"What help do you want?"
"The prostitute killer," he said. "I may know who it is."
"Ah," she said as they walked.
"I know it is probably one of three people," he added as she paused to look into the window of a hat shop on Kalinin Prospekt.
"And how am I to help?" she asked.
"You want us to catch this killer," he said.
It was not a question, so she did not answer. She simply said, "I want you to catch the killer. I knew one of… I knew die second victim, Illyana Osnakovich."
"She was the third victim," Karpo corrected.
"An important revision," she said, still looking at the "It might be. Information must be kept in order or" "Do you like mat hat?" she interrupted. "That…" he said, looking at the red hat with the wide brim. "It does not look particularly functional."
"It is very functional," Mathilde said. "I would like that hat. You would like that hat on me."
"You are asking for a reward to do what you should do as a duty to the state," he said seriously.
"No," she said, squinting into the shop window and shielding her eyes with her hands to see if there were a salesperson inside. "I'll help, but I'd also like the hat."
"You'll have the hat," he said, wanting to massage his left arm with his right hand but resisting the urge.
"You plan to use me to lure this killer, to identify him when he tries to kill me."
"Yes," Karpo said.
A car skidded on the street somewhere behind them. They did not rum to look.
"It will be dangerous?" she asked.
"Perhaps," he answered.
'The red hat?"
"Yes," Karpo said, looking at her. "The red hat."
CHAPTER SIX
Maya held Pulcharia's cheek against her own as they stood in line in front of the shoe store on Gorky Street. She cooed something meaningless into the baby's ear and bounced her gently, almost backing into the couple behind her. The man was wearing denim pants, a checked shirt, and a white American cowboy hat. He had thick eyebrows and a thick beard. The woman was dark, thin, pretty, with long black hair. She carried a large colorful handbag that clashed with her blue-and-pink long skirt with a zigzag white pattern, which in turn clashed with the tight knit blouse with horizontal green stripes. The woman's shoulders were bare and brown.
"Eezveenee' t'e, pashah' lsta" Maya said to the woman.
The woman smiled, brushed her arm where the baby might have touched her, and said, "It's nothing. The baby is very beautiful."
"Thank you," said Maya, looking at Pulcharia's sleeping face to reassure herself.
"I hear the shoes are Korean," the woman said.
"I heard Polish," said Maya.
"Polish," agreed the bearded cowboy.
The line moved forward, and Maya glanced across the street, where Sasha had been pacing as she waited in line. He should have been working. This was not a normal day off. He said that he had been assigned a new case, something to do with a gang of youths who were involved with some kind of extortion against shopkeepers beyond the Outer Ring Road. He shouldn't have come home to play with the baby. He shouldn't be pacing the sidewalk while she waited in line for a pair of Korean or Polish shoes. She wasn't sure they could afford shoes, but Sasha had absently told her to go ahtad, get in line. They would manage.
Maya wanted to put the baby back in the buggy, but she was afraid Pulcharia would cry. The people in line would begin by being sympathetic and understanding and end by being irritable and giving her nasty looks. The morning was hot. The line was slow. The woman behind her was young and pretty, and Sasha was brooding. Maya reached back and pulled the buggy with one hand, holding the baby tightly with the other, as the line moved again.
Across the street, Sasha approached the cart of a white-clad ice-cream vendor, gave her some coins, and waited while she opened the metal door on her cart, reached in, and pulled out two ice-cream pops. Maya watched as he carefully crossed Gorky Street, dodging traffic. Maya watched him and was struck by the feeling that this moment had happened before. That she had stood here before now and that now the moment was happening again. Perhaps she had not stood here but had been a baby like her daughter and had seen her own father crossing the street with two ice creams. She knew the word for it, deja vu, but this wasn't quite it.
"Ice cream," Sasha said, holding one out to her. "I read a report only weeks ago that said Muscovites eat a hundred and seventy tons of ice cream every day, summer and winter."
Maya took the ice cream and Sasha took the baby, who stirred drowsily. Sasha handed Maya his own ice cream and gently put the baby in the buggy. Pulcharia made an irritable sound, and Sasha began to rock the buggy with one hand as he took his ice cream back from Maya with the other. A babushka farther up the line turned around with a frown to see what was going on, saw the carriage, approved, and turned back to face the shoe store with her bag in her hand.
"I feel very old," said Maya after a small bite of the ice cream.
She looked back at the cowboy and the pretty girl in the clashing colors, who were engaged in a head-to-head whispered discussion.
"So do I," Sasha said. "The problem is that neither of us looks old or is old. It's a feeling that goes away."
"But it comes back," Maya said, taking another bite.
She had no trouble digging her teeth into ice cream, which sent a shiver down Sasha's back when she did it but also intrigued him, reminded him somehow of her independence, her strength. Maya's teeth were very good. His own were acceptable, except for the Romanian space between his top front teeth. His mother, Lydia, had the same space and she said that someone in each generation had it, that somewhere in antiquity there must have been a Romanian in her family. Sasha wondered if his daughter would have the space.
"You should be working," Maya said.
"I am working. That gang might be considering a move into the heart of the city, onto Gorky Street. I'm exploring that possibility," he said with a smile, trying to avoid being splattered by the ice cream, which had begun dripping in the late-morning heat.
Sasha looked at the pretty woman with the cowboy, and Maya saw him looking. Maya's and Sasha's eyes met and they both smiled. She handed him the stick from her ice cream. He took the last bite of his own, accepted her stick, and let her rock the buggy as he moved to deposit the sticks in the trash.
He wouldn't have the nerve to do what he was going to do without Rostnikov. Rostnikov seemed so confident, so quietly certain, not only that this was the proper course of action but also that it would work. Why Rostnikov should risk so much for him was something Sasha could hot fully understand. Part of it, certainly, was Rostnikov's dislike for Deputy Procurator Khabolov, but something else was going on in the Washtub. Though he knew how to survive, there was a defiant, independent edge to the inspector that Tkach admired and feared.
"What?" Maya said as he returned to her in the line.
"What?" he repeated.
"What is wrong? Your eyes…"
"Work," he said. "The streets are full of criminals. If mis line moves fast enough, you can put on your new shoes and we can walk to the park and lie in the grass. I don't have to be anywhere till noon."
"All right," she said. She felt better but not younger, for there was something in her husband's behavior that made her feel that this was a particularly important day and noon a particularly important tune.
Dimitri Mazaraki parked his car and checked his watch. His schedule was off, and things were not going quite right. He had failed to hit Katya and he had seen in his rearview mirror the crippled policeman hurry across the street toward her. He got out, 'breathed deeply, touched his fine mustache, and grinned at nothing. He would survive, succeed. He had done so for this long. He would continue to do so. He was confident, sure of his cunning, his strength, his ruthlessness. He had no loyalty except to himself, and no dependencies. In Klaipeda, the coastal Lithuanian town on the Baltic Sea where he had been born and from which he had
escaped through the tsirk, he had relativesa sister, several cousins. He needed them and they needed him when he and the circus came to the area, but it was a need born of money and security, not of affection. As he had for years, Mazaraki had scheduled a circus tour to Lithuania and Latvia. The circus director had never questioned his scheduling, had even liked the idea, because he liked the Baltic beaches in the summer.
The tour would begin in a few weeks. Mazaraki was beginning to think that it would be his final tour to Lithuania. Killing Katya would, perhaps, give him time, enough time, but that policeman who loved the circus had unrelenting eyes. Mazaraki was sure about those eyes. He saw such eyes hi his own mirror each morning when he admired his body and his fine mustache.
Mazaraki entered the New Circus building through the side door and moved toward his office. His footsteps echoed through the corridor that circled the building, and light streamed in from the tall, modern windows. Yes, he would get another chance at Katya, probably before the day was over, and if he did not he was fairly certain that she would say nothing, that she could say nothing. He had to, he would, protect himself.
And now he had work to do, a new act to schedule in, performers to talk to about extending their performances tonight to fill the show now that the Pesknoko act no longer existed. He would wear his red-and-black suit when he announced the acts. He would stand tall, meet the eyes of the crowd, introduce the performers as if he owned them, as if he were personally responsible for their very existences. It was a feeling he loved and would hate to lose. Perhaps, he thought, this will not be my last trip. It would be dangerous, but perhaps, just perhaps, he could keep it going for a while longer. In his office, Mazaraki checked his messages, found that the Circus School had called him about the act he wanted to recommend to the New Circus's director when he returned. Mazaraki sat behind his desk, surveyed his small office with satisfaction, and picked up the phone. Ten minutes later he had permission from the circus director, who was in Minsk, to bring in the new act at least on a temporary basis.
"Tragedy," said the director on the crackling phone line.
"Tragedy, indeed," echoed Mazaraki sympathetically.
"We'll have some kind of special dedication to Pesknoko and Duznetzov when I return," the director said. "What do you think?"
"An excellent idea, Comrade," said Mazaraki. "And I'll have the final tour plans ready."
"You are a zealous worker, Dimitri," the director said.
"I do my best," said Mazaraki, running his tongue over his white teeth as he examined his reflection in the window.
Five minutes later Mazaraki was in the locker/shower room in the rear wing of the building. He opened his locker, examined his black tights and short-sleeved black sweatshirt to be sure they were clean, and began to undress. Three men, the Stashov clowns, came in arguing. They were wearing loose-fitting work clothes and each was trying to outshout the other about some nuance of their act involving a pail of paint.
"Go back and see it again, and look carefully this time," said the oldest Stashov, the father. "Chaplin is handed the bucket. He doesn't bring it in."
"No, no, no. Never!" cried the middle Stashov, the one with red hair. "They do it to him. The old clown starts plastering him."
The middle Stashov was about to say something else but saw Mazaraki seated on the bench in the corner and shut his mouth. Mazaraki had that effect on the performers and was quite pleased with it.
"Comrade Mazaraki," said the Stashov father.
"Comrade Stashov," answered Mazaraki, putting on his American Puma shoes. "I have a videotape of The Circus if you want to see what Chaplin did. You can look at the scene in my office after I work out."
The Stashovs looked at each other furtively, surprised at this unexpected offer from the usually forbidding assistant director.
"We'd be very grateful, Comrade," said the older man.
"We are here to help each other," said Mazaraki, standing, a giant in black. "Like a big family."
"Yes," said the father with a nervous smile.
"Noon in my office," said Mazaraki, moving out of the locker room.
When he closed the door, the voices of the Stashovs resumed but they were quieter, wondering.
Mazaraki, back straight, walked across the hall to the rehearsal room where he had his weights. The sound of an accordion greeted him as he opened the door. The room was the size of a handball court, with echoes and cream walls. The carpet was green and thin. The accordionist was sitting on a pile of exercise mats in the corner. He wore street clothes and the red hat he used in his act. His partner, an incredibly beautiful thin young girl with long blond hair, sat beside him, her legs encased in tight jeans and pressed against the accordionist, who played and grinned at her. His teeth were too large. His face was also too large, but he had a way with bears and an act that always brought laughs. The girl was perfect for the act, a perfect contrast to both the bears and the homely accordionist. Mazaraki wondered what the girl thought when the accordionist made love to her. He wondered what it would be like to see the bear make love to her or to make love to her himself, balancing her on top of his flat, scarred belly.
The girl looked at Mazaraki and sensed something of his thoughts. She tugged at the sleeve of the accordionist, who had not looked up, and he pulled out of his reverie to smile at her and follow her gaze to Mazaraki. The music stopped.
"Go on playing," Mazaraki said, finding the chalk and powdering his palms.
"I was just… We were just finishing," the man said, his smile still fixed on his face but having lost its bemusement.
"Of course," said Mazaraki, looking at the girl, who pushed her long hair behind her back and avoided his eyes. The accordionist pretended not to notice the assistant director's look as he led the girl by the hand to the door.
"What was the song you were playing?" Mazaraki asked, reaching down for a pair of fifty-pound dumbbells.
"Just a… a French song," the accordionist said, opening the door.
"I like it," said Mazaraki, lifting a weight in each hand, feeling his biceps tighten. The girl tried not to look at him but turned and saw him grin under his huge mustache. She stared in fear and fascination for an instant before the accordionist led her out.
Alone, Mazaraki sighed deeply, straightened his back, and began to curl the dumbbells.
Ah, he thought, it feels good to be powerful.
The policeman had said something about lifting weights, Mazaraki remembered. The policeman, yes. Mazaraki was quite sure that he would be seeing that policeman again.
In less than a minute the sweat began to flow, and Dimitri Mazaraki sighed a sigh that echoed like the voice of a satisfied lover.
Rostnikov was looking at a book when Sasha Tkach arrived at the Gorgasali brothers' bookstall just off Lomonosov Prospekt. The crowd, mostly students carrying their own textbooks or purses, was large. Since it was noon, some of the people browsing chewed on sandwiches they carried or ate ice creams. The woman behind the flat table of books watched warily to protect her wares from theft and food stains. Sasha looked for the little girl who had been standing next to the trailer the day before, but she wasn't there.
"Sasha," said Rostnikov in greeting as he put down the book and limped away from the small crowd. The inspector hooked his arm around his young colleague and guided him to an open space where they could look across the university toward the Lenin Hills. On a clear day one could see the ancient and modern towers of Moscow across the hills and the Moscow River. This day was warm and clear.
"You know the history of the hills?" Rostnikov asked, looking toward the city.
"Somewhat, from school." Tkach pushed his hah" back from his eyes. With Rostnikov he always felt as if he were a student about to learn some magical truth. He glanced through the crowd at the woman behind the tables to see if she recognized him, but she had no reaction.
"Look out there," Rostnikov said, biting his lower lip and shaking his head. "There's plenty of time. Some good w
ill come of this day. I was following a young woman, thought I would not be able to join you, but she had no trouble eluding me. She was young like you, fast, a circus performer. You like the circus?"
Tkach looked at Rostnikov, whose eyes were fixed on the hills. If this conversation were going somewhere, its direction was a puzzle to Sasha, who wanted simply to turn and get their business over with. Rostnikov, however, appeared to be in no hurry and to have no interest in coherence.
"I haven't seen the circus since I was a boy," Sasha said.
"You'll want to take the baby there when she can understand, even before she can speak," Rostnikov said, sighing. "She may understand no more than the colors, the lights, the smells, but you will understand, will see the spectacle and see her wide eyes."
"I'd like that," said Tkach.
Rostnikov's eyes moved to the tall tower of the university.
"I would have liked Josef to go to the university," he said. "He would have liked it, too."
Sasha did not know what to say, so he said nothing as Rostnikov went on.
"The Lenin Hills used to be the Vorobyevy Hills, the Sparrow Hills, named for the village that used to be here. You knew that?"
"No, or if I did I didn't remember," said Sasha, looking back at the bookstall nervously.
"Patience, patience," said Rostnikov without looking at the nervous young man at his side. "A calm before we act. History has a calming effect. When I was a boy, I used to feel dwarfed by history, insignificant. I was nothing, a speck. That was what we were encouraged to believe and still are. I believed it. I still believe it. It frightened me as a boy, to be insignificant, one among millions and millions, lost in repeated history. And then one day, when I was almost killed by a drunk with a knife, I suddenly felt that the reason for my fear was the importance I attached to myself, my body, my thoughts. Are you following this?"
"I don't know," said Tkach.
Rostnikov patted him on the back.
"I've not gone mad. There's a point. Pay attention. I've not forgotten why we're here or why you think we're here. So, at the moment when I thought I was going to die I suddenly gave up any sense of the importance of my thoughts and body and I was set free. I was no longer bound by fear. Whatever I was, and I'm still not sure what that is, was, I knew, part of something far greater than I could understand. I was liberated by that moment, could smell, taste, feel, and not carry the burden of having to protect the fragile shell that, ultimately, I could not protect. And once I no longer protected, I could enjoy life. Food smelled better. My wife looked better. I loved my son without sadness. I could almost taste the iron when I lifted weights. Unfortunately, the understanding tends to fade a bit each day."
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