Dinah Washington and Porfiry Petrovich finished together. He placed the weight back on the stand, and the singer concluded with a plaintive low note that nearly brought tears to the detective’s eyes.
He sat up, reached for his towel, and wiped himself as he looked at the girls, who seemed to find even his wiping of sweat fascinating.
“You are the strongest person in the world,” said the older girl.
Rostnikov looked over at Sarah, who sat in her chair across the room reading a book.
Although neither of the two girls had spoken much since their grandmother was taken from them and sent to prison, they had done reasonably well in school from the day the Rostnikovs had taken them in. And now the girls were gradually beginning to speak more and more.
“Sometime I will take you to watch the Olympic hopefuls working out,” he said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll see one of the former champions, a few of whom are now coaches, demonstrate. Then you will see some of the strongest men in the world. And the strongest ever was …”
“Alexiev,” finished the younger child.
Rostnikov smiled. Normally at this point he would turn off the record player, which he now did, put away the bench and weights in the space he had made behind the doors of the bookcase against the wall, which he now did, and change his clothes and shower, which he did not do.
Rostnikov had many loves, beginning with his wife and son and, more recently, the two little girls who were looking up at him from where they were seated. Following his family on his list, a list of which he was never overtly conscious, were his work and his coworkers, weight lifting, American mysteries, particularly those about the police by Ed McBain, and plumbing.
On his days off Rostnikov would often spend hours searching the outdoor stalls around the city for mystery novels in English. An Ed McBain was always a treasure, as was anything in English translation by Georges Simenon, but close behind were Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, and many others.
When the weights and bench were compactly stored and the bookcase door closed, Rostnikov wiped his brow, neck, and head once more and said to the girls, “Shall we go to work?”
Both children nodded yes and smiled. Rostnikov glanced at Sarah, who looked up and smiled at the trio across the room, but there was something plaintive in her expression.
Rostnikov went into the bedroom and came back with his big plastic toolbox in one hand and five four-foot-long plastic tubes under the other arm. Bulianika and his wife on the fourth floor had come by earlier and left a message with Sarah that their sink was backed up. Sarah had said that if nothing came up at Petrovka, she was sure Porfiry Petrovich would take care of it later.
He told the older girl to get his plastic bucket from the storage box in the kitchen area. She moved quickly.
Rostnikov loved plumbing. He owned books on plumbing and pored over the diagrams even when the books were in German or any other language he could not read. From time to time Rostnikov would drop in on the Detlev Warehouse, a great indoor expanse that had once been a lightbulb factory. Now it was piled with neatly organized building parts, including piping, fittings, and tools for plumbers.
In exchange for the not inconsiderable right to evoke Rostnikov’s name and rank when trouble arose, Detlev and his son, who looked like nearly identical well-built Italian construction workers, complete with dark mustaches and faded overalls, supplied the detective with parts and tools free or at a laughably low price. The Detlevs firmly believed that they were getting the better of the deal by saving the money they would normally have to pay to the police and one of the new mafias. At night an armed guard, an off-duty police officer, protected the warehouse, but the Washtub’s reputation was far more effective.
“We should not be long,” Rostnikov said as the older girl opened the front door with one hand, carrying the bucket in the other.
Sarah nodded.
On the way to the Bulianikas’ apartment, the two girls took turns opening doors for Rostnikov, who moved slowly on his new leg, walking before him with a serious demeanor suitable to the serious business at hand.
For Rostnikov, this building, with its ancient and ill-built pipes, was his challenge. Eventually, if he lived long enough and the building continued to stand, he would probably replace every pipe, joint, toilet, and sink. Behind the walls was a network of metal and plastic that worked like a system of the human body. Water came in supposedly clean and left, usually dirty.
The Bulianikas, an old Hungarian couple whose son had moved back to Budapest years ago, welcomed the repair trio, offering tea and cookies. The girls each took one cookie, as they had been instructed, and Rostnikov said they would all have a quick tea when the job was finished.
The job turned out to be an easy one. The sink, old and cracked, was backed up with foul-smelling water and almost full to overflowing.
“First rule in a case like this,” said Rostnikov to the two attentive girls, “is not to immediately use a plunger or drain auger, that long spring. The cause may be in the fixture drain, right here, or in the main drain, which collects waste from the fixture drains. Or the problem could be in the sewer drain that carries liquid and solid waste out of the house and to the sewer. We’ve had no other complaints, so we can tentatively conclude that the scene of the crime is in the fixture. So we start by clearing the drain opening.”
One of the first things he had done when taking on the circulatory system of the ill-constructed building was to collect a few kopecks from each tenant to buy strainers for each sink. It would not solve any problems, but it would go a long way toward cutting down on clogged drains.
Rostnikov, sweating even more through his white sweat suit, removed the stopper and, using a flashlight, looked down the drain to the first bend a few feet away. He could see nothing.
Then, using his plunger, he created suction and pulled, his neck muscles bulging red, the girls standing back in awe. Nothing.
Next Rostnikov forced the long, flexible metal coil of his auger down the drain. He cranked the handle, which rotated a stiff spring when he hit what he thought might be a slight blockage. This accomplished nothing.
“Next,” said Rostnikov like a seasoned surgeon addressing a group of interns rather than two fascinated little girls, “we can do one of two things. We can use a chemical cleaner, which would probably not work because the drain is completely clogged. If it didn’t work, we would then have to contend with caustic water. So we must dismantle the trap and use the auger on the drainpipe that goes into the floor.”
The girls nodded in understanding as Rostnikov dismantled the trap, found it a bit dirty but clear, and inserted the auger into the floor drain. Again no result. He reassembled the trap and, awkwardly holding on to the sink, pulled himself up.
“The clues lead us elsewhere,” Rostnikov said, picking up his piping and toolbox.
After reassuring the Bulianikas that he was on the trail of the problem, Rostnikov took his equipment and, with the girls ahead of him opening the stairway doors, went to the apartment below, where Vitali Sharakov lived alone. His wife had left him two years earlier. She had stayed with him for years only because he had been a member of the Communist Party, the ranking member in the apartment building, who earned a good living as a district sanitation supervisor, though he knew nothing about sanitation. But Sharakov was now a sullen stoop-shouldered man whose bush of dark hair always looked as if it needed cutting and who frequently looked as if he had forgotten to shave.
He let Rostnikov and the girls in with the air of a man who was accustomed to being intruded upon and had resigned himself to a lack of privacy.
“Plumbing problem upstairs,” Rostnikov said.
Sharakov was wearing socks, a pair of wrinkled pants, and a white T-shirt with short sleeves from which his thin arms dangled like winter birch twigs.
Sharakov nodded. The room was dark except for the light from the television set placed directly in front of an old armchair. As far as Rostnikov could see, the room
was neat and clean.
From the television came the voices of a couple of actors arguing about a woman who was married to one of the characters.
“No trouble with your sink or toilet?” asked Rostnikov.
Sharakov shrugged and said, “No more, no less than normal.”
He went back to his chair and his television show and let Rostnikov and the girls find their way to the sink. Rostnikov put down his toolbox and piping and turned on the water. The flow was weak. Then the work began. Rostnikov got on his back and moved awkwardly to open the little door that revealed the drain that was connected to the apartment above. Rostnikov stopped and asked Sharakov if he could have more light.
“Yes,” said the man in the armchair, but he didn’t move.
The older girl found the switch, and a hundred-watt bulb came on. Rostnikov took out his flashlight and a few tools and began to remove the metal plate under the sink. The screws were rusted. Rostnikov would replace them with new ones from his toolbox. For now he needed a careful but firm grip to turn each screw, not wanting to crack the grooves. Once he got each screw out slightly, he put a few drops of oil from a small aluminum can into the space behind the screw head. After giving the oil a few seconds to soak through, he removed the plate and searched the space behind it with his flashlight.
The coupling of the two sections of drainpipe was directly in front of him, a piece of luck since many of the joints in the building were difficult to reach. He had both the right wrench and the strength, after using more oil, to turn the coupling. It took about four minutes to loosen the ring and free the pipe. Each twist brought forth an ear-punishing squeak of rusted metal nearly locked by time and decades of polluted wastewater.
Rostnikov placed the coupling carefully on the floor, pushed the freed lower pipe gently out of the way, and called for the bucket and the flexible auger. The older girl handed him the bucket. The younger girl handed him the rolled-up metal coil.
Rostnikov, lying on his back, pushed the coil upward slowly. Gradually the coil almost disappeared, and then he paused, feeling some resistance. He reached for the bucket and held it in one hand while he twisted the handle of the auger. He paused, pushed it a second time, and then quickly pulled it out of the pipe as a trickle of dark liquid dribbled down, falling deep inside the wall of the building. Rostnikov got the bucket under the pipe just in time. The trickle suddenly turned into a torrent as the combination of hair, pieces of metal, paper, and items of unknown origin came thundering out.
He turned his head away and held the bucket tightly. The muck was almost to the top of the bucket when the flow suddenly stopped.
Rostnikov carefully removed the bucket, which gave off a foul odor that got even Sharakov’s attention.
“What is that?” he called.
“I think it best not to know,” said Rostnikov.
He wanted to replace the two sections of pipe with two of the new plastic sections he had brought, but he checked his watch. He did not have the time. He did, however, replace the rusted connecter with a new plastic one. Then he put the plate that covered the piping back in place and replaced the old screws with new plastic ones.
Sweat-drenched and dirty, Rostnikov gently eased his way out from under the sink, grabbed the countertop, and pulled himself up. The girls were looking in the bucket.
“I think I see a bug, a big bug,” the younger child said.
“It would not surprise me,” said Rostnikov, washing his hands in the sink and drying them on his sweatshirt. He would wash off thoroughly in the shower when he got back to his apartment.
“I’ll be back when I can to put in new piping,” Rostnikov said as he and the girls moved past Sharakov, who grunted and continued to watch his melodrama.
Rostnikov had to carry the bucket. It was very heavy now and dangerously near to overflowing. He let each of the girls carry two sections of the relatively lightweight plastic pipe. They managed with difficulty and dignity.
“Go tell the Hungarians that their drain is fixed,” he said to the girls, who nodded like solemn, dutiful soldiers. “Then bring the pipes back to our apartment. You have done good work.”
Both girls smiled and hurried away.
By the time he got back to the apartment after going downstairs and outside to dump the putrid mess directly into the sewer, the girls were already in their night-clothes, men’s extralarge black T-shirts with the words THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE printed in English across the front.
Sarah finished getting the girls ready for bed while Rostnikov removed his left leg, placed it nearby, and showered using the heavy-duty grainy Chinese soap that went through even the dirtiest grease. He shampooed with just the right amount of American liquid Prell and was dry, leg back on and fully dressed, in ten minutes. He said good night to each girl and thanked them for their help.
“I’m going to dream about that bug,” said the older girl.
“It wasn’t a bug,” Rostnikov lied. “It was a piece of black rubber.”
The child sighed with relief, and Rostnikov went into the living room, closing the door behind him. Sarah sat at the table, a cup of tea for her husband in front of the empty chair across from her.
Rostnikov sat, sipped some tea, and said that he had to go back to work. He didn’t know for how long. Maybe an hour or two, maybe most of the night. He told her he still had almost two hours before he had to leave. Then he waited for her to tell him what was troubling her.
Sarah spoke softly, calmly, telling him what she felt and thought and what her cousin had said.
“I’ve been having seizures,” she explained. “I have medication from Leon that should stop them, but I may have more. I go blank. I think I shake. I wet myself. I don’t want the girls to see this happen. I don’t want you to see it happen, but you should be prepared. I should tell the girls and Iosef.”
“Yes,” said Rostnikov, reaching across the table to touch his wife’s hand. “I was wondering why I got chicken tabak tonight.”
“I will survive,” Sarah said, a confident smile on her full lips and pale face.
“And we will endure,” said Rostnikov. “Surviving and enduring are what Russians do best. We have almost made an art of it.”
“If the medication doesn’t work,” Sarah said calmly, “we will try another medication. If that, too, fails, the woman who operated on me, removed the tumor, will conduct a procedure to relieve the pressure in my brain. It is not an operation in the same sense as the one I had. This is a simple procedure that is almost certain to work and poses no threat to my life.”
Rostnikov said nothing.
“Porfiry Petrovich,” Sarah said softly, “Leon would not lie to me.”
While Rostnikov had been lying on his back under the pipe holding the plastic bucket, Valentin Spaskov was sitting in the unmarked car across from the Moscow Television News office. The engine was off. Spaskov did not want to draw any attention. He had signed the vehicle out for surveillance of a suspected illegal arms dealer.
He watched each person exiting the building, waiting for Magda Stern. He knew she was inside. He had called from a public phone five minutes before he parked across from the building and asked if she was there. The woman who answered said she was, but she was in a meeting. Spaskov said he was Inspector Tkach and asked to leave Magda Stern a message that the new photographs would be ready for her to look at the next morning.
Valentin hardly noticed the cold. He was wearing civilian clothes and a lightweight jacket so he could move quickly when the time came. In the holster under the jacket was a fully-loaded Colt Delta 10mm Gold Cup that he had taken from the Trotsky Station evidence room. After he killed Magda Stern, he would clean the weapon and return it to the evidence room on a shelf containing dozens of weapons.
He had decided to use it because the killing might then be linked to a shooting in front of Moscow Television News almost a year ago. A popular newscaster and commentator had been shot as he exited the office. The man had, on the air, been critic
al of both the government and the rise of extremists. Valentin had no idea what Magda Stern’s political position might be. He simply planned to kill the woman nearby in the hope that it would be blamed on the same people who had committed the earlier murder and had never been caught.
If this were his district, he would have carefully supported such a suggestion. But this wasn’t his district, and he wasn’t at all certain whose district it was, considering the recent drawing of districts by the Ministry of the Interior. On more than one occasion, Valentin had been called upon to step in to negotiate jurisdiction over a crime because both Trotsky Station and another station claimed the territory.
The detectives from the Office of Special Investigation would, he was sure, not accept such a motive. The death of Magda Stern the night before she was to look at new photographs in the hope that she could identify her attacker would be too much of a coincidence. The detectives would conclude that her attacker and murderer was in one of the photographs. But which one? They would check, to the best of their ability, where each man photographed this day was at the time of each rape and beating. They might even eventually grow suspicious of Lieutenant Valentin Spaskov.
He would remain calm, cooperative. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he would now, this night, have to murder an innocent woman. The problem was that he did not know if he was capable of stopping his attacks. And now he considered that once he had murdered Magda Stern he might well murder his next victim.
She came out of the building walking quickly, pulling the collar of her coat around her neck to temper a winter wind that came out of the darkness carrying drifts of snow from the street and sidewalk. A few people came out with her. If she went somewhere with them, he would follow and have to kill her elsewhere, but the group went to the right and she moved alone to the left. The group was moving toward the nearby metro station. She was walking into a darkness that was barely relieved by streetlights blurred by blowing snow. She was cooperating fully in her own murder.
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