Red Chameleon ir-3

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

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

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

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

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

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

  “What are you-?”

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

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

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

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

  “Are you still Mastakov?” Rostnikov said gently.

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

  “I couldn’t tell,” said Rostnikov.

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

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

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

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

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

  “What is the line?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “And then?” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  She shrugged and smiled, happy to be active.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  TEN

  In the morning, Sarah Rostnikov rolled over in bed and examined the face of her husband. His eyes were open and appeared to be examining the ceiling with great interest. His behavior the night before had been most strange. She had been too much within herself, too much concerned with disappointment to worry about Porfiry Petrovich, and since he seemed content in his routine, she had not thought greatly about his problems, though she knew they were great and many.

  When he had come home late the night before, he had eaten without noticing what he ate, had lifted his weights, losing himself so completely that she had to remind him that it was well past midnight and the clanking of the metal on the mat in the corner was surely disturbing the neighbors downstairs. They both knew the downstairs neighbors. Misha and Alexiana Korkov, would never complain. They were a mousy pair with a pale, near-teen daughter. Misha sold tickets at the USSR Economic Achievements Exhibition, while Alexiana did something vague and menial at the Aeroflot Air Terminal.

  After he had stopped lifting, Rostnikov had sat on his small bench, sweating, thinking, distant. He had washed, and for the first time in memory, at least her memory, he had not read at least a few pages of an American detective novel. It had become a ritual need of her husband’s to read at least a few pages of Ed McBain or Lawrence Block, Bill Pronzini, or Joseph Wambaugh. He was forever ferreting out their novels in English, hoarding them, fearing that he would run out. But last night he read nothing.

  Stranger still, he had asked her if she wanted to make love. He had said it so softly, almost an exhaled breath with words, that she almost missed it. Sarah had been tired, concerned, hot, and far from any feeling of passion, but there was something in her husband that made the request a near plea. It was a sound she had never heard from him before. No one else would have noticed it. The man was so solid, so confident, so unmovable, that his possible vulnerability frightened her.

  And now, in the morning, the sun coming through the window’s thin curtains, she said, “Porfiry, what is it?”

  “I must get up,” he said. “I have an appointment.”

  He sat up, scratched his broad, hard, and hairy belly through his white undershirt, and reached over to massage his leg. At least this part of the ritual did not change.

  “Where are you going?” she tried.

&nb
sp; Rostnikov looked at his wife, her long, red-tinged hair back over her shoulders, framing her round, still-handsome face.

  “Porfiry?”

  “It’s better you do not know,” he said, getting up and reaching for his pants. Sarah had sewn the sleeve the evening before, and it looked fine. He had but two suits and liked to keep the other one for emergencies and when his regular suit was being cleaned. Getting it cleaned was a major chore. So much was a major chore, he thought, looking for his shirt.

  “You’ll call me later?” she said. “I’ll be home by six. Is this dangerous?”

  Rostnikov had one shirt-sleeve on. He paused, pondering the question. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Are you-are you afraid?” she asked, a question she never imagined asking him. She could tell by his broad, flat face that he had not considered this. Before he answered, he finished putting on his shirt.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, buttoning his shirt and searching for his tie. “I am curious, filled with curiosity. If you ask me, is this dangerous, Porfiry? I say, yes. I think so. But it is a puzzle, a page that must be turned even if the page is on fire and I burn my hand.”

  She was still in bed, watching him, when he finished dressing. He moved to her, kissed both her cheeks and her forehead.

  “If Josef gets here before I do, do not eat without me,” he said. “If I am not back by nine, call Tkach at Petrovka.”

  “Porfiry,” she said, feeling fear.

  He shook his head no and pursed his lips. Then he turned and went out the door. Sarah tried to hold that memory of him, to etch it in her mind. She didn’t want to tell herself why she was doing this, but she knew, she knew deep within her, that she feared never seeing him again.