“You do not work?” the policeman had asked, with the hint of a barb in his words.
“I am a student,” the killer had replied, “and as such, I quite possibly put in more hours at work than you do, and the ultimate value of my studies may have far more input to our economic future than does your pursuit of the depraved, deprived, and unfortunate. Now, if you wish to threaten me with loss of the apartment or a trip to Petrovka, please do so and then leave.”
The policeman had left with a smirk but in confusion and the killer had closed the door, retrieved the hammer and gone back to sitting on the floor.
And now he heard the footsteps in the hall. And now he heard the knock at the door. He didn’t answer. And now he heard the sound of her key in the lock and the opening of the door. In the bleak light of the hall he could see her outline, the outline of his Vera. In her hand was her shopping bag filled with food she would never eat.
“Ilyusha?” she said, speaking into the darkened apartment. “Ilyusha, are you home?”
He rose from the floor as she removed her boots, still standing in the doorway. She heard him move forward and paused with one shoe off.
“You startled me,” she said with a nervous smile. “Why are you in the dark?”
He waited till she took off the other boot and walked in.
“Ilyusha,” she said, “what is wrong?”
“Aleksander is dead,” he answered.
She dropped the shopping bag, and a sound like air escaping from a child’s balloon in Gorky Park came from her dark outline. A bread skittered out, and a can of something rolled.
“I thought it would disturb you,” he said. “But I have something that will disturb you even more. I killed him.”
“No,” she cried. “Ilyusha you…”
“Yes,” he said, knowing that tears were coming to his own eyes, that he would soon be unable to control his own voice. “Yes, I know. I saw the pictures. Ilyusha the-fool-no-more knows. Ilyusha who was used and laughed at.”
“No,” she said backing away from him. “It wasn’t like that, nothing like that. You must understand.”
Her coat was still on and he could sense her fear through it.
“I understand,” he said, unable to hold back the tears. “Now you must understand.” He brought the hammer up over his head. It was heavy up there like a barbell. He knew she could see it, could feel his weakness, and he hated both her and himself as he brought the hammer down as hard as he could as she started to whimper something softly that he never heard.
The Rostnikov toilet did not work. Well, it did work if you were willing to clean up the floor each time you flushed. So, between complaints to the regional manager who was responsible for the building, the Rostnikovs used the toilet at the end of the hall. Porfiry Rostnikov had done what he could. He had threatened the manager, a thin party member named Samsanov who wanted to talk only about his wife’s illness. Threats did not work. The offer of a small bribe brought only promises and an explanation. The tenants above Rostnikov were a Bulgarian whose family was spending a year in Moscow in a technological exchange program. To fix Rostnikov’s toilet meant disrupting the toilet of the Bulgarian technological expert. The Bulgarian did not know anything was wrong with the toilets. A decision had been made at a political level Rostnikov could not penetrate to keep the Bulgarian visitor from knowing that there was anything wrong with the toilet. The building manager had promised that when the Bulgarian family left in the summer, the toilet would be fixed immediately, providing of course that a higher priority political family did not move into the apartment and that a suitable bribe be involved.
Rostnikov missed his toilet. He had given up complaining as had his wife. A new idea had begun to form within him. He would go to the library, find a book about plumbing, learn how to fix the toilet and then approach the Bulgarian family directly. He did not even know if they spoke Russian, but he was sure they must in some manner. He was also of the belief that Bulgarians in general were polite people who would find it difficult to refuse his request. So, in his spare moments Porfiry Rostnikov read plumbing books.
He and his wife had eaten a quiet meal of fish soup, bread and tea with a small glass of after-dinner cognac and talked about the things they usually talked about. Rostnikov said nothing about Iosef or about the fourteen-year-old boy killed by Tkach.
Sarah was a solidly built woman of forty-five with a surprisingly unlined face considering the wear of her life. She belonged to an official national group in Russia. The Jews had to register just as did the Armenians or any other ethnic segment of the populace. Sarah was so registered. They had married after Porfiry was a policeman. If they had married before, it was almost certain that he would never have been given the job he was so good at. In fact, it was only his reputation that protected him.
He fingered the plumbing book near his plate and tore off a piece of dark bread.
“Procurator Timofeyeva does not look well,” he said.
Sarah wore the familiar round Russian glasses and had a habit of looking over them when she wanted to emphasize her interest. The habit had begun when she went to work as a clerk in the Melodiya record shop on Kalinin Prospect eight years earlier. She would look over her glasses at the top of an album selected by an important customer and nod at the sagacity of the selection.
“She does too much,” Rostnikov went on. “She works too hard. Loyalty and dedication have reasonable limits.”
Sarah nodded in agreement.
“That young man, Tkach, shot a boy today, a robber, killed him,” Rostnikov went on, looking down at his plumbing book. “You’ve never met him. He’s a good man. Reminds me…”
“Of Iosef?” Sarah supplied.
Rostnikov shrugged. “In some ways. Others not.”
“And you want to invite him to come over?” she said.
“Maybe, with his wife, for a drink of coffee, some time,” Rostnikov went on.
“Would they accept?”
Rostnikov knew what she meant, but he felt she was oversensitive to her Jewishness. He knew, if he ever let it happen, she would open up the question of leaving Russia, of going to Israel or England or America. They had skirted the possibility many times. It was an unanswered challenge. He was not even sure what his own status was if it came to such a request. He doubted if a police official, even one as low as he, would be permitted to leave, and even to think about it publicly might end his career. There were many ways to end his career, but that might be the surest of them all. Besides, he was a Russian, a Muscovite. It wasn’t just a matter of love or loyalty. It was part of him. His thoughts, past, future were within a few miles of where he now sat worrying about his son, the plumbing, a murderer, a stubborn procurator with a heart condition, a young officer fighting a sense of guilt, and a murder which made him uneasy in ways he could not quite understand.
He rose from the table, reached over with the remnants of his bread to soak up the last bit of moisture from the soup in his bowl, popped the bread in his mouth, and moved to the corner of the room.
“You shouldn’t lift those things after a meal,” Sarah said.
“Later I’ll be too tired,” he countered. Their dialogue had been almost exactly the same on this point for years, but neither could resist it. “I’m preparing for a competition.”
Sarah cleared the dishes and said nothing.
“The weight lifting competition for strong old men,” he said, removing his jacket and shirt and rummaging for the old sweat shirt he wore while lifting.
“Maybe you can get strong enough to lift Samsonov over your head till he promises to fix the toilet,” she said, turning on the kettle on the single burner to create some hot water to clean the dishes.
Rostnikov prepared his weights. It was awkward for him to bend with his bad knee and even more awkward to do the actual lifting. He would definitely forego, if possible, the dead lift and the clean and jerk if the competition permitted. After all, he was a war hero. Compensation should be
made for that even if it couldn’t get his toilet fixed.
He was into his fiftieth right arm bend with twenty-five pounds when the phone rang. He kept lifting. Almost all the calls to the apartment were police business, which was why he had the phone. But this time a finger of fear went down his back and made him shiver. It might be about Iosef.
Sarah answered. “It’s for you. Karpo.”
Sarah did not like Karpo. She had met him once, and he had made not the slightest attempt at being civil. Rostnikov assured her it had nothing to do with her being Jewish, that Karpo treated everyone exactly the same-badly-but Sarah did not like him.
“Rostnikov.”
“Inspector, I’ve taken the liberty of having a car sent for you,” said Karpo. There was something strange about his voice as if he felt the need to say each word precisely. “If you would meet me at the Metro entrance at Komsomol’skaya as soon as possible, I will explain. We may have the Granovsky murderer trapped. All exits are blocked.”
“I’ll be there quickly. You sound-” Rostnikov began.
“I have been shot,” said Karpo.
Rostnikov hung up and moved across the room quickly to put on his shirt, jacket, and coat.
“I must go out,” he said. I don’t know when I will be back.”
“You’re sweating,” Sarah said. “You’ll catch cold.”
“I’ll be in a warm car.”
She nodded in resignation.
“Porfiry,” she began as he opened the door.
“Yes,” he said, looking back.
“As always,” she said with a smile.
He returned her smile.
“There’s a hockey game on the television. Why don’t you watch it and report to me when I get back,” he said, closing the door.
He didn’t hear her say to herself, “I hate hockey.”
The path that had taken Emil Karpo to the Komsomol’skaya station with a bullet in his right shoulder had begun shortly after he had left Rostnikov’s office at Petrovka. He had weighed the possibility of taking a bus to Granovsky’s apartment and decided he could make just as good time or better by walking the several miles. The walk in the falling snow had proved to be the easiest part of his night. When he got to the apartment building, he began systematically to question the tenants.
The knock and the announcement, “Police,” got the doors open, and one look at this gaunt specter insured cooperation, but there was little to be learned from most of the people in the building. Some denied even knowing that Granovsky had lived in the building, an obvious lie. Others wanted so much to cooperate that they were prepared to describe endless streams of wild-eyed anti-revolutionary visitors. One woman, who worked in a state pharmacy, claimed that she could smell drugs on Granovsky’s visitors when she passed them in the halls. An old couple named Chernov, who lived below the Granovsky apartment, complained about noise from above but could supply no leads. It soon became fairly clear to Karpo that there was little to be learned from the neighbors, but he also knew enough not to stop. Then, on the fifth floor, he had found Molka Ivanova, a woman so small as to be within a fraction of being a dwarf. She was but one of the one hundred thousand Ivanovas in Moscow, for Ivanova is a more common surname in Moscow than Smith or Jones is in New York. But she proved to be a singularly important Ivanova. Molka Ivanova was a bookstore clerk who shared her apartment with her granddaughter’s family. The granddaughter knew nothing, but Molka was clearly frightened. Karpo bullied his way into the apartment. Molka’s fear was not the result of a normal fear of an honest person confronting the police. She had a secret. It might mean nothing. It might mean everything. She might have a black market purchased television set or forbidden book. Karpo had no time to be discreet and no talent for it.
“The neighbors tell me you know something about the murder of Aleksander Granovsky,” he said, looking down two feet at the woman with his unblinking brown eyes. Her own were fluttering rapidly and she held the top of her dress as if in fear that this ghost was going to attack her.
“It’s nothing,” she said, looking in the direction of her granddaughter and a teen-age boy who sat silently, pretending to pay no attention to anything but the books they held in front of them.
“Tell me the nothing,” he said.
“Well…” she began.
“Now,” he insisted with a smile that chilled the old woman.
“I did hear him…”
“Granovsky?”
“Yes,” she said. “I heard him arguing in the hall last night walking up the stairs. I was coming back from the market. Market Number forty-seven. They had cabbage, green cabbage-”
“On the stairs,” Karpo interrupted.
“They were arguing. He was threatening him.”
“Someone was threatening Granovsky,” Karpo supplied. “Please call him Granovsky.”
“I don’t know whether to call him comrade,” she replied in fear.
“Do so,” said Karpo.
“This man in black was drunk. He was shouting at Comrade Granovsky, saying he was disloyal, should be killed like a dog. Comrade Granovsky ignored him, and the man grabbed him. He’s a big man. Comrade Granovsky spat in his face. Or the man spat in Comrade Granovsky’s face. I don’t remember which. It was very brief. Then Comrade Granovsky pushed the man.”
The retired librarian’s hands went out to demonstrate the push and stopped short of the stomach of Emil Karpo.
“Then?” urged Karpo.
“Comrade Granovsky hurried up to the sixth floor where he lives with the man behind him shouting. And that’s all I heard.”
And, thought Karpo, many others must have heard it too and conveniently forgotten.
“Who was this man in black? You know him.” The second sentence was indeed a statement and not a question, though Karpo only sensed that it should be.
“His name is Vonovich, Mikel Vonovich. He lives down the hall in five hundred ten,” Molka Ivanova said. “He is a cab driver. A big man, as tall as you but bigger across.”
Karpo moved to the door and heard a voice behind him which must have been the granddaughter’s.
“Don’t tell him where you found out. Please.”
Karpo closed the door behind him, moved down the hall, and found five hundred ten. There was no answer. Karpo had decided to get a key and examine the apartment and was turning to find the building manager when luck struck, but it is difficult to determine if it was good or bad luck for Emil Karpo.
A huge, burly figure in black with a black beard came noisily down the corridor, almost filling it, and singing a popular song twenty years old. He was somewhere in his thirty’s and clearly drunk. He was about ten feet from his door before he saw Karpo.
“What?” asked Mikel Vonovich in a voice surprisingly high for his size.
“I’m from the police,” Karpo announced calmly. “I would like to talk to you.”
Vonovich looked to the wall on his left, then to the wall on his right and finally at the tile floor.
“What?” he bellowed.
“To talk about last night,” Karpo repeated, taking a step toward the giant cabdriver.
“Last night? Last night.” Something glowed in Vonovich’s grey eyes and a look of cunning crossed his face. Karpo, who was prepared for either a docile change of attitude, a feigned drunkenness, or even a physical attack was unprepared for what did happen next. Vonovich reached into his pocket swaying as he bumped into a wall and came out with something in his right hand. It was a gun and it fired in Karpo’s general direction. It was the second time in hours that Karpo had been shot at and once again, the shot had missed. Karpo fell against the wall, giving Vonovich enough time to turn and run down the hall into pools of light along the way-the plunge of a monster from folklore into the imaginary hell of the past. For a drunk, Vonovich moved with surprising speed.
Karpo was after him in less than a second. Not a door opened in curiosity. Not a sound was heard. Through the exit door Karpo plunged, and he could see
the massive dark figure dive into a cab, his own cab surely, parked on the street. Karpo ran for it with drawn gun and shouted for Vonovich to stop. He considered shooting the cabdriver through the window but knew he would probably kill him and that he might be needed alive.
The cab ignition caught and Vonovich pulled away, skidding in the snow and almost hitting a woman and a young boy.
Karpo looked around for a car to commandeer, but there was nothing in sight but a streetcleaning truck brushing away the accumulating snow. Karpo ran to it, gun in hand.
The driver, a dark man with a grey stubble on his face, let out a gargling sound. Karpo leaped up next to the man.
“You see that cab,” he said, pointing with his gun. The streetcleaner added. “Follow it. I’m a policeman.”
“I can’t catch a car with this,” the man said logically.
“You can the way he is driving. Look.”
“But-”
Karpo took the man’s face in his free hand and turned it toward his own. They locked eyes for an instant, and the man pulled back.
“I’ll catch him,” he said dryly.
And the chase was on. The streetcleaning truck lumbered slowly forward, straight, sure, unswerving. The cab, with its drunken driver, sped for a few dozen feet, skidded, turned, stalled, started again, bounced off parked cars and hurried away.
“We will catch him,” said the streetcleaner, warming to the chase. Karpo grunted.
It was late at night and traffic was light when Vonovich went backward in a skid and flew over the curb into a small park. His cab stopped just short of a pond where a few people were skating. They scattered, clutching each other. Half a block behind, Karpo leaped out of the streetcleaning truck and ran in the direction of the screams. Vonovich had abandoned his cab by the time Karpo arrived, gun in hand, to frighten the skaters. He didn’t have to ask where Vonovich was. He could see him sludging forward through the park like an enormous bear.
“Stop,” the policeman shouted, but the bear did not stop. It headed out of the park down a street toward the warm hole of a Metro station with Karpo behind. Karpo couldn’t see Vonovich after he disappeared into the Komsomol’skaya Metro station, but he couldn’t wait. He ran in just in time to see the drunken cab driver hurl himself over the stile without paying his ten kopeks and roll across the floor with a mighty “grummpf.”
Death of a Dissident ir-1 Page 8