A Fine Red Rain ir-5

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  "I am a plumber," Rostnikov said, leading her past the waiting couple, who pounced on the now-empty table.

  Twenty minutes later they joined the crowds under the neon sign of the New Circus. They were shown to their seats, very good seats, in the second row.

  "Why do I know this is not simply a night at the circus?" Sarah whispered.

  Rostnikov sighed and looked at her. "We came at the invitation of a killer. I could not bring myself to disappoint him."

  "I see," said Sarah. "And why was it necessary that I come?"

  "Because," said Rostnikov quietly as the lights went down, "I need you."

  "To do what?"

  'To be with me," he said as the music blared forth in a rush of brass and Dimitri Mazaraki stepped out to the center of the ring, huge, confident, giving his fine mustache a twirl of conceit. He was dressed in reda red coat, red pants, even a red top hat. The music stopped, and the big announcer's eyes, scanning the audience with a Cheshire grin, silencing one and allmen, women, and childrensilenced them with the secret he held of magic to be performed, mystery to be savored, danger to be witnessed, fantasy to store for the gray day tomorrow.

  Mazaraki's eyes played over the crowd, roamed beyond the silence, and snapped onto Rostnikov right in front of him in the second row. Mazaraki's smile changed, the lip curled ever so slightly below the fine mustache. Rostnikov replied with a smile of his own, a sad smile that caused the announcer's lip to hesitate for only a moment before he turned his eyes back to the crowd and announced the first act.

  The music came blaring forth again. Mazaraki stepped back into the shadows, and a dancing bear and two mandolin players dressed in plaid suits and baggy pants bounded into the ring.

  "That was your killer?" asked Sarah, leaning toward her husband.

  Rostnikov nodded.

  He felt her grip tighten on his arm.

  Emit Karpo sat at his desk on the fifth floor of Petrovka finishing his report. He had no office and his desk was number five in a line of eleven desks against a windowless wall. The windows were all in the offices on the outer wall. An officer named Fyodor sat at desk number nine talking on the telephone. Karpo could make out nothing that Fyodor said. He didn't care. But he could not ignore the snorting laugh that usually followed a deep intake of air by the other inspector.

  He finished die report and looked over at the only other person in the office.

  "It's almost nine," Mathilde said, playing with her wilted red hat. She seemed generally wilted. Her hair lay across her cheeks. The collar on one side of her red dress was up, the other down, and it was clear that this lack of symmetry was not a clever fashion ploy.

  "It is finished," said Karpo. "I need only make copies and carry them to the deputy procurator's office."

  "And then?"

  "And then," said Karpo, rising, "you are free to go."

  Mathilde put the hat over her face and laughed. It was a loud, rough laugh that rivaled that of Fyodor, who paused in his conversation with a smile and looked over at the woman in red to share her joke. When Fyodor saw Karpo looking back at him, however, he returned to his phone conversation.

  "Something is humorous?" Karpo asked, standing in front of Mathilde, the report, in duplicate, on Yuri Pon neatly tucked into a folder under his left arm.

  "I was almost killed this afternoon," Mathilde said, choking back a hiccup. "That madman almost killed me."

  "I was there," Karpo said reasonably.

  "Oh, yes, of course. How could I have forgotten?"

  "I did not literally mean" Karpo began.

  "No, you did not literally mean," she said, standing. "You literally are. Do you know that I was frightened this afternoon? Do you think it might be reasonable to offer me something? Thanks, an arm of support, an American tap on the chin for a job well done?"

  "The hat…" Karpo said.

  "With the money I could have made picking up Englishmen at the Bolshoi today, I could have bought five hats," she said, putting the hat on the chair.

  "Well?"

  "Well? Is that what you have to say? It's your turn to speak, Emil Karpo. Your turn."

  Her hands were on her hips. A moist clump of hair fell over her eyes. She tried to blow it away but it didn't move. She flicked it over with her fingertips.

  "You helped to catch a man who committed eight murders of women," he said evenly. "You seemed quite willing to"

  "Spasee' ba, thank you," she said.

  "Spasee' ba," Karpo said. "On behalf of the people of Moscow."

  "I'm touched," she said with a sigh, picking up her hat again. "You are a romantic, Emil Karpo."

  "I don't see how you could come to such a conclusion," he said. "Certainly not based on the information you have or on anything I have said or done here."

  Fyodor laughed, and both Mathilde and Karpo turned to see if he were laughing at them. He was not.

  "I was being sarcastic, Emil."

  "As you well know, I have no sense of humor," Karpo said soberly. "I have no repressions and, therefore, no need for humor."

  "Do you know what day it is?" she asked.

  "Tuesday," he replied.

  A door somewhere opened and closed, the sound echoing past them.

  "Let us break the pattern," she whispered and found herself unable to repress a hiccup. "Let us go to your apartment, which I have never seen, and let us get in bed."

  "It isn't Thursday," Karpo said.

  "Believe me," she replied. "It will still work."

  "Why do you want to do this?" he asked with genuine curiosity.

  "Why? Because you are a challenge to my profession, to my craft. I am driven to make you feel, to make you react."

  Karpo shook his head, unable to understand this woman.

  "And I am to pay as always?" he asked.

  "Yes," she said, plunking the red hat on her head. "You are to pay as always. The hat was for risking my life."

  "I see," he said. "Compensation for lost income. And you don't want cash without expending labor."

  "I love when you talk filthy to me," she said with a grin.

  "I didn't…"

  "Deliver your report and let's go," she said. "While I still labor under the delusion that there is hope for you."

  The circus crowd responded with enthusiastic applause to the panorama display of the fighting spirit of the Red Army. A woman stood upon a great horse that pranced around the ring. The woman held high a red flag with the hammer and sickle. In the darkness beyond the curtain, a cannon roared. Twelve men dressed as soldiers high-stepped out and raised their rifles to the sky in salute. The applause rose again.

  Rostnikov noted that the applause came nowhere near matching that which had been given to the trick horse rider or the dancing bear or the clown on the high wire or any other act before this one.

  Throughout the evening, Mazaraki had moved closer to the crowd with each announcement of each act, had moved closer and closer to Rostnikov.

  "For the benefit of our foreign visitors," Mazaraki had said, looking at Rostnikov during his introduction of a motorcycle act, "the New Moscow Circus does not promote the idea of danger in its performance. Skill is the focus, Soviet skills. Our people come, not in the hope of witnessing accident or death, but with confidence that they will see performers who have perfected their skills, their timing, and the potential with which they have been born and that our nation has nurtured. And yet, Tovarich," he said, looking directly at Rostnikov with a grin, "some skills have a risk of danger, and those who come through the doors of the circus must understand that there is always the slight possibility of accident for those who would challenge their skills, their muscles, their wit. There is no better place man the circus for such a challenge."

  "He's talking to you," Sarah whispered.

  Rostnikov said nothing. He watched the announcer hi red describe the motorcycle act, watched him back away, watched the look in the man's eyes, which he had seen many times before during investigationsa look of defiance a
nd desperation.

  The last act before the curtain call by all the performers was a magician, a magnificent magician with two bespangled women assistants whom he kept making disappear and reappear in various sections of the audience, high above on a rafter, or inside one of the four locked boxes on a raised platform.

  Children clapped, men and women said "wonderful," and the performers and animals made a final triumphant appearance. As the performers left and the final strains of a march vibrated from the band, Rostnikov looked at the exit curtain, looked at Dimitri Mazaraki looking back at him. The tickets had been the first invitation. All night long, throughout the performance, Mazaraki had issued other invitations. And now came the last, a look that said "Come if you dare, but I doubt if you dare, not in my world."

  It was, Rostnikov thought, the bear trapped in a shed, standing on its hind legs, growling, claws up, paws wavering, a frightening and frightened figure.

  'Take the metro home," Rostnikov said to his wife as the crowd began to thin and the band stopped playing. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

  Sarah looked at him and avoided a sticky, crying little boy who was being led out by his mother.

  "What are you doing, Porfiry Petrovich?"

  She was tired, worried, and well aware that she had no chance of changing his mind regardless of what he was going to do.

  "Delivering a message," he said. "From a man who sat on Gogol's head."

  "I'm staying," she said firmly.

  "If you stay, I will worry about you," he told her gently. "If I worry, I cannot do what I must do."

  There were only a few people left in the arena now. Sarah Rostnikov looked around and back at her husband.

  "You didn't plan this?"

  "No," he said, shaking his head. "I thought I had another day."

  "And…"

  "Another day may be too late."

  The voices of the stragglers, the sounds of their feet shuffling tired on the concrete steps, dropped another level. There was nothing more to say. Sarah touched her husband's arm, turned her back, and walked slowly after the others.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Rostnikov waited till the entire arena was clear and then he turned, walked down three steps, and sat in the same seat in which he had sat for the entire performance. Five minutes later a squad of cleaning women in babushkas came out. They came through the main curtain like a new act, the jabbering cleaning women. Rostnikov watched them divide into duets and climb into the seats with their arsenals of brooms, rags, bags, and pans.

  The two who had his section noticed Rostnikov later than they would have had he betrayed his presence with any movement, but notice him they did.

  "Show is over," said the older and heavier of the two babushkas. "Not yet," said Rostnikov, his eyes not on her but on the entrance curtain.

  "We've got to clean up," she said with one hand on her hip and the other using her broom to point to the rows of stands.

  Rostnikov shifted slightly to remove his identity card. He held it up to the woman without looking at her. The other cleaning woman, a shorter version of the leader, leaned forward to look at the card.

  "We'll clean around him," the older woman announced, and they went about their business. In less than twenty minutes the women had finished their cleaning act and exited as they had come. Some of the women turned their heads to look at the bulky man sitting alone in the arena. The older babushka who had seen his identification card spoke to a woman at her side as they departed, and more heads turned to look at him. Then they were gone and all that remained was the overhead humming of the lights. Suddenly the lights began to click off. There was a pattern. The lights behind Rostnikov went off first and then, like a row of dominoes, the other lights clicked off in a wave until the only illumination in the circus arena came from a quartet of night lights mounted on the floor. They cast a dull glow in the circle in front of Rostnikov as if waiting for a final, ghostly performance.

  And still Rostnikov sat. He thought, after another five minutes or so, that he heard something in the darkness beyond the lights. The direction was uncertain. He sat almost certain that he was now being watched. He wanted to shift his leg to keep it from going stiff but he did not move. Another sound. In front? Above?

  "The next performance isn't until tomorrow." Mazaraki's voice came from the darkness.

  Rostnikov said nothing, did not try to find the man behind the voice.

  Mazaraki laughed. The laughter echoed in the dark circle of the arena like the screams of a dozen madmen.

  "You are in my world, policeman," Mazaraki said. Rostnikov thought the voice had moved. Yes, to the right in front of him and possibly above. No, definitely above.

  "I am going to guess something, policeman. I'm going to guess that you have told no one else what you suspect. Am I right? I'm right. And now, policeman, you are trapped in the light like a fish in a tank."

  Rostnikov was certain now where the voice was coming from. He turned his head upward and fixed his eyes directly on the point in the shadows where Mazaraki must be standing. "It is you who stand naked in the light, Dimitri Mazaraki."

  From the darkness came the shuffling, slipping sound of Mazaraki taking a step backward.

  Rostnikov stood up then and walked down two steps, ignoring the electric tingling in his leg. He walked to the center of the circle and beyond. Above him Mazaraki scrambled heavily, his footsteps echoing on metal. Rostnikov reached the far side of the circle and moved to one of the four lights that were fixed on the center of the arena. He reached down and with both hands pulled the metal light fixture. It was reluctant to move, but he forced it upward, upward. It was like a cannonball, a single a dumbbell heavier than any he had attempted before. It fought him for seconds and then gave up.

  Above him Mazaraki continued to scramble. Rostnikov turned in front of the beam and looked upward. His own huge shadow was cast over the seatsa faint, broad shadowand just above the head of the shadow the faint light found Mazaraki, one foot on the rope ladder leading down from the high wire. Mazaraki, still clad in his red suit, looked down over his shoulder. His hat slipped from his head and floated like a bird in slow motion downward toward Rostnikov, who watched it land, bounce, roll in a circle, and stop.

  "I'm coming, policeman," Mazaraki said.

  "I'm here," replied Rostnikov as Mazaraki climbed down in the shadow of the policeman.

  Mazaraki came steadily, without panting, without effort. Rostnikov was fascinated by the grace of the huge body and the pose the man in red took when he reached the ground. Mazaraki stood for an instant with his hands on his hips. There was a smile below his mustache. He took a dozen steps forward and beckoned for Rostnikov to meet him. Rostnikov made no reply in word or movement. His gray shadow now covered the hatless announcer, who took the final ten steps and stood in front of Rostnikov. Mazaraki was at least six inches taller. The big man's right hand came out and grasped Rostnikov's left arm above the elbow. The wool of the gray sweater scratched Rostnikov's arm. The eyes of the two men met, and Rostnikov reached over with his right hand, got a firm grip on Mazaraki's thick, hairy wrist, and began to squeeze slowly.

  "The game will soon end," whispered Mazaraki. "Your moment in the ring will be over. I will crush your head and throw your body in the park."

  The smile on Mazaraki's face was fixed, his teeth remarkably white and even, the teeth of a performer, but beads of sweat were forming on the big man's brow and his cheeks. Rostnikov's left arm was beginning to go numb where Mazaraki squeezed. The light Rostnikov had turned upward now hit the big man's face, casting the upward shadows Josef used to make with a lamp: the scary face, the dark eye sockets, the black mouth.

  And then Mazaraki's dark smile contorted suddenly. He gasped, let go of Rostnikov's arm, and tried to pull his hand back, but Rostnikov didn't let it go. Mazaraki struggled to free himself, jerked back to make the smaller man release him, but Rostnikov didn't budge. His grip was like a metal spring trap on Mazaraki's wrist. Mazaraki lashe
d out with his left fist, a thundering hammer of a blow. Rostnikov stepped forward, leaned over, and rammed his head into Mazaraki's exposed stomach just below the blow, which barely touched the top of Rostnikov's head.

  A wooof sound escaped from Mazaraki, and Rostnikov released his wrist. The announcer hi red fell on his rear into the center of the circle. He writhed on the ground, got to his knees holding his stomach, groaned, and slowly stood.

  "I'm not going to jail," Mazaraki shouted defiantly, one hand on his stomach.

  "I'm not taking you to jail," Rostnikov replied.

  Mazaraki's new mask was one of puzzlement.

  "You lie." He laughed, and his laughter once again echoed through the arena.

  "Why would I lie?' Rostnikov said.

  "I killed Pesknoko," Mazaraki said. "And Duznetzov.

  He killed himself because he was afraid, afraid of what would be done to him because he was weak, because he might talk. Do you know what he might talk about?"

  "You were smuggling people across the borders to the West," Rostnikov said as Mazaraki tried to straighten up, pull himself together for another frantic attack.

  "Yes, but how did you…?" Mazaraki said, and then got an idea. He looked up at Rostnikov with a new understanding. "Yes," he said again, "I see. You're not going to put me in jail. You haven't told anyone. You want me to get you out. You, and some family members. A wife? Daughter? Huh? Ha. Now it is clear."

  Rostnikov said nothing. He held his ground. But something had hit him low in the stomach. The voice of a warlock was speaking to him.

  "It can be done," Mazaraki said in a whisper of conspiracy that would have been heard by anyone who happened to be in the darkness of the arena. "You take a vacation, say you are going to the mountains or Yalta, but you come with the troupe. We are about to go on tour. You come with the group to Lithuania. I have false papers so you can even cross the border into Poland. And in Poland I know people who can get you into Germany, West Germany. It can be done, policeman. I've done it dozens of times."

  Nausea. Rostnikov felt nausea as he imagined for an instant himself, Sarah, Josef, each carrying a suitcase, climbing into a car with someone who spoke with a Polish accent.