A Fine Red Rain ir-5

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  "He's dead, Comrade Inspector," shouted one of the policemanan older, heavyset sergeantat the body.

  "Thank you," answered Rostnikov.

  The rain suddenly let up. It didn't quite stop, but it ceased applauding madly against the pavement. Rostnikov checked his watch. It was nearly seven and he should have been back at the Petrovka Station for the morning meeting with the Gray Wolfhound's staff. The street had now been reasonably cleared of pedestrians by six or seven police officers. Had it not been raining, Rostnikov was sure, it would have taken at least two dozen to keep the street clear.

  "His name is Duznetzov," the older officer at the body shouted to Rostnikov, who forced himself to turn and look at the policeman, who held up a limp wallet. "He's with the circus."

  "Not anymore," Rostnikov said, but he said it to himself and to the smiling Gogol.

  At the moment Valerian Duznetzov flew into the morning rain, Oleg Pesknoko, who was rumored to have had a Mongol grandmother, dipped his hands in chalk, rubbed them together, and wondered why Duznetzov was late. Pesknoko rubbed his shaved head and took off his warm-up jacket and placed it carefully on the bench. Then Pesknoko adjusted his blue practice tights, rubbed his stomach (telling himself mat he would have to lose at least fifteen pounds), and stepped into the small, silent circus ring.

  Duznetzov was probably drunk again, thought Pesknoko as he strode across the ring and shivered. He rubbed his shoulders and did a series of limbering-up exercises. Each year the exercises took longer. Each year it became harder to think up new routines, to find ways to justify them to the political committee. Neither he nor Duznetzov was very good at thinking up the routines or at finding some reason why their aerial act fulfilled the conditions of Marxist/Leninist ideology. Oleg was still considered the best catcher in the circus in spite of his fifty-nine years, and Duznetzov was considered the most daring flyer in the business. But Oleg's Katya was the brain. She was the youngest. She was pretty. She could smile and she could fly, perhaps not with the best, but she was good enough when she was backed by Oleg and Valerian. And, Oleg realized without quite admitting it consciously, Katya was the only one of the trio with a brain.

  But now, with die new director out looking for young talent, Oleg, Valerian, and Katya would have to work twice as hard, be doubly inventive, if they were to stay with the circus. They had a protector with a vested interest in the act, but even the protector could not guarantee their jobs. And, Oleg thought as he began to climb the rope ladder, it was essential that they not lose their position, not yet, not with the Lithuanian and Latvian trip scheduled for October. No, he thought, coming to the top of the ladder, they would have to do something sensational, something so daring that the new director could not possibly consider replacing them.

  Oleg stood on the platform and looked down at the net below him, at the empty, dark comers of the arena. They had talked, the three of them, of what they might have to do if they were unable to secure their place in the troupe. It was a desperate second choice, one that none of mem wanted to take, for one could never be sure of the reaction of the Komisol representative if he were told that certain counterrevolutionary transactions were going on in the circus. It wasn't something Oleg wanted to do, but they had decided to consider it. The possibility had sent Duznetzov into a deep gloom. But what could you expect from a flyer, Oleg thought, loosening the rope that held his trapeze. Flyers lived on applause, on their nerves. Catchers had to be strong, unappreciated by all but their fellow professionals. It was the difference between himself and Duz-netzov. Valerian needed an audience even to practice. Oleg needed only his own approval and Katya's admiration.

  This morning he had planned to try Katya's idea for the one-legged catch and the flip to a hand-in-hand. Oleg was not sure they could do it. Five years ago he would have felt confident, but their reflexes were not the same. They were, however, highly motivated.

  Without Valerian, there was little Oleg could do. He had left Katya sleeping in their apartment, knowing she would come in an hour or two when she awakened and found his note, would come and criticize, advise, encourage. Oleg sighed, checked his hands, grabbed the bar, and swung out over the net below. The rush of freedom he always felt when he swung above the net pulsed through him and made his muscles ripple. He pulled himself up on the swinging bar, forcing himself not to grunt with the effort, and hooked his legs around the bar and the swing ropes. As he swung, he let go of his thoughts, stretched out his arms, imagined the catch, the throw, Valerian's flip, and the split second he would have to grasp the ankle. He swung and imagined. Yes, he decided. He could do it.

  Something slipped. He felt or sensed the slip. It was very slight at first. Oleg was upside down. He seldom looked up to the ceiling; there was no need to do so. But this time he sensed that there was a need. He craned his thick neck up toward the darkness where the ropes were attached. There was someone up there.

  "What are you doing?" he called.

  The figure continued to maneuver hi the darkness, and Oleg definitely felt the trapeze begin to loosen. It made no sense. Oleg would simply release his legs and fall to the net below. He couldn't see who the person working at the ropes was, but he had no doubt that he knew who it was. It could be no one else.

  Oleg took one long swing as the trapeze rope began to slip and did a double flip as he released the bar. He hadn't tried a double flip in at least ten years, but he had something to prove to the man above him: that he was capable, that he was not to be frightened, not to be threatened, not to be taken lightly. It was a beautiful double-flip descent that would certainly have brought applause from any audience, but the breaking of the net as he hit it after his thirty-foot drop would have brought gasps of horror. As he struck the net, Oleg understood. The net was not tied down. It was not going to catch him, was not going to break his fall. Just before he struck the blue concrete of the ring floor and broke his neck, Oleg, tangled hi netting, was sure that he heard the echo of applause from a solitary figure high above him.

  Hours earlier, before the two circus performers had plunged to their separate deaths, before Rostnikov had failed to find his pickpocket, before the first faint light of dawn had tried to let the city know that it was waiting behind the clouds, a tall, gaunt man dressed in black had made his way to the records room of the Petrovka Station, had carefully collected notes in a black notebook, and had left the building to walk to the Marx Prospekt Metro Station, where he had climbed onto an arriving train and stood throughout his journey even though there were several seats available. Early-morning travelers avoided the man with the notebook. A pair of young women huddled together and whispered that the man looked like a vampire or, at best, a pale Tatar. Then, when he slowly turned toward them, they decided to change the subject completely. At the Komsomolskaya Station the man in black got off, his left arm stiffly at his side, the notebook clutched in his right hand. Through the window the two girls who were on their way to work looked out at the dark figure and decided that he was a murderer. As if hearing their words, the man turned his head and looked at them without expression. One of the girls let out a gasp as the train pulled away.

  Emil Karpo had seen this reaction to him before, had heard criminals, policemen, whisper things about his frightening pallor or his almost religious zeal. He had heard the nicknames and he had not been bothered. In fact, he had felt that such nicknames helped to establish the relationship he wanted to have with the rest of the world. Rostnikov, whom Karpo admired with reservations, was known only as the Washtub, which somewhat accurately described the chief inspectors body but did not account for his strength or his puzzling attitude.

  Karpo moved resolutely through the station without looking around at the decadent upturned glass chandeliers, the arched columns, and the curved white roof with decorative designs. He had seen the station thousands of times on his way from or to his small apartment and had long since decided that he preferred the more modern, efficient stations of the outer metro lines to this reminder of an
earlier decadence. To Karpo, Russia meant sacrifice. The revolution was far from over, might never be over. There was only the struggle, the dedication, the small part one could play in the bigger picture. There wasn't necessarily a victory to be achieved. Life was a series of tests, challenges that one was either prepared for or would be worn away by. Since hardship was inevitable, it was best to condition oneself to it. Discomfort was welcome. Pain was the ultimate test. A weak individual could not function. There was a way in which one lived, as Lenin had lived. Emil Karpo was intelligent, unimaginative, determined, a zealous Marxist and an investigator in the Office of the Procurator General whom criminals feared with good reason.

  Karpo walked slowly, deliberately clenching and unclenching his left fist as the surgeon who had operated on the arm had told him to do. The arm was, after three weeks, beginning to respond, and the doctor, a Jew named Alex who was related to Rostnikov's wife, had announced only the day before that Karpo would be using the arm and hand normally within four months. The entire incident had puzzled Karpo. The initial injury to the arm had been sustained after a fall from a ladder in pursuit of a minor confidence man. It had been reinjured in a terrorist explosion and dealt a further blow in a rooftop scuffle. Soviet doctors, three of them, had declared that Emil Karpo would never use his hand and arm again. He had resigned himself to this, considered his alternative values in Soviet society, and rejected Rostnikov's urging him to see Alex. But Alex had seen him, had promised results, had delivered. Karpo knew the system was not without its incompetents and fools. After all, that was why the police existed. But to have the medical system fail him so completely had given him some brooding hours.

  A short walk later Karpo entered his apartment building. Though it was less than thirty years old, it smelted of mold and mildew and was not properly maintained. Karpo walked up the five flights of stairs. He would have done so even if there had been an elevator in the building, which there was not. As he always did, Karpo paused in the fifth-floor hallway, listened, waited, and then approached his door. Though he had no reason to expect intrusion, he checked the thin hair at the corner of the door just above the hinge to be sure no one had entered the room while he was out. Satisfied, Karpo inserted his key and stepped into the darkness.

  It would have been dark in the room even if it were not a rainy morning, for Karpo always kept the black shade drawn. There was nothing out there he wanted to see. Out there was only another building across the courtyard. Windows, people, distractions.

  Karpo moved to the center of the room in darkness and willed his left arm to reach up for the light cord. His arm told him that it was ridiculous, that the pain was not worth the satisfaction, but Karpo had dealt with the reluctance of his body before. In the darkness he clenched his teeth gently, held tightly to his notebook, and willed his left arm up. And up it went, feeling as if it had been dipped in hot metal. Slowly, up, up, and Karpo felt the cord on his fingers. He closed the fingers and demanded that his arm come down slowly, slowly, and it obeyed until the light came on, revealing the small room, nearly a cell, where Emil Karpo slept, worked, and occasionally ate. His brow was damp from his effort, but Karpo did not wipe it. He moved to the solid table desk in the corner, put down the black notebook, and turned on the desk lamp. Behind him was his bed, little more than a cot, neatly made. Next to the bed was a small table with a hot plate. Flat against one wall was a rough oak dresser. And that was it except for the bookshelves filled with black notebooks just like the one Karpo had placed on the desk. Each notebook was filled with reports, details on every case he had ever investigated or been part of. At night, when others slept, played, wept, drank, or laughed, Karpo went over his notebooks, studied the still-open cases.

  It was Karpo's goal, though he knew he could never achieve it, to close every case in those black books, to catch and turn over for punishment every criminal. He reached up, took down a series of notebooks, placed them in a neat pile next to the one he had brought in, and removed a sheet of paper from the desk drawer, a sheet on which he bad neatly ruled lines and filled in dates. It was not only his method, it was also his comfort. The room was a cool tomb where he could lose himself in his work, will himself to put everything in order. The books in front of him told Karpo that there was a killer on the streets of Moscow, a killer who had struck eight women in a little less than six years. The books told him that there was a pattern. Perhaps he did not have enough of the pattern yet to act, but a pattern was there, and tonightor next month, or next year, or in ten yearshe would find that pattern and find the killer.

  He sat up straight, closed his eyes, concentrated on the moon he imagined, concentrated on nothing but the moon, watched it grow small as it moved away from him, and when it disappeared in the distance of his imagination, Karpo opened his eyes and went to work.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The baby was crying. Sasha Tkach rolled over and looked at the small crib next to his and Maya's bed. Then he groped on the nearby table for his watch. His right hand touched it and knocked it to the bare wooden floor, where it hit with a thunk barely heard over the baby's crying.

  "What time?" Maya mumbled sleepily.

  Sasha found the watch and tried to turn it so that he could read its face by the dim street light coming through the open window.

  "I think it's two-twenty or maybe three-twenty," he said.

  This revelation, or the sound of its parents' voices, made the baby cry a bit louder.

  "She's hungry," said Maya, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

  "Hungry," agreed Sasha, flopping back on the bed.

  He watched Maya rise, her full brown hair uncombed, the white American T-shirt she slept in clinging to her. Sasha smiled and closed his eyes. He could change Pulcharia's diaper, and was quite willing to do so, but he could not produce milk. Besides, Maya was on maternity leave and could sleep late if the baby let her.

  In the weeks before the baby was bom, Sasha's mother, Lydia, who slept in the next room, had loaded the pregnant Maya with old wives' tales and reasonable advice.

  "Long walks, every day," Lydia had repeated, and Maya had agreed, walking to work in the early days of the pregnancy. "And no sweets. Sweets make the skin itch."

  Maya had nodded with a tolerant smile at Sasha. Before the pregnancy, Maya had begun to show signs of irritation with her mother-in-law. Sasha well understood. During the day they were all at workLydia at the Ministry of Information, Sasha at Petrovka, and Maya at her most recent job, a day-care center for the workers at the Ts.U.M. department store on Petrov Street. But in the recent mornings and evenings, Lydia, who was growing increasingly deaf and increasingly irritable, made it difficult for the expectant parents to keep smiling. With only two rooms in the apartment, it was difficult to get away from each other, especially difficult to get away from Lydia's loud voice.

  Sasha, eyes still closed, heard Maya pick up Pulcharia, coo to her. He opened his eyes and saw the dark silhouette of Maya, cross-legged on the floor, lifting her T-shirt to offer her full breast to the tiny girl named for Lydia's own mother, a concession Sasha thought was more than Maya should accept but to which Maya had readily agreed. She liked the old-fashioned name and really had no one in her family or in history or in literature that she particularly felt like naming her child for. Pulcharia seemed perfect to her.

  Before the birth, Lydia had also announced, from her own experience and that of her few friends, that oxygen was essential to pregnant women. "So breathe deep when the contractions come and rub your stomach in circles like this. The pain will be like no other you have imagined."

  "Thank you," Maya had said, smiling at Sasha.

  When the baby did come, it was in the hospital, in a large delivery room from which Sasha was barred. Two other women were having babies at the same time. Maya had remembered the pain abstractly even when she told Sasha about it. She remembered the white, loose gown they had put on her and tied at the neck. She remembered the screaming women on either side of her, the white-mask
ed, white-gowned, white-capped quartet of doctors and nurses who helped her, and she remembered the pain. There was no anesthetic. Though the Lamaze method was developed largely through Soviet research, there was no encouragement to practice natural childbirth methods that might lessen pain. Pain was assumed to be a natural part of bearing a child. Pain, the doctor at the clinic had told her, was a reminder of the cost and responsibility of bearing a child. It was not supposed to be easy.

  After the birth the baby had been kept from Maya for more than a full day to avoid infection. And though there was nothing wrong with mother or child, Sasha had been unable to see them for ten days. That, too, to avoid infection.

  Sasha lay with his eyes closed, trying to remember the time he had seen on his watch. The watch was notoriously unreliable, a recent replacement for the pocket watch he had inherited from his father. The new watch was Romanian and tended to lose a minute every few days.

  The baby was cooing now, and Maya was whispering, "Krasee' v/iy doch, beautiful daughter."

  In another hour Sasha would have to get up, get dressed like a student, and hurry to a bookstall near Moscow State University that was reported to be a contact for the illegal sale of videotapes and videotape players. Sasha was a junior investigator in the Office of the Procurator General. He looked far younger than his twenty-nine years and was frequently used in undercover operations because of the innocence of his features. He looked nothing like a policeman. He also knew, and didn't like, the fact that among the investigators at Petrovka he had earned a nickname: the Innocent. Still, it was better to have a nickname, a reputation, a future, than to be where Rostnikov was nowdemoted, for some reason, and under the eye of the Gray Wolfhound.

  When next he opened his eyes, Sasha would get up quietly, check on the baby, brush his teeth in the tiny bathroom that had no bath and a shower that infrequently worked, shave, dress, and grab a slice of bread and a drink of cool tea from the bottle in the small refrigerator. Then he would walk to the metro and head for the bookstall, where he would pretend to be a student wanting to buy a foreign videotape machine. His reports, which up to now had had little of substance in them, were not only being reviewed by Khabolov, the assistant procurator, butbecause of the economic implications of the case, Sasha Tkach was surewere also being examined by someone in the KGB. No one had told him this, but because the black market was involved it was obvious, and Khabolov's special interest in the case had made it clear that there was an urgency involved that was encountered only when pressure was being put on the assistant procurator.