Tarnished Icons

THIRTEEN

It was a narrow street in the old part of Moscow, a street that had been fashionable a century ago and now withstood the crumbling of its stores and brick houses, which had been turned into apartments.

Karpo knew the street well.

It was where, for several years, he had come to meet Mathilde Verson, where they had gone to a small room, a neatly decorated and quite comfortably bright room where they initially had sex and eventually did something very close to making love. Mathilde was smart, a flaming redhead with good teeth and extremely fair skin. She was a little over forty. During the day she filled in as a telephone operator. For the last six months of their relationship, Mathilde had refused to take money from him, though the thought of anything but a business arrangement made Karpo uneasy. Yet resistance to the life force that was Mathilde, the good-natured fun she made of his seriousness and his lack of a sense of humor, was impossible.

When Mathilde was caught in the crossfire between two gangs and torn to pieces by bullets from automatic weapons as she sat in a small cafe drinking tea, Karpo had, with Rostnikov’s support, joined with Craig Hamilton, the American FBI adviser on organized crime, to find, confront, and destroy those who had taken her life.

This retribution had given Karpo little satisfaction, and he had stepped back into total dedication to his work. He had also, Porfiry Petrovich had told him, begun behaving like a man who was now courting death. If that was true, Karpo was not consciously aware of it.

Now it was a Thursday again, and he was on the same street where he had first begun meeting Mathilde. It was also almost the same time of day.

Emil Karpo had only broken one law in his life. He had believed fervently in Communism from the time he was a boy and his father took him to his first party meeting. He had believed in its laws and promise. There were weak and corrupt government officials and police, but Karpo, erect, dressed in black, pale-faced and determined, walked like death in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, a film he had never seen, through the streets of Moscow.

The law he had broken was that of frequenting a prostitute. He wanted no wife and was not sure of the kind of woman who would have him even had he so chosen. He was aware, not just from the teachings of Lenin and Marx and Chairman Mao, that men were potentially superior animals, but that did not stop them from being animals.

Emil Karpo had decided that to fulfill his function as a citizen of the Soviet state he had to acknowledge his existence as a sexual animal or he would lose at least some of his ability as a police inspector. It had been a difficult position to arrive at for Karpo, especially in a Soviet Union that proclaimed prostitution did not exist.

Now Karpo walked. The sun was out, but the snow was not melting. People, carrying their plastic bags and bundled up, avoided him on the street, and only an occasional young man would look directly at him.

The shop was small, the walls cracking. An icon of the Madonna and the baby Jesus hung where only a few years ago Lenin had looked off into the future. The owner of the small coffee and tea shop, much smaller than the one in which Mathilde had been killed, was not a Communist or a Christian. He was a survivor, a Turk by birth, with a round body and mustache and a look of constant consternation on his face.

The prostitutes had paid him a token fee for taking up table space in his shop. He didn’t mind having the place look a little busy. But those were the old days. Now prostitutes plied their bodies openly near the big hotels that made special arrangements for visiting businessmen. The newly rich, proudly unscrupulous capitalistic entrepreneurs and the mafias had their own contacts for obtaining prostitutes and seldom accepted the offers of the women who were reduced to walking the streets.

The shop was nearly empty. There were only five tables, in any case, with a counter against the far wall that was only a dozen paces from the door. One table held a couple, a man and woman about the same age. Maybe they were married or lovers, or maybe this was one of the last vestiges of the old days and they were talking money for favors.

At another table sitting alone, looking out of the frosted window, was a dark-haired young woman, thinner than Mathilde and wearing more makeup than Mathilde had ever used. She was wearing a reasonably modest green dress, and she was seated far enough back from the small table to reveal a black belt around the middle of the dress. Draped over her chair was an expensive-looking black jacket.

Karpo approached the young woman. Before her was a demitasse of dark coffee and a smoldering cigarette in a clear glass ashtray.

“Amelia?” he asked, standing over her.

The woman turned to look up at him. She was definitely pretty. She was also older than she had looked in profile, which, he decided, was probably why she had been looking out of the window instead of at the door when he entered. She was somewhere in her thirties. Beyond that, he couldn’t be sure.

She smiled, a very small but sincere smile, and held out her hand. It was slender and her nails were cut relatively short and painted bright red.

“Please sit,” she said, putting out the cigarette. “Would you like a coffee? Tea?”

“Nothing,” he said, sitting, not unbuttoning his coat.

“You are going to make this difficult for me, aren’t you, Inspector?” she said with a sigh.

“That is not my intention.”

“We have met, you know?” she said.

“Almost two years ago,” he said. “On the street. Mathilde said hello to you. You were with two other women.”

“Quite a memory,” she said, looking impressed.

“I am a policeman,” he said.

“I thought it might have been me who impressed you,” she said.

There was a teasing in her voice and manner that reminded him of Mathilde. Was she imitating Mathilde? Was it part of her act? Was he seeing the real woman?

“You asked to see me,” he said. “You said it was important.”

“Down to business,” she said, slapping both hands on the small table. “All right. Mathilde and I were friends. We talked. I knew about you. I knew something close existed between the two of you toward the end. But you want to get to business. Fine. If you are interested, I will take Mathilde’s place. Not in a personal relationship but a business one. My rates are low and my time flexible. I would like to be able to do it for Mathilde.”

Karpo, who had mastered the skill of not blinking, looked directly at her and decided, at least for the moment, that she was telling the truth.

“Why aren’t you working a hotel or …?” he began.

She laughed. Not Mathilde’s ringing laugh, but a low, deep laugh and said, “I’m too old. The girls in demand are near amateurs, teens or in their early twenties. I hold on to my regulars and pick up extra money doing … well, things. I refuse to walk the streets in front of second-rate restaurants and hotels. Are you considering? It’s difficult to tell looking at you.”

“I’m considering,” he said.

Consideration of such a thing was not something Emil Karpo could do quickly.

“You have a last name, Amelia?” he asked.

“The real one or the easy one?” she asked.

“Both.”

“The real one is Boroskovich, Amelia Boroskovich. The professional one is Boros. I thought it sounded exotic when I began my profession. Now I am stuck with it.”

Karpo rose and looked down at the young woman. He spoke deliberately with no trace of emotion.

“I will consider,” he said. “If I decide to engage in the relationship, it will be for one time initially. We can decide what, if anything, happens after that. I want only the business relationship.”

“Your gallantry is flattering,” she said with a smile on her very red lips. It was an ironic comment worthy of Mathilde.

“If I decide affirmatively, will this time and place a week from now be acceptable?” he asked.

She shrugged and said, “Now would be acceptable, but, I know, you want to consider.”

“Yes,” he said. “I may decide negatively. It would have nothing to do with your appearance or personality, which are quite acceptable.”

“A real compliment,” she said, showing more teeth, which were white and remarkably even. “I’ll be here a week from this moment, Emil Karpo. If you come, I will smile. If you don’t, I will drink a cup of strong coffee, have a cigarette, and whisper to the memory of Mathilde that I tried.”

Karpo nodded and left the shop. He walked the way he had come without looking back. He told himself he would consider, that he would check on Amelia’s background, but unless he found something truly damning, he knew he would be back at the shop in exactly one week at the same time.

The Yak stood looking out the window of his office. His hands were clasped behind his back when Rostnikov entered and closed the door.

“It would be nice to have some fresh snow,” said Director Yakovlev, still turned away from his deputy.

There really was nothing intelligent to say about the comment, so Rostnikov stood silently. Written reports on the bomber, the rapist, and the men who had murdered the Jews were in his hand.

Yakovlev turned around, approached Rostnikov. He took the reports and placed them on his desk without looking at them.

“Last night our bomber, Alexi Monochov, was transported by plane to a mental hospital in Irkutsk, Siberia. An evaluation by a psychiatrist and a decree from a judge were obtained.”

Rostnikov said nothing.

“Monochov turned over the names of the eight profiteers and criminals his father had been blackmailing,” said the Yak, “along with the evidence against them.”

Again Rostnikov said nothing, though he knew from his last conversation with Monochov that there had been sixteen people of substance being blackmailed. He had more than a good idea of where the evidence against the final eight, probably the most influential people on Monochov’s list, might now be.

There was a pause while Director Yakovlev waited to see if Rostnikov would react. Rostnikov did not.

“You’ve made me look like a genius in my first week,” said the Yak with a touch of what may have been relief. “Three major crimes brought to resolution. My decision to put you in charge of all ongoing investigations has brought me reluctant praise from several sources.”

“I’m pleased to hear it,” said Rostnikov.

“Would you like to sit?” asked the Yak, moving behind his desk.

“Not if we will be brief,” said Rostnikov.

“We will be very brief,” said the Yak, touching the tips of his fingers together. “I have only one more piece of information. Regrettably the statue of the wolf you brought in yesterday proved to be nothing but a cheap replica of the original. Sometime in the past century someone must have made off with the original and buried the imitation in its place.”

Rostnikov said nothing. There was nothing for him to say. He knew that the statue he had brought in was authentic. He had been a police officer long enough to know when he was touching real gold, emeralds, diamonds, rubies. He had touched them the night before. He had placed a real treasure on the desk where the report files now stood. In addition, Rostnikov was certain that the Yak didn’t think he was deceiving his deputy.

“A certain member of the government, one who is high in rank and shows promise of being president one day, came here last night,” said the Yak. “I do not know how he knew the statue had been delivered to me. He looked at it, examined it, and proclaimed it a fraud. Then he took it with him.”

The Yak, Rostnikov knew, did not have to tell him about the unidentified member of the government. It was clear that the Yak wanted Rostnikov’s respect. Yakovlev was not after the wealth to be derived from a rare treasure any more than he would use a list of nuclear criminals to gain wealth. Yakovlev sought only that which would yield influence and favors. Conclusion: the director had the eight missing files, and an influential government official had the wolf.

“It will be a disappointment to the staff of the Hermitage,” said Rostnikov.

“I have already spoken to Colonel Snitkonoy and explained the matter,” said Yakovlev.

“And each of the three thieves has explained in lengthy statements how the other two were responsible for the murders of the Jews,” said Rostnikov.

“They are all guilty,” said Yakovlev. “Their trials will be swift, and the zeal with which we have pursued and caught these killers will be made very public.”

“There turns out to be one irony,” said Rostnikov, now wishing that he had taken the director’s offer to sit. “The four men thought they had some right to the wolf because their ancestors had originally stolen it.”

“Twisted logic, but not ironic, Porfiry Petrovich,” said the Yak.

“Two of them, plus the one they murdered, Igor Mesanovich, were descendants of the original band of anticzarist thieves,” said Rostnikov, “but the fourth, Yevgeny Tutsolov, was not related to any of the original thieves. His family were all laborers and factory workers in Moscow from long before the original theft. He lied to the others.”

“Interesting,” said Yakovlev.

Rostnikov stood silently and met the other man’s eyes.

“Perhaps the wolf will be found one day,” said Rostnikov.

“Perhaps, who knows,” said the Yak. “Meanwhile, what we have said here this morning must remain confidential.”

And what we have not said, thought Rostnikov.

“I’ll tell no one,” he said.

“In which case, I would like to do you a favor, both for your outstanding work and your discretion. Thanks to what I have told you, the extent of my influence has expanded significantly.”

Rostnikov thought for only a few seconds and then told his superior what he wanted. Two favors.

“Name them,” said Yakovlev.

“First, Lieutenant Spaskov’s death will be listed as having occurred in the line of duty. He will not be officially listed as the serial rapist. He has a wife and a daughter.”

“Your people can so report,” said Yakovlev. “You have another request?”

Rostnikov told him.

“I think that can be arranged,” said the Yak.

“May I ask when?” asked Rostnikov.

“Perhaps as early as this afternoon,” said the Yak, rising and holding out his hand.

Rostnikov moved closer to the desk and reached over, supporting part of his weight on his left hand. They shook and Yakovlev said, “We have a new set of cases.” He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out three files: two thin, and one very thick. He handed them to Rostnikov. “Keep me informed.”

The meeting was over.

“No Lydia?” asked Elena when she entered her aunt’s apartment early that evening.

Elena had the late afternoon and evening off after working all night and most of the morning, not to mention almost being killed.

Anna Timofeyeva was sitting at the window, looking over her glasses at her niece. The apartment was a bit on the cold side, which Anna rather liked and Elena didn’t mind. Anna wore a thick beige turtleneck sweater. On her lap was a book she had been reading. In the chair opposite her was Baku. The cat was curled up sleeping.

“Lydia was invited out to someone’s apartment for dinner,” said Anna. “She didn’t expect to be home early, but she promised that if the hour was not too late, she would stop for a moment.”

“May we be so lucky,” said Elena, hanging her coat in the corner cabinet as the phone began to ring.

Anna didn’t move, though the phone was within reach.

“It’s him,” she said. “He’s called four times. Out of respect for my health and his father, I have displayed a politeness my closest relatives and colleagues in the procurator’s office would never recognize.”

The phone kept ringing.

“Hello,” said Elena, picking up after the fifth ring.

She stood, supporting her elbow in her hand, the phone to her ear and her legs spread.

“I would have told you, but you were out of the office all day,” Elena said, turning her back on her aunt in the hope of a semblance of privacy. “I want to take more time to consider. I do not want presents. I do not want flowers. I do not want poems. I want time. It is not that I don’t …” She looked at her aunt.

“Say it,” said Anna Timofeyeva, looking down at her book through her glasses. “I’ve heard it before. It does not make me ill.”

“It’s not that I don’t love you, Iosef,” she said, “but I have to imagine my future beyond the immediate romance-a year, two years, two decades. Don’t you understand? … Thank you. … Yes, Saturday night would be fine. An American movie will be fine. And yes you can make the dinner. … Yes, Sasha and I did have to tell Valentin Spaskov’s widow and child that he was dead. … We lied. Porfiry Petrovich approved the lie. Lieutenant Spaskov died in the line of duty on his way home saving the life of a man who was being attacked by a gang on the street. … Yes. … Saturday. Good-bye.”

She hung up and turned to her aunt, who looked up and said, “Sometimes I think I look like one of those old women in the movies and on television, the ones who wear shawls over their shoulders and sit in rocking chairs knitting sweaters no one wants and blankets no one needs.”

“I’m waiting,” said Elena. She picked up Baku, sat down across from her aunt, and put the cat on her lap. The cat continued to sleep.

“I never thought this would be my future,” Elena’s aunt said, taking off her glasses and looking around the room. “I thought I would die at my desk. Overwork. A massive heart attack. A well-attended funeral where I would be laid out in my uniform. And the surprise is, Elena, what has happened to me, what is so different from what I expected and even wanted, is not so bad. In fact, I am growing to like my existence. I like occasional visitors, like Porfiry Petrovich, who ask my advice and help from time to time, but I am learning to savor my repose, my view from the window, and my reading. You’ve read this?”

She held up a copy of Crime and Punishment.

“Yes,” Elena answered, looking out the window and petting the sleeping cat in her lap.

“I was not a reader of literature as a young woman, or even as a middle-aged woman for that matter,” said Anna. “I read dictums, laws, revisions to the law, orders, cases being made and presented. I had no life outside of my work. No marriage. I never came close to considering marriage. I am very close to celibate, and those few experiences took place a long time ago and far from Moscow. Unlike your mother, I have never had very much in the way of a sex drive. Therefore, I do not regret my decisions, and I do not brood over my present state, though it has taken me some time to come to it.”

“That’s your advice?” asked Elena.

Anna shrugged.

“I don’t give advice anymore except to recommend reading and to be decisive about what I want to eat,” said Anna. “I like Iosef. I see his father and mother in him. It is a good combination. I also see something behind his good looks and his eyes. He has a sense of humor. He is creative. Whether you wish to keep your independence for a while or for the rest of your life is your decision. I can’t tell you what it’s like to share one’s life with a man. As you see, I am not much good at this kind of advice.”

Elena did not answer. If Iosef would give her the time, she would take it and probably in the long run she would truly accept him. If he grew impatient and wanted an answer soon, she would probably reject him as nicely as possible. Iosef was a man of both intellect and intuition. She doubted that he would continue to press her for an answer. He might, however, go on with his life if she took too long to decide.

“What have we to eat?” Elena asked.

“Cheese, lots of cheese, bread supplied generously by Lydia Tkach, one onion, one half of a sausage left over from last night, one suspicious-looking tomato, four imitations of American cola in cans with those pop-up things, and a half-empty package of chocolate cookies, which are forbidden to me but I am unable to resist.”

“Sounds fine,” said Elena, getting up and putting Baku back on the chair. “I’ll get it ready. I plan to go to bed very early.”

The surprise had been perfect. Rostnikov had taken the girls out for an ice cream. Russians eat ice cream in spite of the weather. It is a love, a need, an obsession that poets, psychiatrists, philosophers, and writers of novels have been at a loss to explain. Old men have been known to get into fights in near zero weather while waiting in line for an ice-cream cone. Children save almost meaningless kopecks for weeks to buy one small packaged ice-cream sandwich.

The girls had eaten their ice creams slowly, savoring them. Rostnikov had tried to do the same, but the habits of a lifetime die hard. He was done in five chilling but satisfying bites.

When they got back to the apartment, the girls were looking forward to reading and maybe a little television if there was something on that Sarah Rostnikov would let them watch. Porfiry Petrovich had done his workout before dinner, and no one was in need of a plumber. He might, however, read to them. Sarah wouldn’t let him read them American or French detective novels, though he said they could learn a great deal from Georges Simenon and Ed McBain. Sarah said they were too young. She had a neat pile of storybooks, with chapters, for them to read or have read to them.

They opened the door and looked across the room at the table where three women were sitting: Sarah Rostnikov, Lydia Tkach, and their grandmother, Galina Panishkoya. The girls stood for a moment with the door open, glanced at Rostnikov, who was smiling, and ran into the waiting arms of their grandmother.

Rostnikov took off his coat, hung it up, and looked at the table now surrounded by happy weeping women and children. The only one not crying was Lydia Tkach, not because she didn’t want to, but because she had an image to maintain, an image she had spent a lifetime perfecting.

“Do you have to go back to jail?” the older girl asked.

“No,” said her grandmother.

“Your grandmother will live here with us for a while,” said Sarah. “It will be a little crowded, but we’ll manage.”

“Apparently,” said Rostnikov, “your grandmother was confused. She didn’t do the thing we thought she did. It was someone else who has yet to be found. Your grandmother got caught in the middle of an unfortunate event. My superior reviewed the record of the trial and came to the conclusion that she should be released immediately. He exerted some influence to see that justice was done.”

“And I have a job,” said Galina, still holding her granddaughters, who had not yet taken off their coats. “I’m going to be working in the bakery of Lydia Tkach. I am going to sit on a stool, take orders, and learn how to use a cash register.”

“Older women are better workers than girls,” said Lydia.

Neither Sarah nor Porfiry Petrovich was sure of such an all-encompassing statement, but neither was going to engage Lydia Tkach in argument on this point.

They didn’t get to bed till nearly eleven, much too late for the girls, but this was a special night. Lydia insisted that Rostnikov not walk her down the steps and to the metro station when she left.

“No one is going to attack me from here to the metro station,” she said. “And, besides, I would have to walk slowly so you could keep up with me. It is cold outside and I want to move quickly.”

Sarah set up the bedroom for the girls and Galina. When they had gone in, Rostnikov and Sarah could hear them whispering for about ten minutes.

Setting up the living room to sleep in was a little awkward. Rostnikov knew how Sasha and Maya had done it when Lydia lived with them. A one-legged man getting onto a mattress on the floor was a sight best reserved for himself and his wife.

Sarah turned the lights out and got in under the blankets next to her husband after she had changed into her pullover nightshirt. Since the girls had come into their lives, he had taken to sleeping in boxer shorts and a variety of extra-large T-shirts of various colors and carrying various messages on front, back, or both. The orange one he wore tonight bore the words PLANT A TREE in black letters. Rostnikov found the shirt reasonably comfortable, though he planned to plant no trees. Before the girls had come, he had slept with nothing on, and so, usually, had Sarah.

“How did you do it?” Sarah asked in the darkness.

“Do what?”

“Porfiry Petrovich,” she said with mock exasperation, “Galina Panishkoya. How did you get her out of jail? She killed a man.”

“It was a mistake,” he said. “You heard me tell the girls.”

Rostnikov rolled over to kiss his wife and then rolled back, his arm touching the prosthetic leg next to the bed.

She touched his hand and he spoke very quietly. “Do you think a beautiful woman might consider making love to a one-legged policeman tonight?”

She answered by rolling on top of him as she pulled the nightshirt over her head.

Somewhere during that night in Moscow, two drunks passed out in doorways and died, frozen. A husband and wife who lived with another couple in a single room had a fight over his snoring. He threw her out of the fourth-floor window. There were two murders, five beatings, dozens of breaking-and-enterings, and countless drug deals and illegal transactions between midnight and dawn.

Sometime during the night, the snow began to fall again. It was falling when the members of the Office of Special Investigation awoke and looked out their windows. There was Pankov the anxious clerk; Zelach the slouch; Elena Timofeyeva, who had not slept that night; Iosef Rostnikov, who had been up most of the night writing some very bad poetry that he threw away; Sasha Tkach, who had fallen asleep with his wife in his arms in the darkness thinking of how close he had come the night before to being killed; Yakovlev the ambitious director; Emil Karpo, who had worked at his desk till midnight and immediately fallen asleep when he got into his narrow bed; and Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov. They all looked forward to a day in which Moscow would be covered in clean, soft, pure, cold whiteness.