It was then Vonovich pulled out his gun and fired blindly in the general direction of the policeman who was pursuing him. The bullet struck Karpo in the right shoulder, knocking him back against the stairs. He could hear Vonovich hurrying, slipping down the stairs toward the platform.
“You, stop,” came a voice over Karpo. “Don’t reach for that gun.”
It was a brown uniformed policeman leveling a pistol at Karpo who, now wounded, looked even more cadaverous than usual.
“I’m a police inspector,” said Karpo.
“Yes,” said the policeman, putting away his gun. “I recognize you. You’re Inspector Karpo. Let me help-”
“No,” shouted Karpo. “Get to the other exit. There is a big drunken man with a black beard. He is not to get away. Shoot him if you must. I’ll watch this end. When is the next train?”
The policeman looked somewhat confused and tried to think.
“I don’t know. Not soon. Half an hour, perhaps.”
“Find out,” said Karpo. “No. I’ll find out. You get to the other exit. Move.”
The policeman ran back up the stairs into the night, and Karpo reached for his gun. His shoulder was bleeding moderately through his coat, and his arm was numb, but his legs were fine. He went down the stairs and found a schedule on the wall. If it was right, and the Metro usually did run on time, he had time enough to call Rostnikov. He pulled himself up the stairs and made his way slowly to a public phone he had seen on the street. While watching the exit, he called Rostnikov. He looked back at the dark trail of blood spots and wondered if he should take a chance on putting his gun away and packing his wound with clean snow.
Fifteen minutes later Rostnikov had arrived. He had no trouble finding Karpo. Police cars stood at both entrances to the Metro station. Karpo sat in one of them, his arm temporarily bandaged by a policeman.
“How are you?” Rostnikov asked, sliding into the back seat next to Karpo.
“I made a mistake,” said Karpo, between his teeth. “I had the chance to kill him, but I didn’t take it.”
“He killed Granovsky?” Rostnikov asked.
“Don’t know,” said Karpo. “Very possibly. But now he is down there with a gun. There are other people down there and he is drunk, perhaps mad.”
“And?” asked Rostnikov trying to make his leg comfortable.
“We have about ten minutes or less till the train arrives and he gets on it.”
“In that case, you better tell me what I need to know,” said Rostnikov. And Karpo did just that, quickly and efficiently.
When the briefing had finished, Rostnikov emerged from the car and headed for the Metro entrance, nodding at the armed police officers who guarded it. They were all uniformed. He was about to go down the stairs when he heard the voice of Sasha Tkach behind him.
“Wait.”
Rostnikov turned and watched the young man run toward him, his breath forming white clouds as he hurried forward.
“You know what we have?” Rostnikov asked.
“Enough,” said Tkach and the two men went down.
The two policemen took the stairs down, talking about nonsense, the weather, life, and not looking but looking at the same time. Vonovich was easy to spot. He paced along the platform with his hands in his pockets. Certainly, he was holding his gun. A few people sat on benches talking or reading.
The first series of Moscow Metro stations built in the 1930s are comparable in design to the most decadent of castles. No two stations are alike. Komsomol’skaya, designed by two renowned artists, is one of the most baroque. It is 190 meters long and nine meters high. Its vaults are supported on seventy-two pillars. Massive mosaics depicting Russia’s military past decorate the station illuminated by a series of elaborate hanging chandeliers.
Vonovich looked into the darkness down the track urging the train to come, and from the distance in the tunnel, there did come the sound of a rushing, noisy train.
Vonovich looked with suspicion at the two newcomers, who ignored him, spoke of trains and tracks, and looked at their watches impatiently. Because the short, heavy one walked with a limp, Vonovich felt somewhat reassured.
The train came hurtling out of the darkness, and both Rostnikov and Tkach knew the time for deception was over.
They walked behind a pillar, still talking, and both drew their guns.
“We do not kill him unless we must,” Rostnikov whispered. Tkach nodded.
“Vonovich,” Rostnikov shouted, and his voice echoed and rose above the incoming train. The boarding passengers looked around in confusion, and the heavy pacing man stopped and looked first at the train and then in the direction of the two men, who had gone behind the pillar.
“Vonovich, raise your hands and step away from the track, now!” shouted Rostnikov.
Vonovich answered with a wild shot that hit one of the massive chandeliers, sending a snow of glass to the platform. Passengers screamed and the train, which had pulled into the station, paused only for an instant with passengers inside pressing their noses to the window to see what was happening. The motorman chose not to open the doors and sped on, leaving Vonovich confused. His coat was open and swirling, and he didn’t know which way to run or whether to try to hold the train back with his bare hands.
Instead, he ran for the far exit, away from the voice of the policeman, over the outstretched form of a workman who covered his head in fear and pressed his nose to the floor.
Tkach stepped out from the pillar and was prepared for pursuit, but Rostnikov held him back.
“Wait, he has nowhere to go.” Then to the half-dozen people on the platform. “Stay down. Stay where you are.”
Vonovich, his coat flowing open and letting out grunting sounds, hurried up the stairs and less than five seconds later came scrambling down again, obviously checked by the sight of armed police on the street.
Tkach watched the trapped man with the gun sway as he considered running down the tunnel.
“If he goes on the track,” said Rostnikov, “shoot him.”
But Vonovich did not. He turned his eyes back at the two policemen and began to shuffle in their direction. The shuffle turned into a run and the passengers on the platform rolled away, one woman plunging with a scream off the platform and onto the track.
Tkach and Rostnikov stepped out into the path of the rushing creature.
“If his gun comes up,” said Rostnikov, “shoot. If not…”
But Vonovich was upon them. Tkach could feel himself shoved to the side by some animal force. He tried to keep his balance but went over a bench. Behind him he heard a loud groan and he scrambled up, gun leveled to help Rostnikov. What he saw was something he would never forget.
The massive man was struggling in the arms of Inspector Rostnikov. His legs were off the ground, churning, touching nothing. Vonovich’s left arm came across in a heavy swing and Rostnikov burrowed his own head into the bigger man’s coat and lifted with an expulsion of air. Tkach watched Vonovich come up in the air in Rostnikov’s arms, cradled like a baby, and then Rostnikov threw the creature like a bundle of laundry into the pillar. Vonovich’s gun scratched across the platform and came to rest near Tkach’s leg. Vonovich himself was clearly unconscious.
As he moved forward toward the felled cab driver, Tkach could sense the passengers rising and could hear the woman who had fallen on the tracks calling for help. He could also see quite clearly that Rostnikov was smiling, a childish, satisfied smile, and looking up at a massive ceiling mosaic of an approving ancient Russian knight.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Vonovich, have you lifted weights?” Rostnikov asked, sipping his tepid tea with loud satisfaction. Vonovich, on the other side of the desk, shifted uncomfortably.
“There is no trick to the question,” Rostnikov went on. “I’m breaking the ice, making small talk. We could be here for hours and once I start with the difficult questions we might both get a headache. You, if I judge you right, will get surly. I will grow irritable. It wo
n’t be pleasant, but if we can-”
“I could tear you in half with my hands,” grumbled Vonovich. “You were lucky.”
The huge man grabbed the cup of tea in front of him, buried it in his brown hand and brought it angrily to his mouth spilling much of it on the way. Rostnikov sighed and took another sip of his own tea, turned from the burning eyes of his prisoner and ran his finger along the scar on his desk made by the sickle. As long as he kept this desk, which would probably be the rest of his career, that scar would be there to remind him of this case. He was determined that it would be a reminder of success and not failure, but to achieve success he would have to deal with this oaf Vonovich.
“I’m sure you could,” said Rostnikov. “Shall we start the lies?”
“I have no reason to lie,” growled Vonovich. “I have given you all my papers. Everything is in order.”
He reached up to scratch his head and lost his hat in the process. There was little room in the office to reach for it, and the huge man almost fell out of the wooden chair.
Rostnikov shook his head giving himself-not his prisoner-sympathy. He had sent Tkach home; the boy had seen enough for one day. Karpo was in the hospital having his shoulder wound cared for. That left only Rostnikov. Now the case was his responsibility. And his pleasure.
The bears like this were a challenge, but for Rostnikov the challenge of stupidity was like that of a target for a sharpshooter. It was a matter of professional execution rather than innovation. The smart ones were often easier to break. They tried to be too clever, tell too many lies. The smart ones knew it was a deadly game, and they were confident that they could hold their own. Ah, but the stupid ones-sometimes they clung to an obviously foolish, impossible story regardless of what Rostnikov said. And though they did not know it, they were right to do it.
“What are you thinking?” demanded Vonovich, downing the last of his tea and putting his fur hat back on his head in an awkward position so that it would fall off if he moved or if gravity were simply given sufficient time.
“I was wondering how stupid you are,” said Rostnikov.
“You’ll see how stupid I am,” Vonovich said with a cunning smile.
“Yes, I’m sure I will,” agreed Rostnikov. “Why did you run from the officer in front of your apartment door?”
“I didn’t know he was a policeman. He looked like a killer. A robber.”
“Yes,” agreed Rostnikov, reaching under the table to massage his stiff leg, “he does. So you shot at him and ran away. When you got to the street, why did you continue to run? Did you think a robber was openly pursuing you through the streets?”
“That’s what I thought,” agreed Vonovich, his cunning smile looking particularly stupid to Rostnikov. “I thought he was a crazy robber. There are such things. A man gets a few drinks or something and…there was Czekolikowski who killed everybody in the Praga Restaurant for no reason last year.”
“That was five years ago,” corrected Rostnikov, “and he didn’t kill everybody. There are still a few Muscovites left. He shot two people, one was his brother.”
“He was crazy,” Vonovich insisted, crashing his fist down on the desk. Rostnikov had to catch his skittering cup, and a burly uniformed policeman who had been stationed outside the door burst in with his pistol ready.
“It’s all right,” Rostnikov said, holding up a calming right hand. “Comrade Vonovich is making a point.” The policeman backed out, closing the door.
“I’m an honest citizen,” Vonovich tried with something he must have thought was a pout.
“You are, at best a pidzhachnik,” said Rostnikov. “You pick up a drunk or visitor and steer him into some little club where he is overcharged for vodka and a gypsy with a balalaika playing ‘Dark Eyes.’ You keep him going till he is so drunk that he can’t see. Then you steal his money and his clothes and leave him in some doorway. Or you are a fartsovschik, a black marketeer. Where do you roam-hmm? — from the Rossiya Hotel to the Bolshoi Theater finding tourists to trade your rubles away for foreign money?”
Vonovich looked at Rostnikov warily.
“It says that about me in your files?” he asked.
Rostnikov nodded wearily, but in fact there had been very little in the file on Vonovich. There are more than ten thousand cab drivers in Moscow, and Rostnikov knew that there were not enough honest ones to fill a small cell. Vonovich was surely not one of that few.
“Why did you continue to try to escape when you saw that it was the police who were after you?” he went on.
“I was drunk,” said Vonovich sadly.
“No,” replied Rostnikov.
“Well, I knew it was too late. I had shot a cop. I had a gun. By then I just wanted to get away. I knew what would happen to me.”
“What would happen to you?” asked Rostnikov.
“Just what is happening to me.”
“Which is?”
“This.”
Rostnikov wanted more tea, but that would let Vonovich know he had time to pause, to wait, to try to think. It would have to go on.
“Ivan Sharikov,” said Rostnikov, looking directly into the eyes of the creature before him.
“What about him?” Vonovich answered. “Can I get more tea?”
“He’s dead. No you can’t, not yet.”
“Water? Coffee?”
“Don’t you want to know how Sharikov died?” Rostnikov tried.
Vonovich shrugged and spoke while looking at a spot on the wall above Rostnikov’s head.
“He was nothing to me, another cab driver. We had words a couple of times, that’s all.”
“Words?”
“All you do is ask questions about everything,” Vonovich burst out.
“That is my job. Yours, at the moment, is to answer them.”
“I had a few arguments with Sharikov. He was a difficult, stubborn man.”
“And you are as gentle as a Georgia peasant. Someone stabbed your friend in the face with a broken vodka bottle.”
Vonovich shrugged again. His hat moved precariously on an angle.
“That is a chance you take when you drive a cab in Moscow at night.”
“How do you know it was night?” Rostnikov jabbed.
“He drove at night. I guessed. Who knows? Who cares?”
“You killed him. That’s all.” Rostnikov rose as if the meeting were suddenly over, and Vonovich looked bewildered.
“That’s all?” asked the giant. “You tell me I killed someone and that’s all?”
“We have all the evidence we need. Where were you last night?”
“Driving my cab.”
“Except,” said Rostnikov sitting again, “for the time you were arguing with Aleksander Granovsky in the hall of your apartment building.”
“Ha,” laughed Vonovich, a single mirthless laugh. “Now you are going to say I killed him too. I was running around Moscow killing everybody as fast as I could. Bing, bing, bing.”
“You tried to kill a police officer tonight,” Rostnikov reminded him.
“Accident,” corrected Vonovich holding up his hand. “Accident.”
“The gun,” Rostnikov tried.
“Left in my cab this very evening by a fare I dropped at the airport. I was going to turn it in.”
“I’m taping this conversation, you know,” Rostnikov said. “Do you know how stupid you sound?”
“I don’t care to hear it.”
“I was not offering to play it for you. Your apartment is full of stolen property. Your cab has an illegal supply of vodka. You have American money in your pocket, and you have shot a policeman. What do you think will happen to you?”
“I’ll be given justice?” Vonovich asked, starting to rise. His hat fell off again.
Rostnikov sat back heavily while the giant groped for it.
“Vonovich, we know about the murder, all about the murder. We have evidence. Can’t you see your bloody victim before you? Don’t you want to confess and make both of our nights
easier?”
Vonovich rose from the floor, hat in hand, face pale, eyes confused and still a bit drunk.
“It was an accident,” he said, almost too low to be heard.
“What?” demanded Rostnikov.
“An accident. I didn’t know I would…we fought and I just…I was too…I didn’t expect him to die.”
“But die he did. Where did you get the sickle?”
Vonovich looked bewildered. “Sickle?”
“You killed Granovsky with a sickle, you fool.”
“Granovsky?”
“Who did you think we were talking about?” Rostnikov was up and shouting. “Did you kill someone else too?”
“I have nothing to say,” said Vonovich. “I have said too much.”
“You’ll say more.”
“No.”
And Rostnikov knew that the “no” was probably all he could get for now. He had all he needed. Rostnikov turned off the tape recorder, rose, and went to the door. He opened it keeping his eyes on Vonovich, who was twisting his upper mustache.
“Take him to the cells,” Rostnikov told the officer.
The policeman reached over to nudge the sitting bear, who was startled and began to rise as if to respond. Vonovich realized where he was and grew docile as he walked ahead of the policeman.
“Thank you, Comrade Inspector,” Vonovich called back.
Rostnikov could think of nothing the man had to thank him for. When the policeman and prisoner were gone. Rostnikov pulled out his tape and went up to the office of Procurator Timofeyeva. She let him in almost immediately.
Young Lenin smiled down at him from the wall, and Procurator Timofeyeva sat in exactly the same position he had left her in earlier, wearing the same uniform and looking just as weary.
“And?” she said.
Rostnikov handed her the tape, which she took and placed on a machine which she pulled from a drawer. She set it up and listened intently, moving only once to adjust her glasses. When the tape ended, she snapped off the machine decisively.
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