Tarnished Icons ir-11

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Sasha, who was over thirty but looked no more than a few years past twenty, dressed quickly to the morning din of his apartment. Lydia has slept over, and now, refusing to wear her hearing aid, she was shouting about having slept badly. Pulcharia, who was nearing four years old, was telling Maya, her mother, that she did not want to stay with Grandma Lydia. Illya was gurgling calmly in his makeshift crib.

  Sasha examined himself in the mirror of the tiny bathroom. The bulge of the gun in the holster under his jacket did not show. The suit he wore was baggy and a bit frayed. A new suit was out of the question. His salary and Maya’s combined were barely enough to keep the family fed, dressed, and in a reasonable two-room apartment. He adjusted his shirt, slightly yellow from too many washings, and decided this was the best he could do. Besides, he would be out on the streets in his coat and scarf most of the day.

  He was alone in the bedroom with the baby. When Lydia slept over, which was often, she slept in this room on the bed with Pulcharia. The baby slept in the other room. Even with the door to the bedroom closed, Lydia’s snoring could be heard just below the decibel range of a metro. Pulcharia had always been completely oblivious of her grandmother’s snoring.

  Sasha stepped out into the combination living room/dining room/kitchen where he and Maya slept on the floor. The futon had been rolled up and stored, and the room was reasonably neat, but the look from Maya as their eyes met let him know with sympathy that neither of them would escape the apartment this morning without conflict. Maya, dark, pretty, showing no sign of having had two babies, shrugged slightly and shook her head, her short, straight dark hair moving in near slow motion.

  Maya was dressed for work, dark skirt, green blouse, shoes with a low heel. She looked beautiful. He wondered how many men made passes at his wife in the course of her day at the Council for International Business Advancement. Sasha tried to ignore his mother and moved to give his wife a kiss. She was already made up, so the kiss was nearly chaste.

  “Me,” said Pulcharia, knee-high to his baggy trousers, holding out her arms.

  Sasha picked her up, kissed both her eyes and nose and hugged her, thinking that in spite of Lydia’s insistence that the child looked like Sasha’s grandmother, Pulcharia was clearly Maya’s child. This was how Maya had looked as a child. They had photographs. Lydia denied the striking resemblance and insisted that her granddaughter was a replica of Lydia’s own mother.

  Sasha put his daughter down and accepted a cup of coffee and a slice of bread from Maya. Only then did he turn to his mother, a small, wiry woman with a determined face that would have been considered handsome were it not for her nearly constant scowl. There was more than a bit of gray in her short, wavy hair. She wore a sagging, heavy blue robe and regarded her son with a look of determination.

  “Dobraye utra,” Sasha said, continuing to eat. “Good morning, Mother.”

  “Two things,” Lydia shouted as Pulcharia sat herself down at the table near the window and ate last night’s bean soup and a large piece of bread. The child had the enviable ability to tune out her grandmother.

  “Yes, Mother,” Sasha said, sitting in front of a bowl of soup and joining his daughter. He was sure that Maya had finished eating sometime before.

  “First,” said Lydia, “the child kicks in her sleep. She moves all around. I can’t sleep.”

  Lydia’s unceasing snoring was evidence to the contrary, but Sasha looked up as his mother moved toward him.

  “I’m afraid you’ll just have to sleep in your apartment more,” he said.

  Hovering over him, she ignored his comment. Maya looked at her watch, gulped down the remainder of her coffee, kissed Pulcharia, gave Sasha a look of sympathy, and moved to give the baby a good-bye kiss. “Second, this apartment is too cold,” Lydia said.

  “Everyone’s apartment is too cold or too hot,” said Sasha. “It is a fact of winter life in Moscow.”

  “I intend to complain,” Lydia went on.

  “To whom?” he asked, dipping his bread into the soup.

  “Third,” Lydia said. Maya was putting on her coat.

  “I thought you said there were only two things,” Sasha said before he could stop himself.

  “Grandma did,” Pulcharia confirmed.

  “You have still made no effort to be assigned to an office job,” Lydia said.

  “I don’t want an office job,” Sasha said with what he thought was remarkable composure considering that he had gone through this conversation with his mother perhaps a hundred times before.

  “You have a family,” she said.

  Maya closed the door quietly and escaped.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “People try to kill you. You do dangerous things.”

  “Sometimes,” he said.

  “You’re like your father,” Lydia said. “You have a temper. You’re easily angered and your emotions get you into trouble.”

  Sasha checked his watch. On this point, he knew, his mother was right. Sasha’s father, whom Sasha did not even remember, had been an army officer. He had died on duty in Estonia when Sasha was two. The official cause of death was pneumonia, but Lydia was convinced that he had died of debauchery.

  “Your father was always volunteering to go to distant places, even Siberia,” she said, “because of his hot blood.”

  And, Sasha was certain, to escape from his wife, who had been a beauty but who almost certainly had the same personality then as she was displaying now.

  “Today you ask for a transfer to a ministry office position,” she insisted. “I will go back and see some of my old friends. They have already said they would help.”

  Sasha took his and Pulcharia’s bowls and put them and the spoons in the small sink behind him.

  “No, Mother,” he said.

  “Then I will talk to Porfiry Petrovich again,” she shouted.

  To this the baby reacted with a scream followed by crying. Lydia didn’t seem to hear him. Pulcharia ran to the crib, where she had some success in quieting little Illya.

  “Porfiry Petrovich has no power to transfer me,” Sasha said. “Besides, he would not do so without my consent, even if he could.”

  “Colonel Snitkonoy,” she said. “I’ll go directly to him.”

  “He will pat your hand, tell you he understands, promise to see what he can do, and then forget you came except to tell me that it would be best if I did what I could to keep you away from him.”

  “Stubborn,” she said. “Like your father.”

  Sasha nodded.

  “He needs a new diaper,” Pulcharia called. “He stinks.”

  “The baby needs a new diaper,” Sasha shouted, walking across the room to take his own coat and wool cap from the rack near the door. “And I am very late.”

  “This conversation is not over,” Lydia said.

  “Of that I am certain, Mother,” he said, buttoning up.

  “Gloves,” Lydia said.

  He pulled his gloves from his pocket and displayed them.

  “He stinks,” Pulcharia repeated, leaning over the railing of the crib to get the odor more directly.

  Sasha hurried back across the room, kissed his mother’s cheek, and marched quickly toward the door.

  “I don’t want to stay home with Grandma,” Pulcharia said as he opened the door. There were tears in her eyes.

  “She loves you,” Sasha whispered so that his mother could not hear. “You must stay with her.”

  “Yah n‘e khachooo,” said Pulcharia. “I don’t want to.”

  “I’ll bring you something special,” Sasha said, taking his daughter in his arms and kissing her again. “Now I’m late.”

  “We’ll go for a walk,” said Lydia, moving to the crib. “We’ll go to the park.”

  “Okay,” said Pulcharia.

  When Lydia had worked in the offices of the Ministry of Public Affairs, she had frequently lived with Maya and Sasha and it had been almost tolerable. Now Lydia was retired, on an insignificant and often unpaid
pension, and had plenty of time. In spite of the pitiful pension, Lydia was not poor. During her more than forty years in the ministry, Lydia had quietly managed to put away money. What little she saved, she converted from rubles into jewelry, jewelry she bought from people who needed cash for bread. Gradually Lydia learned enough about jewelry to know what she was buying and to make sometimes remarkable purchases. She kept everything in a box she hid carefully wherever she was living. Then, after she had officially retired, with the Soviet Union in the process of falling, Lydia sold her jewelry, piece by piece, at a profit, to the sudden influx of entrepreneurs, carpetbaggers, and outsiders in Moscow.

  While Yeltsin stood on the top of a tank proclaiming the end of Communism, Lydia was going to the proper ministry offices and arranging to buy government Bread Shop 61 half a block from where she was living near Solkonicki Park. When Gorbachev had started using words like perestroika-the restructuring of the Soviet communist system-and glasnost-openness to express one’s opinions-Lydia had called a cousin who was a farmer on a collective outside of Kursk and made a deal with him. It was simple. If the government ever did fall and the farmers became free to own and deal, she would be willing to purchase all the wheat he could produce on his land and that of some of his neighbors. It was not an enormous amount, but it would be enough to supply flour for the bread she planned to sell. Lydia’s cousin even knew someone in Kursk who could convert the wheat to flour at a reasonable rate, with her cousin, of course, getting a small commission for that service. Lydia and her cousin would annually reset the price, and she would make it a fair one. Living in fear of having no government to which to sell his crop, her cousin and his friends had readily agreed. Then she had made the necessary vzyatka-the unofficial bribes needed to get services-obtained the necessary purchases, and became the owner of a bread store. The bureaucrats who had sold her the government store that they now deemed worthless were happy to take her money even though its value was dropping crazily. She had bought the store and had full papers and rights to it. It had even left her with significant savings.

  While the people of the right and left and middle were marching and buildings were in flames, Lydia offered each of the state employees who worked in the store the opportunity to stay and work for her with the incentive of bonuses if business went well. Some stayed. Some left. They all thought she was a bit mad. Gradually the bread shop workers learned that it was to their advantage to produce and to be reasonably respectful to customers.

  Now, more than three years later, Tkach’s Bread Shop, which sold only one size of loaf at a price lower than competing shops, was a thriving business with long lines. It was an assembly line of bread, and prices were listed in rubles and dollars.

  Once, a little more than a year before, a gang of young men, too few to be called a mafia, too many to be ignored, and too violent to be reasoned with, had come to the shop and demanded a regular weekly protection payment. The bread shop manager had called Lydia, and she had agreed to meet the gang the next Tuesday morning. When the gang of tattooed young men in leather jackets arrived, they were greeting by the old lady and three men who displayed both their weapons and their police identification. One of the policemen looked like a boy but had a glint of near madness in his eyes. A second policeman was bulky and looked a bit dull-witted. The third was tall and dressed in black, with a paste-white face and sparse combed-back hair. Ultimately the gang decided the money they might collect from the bread shop was not worth a confrontation with these three. Six months later a larger, older gang of Georgians also backed down when Sasha and his fellow policemen showed up. The few rubles they would collect from Lydia were simply not worth dying or going to jail for.

  Now, with no protection to pay, Lydia was even further ahead of her competition, and the bread shop thrived. When Lydia died there would be a significant business to be left to her son and grandchildren. She had arranged the proper papers and paid the right people so that this could come to pass.

  Somehow, though she didn’t tell him, Lydia expected Sasha to know all this and be grateful. Normally, however, he had other things on his mind, dangerous things that worried Lydia.

  Sasha put his daughter down and went through the door, closing it quickly behind him. As he ran down the stairs, he brushed back the strand of hair that had regularly fallen across his eyes since he was a boy. There was more than a bit of truth in what his mother had said. There was danger, now more than ever before, and there were always bribes and women. He did have a temper. There was, however, a great deal to be angry about.

  One of those things was a violent rapist who had survived long enough to earn a nickname, the Shy One. He had managed to commit at least twenty reported rapes without once being seen by his victims, who ranged in age from sixteen to sixty-seven. He had come upon them from behind and dragged them to a dark street or park or train yard. He warned them not to scream, and then he raped them from behind.

  The first reported rape had been over two years ago. The rapist had worn a condom and left no semen traces to analyze. After each sexual attack he had beaten the victim, hitting each woman in the head when he was finished. With each attack the beatings had grown worse. All of the victims had received hospital treatment. Seven had required surgery. Two had lost sight in one eye. And the Shy One left no clue at all, which was why the National Police were happy to turn the case over to the Office of Special Investigation and why the Wolfhound had turned it over to Sasha and Elena Timofeyeva with the vague suggestion that Elena might be used as a decoy and Sasha, with his youthful appearance, might watch over her with little suspicion falling on them. The Wolfhound’s ideas were always vague, intentionally so. If his investigators succeeded, he could take credit for their success. If they failed, he would view their failure with paternal sympathy and clear disappointment.

  The Shy One had no time pattern, no particular night of the week, no pattern of months, and only the vaguest broad sector of operation. Some of the victims said they heard a car door close immediately after they were attacked, but none could identify any car.

  Sasha tried to come up with an idea as he jogged to the bus, but all he could think of was that his mother would be there when he got home and he would have no peace.

  Emil Karpo had awakened at five in the morning, just as he had done for more than twenty years. He had awakened in total darkness without an alarm clock. He turned on the small table lamp next to his narrow bed and rose slowly. For weeks after Mathilde Verson’s death, he had slept with the small light on as he had as a young boy. Then, one night, he had turned it off. He slept without clothes despite the weather. Though the past night had been cold, it was no colder than a typical Moscow winter night. On warm nights in the summer, he slept on top of the thin sheet and thick blanket. On cold nights like last night, he had slept under the thick blanket that had been a gift from Mathilde. Mathilde, who had been torn to pieces in daylight on a busy street. She had been caught in the crossfire between two rival mafias. Mathilde had been a full-time telephone operator and a part-time prostitute with a sense of humor Karpo did not understand. They had, over the years, moved from a regular Thursday rendezvous to a teasing friendship to a serious relationship. Karpo wondered what there was in him that had made the bright, pretty woman want to be with him.

  Emil Karpo had no illusions about himself. He was tall and incredibly gaunt, though he worked out in his room each morning. He was very pale and wore his straight and thinning hair brushed straight back. Until Mathilde, he had never worn anything but black. She had gradually changed that, but now he was back to his black attire. With Mathilde he had smiled a few times, very small smiles that only someone watching closely would have noticed. People did not tend to watch Emil Karpo closely. He was well aware that both the criminals and police referred to him as the Tartar or the Vampire. Neither name displeased him. It did not hurt to have a reputation. But Mathilde had seen past his white, cold image. Zeema, the winter, suited him and now it was Dikabr’, December, which
suited him best of all months.

  He looked around the room. Against one wall was a bookcase filled with black notebooks covering the details of every case on which he had ever worked. He had a special marking on those books containing cases that had not been solved. On the desk before the bookcase stood an old table. Two months ago, Karpo had purchased a computer, which rested on the table. It was crude, an old Macintosh II, but it had been expensive. That didn’t matter to Karpo. He had saved most of his salary. He could have lived better, perhaps eaten better, certainly dressed better, but he had simply put his money-cash-in a well-hidden place outside of his room.

  Karpo was slowly transferring all of the data from his black books to the computer. He had been reading books on computers and had become convinced from using the one belonging to the Office of Special Investigation that a careful recording of the data in his notebooks might enable him to cross-check information from thousands of crimes and perhaps find information that would tie some things together.

  On the wall near the door to the hall sat a chest of drawers, so old it was almost an antique. There was a painting on the wall. Mathilde had painted it. Craig Hamilton, the black FBI man who had been one of the agents assigned to help in the Russian fight against organized crime, lived in Washington and was a lover of art who frequently visited the National Gallery with his family. He had declared Mathilde a talented artist. Mathilde had given the painting to the Rostnikovs. Karpo had come to his room shortly after her death to find the painting on the wall. Each morning he paused, as he did now, before he began his workout to gaze in the semi-darkness at the reclining figure of a woman looking up a grassy hill, her face away from the viewer, her red hair, like a young Mathilde’s, billowing in a gentle wind. At the top of the grassy hill stood a small house. On the wall behind Karpo’s bed was the door to the closet where his dark clothes hung neatly in front and the clothes that Mathilde had bought, made, or convinced him to purchase were in boxes on the shelf. The fourth wall was to the right of Karpo’s bed. It had the single window that Emil Karpo opened only in the morning to determine the weather.