A Fine Red Rain

Home > Other > A Fine Red Rain > Page 19
A Fine Red Rain Page 19

by Stuart M. Kaminsky


  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 seats—a faint, broad shadow—and 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 lashed 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 in 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.

  “Katya Rashkovskaya,” Rostnikov said, to pull himself away from the temptation of the image. “You tried to kill her.”

  “Of course,” said Mazaraki through clenched teeth, fighting off the last of the first shock of pain. “If I don’t kill her, she will kill me.”

  “Kill you?” Rostnikov said as Mazaraki stood almost upright.

  “Whose idea do you think all of this was?” Mazaraki said with a shake of his head. “I never thought about smuggling people, doing anything but some black marketing of a few radios from France. It was her idea when they joined the circus. She kept Pesknoko in line, Duznetzov. And then when Duznetzov weakened and said he could take no more she got me to threaten him. She decided that we had to get rid of Pesknoko. Then, only then, did I realize that she would have to kill me, have to get rid of me, or I might drag her down if I got caught. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?”

  “It makes—” Rostnikov began.

  But Mazaraki hulked forward and cut in, “I only tried to kill her to protect myself. You are a joke, policeman. You’ve done all this to protect the woman but she is the one you want. You are a joke but we can turn the joke. We can both get her and I can get you and your family into the West. You’re thinking about it.”

  His voice was now a soothing whisper.

  “I saw that look in your eyes. I’ve seen it before in the eyes of black marketers, government bureaucrats, scientists, and even a KGB man. I can get you out, policeman. All you have to do is take my hand on it and it will cost you nothing, nothing at all.”

  Mazaraki’s right hand was stretched out. Rostnikov for the first t
ime stepped back, not wanting to touch or be touched by that hand, as if the touch would give him a disease of thought that he could not overcome, a disease he might welcome. Mazaraki stepped forward, leering now, and Rostnikov’s good leg kicked the upturned light, sending out a crack of leather heel on metal, and with the crack Mazaraki stopped, a startled look on his face. He stopped, opened his mouth to speak, and whispered, “Nothing at … all.”

  And then the big man in red fell on his face. In the center of the back of the fallen man’s red jacket Rostnikov could see an uneven wet pattern of an even darker red. Rostnikov looked up into the dark arena.

  “Katya?” he said.

  “Yes,” came the woman’s voice.

  There really wasn’t anything else to say. If he had been a younger man with a good leg, Rostnikov could have leaped over the lamp into the protection of darkness, but a leap was out of the question and a shuffling roll would be ludicrous and undignified. He felt the dull heat of the light directly behind his good leg. His weak leg could take no more than a pained instant of weight. He gave it that instant and kicked back at the light with his heel. The glass shattered and the bullet from the darkness hummed past him as he turned to his right and moved as quickly as he could into the darkness. She fired again. Three more shots. All three to Rostnikov’s right. And then a pause. The body of Mazaraki lay silently. A thin wisp of smoke rose from the dead lamp, and a shuffling rush of footsteps came closer.

  Something moved at the far reaches of the remaining light. He pressed himself against the wall behind him and waited for Katya Rashkovskaya to run across the ring, gun in hand, and find him. “Nichevo,” he said to himself. If it were to be like this, then it would be like this.

  She stepped into the light slowly, her hands at her side. She was dressed in white and, Rostnikov thought, looked quite darkly beautiful. And then someone appeared behind her and then someone else.

  “Porfiry!” came Sarah’s voice.

  And into the light behind Katya Rashkovskaya stepped Sarah and Sasha Tkach. Sasha was holding a gun. Katya was empty-handed.

  “I’m all right,” Rostnikov said, stepping forward.

  “I called,” Sarah said, looking down at the dead man.

  “I see,” said Rostnikov, moving forward toward her.

  Sasha pushed his unruly hair from his face and smiled at Rostnikov, who nodded. Katya didn’t smile. She looked emotionlessly at Mazaraki’s body and leaned over to pick up the red hat.

  As Sarah put her head against his chest, Rostnikov wondered if he should wait till morning to retrieve the plumbing books he had loaned to Katya Rashkovskaya.

  Deputy Procurator Khabolov was dreaming about Helsinki, which, even in his sleep, he found quite odd, for he had never been to Helsinki nor did he have any interest in going to Helsinki. He found himself walking the streets of Helsinki certain that he was getting lost, unable to retrace his steps because he did not know where he had begun, unable to ask anyone who passed him for directions because they all spoke to each other in a language that must have been Finnish. Suddenly, behind him, came a pounding noise. In his dream he turned as the noise came closer, became louder, more insistent. Fear pressed him against the brick wall of a building while he waited for the massive ball of iron that pounded toward him, would surely, suddenly, come around a corner to crush him. He looked for help at the Finns around him who did not stop but kept walking, smiling.

  “Answer the door,” one of the Finns said without moving his mouth, and Khabolov sat up in bed, awake, panting in fear. “The door,” his wife repeated. “Someone’s at the door.”

  Khabolov looked at his wife, who had turned her huge freckled back on him and was clutching a pillow to her head.

  The knock came again. “Can you dream that people are speaking Finnish if you can’t understand Finnish?” he asked.

  “Answer the door,” his wife replied, and Khabolov pushed back the covers, checked the buttons on his pajamas, smoothed down his hair with two hands, and looked at the clock on the dresser. Six o’clock in the morning. The knock came again, and he padded quickly out of the bedroom and toward the door. The knock came again.

  “Who is it?” he called.

  “Rostnikov” was the reply.

  Khabolov checked himself in the mirror next to the door, didn’t like what he saw, and shouted “One moment” as he hurried back to get the blue-and-white and too-warm-for-this-weather flannel robe in the closet. His wife said something half in sleep. He ignored her and closed the bedroom door on his way out.

  When he opened the apartment door, Deputy Procurator Khabolov saw that Inspector Rostnikov was not alone. Tkach stood at his side, a bit pale, almost at attention.

  “What is it?” Khabolov asked, assuming a terrible emergency. Rostnikov was not even working for the Procurator’s Office any longer, and no inspector had ever visited, ever been invited to visit, Khabolov’s apartment. Khabolov had no desire for anyone outside of his family and his few friends to see what he had accumulated in appliances and the minor luxuries that made life tolerable.

  “May we come in for a moment, Comrade?” Rostnikov asked politely. Both were quite sober and serious, yet neither gave the impression that an emergency was in progress.

  “I’d like to know …” Khabolov began and stopped when Rostnikov reached into his pocket and pulled out an oblong package wrapped in a brown paper bag. The object looked like a small book. Khabolov looked at both policemen sternly, discerned nothing, and took the package. He opened it and extracted something he recognized, a videotape.

  “What is this?”

  “A videotape,” Rostnikov said.

  Khabolov could see that it was a videotape. For a moment he thought he might still be dreaming. The scene made as much sense as his dream about Helsinki.

  “We think,” Rostnikov continued, “that you should look at it.”

  “Now?” Khabolov asked them.

  “Now would be a very good time, or you could wait till later,” said Rostnikov, letting his eyes focus beyond Khabolov on the interior of the room.

  “What is it? Some murder evidence? Inspector Karpo included in his report on the apprehension of the prostitute killer that you had been instrumental in … It has nothing to do with that case?”

  Rostnikov shook his head no, and Tkach remained at near-attention.

  “I’m running out of patience,” said Khabolov, bouncing the videotape in his hand as if it were growing warm. “Very well. Come in, but mark you, this had better be important.”

  Rostnikov and Tkach entered the room, and Khabolov closed the door quietly behind them.

  “Come and be quiet. My wife is sleeping in there.”

  Neither man had known Khabolov had a wife, but that did not surprise or interest them as much as the brown carpeting on the floor. Not a rug in the center of the room, but real carpeting. Sasha Tkach wondered if the apartment had more than one bedroom.

  Khabolov led them across the room to a sofa facing a television set with a video machine on a table next to it.

  “Better be important,” Khabolov warned, turning on his machines and inserting the tape. A static-filled image came on with a flamelike sound and Khabolov plopped on the sofa to watch. He did not invite the two policemen to sit. They stood and watched the screen.

  “It had better be important,” Khabolov said again. “Murder evidence or—”

  “Profiteering,” Rostnikov supplied. “Black market, probably. We think it important enough to consider turning over to the KGB. We thought you might be the one to do it.”

  “I see,” said Khabolov, and for an instant he thought he did see. These two wanted to get on his good side. They had stumbled onto something important and had brought it to him. Rostnikov wanted his job back. Tkach wanted some assurance about his security. In exchange they were giving him something he could turn over to the KGB. And then the static stopped and a picture came on the screen. It was a bit dark. The camera jiggled but the picture was clear. There was no mi
staking the interior of the Gorgasali trailer. And there were the Gorgasali brothers. Someone said something on the tape. Khabolov couldn’t make it out. And then a figure came through the trailer door and Khabolov leaped up from the sofa. He was looking at himself. He plunged his hands into the pockets of the robe and came up with a handkerchief. He threw it at the nearby table and missed. Before the Khabolov in the picture could speak, the Khabolov in the apartment reached over and snapped the television off.

  “You are playing a dangerous game, you two,” Khabolov said, retrieving the tape from the machine and plunging it into his now-empty pocket.

  “You may keep that one,” Rostnikov said. “We have another copy.”

  “Blackmail? You are daring to blackmail me?” Khabolov said, looking at Tkach, who looked at Rostnikov.

  “It would appear so,” said Rostnikov.

  “I’ll go to the Chief Procurator, tell him it’s a fake, tell him you two are in on this. If I lose my job, you lose yours. If I go to jail, you go. Especially you, Tkach. You were the one who made contact with those two.”

  Khabolov pointed to the blank television screen to indicate that it held the Gorgasali brothers.

  “Perhaps so, perhaps not,” Rostnikov said. “The Chief Procurator might believe you. He might not. It might be reasonable to hear our terms before you try to make threats.”

 

‹ Prev