic encyclopedia he was. Paulinin looked rather like a bespectacled, nearsighted monkey with an oversized head topped by wild gray-black hair. He was forever searching for something, putting things together, looking for challenges. His office was a clutter-piles of books, objects from past investigations. Here a pistol with the barrel missing. There, on the tottering pile of books on the edge of the desk, some false teeth.

“You can,” said Karpo, standing in front of the desk, motionless, “tell me when it was made, who made it, how I might discover who it belongs to.”

“Miracles,” said the monkey of a man, pulling a long wire from the drawer, examining it carefully with a squint and returning it. “The man wants miracles.”

And miracles, Karpo knew, were just what Paulinin liked to deliver. And so he waited patiently, immobile, a dark tower around which buzzed the clever spider monkey.

Paulinin pushed the drawer closed, tapped both open palms on the paper-covered desk, and considered. An idea struck, and he shoved a report on coarse yellow paper aside and grabbed a syringe as if it might try to scurry off the table.

“An 1891-30 Moisin, our primary rifle of the last war with the Germans,” Paulinin said, holding the syringe up to examine it against the ceiling light. “There are thousands still around. Amazing that this one can still shoot. The bullet went through an almost smooth barrel. The whole rifle is a relic. I don’t see how anyone could hit the Kremlin-forgive my example-with it, let alone a policeman fourteen stories below.”

Paulinin turned his back to place the examined syringe on the small sink in the corner.

“Go on.”

Karpo’s arm had in the past several days begun to lose all feeling. It had to be placed by him in the black sling like a sleeping baby each morning. He wondered if the numbness would continue to spread up his shoulder to the rest of his body. There was no fear in his conjecture, only a curiosity and a suppressed regret deep within.

“So,” Paulinin said, turning to face Karpo and folding his arms as he leaned back against the sink, “the gun does not break down. It does not come apart, to be placed in a little carrying case. This is no-what was that American movie?”

Karpo did not go to movies, had only seen part of one while pursuing a pickpocket in the Rossia Theater five years earlier.

“Filthy Harry,” Paulinin said. “That was it. Americans are rifle crazy since Kennedy. Movies, books, full of rifles, full of people shooting people from rooftops. Like your Weeper.”

“The rifle could not be broken down for transport,” Emil Karpo reminded Paulinin, who pushed away from the sink and began to search through the pile of books on the desk.

“Your Weeper has to carry the rifle around full length. It is 51.5 inches long and weighs 8.8 pounds without bayonet. It’s not some little thing, either. Big, long, a Cossack penis, we used to call them. So, ask yourself, Comrade Karpo, how did your Weeper carry that rifle up to those roofs and down? What did your killer carry in it? A rolled-up rug, what? It’s too big for a violin case like they used in old American movies.”

“I’ve made a note,” Karpo said, and found Paulinin pausing to catch his eye. Normally, Karpo took detailed notes and went back to his room to transcribe them, but with one hand it was a difficult task, and he wanted no comment or glance from Paulinin. They were not friends. In truth, Karpo, the Vampire, the Tatar, wanted no friends. He wanted no obligation except to the state.

Paulinin looked at the limp arm through his thick glasses and shrugged before continuing.

“So your killer is left-handed. The Moisin has a right twist, but his bullet enters, drifts toward the left. Could be done by a right-handed shooter, but someone who is picking a target will usually wait till the target is neutral or to the right. That is conjecture, of course, based on experience.”

“Of course,” agreed Karpo.

“Finally,” said Paulinin, holding up a finger as he found the thin report he was searching for. “Your killer is strong. That rifle kicks like a member of the Supreme Soviet denied an extra box of Americans cigarettes. So, a picture is forming, comrade inspector?”

“Someone strong, probably big, left-handed, carrying something long enough to hide a long, heavy rifle.”

“That’s it,” agreed Paulinin, adjusting his glasses and reexamining the report in his hand. Karpo was clearly dismissed.

“Very good,” the detective said, not in the least offended by his dismissal. “If-when I find the rifle, I will bring it to you for positive identification.”

Paulinin laughed and shook his head. “You are looking for an antique, Comrade Karpo, a mastodon. If you find it, there will be little need to verify its relation to the crimes. If you dragged the corpse of Stalin in here and said, ‘Is this the Stalin who sat on your mother’s face, the Stalin who wore his collar too tight, the Stalin who was the premier of all the Russias?’ what could I answer?”

“You could answer like any Russian, ‘It is possible,’” Karpo said, opening the door to depart.

Paulinin was actually surprised. Never in his fifteen years of dealing with the pale, sharp bone had he known Karpo to display any humor. He turned to his report on chemical testing of vomit with professional joy as soon as the door was firmly closed.

But Karpo had meant no humor in his remark. Humor was far from his mind. It was caution he voiced, a caution he usually exhibited but which something within him now told him, urged him, to abandon. Time was, he feared, against him. The Weeper might strike again, kill another policeman. Or Karpo’s arm might be exposed, and he might be summarily dismissed. That could not, must not, happen till the Weeper was found.

He spoke to no one as he climbed the stairs. Karpo never took an elevator unless ordered to or accompanying a superior. He liked his feet on something solid. He walked home in the noon heat, absorbing but not considering the sweating figures that moved past him in shirt-sleeves or short-sleeved, loose blouses. The young woman who stared at him at the corner registered deeply but not consciously. Her breasts were large, unfettered, distracting. As he crossed Sverdlov Square and strode through the thin crowd in front of the metro station, the image of Mathilde came to him. He stopped, drew a deep breath, and willed the image to depart. He imagined a silver circle, breathed easily, ignoring the man with the loaf of bread under his arm who stared at him, and waited while the distraction of the body passed. When he moved again, he knew it would have to be addressed, that imp inside. There was no denying the animal inside. It could distract, but it also confirmed, reminded. It spoke and had to be answered, or it would play hell with even the most disciplined body, calling it from its duty. Better to respond, appease, recognize, than to suffer the distraction.

He got on the Marx Prospekt train and stood for the four stops till the Komsomolskaya Station. There were a few seats, but Karpo did not want to sit. He wanted the distraction of discomfort, relished the physical irritation to be overcome.

He departed from the train, walked slowly through the crowd, avoided bumping into a man in a railway uniform who carried a net bag filled with green apples, and headed for the long escalator. The station reminded him of an ancient time with its decadent upturned glass chandeliers, its arched columns, and curved white roof with decorative designs. He preferred the more efficient outer stations to these compromises with the past.

Ten minutes later he stood in front of his room at the rear of the fifth floor of an apartment building built less than thirty years ago and already smelling of mold and mildew. As he always did before he entered, Emil Karpo checked the thin hair at the corner just above the door hinge to be sure no one had entered the room. Only then did he insert his key and step into darkness.

The shade was, as always, drawn. There was nothing to see through the window beyond, nothing he wished to look at. He clicked on the light in the ceiling and moved to his desk to turn on the desk lamp. The room was remarkably small, small even for a poor Muscovite. It was almost a cell, a cell with a simple table desk, a bed that was little more than a cot, a hot plate in the corner, and shelves of notebooks, each with the same black cover, notebooks filled with legible handwritten reports on every investigation he had ever engaged in.

It was in such a room that Lenin had worked, and Emil Karpo did not find it constricting. On the contrary, he enjoyed the compactness, the wall that kept his energy imploded.

He sat, reached for the current notebook, opened it to the proper page with some awkwardness, since he had but one hand to use, propped the book open with another book, and began to write and to think as he wrote of the next move in his campaign to catch the Weeper.