Death of a Dissident ir-1

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Congratulations, Comrade Rostnikov,” she said with a tired smile. “You’ve done your job well. I’ll call the Chief Procurator at once and inform him that Granovsky’s murderer has been caught.”

  Rostnikov looked down at his hands. He was seated in the comfortable black chair before her desk and wished it were further away in a dark corner. He should certainly be quiet now, but he could not be.

  “Has he?” he asked.

  “Of course,” said Timofeyeva impatiently. “You have his confession. He knew both victims, quarreled with them, tried to kill a policeman.”

  “I think at some time this Vonovich has quarrelled with everyone in Moscow,” Rostnikov said, looking up. “I think this Vonovich did murder someone, but not recently and not Granovsky or the cabdriver.”

  Procurator Timofeyeva looked at the pile of work on her desk and then at Rostnikov.

  “Is that what you want me to tell the Procurator General, Porfiry Petrovich, that you haven’t caught the murderer?”

  “It is not my position to tell you what to say, Comrade Procurator,” he answered.

  “Porfiry,” she answered in a voice Rostnikov had never heard from her before, a voice with the timbre of emotion and something else. “There is so much to this. It is best that there be an end, that the murderer be this worthless enemy of the state, that the world know it was the deed of a drunken lout, a criminal. It is best.”

  “As you say, comrade,” Rostnikov agreed rising.

  “Go home, rest. You have a heavy caseload. Get back to it. I’ll take care of the report.”

  “As you wish.”

  “As I wish,” she repeated with words far away. “There is much to be done, Porfiry, and too few of us to do it. Even after all these years the old society is still disintegrating. As Lenin told us, this disintegration is manifest in an increase of crime, hooliganism, corruption, profiteering, and outrages of every kind. To put these down requires time and an iron hand.”

  “Of course,” he said. Her hand reached out for the phone and she waited while he left and closed the door behind him.

  Rostnikov picked up his coat in his office and went home. He could not justify a police car now so he took the bus and walked telling himself it was over but realizing that he could not accept this. Oh, he could accept it with his body and go on with his caseload. It would not be the first case that ended without a solution or with one that Rostnikov thought was wrong. No, this one would continue to bother him because if Vonovich were not the killer then the killer was still out there in one of the buildings he was passing or a hotel or walking the streets.

  Rostnikov had difficulty accepting the priorities of his society. He recognized them, understood them, sympathized with them, but it was difficult. He had perhaps read too little Lenin and too much Dostoyevsky, or maybe too many of the American police stories that he had bought from Chernov the bookseller, the stories in which Ed McBain’s 87 Precinct Police always got their man or woman. If he ever got to America, Rostnikov wanted to meet Ed McBain, or at least visit the city of Isola.

  Sarah had a pot of soup and a half loaf of black bread ready for him when he got home.

  “It’s finished?” she asked.

  He shrugged and looked over in the corner toward his beloved weights, but he was too tired. He should rise above his weariness and do some lifting, show his resolve.

  “The hell with it,” he said instead with a huge glob of bread in his mouth.

  “What?” asked Sarah.

  “Nothing,” he said and reached for his plumbing book.

  Anna Timofeyeva had a cat. It was one of the few things in her life about which she felt guilty, for she spent very little time with the animal. Home, except for the cat, was where Anna went because it was improper to sleep in her office.

  “I hear, Bakunin,” she told the ancient grey fluff that waddled toward her as she took off her coat, “that in America they have special food for cats, special food. You go to the store and stand in line for cat food.”

  In spite of her position, Anna Timofeyeva lived in a small one-room apartment in an old one-floor concrete building that had originally been built as a barracks for an artillery unit. When the site was abandoned after ground-to-air missiles were developed, the barracks along the Moscow River were converted into small apartments with a communal kitchen which had once served as the kitchen for the artillery unit stationed within its walls. Anna Timofeyeva felt comfortable in the small room. It required little cleaning, was conveniently located and quite practical.

  It was somewhere around three in the morning, she knew, but she had no interest in checking the time. The important time was when she got up, not when she went to sleep. She had named the cat Bakunin, for the infamous anarchist who had opposed Marx, because she liked to think the cat was an adventurous troublemaker who had to be forgiven. Bakunin purred loudly and rubbed against her as she pulled a can of herring from her pocket. Bakunin was, in fact, a remarkably docile creature who, having been denied the opportunity to roam, became like a beast in a zoo, dependent on the one who feeds him and in a general state of physical torpor with occasional moments of undefined resentment.

  “Patience, Baku, patience,” she said, finding her can opener and working on the herring. “We must learn patience.” And, she thought, above all we must learn to compromise.

  Although she was hungry, Anna Timofeyeva knew that sleep was more important to her. She would not go down to the kitchen to cook something or even make some tea. Such an act would disturb the other tenants. Not that they would complain. They all deferred to Comrade Timofeyeva, who was a legend in the building, a legend seldom viewed but often discussed. That one of her high rank should live among a group of the relatively poor was most puzzling. The tenants vacillated between extreme suspicion and fear and pride, believing that somehow her presence provided those under the roof with a special protection.

  She had lived in the building for more than twenty years, but Anna Timofeyeva was barely aware of the other tenants. She knew that at least one of the other six was a family with a small baby that occasionally awoke crying in the middle of the night.

  After rubbing her eyes, Anna Timofeyeva allowed herself to move to her bed where she slowly pried at the can of herring with an old metal opener. The cat purred loudly, and Anna moved surely with thick, strong fingers.

  “Allow me a taste,” she said dipping her fingers past the jagged edges of metal. “It passes inspection.” She put the can on the tile floor and leaned over to pet the cat as it ate.

  “Bakunin,” she whispered. “Lenin said that to reject compromises ‘on principle,’ to reject the permissibility of compromises in general, no matter of what kind, is childishness, difficult even to consider seriously. Sometimes I think Rostnikov fails to understand the nature and need for compromise.”

  Bakunin was working on a particularly unresponsive piece of fish which dangled from the corner of his mouth.

  Anna Timofeyeva removed her uniform carefully, brushed it, and hung it on the high hook where Bakunin could not rub against it. There was no mirror in the room. Anna Timofeyeva was only interested in her image insofar as it displayed conviction and authority and that she could see in the window in the morning.

  She changed her warm, practical woolen underwear and moved to the small basin in the corner to brush her teeth with salt and a calloused finger. Something tugged at her chest like a marionette master pulling all the strings at once, and then it passed. She breathed deeply, rinsed her mouth and retrieved one of the small pills that had been given her by the doctor at the Institute Sklefasofskala. The tightness slowly passed as the pill began to work.

  “Bakunin,” she said softly. “I must straighten the room.” She moved slowly, putting what little there was to put in order in the right place and then she removed the note from her dresser drawer. It was a simple note that she had prepared three years before. It stated that if she were to be found dead, instructions for the continuance of her cases
were in the top drawer of the desk in her office. Her instruction book was brought up-to-date each day before she came home to sleep. Her note asked that Bakunin be given to Rostnikov in the event of her death, but she had made no provisions for the eventuality of going to a hospital.

  Her principal fear, as she turned off the light and got into bed under the woolen blanket, was not that she would die at night, but that she would simply suffer a heart attack and live. Her nightmare was that she would lie helpless while someone in the building heard her gasps and dialed 002 for “fast help.” She could imagine the big white ambulance with its red cross and its soft siren pulling up in front of the building and the attendants coming in to lift her from the bed and take her out.

  The cat finished chewing down a bit of fish, and she could hear it in the darkness lapping at the bowl of water on the floor. Then the animal leaped softly to the bed and sought the warmth of Anna’s solid body.

  “The worst thing,” she whispered to the cat as she stroked it, “is not to be useful.”

  Someone padded down the hall outside her door, moving toward the communal toilet, and somewhere else in the distance, a car hummed down the street.

  “I’ll not sleep this night,” she told her cat, resisting the urge to roll on her side for greater comfort. The doctor had told her to sleep on her back. “I’ll not sleep.”

  She slept.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sasha Tkach was disturbed when he woke up. He had slept soundly and dreamed not at all of the boy he had killed the previous day. He felt guilty about his lack of guilt. He should have tossed and turned and wept and worried, but he had not. He had slept comfortably with one arm around Maya. In fact, just before he had fallen asleep, he had a strong urge to make love to her, and he felt she would have responded, but the guilt had been too much, or at least the feeling that he should feel guilty.

  “Do you understand?” he had whispered to Maya, so they would not wake his mother in the next room.

  “You don’t feel guilty,” she said, touching his face.

  “I should, shouldn’t I?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “I’m growing insensitive,” he whispered.

  “You are being honest. It is too bad the boy is dead, but you didn’t know him. He meant nothing to you. You had invested nothing in him and you killed him while doing your work. You are probably a bit ashamed of being proud.”

  “Perhaps,” he mused. “It is difficult to be a policeman.”

  “It is difficult to be anyone in Moscow,” Maya said, sitting up.

  And then it struck Tkach. He pushed his yellow hair from his face and remembered. Sasha Tkach was unaware that the case was over, that Vonovich the cab driver had confessed, that he was to go back to his regular caseload. Tkach was not aware that he was about to disrupt a politically tranquil situation. He was simply being a policeman. He leaped up and went to his pants searching for his notebook.

  “What are you doing?” Maya whispered from the stove where she was turning on the kettle.

  “Looking for…aha, here,” he said.

  “Sasha, what’s wrong?” came his mother’s voice from the next room.

  “Nothing mother. Go back to sleep.” He looked at his notes again and there it was. He should have put it together. It might be nothing, but he should have seen it. He was sure Rostnikov and Karpo would have seen it, but he had not tied it together.

  “I have to go quickly,” he said to Maya, slipping into his pants.

  “All right,” she said. “Take the sandwiches, and don’t eat them too early.”

  He took them and grabbed for his coat on the wall. “And don’t worry.”

  “Worry?” he asked.

  “About the boy,” she said.

  And then he felt a terrible guilt.

  In twenty minutes he stood before the apartment building he was seeking. He had been there the day before, had interviewed a young man, a confident young man, one of four people he had talked to, friends or acquaintances of Aleksander Granovsky. This one had really been no different. The difference was that he lived on Petro Street. Petro Street was where the cab driver had been killed. True it was at least a mile from here, but he remembered the two witnesses who had reported that the killer looked young and had headed down Petro Street. He had accepted the young man’s alibi too easily. He had to check with the man’s wife.

  When he had looked up the names of the Granovsky friends, the Petro address had simply been one of them. In fact, it was probably nothing, a coincidence, but he should have noticed. Tkach bounded up the stairs and down the dark hall.

  “Ilyusha Malenko,” he called after he knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again and called again.

  He tried the door but it was locked. Five minutes later he found the building superintendent, who was unimpressed by the police officer. She was a stout woman in her thirties with stringy red hair and a permanent scowl.

  “The Malenkos are quiet people,” she said.

  “I don’t care about that,” Tkach answered impatiently.

  “I know they have some friends whom they should not have, but they are young. They will learn. We have to support our comrades. Besides,” she said leaning toward Tkach, “young Malenko’s father is a man with influence.”

  “I want the door open now,” demanded Tkach.

  “And if I say ‘no?’” she said with hands on ample hips.

  “I’ll have you arrested,” he said slowly. “You are obstructing an investigation of murder. In fact, I think you have gone too far already.”

  “Wait,” said the woman searching in her apron pocket. “I’m just being careful. I have a responsible job.”

  Tkach took a particular delight in frightening the woman. He had never had any success in influencing his own building superintendent, who did not look radically different from the one before him.

  She wobbled down the corridor ahead of him and grunted up the stairs. He followed, wondering what he would find in his search. Maybe something incriminating, some evidence of a sickle, something. In fact, though he was excited by what he was doing, he also hoped that he would find nothing, expected that he would find nothing and that Malenko’s wife would say he had been quietly at home when the murders were committed.

  “All right, it’s open,” said the red-haired woman stepping in ahead of him. “Now what you think you will find is…”

  Tkach had been right behind her when she suddenly backed up. Her wide rear hit him in mid-stomach, and they both tumbled to the hall floor. Tkach’s breath was gone, and he struggled to push the heavy burden from him so he could try to resume living.

  His first thought when he saw her face was that she was having a heart attack. The woman’s eyes were wide with fright, and she was gurgling. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation would be essential, but the idea repulsed him and he considered seriously letting her die. Instead of dying, she pointed to the room. Tkach forced himself up, pulled out his gun, and moved into the room doubled over, though he was now getting air. What he saw straightened him up and filled him with nausea.

  The figure swayed above him in the room, strung up by a man’s tie to a rod which was used to separate the room into two halves. The figure was all red and that of a woman. He could tell from the dress. He certainly could not tell from the face. There was no face, just a pulpy mass of blood.

  There was no one else in the room. Had there been he could easily have smashed Tkach’s brains and walked out even though the detective was armed, because the detective was also hypnotized by the image before him. He didn’t want to think of his first impression, but it came up at him as his eyes held fast on the gently swaying body. His first impression was that he was looking up at the corpse of his own Maya. He knew he was going to be sick, but he didn’t want it to happen in here where he would have to explain it. He went out the door, tripped over the superintendent, who screamed, and raced for the cold outside.

  Emil Karpo did not spend th
e night in the hospital, though he was advised to do so. His wound was not bad, though he had to wear a bandage and sling. The pain was greater than he would have expected, but he did not fear pain. The hospital was too protective and protected. Emil Karpo wanted to be somewhere where he could count on the help of Emil Karpo, and that somewhere was in his room. He had slept for six hours and then arose in the morning with an arm so sore that any movement was agony. His first act, after forcing his pants on with one hand, was to call Petrovka, where he found out that Vonovich was being held for the murder of Aleksander Granovsky.

  He was told by Rostnikov to take the rest of the week off. His protest was overridden, and a compromise was reached. Karpo would take the day off to rest. He hung up and went back to his room to rest, but he knew he would not rest. There was nothing wrong with his feet or his head. He could work, must work. Every day that went by without catching a criminal meant another day for another crime. In spite of social change and the clear needs of the state, people continued to commit crimes against each other, and it remained the responsibility of Emil Karpo to do his best to keep the criminals in check.

  So Karpo dressed. It was painful and took almost half an hour, but he did it and did it alone. Since he knew no one in his apartment building with any intimacy or cordiality, that was the way he would have to have done it anyway.

  He was on his way out of the building when the phone rang in his room, but he did not hear it. It was, in fact, Rostnikov calling to tell him of a call he had just received from Sasha Tkach on Petro Street.

  Karpo decided his task for the day would be a relatively easy one. He had a few suspects to check in the case of the person who was impersonating a police officer and preying on the African students. It was a short list of people who had been arrested for crimes committed while in some kind of disguise or uniform. The first name on the list was that of Vasily Kusnitsov also known as Chaplin because he liked to think that he looked like Charlie Chaplin. Kusnitsov was not home. The next name on his list was that of Rudolf Kroft, a former circus performer who had come on bad times after injuring his leg in a fall. He had twice been arrested for posing as a bus driver and a census taker. The house on Meduedkoya Street was not difficult to find, but it was an incredible house. Karpo thought that a good breath of air or another touch of snow would be enough to send the old wooden building tumbling. He walked gently up the steps of the three-story building and opened the door. The little alcove was cold as the outside. Karpo resisted the desire to rub his sore arm and examined the names on the wall. Kroft was on the top floor. He made his way up the creaking stairs finding that it grew no warmer as he rose. The room he sought was right at the top and he knocked.