Hard Currency ir-9

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “All times in Russia have been troubled,” said Mrs. Allyamakaya, gumming her peach. Juice dribbled down her chin.

  “Good night, little mothers,” he said, stepping past them. “I suggest you not stay out too long. There’s a chill in the night air out of the north.”

  “Thank you for the peach, Tovarich Odom,” Mrs. Allyamakaya’s friend said.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Allyamakaya as he disappeared into the building.

  “God bless that young man,” said Mrs. Allyamakaya’s friend, wiping her hand on her dress.

  “May there be more like him in the future,” said Mrs. Allyamakaya. “If Russia is to survive and prosper, it will be through the work of young people like him.”

  Cuba is dotted by small police stations with perhaps two or three cells in each. Each station is headed by a major with a single gold star in the middle of his blue baseball cap. Station operations are run by a captain or lieutenant. There is also a plainclothes lieutenant whose job it is to know the district and to direct investigations if a crime occurs.

  The sun was bright and the streets of Havana hot, but not as hot as Moscow on a humid summer afternoon. A pair of small boys ran past the Guanaba Police Station on their way to the little park a block away. If the old man who tended the park was feeling well enough, the gate would be open and the boys could find friends to fight or play with.

  One of the boys looked up at one of the windows of the small white two-story building and met the eyes of Major Fernando Sanchez. Sanchez looked through the boy into the center of the earth and the boy’s face went pale as he hurried on.

  Behind Sanchez were Rostnikov, Elena Timofeyeva, and Igor Shemenkov, all seated in wicker chairs circled around a small white wicker table. A folder filled with thin sheets of paper sat on the wicker table. The room had blue curtains. There was a small desk with a black leather chair and photographs of young uniformed Fidel Castro and Che Guevara on the wall. An air conditioner with a green potted plant atop it hummed in the window through which Sanchez, his back to the trio, looked out onto a wide, busy street of children.

  “You know I never wanted to come to this country,” said Igor Shemenkov in a low voice, first to Rostnikov and then, once more, to Elena Timofeyeva. He sighed deeply and waited for a response to his declaration.

  Rostnikov saw a man in blue pants and a formerly white guayabera shirt that had yellowed with age and careless washing. He saw a man of about forty with a dark, rough face and alert eyes. Shemenkov was losing his hair, but Rostnikov thought the man’s brooding roughness and his open sincerity might be a very appealing combination to women. He looked at Elena, who held a notebook at the ready.

  Elena was attentive and a bit tired. She looked strong, clean, and pretty. He detected nothing that would suggest anything but a professional interest in the man across from her. He watched her eyes stray from the notebook for an instant to the back of the Cuban policeman at the window. Then she looked back at the blank pages before her.

  “Unfortunately,” said Rostnikov, “a distaste for the scene of the crime is not a defense.”

  “I’m not trying to say …” Shemenkov began, and then turned to Elena.

  “I worked. I did not complain. I learned the language. You know how many Soviet advisers bothered to learn Spanish?”

  “All of them,” said Elena. “It is required.”

  Shemenkov smiled and shook his head. He looked at the back of Major Sanchez and ran his rough palm over his head to hold down the last thin strands of his hair.

  “Have you ever taken a language course for foreign advisers?” Shemenkov said. “I’m not talking about the military courses, the diplomats’ courses. I’m talking about the few weeks of phrases and badgering we got. One in ten. Yes, one in ten learn to speak Spanish.”

  He held up a single finger so they could count it and pointed it at himself.

  “Your family is from Minsk?” asked Rostnikov.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been to Minsk twice,” said Rostnikov. “I have two cousins there. One is a fireman. The other works in the office of a radio manufacturer. The fireman’s wife has three kidneys.”

  “That is unusual,” said Shemenkov. He looked at Elena for some clue to the puzzling conversation of the policeman with the bad leg.

  “Perhaps,” said Rostnikov.

  “Is it good or bad?” asked Shemenkov.

  “Three kidneys? She has infections in one of the kidneys. My cousin wonders if it is the last kidney, the one she doesn’t need.”

  “I see,” said Shemenkov, though he saw nothing.

  “A band at our hotel played music most of the night for the German tourists,” said Rostnikov. “The Presidente. You know it?”

  “Yes,” said Shemenkov cautiously.

  “I am in the room of Maria Fernandez,” Rostnikov said. “You know it?”

  “Yes.”

  “My window and that of Elena Timofeyeva face the pool. We had little sleep. I would like to be home in my own bed surrounded by people who speak Russian. Tonight I would like to see my wife and the two girls who are living with us, also possibly talk to my son. I do not travel well.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Shemenkov.

  “Thank you,” said Rostnikov. “You claim that you did not kill Maria Fernandez.”

  “I did not kill her,” Shemenkov said evenly. “We had a little quarrel, yes. But she was fine when I left the room.”

  “Witnesses,” said Rostnikov, looking down at the folder on the table between them.

  “Lies,” said Shemenkov, putting his hands, palms down, on the wicker table and looking at both of them.

  “Why would they lie, Igor Shemenkov?” asked Rostnikov.

  “Jealousy,” the man said.

  “Jealousy? What were they jealous of?”

  “I had Maria,” he said. “Victoria says I killed her. I know she says this. But I did not. Victoria hates me.”

  “Why does she hate you?” asked Rostnikov.

  “Victoria is … was in love with Maria,” he said.

  “So?”

  “In love,” Shemenkov repeated, leaning toward Rostnikov and speaking slowly. “Like lust, sex.”

  “I am familiar with the passion,” said Rostnikov.

  “Maria was in love with me and I with her,” Igor said.

  “You have a wife and two children in Minsk,” said Rostnikov. “That is not meant as criticism, only as a possible reason why you might not want the continued attention of-”

  “I planned to divorce my wife and marry Maria,” he said. “I loved Maria. I would not kill her. I would not pinch a hair on her head, though I know the hairs of the head have no feeling. It was enough for me that the hair was Maria’s.”

  The sound that Sanchez made at the window reminded Rostnikov of the groaning of the toilet pipes in his apartment in Moscow.

  “I would not harm Maria,” Shemenkov insisted, looking at Sanchez, who turned around and shook his head. “I swear to you on the memory of my mother, the honor of my father, the virginity of my sister.”

  “When did you last see your sister?” asked Sanchez as he moved away from the window, folded his arms, and stood with his feet slightly apart.

  “My sister?”

  “Tell them what happened,” said Sanchez. “Your words.”

  Shemenkov shook his head, bit his lips, and looked at Elena.

  “Believe me,” he pleaded. “I didn’t kill Maria.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I believe you,” she said.

  “It matters to me,” Shemenkov said. He hit himself in the chest with an open right hand. “There is no justice in this country. Not for Russians. Not anymore. They laugh at us. Look at him.” He pointed to Sanchez. “He laughs at me.”

  Rostnikov looked at Sanchez. The major did not appear to be amused.

  “I don’t mean he is laughing openly, like a Russian,” Shemenkov explained earnestly. “It is inside. They’ve learned to laugh inside. Castro laughs at us to
this day. They took our money, our technology, sent fools like me to help them, and they gave us nothing. We thought we were in charge, but they used us.”

  Shemenkov started to rise, but Sanchez motioned for him to sit. Shemenkov looked to Rostnikov and Elena for support, saw none, and sat.

  “What has this to do with the murder of Maria Fernandez?” asked Rostnikov.

  “Background,” explained Shemenkov. “For forty years they took everything and now they want to let us know that we were the fools. They want to … The witnesses against me. All Cubans. All Cubans. Deny that.”

  Sanchez shook his head and looked at Rostnikov.

  “Tell us what happened, Igor Shemenkov. The night of the death of Maria Fernandez.”

  “A Minint conspiracy,” said Shemenkov.

  “Minint?” asked Elena.

  “Ministry of the Interior,” explained Sanchez, looking at his watch and folding his arms.

  Rostnikov shifted his weight, thought for an instant of his wife. This morning in Moscow she had sent the girls to school and gone off to work. He forced himself to look at the creature across from him. Shemenkov sighed and then went on.

  “Or maybe the Santería. There was a Santería, the son of a priest or whatever they call them. He bothered Maria, and he threatened me. Or-”

  Shemenkov stopped abruptly and sat back.

  “I didn’t do it,” Shemenkov repeated. He pressed the palm of his right hand against his forehead.

  “Then don’t tell us what you didn’t do. Tell us what you did,” said Rostnikov.

  “I dressed,” said Shemenkov, looking at Elena. “I put on my blue shirt with the buttons and …”

  “How many buttons?” asked Sanchez.

  “How many …? Why do you need to know how many buttons on my shirt?” asked the confused Shemenkov.

  “I need to know it as much as Inspector Rostnikov needs to know what color your shirt was or that you got dressed.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Shemenkov. “Maria and I had dinner at the Maracas Club. Is that all right?”

  Rostnikov nodded, and Sanchez went to sit in the leather chair behind the desk.

  “Does he have to be here?” asked Shemenkov, nodding at Sanchez.

  “The room is wired for sound,” said Rostnikov. “There is a microphone in the telephone.”

  “And one in the table in front of you,” Elena added.

  “It is more convenient,” Rostnikov continued, “if Major Sanchez is here so that we can avoid the embarrassment later of pretending that we do not know that he knows what we are saying.”

  “I do not understand the police,” said Shemenkov.

  “And that is one of the few advantages we have,” said Rostnikov. “You went to dinner at the Maracas. Please do not tell us what you ate.”

  “All right,” cried Shemenkov, running both hands through his wispy hair. “All right. We ate, went to the apartment of Carlos Carerra, had some rum, oranges, crackers. Victoria came, drank too much, said stupid things. Carerra’s wife, Angelica, told her to leave. They screamed. Hair pulling. Maria and Carlos got them apart.”

  “And you sat watching?” Rostnikov prompted.

  “I do not hold rum well,” said Shemenkov. “It is a weakness. They had no vodka.”

  “Go on.”

  “I … I said some things about Victoria. Perhaps they were a bit …”

  “A bit?”

  “I called her a drooling lesbian freak.”

  “Ah,” said Rostnikov.

  “Carlos and Angelica got Victoria into the hall. Maria and I could hear them screaming down the stairs. Then, Maria started in on me. She accused me of being without sensitivity. Remember what I said about her hair? Were those the words of an insensitive man?”

  “Dios mio,” groaned Sanchez. He put his hands over his eyes and swiveled half a turn away in his chair.

  “She scratched my face,” Shemenkov said. “She had a temper. But I loved her. She loved me. She had life. She made me feel alive. Are you married?”

  “Yes,” said Rostnikov.

  “Well, see. You know. Hasn’t your wife scratched your face? Screamed? Thrown things?”

  “No,” said Rostnikov.

  “My wife has scratched, thrown things, kicked holes in the wall,” said Sanchez with a deep sigh. “You have a point here?”

  “Don’t you see? I had been dead for years before Maria, no life, nothing to look forward to. And she was right. I was insensitive.”

  “You just said …” Elena began, but Rostnikov held up a hand to stop her as he nodded to Shemenkov.

  “Go on,” said Rostnikov.

  “Go on? There is no ‘on’ to go to,” said Shemenkov. “I went into the bathroom to clean my scratches. Maria said she wasn’t through with me. I could hear her mumbling in the living room till I closed the door and turned the water on. When I came out …”

  “How long were you in the bathroom?” asked Rostnikov.

  “How long? I don’t know. Not long. Not short. More short than long. I didn’t want Maria to leave without me. I went out and there she was, on the green sofa, looks like a dead lizard, the sofa does. Covered with blood. I went to her, touched her, saw the knife, her open eyes. I felt … the panic of an animal. I howled. I wept. Then I heard someone behind me. I picked up the knife. I thought ‘Robbers, Santería,’ but it was them, Carlos, Angelica, Victoria too. Someone screamed. Someone hit me in the face. I don’t know.”

  Shemenkov went silent, his eyes focused back in vague time and memory.

  “The three witnesses say that they saw him kneeling over the dead woman with a knife in his hand,” said Sanchez. “He turned on them and they thought he was going to attack. Victoria Oliveras kicked Shemenkov in the face.”

  “She broke my nose,” wailed Igor Shemenkov. “Look, see here. If you’d have come last week you would have seen only a purple-”

  “Your story,” Sanchez prompted. “Remember? Carlos Carerra grabbed the knife. The two of them held our intense amigo here while Angelica called the police.”

  “You see?” said Shemenkov.

  “See what?” asked Rostnikov.

  “Injustice,” said Shemenkov.

  “Inspector Timofeyeva and I will go to the apartment,” said Rostnikov. “We will look at it. We will, with the permission and cooperation of the police …”

  Rostnikov looked to Sanchez, who nodded.

  “… examine the apartment, talk to the witnesses.”

  “I am innocent,” said Shemenkov emphatically.

  “There is no rear entrance to the apartment,” said Sanchez. “There is only one stairway out of the building. All three witnesses say that no one passed them going up or down the stairs.”

  “A neighbor,” said Shemenkov.

  Sanchez shook his head.

  “There is one other apartment on that floor. There was no one home. The door was locked. That is the top floor.”

  “I did not do this,” Shemenkov repeated. “If there were anything left to swear to, I would do it. No God. No Party. I swear on … on …”

  “You loved her every hair,” said Sanchez.

  “Every hair,” agreed Shemenkov. “I did not kill her.”

  “A crowd gathered almost immediately after the murder,” Sanchez went on, a look of distant boredom on his face. “One woman, a flower vendor, was walking by outside. She said she heard a howl of pain from the window. She stopped and stood there till the police came. She says no one came out of the building.”

  “Hiding,” said Shemenkov, looking hopefully at Elena. “The killer was hiding until …”

  “Building was searched, up, down, everywhere. There is no other way out,” countered Sanchez.

  “A window?” said Shemenkov.

  “First- and second-floor windows were locked from inside,” Sanchez responded. “The apartment is on the top floor. There have been eleven break-ins in the neighborhood in the past month.”

  Shemenkov’s eyes scanned the room loo
king for answers. There were none there.

  Rostnikov leaned forward and touched the bewildered man’s arm. Shemenkov tried to focus on the homely face before him but seemed unable to find him.

  “Igor Shemenkov,” said, Rostnikov. “Do you have a diminutive, a name your friends and family call you?”

  “No.”

  “He is called Perets,” said Sanchez wearily. “Pepper.” He looked at Elena.

  Rostnikov nodded.

  Shemenkov seemed to awaken just a bit from his stupor. He looked at Elena.

  “It seems our Russian adviser has a temper,” explained Sanchez. “That’s how he got the name.”

  “I didn’t …” Shemenkov began. Then he shook his head and placed his wide palm on his forehead, as if checking for a temperature.

  “I have a hobby,” said Shemenkov suddenly. “I make miniature animals from the shells of coconuts. With these hands. Would a man who does such a delicate thing murder like that?”

  “I think you’ve hit upon a flawless defense,” said Sanchez.

  Rostnikov rose awkwardly, nodded to Elena to take the file, and stepped around the little table to help Shemenkov to his feet. Throughout the ten or so minutes of sitting, Rostnikov’s leg had pulled at him like a spoiled child demanding attention. It was not quite pain, but a nagging dull shock, a demanding tightness. It was difficult to move.

  “Rise, Shemenkov,” he said, pulling the dazed Russian into a standing position. “Officer Timofeyeva and I, with the help of the Cuban police”-he looked again at Major Sanchez, who smiled cooperatively-“will conduct a complete investigation.”

  “You are in a hurry to go home,” said Shemenkov. “Or you want a vacation here. You won’t help me.”

  “Officer Timofeyeva and I will not leave Cuba until we know who murdered Maria Fernandez.”

  “That’s all I ask,” said Shemenkov, wearily holding out his hands.

  Sanchez had walked to the door and opened it. A burly man in a blue uniform and a blue baseball cap entered the room. Sanchez nodded toward Shemenkov and the burly policeman stepped forward and touched his arm.

  “Venga,” the policeman said in a high voice that surprised Rostnikov.