Tarnished Icons ir-11

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Three nights ago?” the young man repeated, shaking his head. “I don’t … that was a Wednesday, no, a Tuesday. It doesn’t matter, though. I go to sleep early. I have to get up early to get here by six. I was in bed sleeping.”

  “Alone?” asked Rostnikov.

  The young man smiled and said, “My roommate was across the room in his bed. He has trouble sleeping and usually reads late by the light of a small lamp next to his bed. The light doesn’t bother me. It’s better than if he goes to sleep. Leonid often snores.”

  “Leonid Sharvotz,” said Rostnikov.

  “Yes,” said Yevgeny.

  “Also a friend of Igor Mesanovich?”

  “Yes,” said Yevgeny.

  “Where can we find Leonid?” asked Rostnikov.

  “He should be at the apartment,” said Tutsolov. “He works afternoons and evenings. He’s a perfume salesman at one of the new GUM stores. I’ve never been there. He gave me the name once or twice, but I don’t remember.”

  “No one was at the apartment,” said Rostnikov. “We just came from there.”

  There was a long silence while the washtub of a detective drummed his fingers on the table. He looked into Yevgeny’s eyes till the young man turned away.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me if I knew any of his other friends? Anyone who might want him dead?” asked Yevgeny.

  “All right,” said Rostnikov. “Do you know anyone who might be able to help us, anyone who might have wanted your old friend dead?”

  “No,” said Yevgeny.

  “Most helpful,” said Rostnikov.

  “You don’t think Leonid and I had anything to do with killing Igor, do you?”

  “No,” said Rostnikov. “Of course not. We’re simply obliged to follow any leads, talk to the friends of victims of violent crimes. See if they can give us any help.”

  “Igor was shot with three Jews?” Tutsolov asked incredulously.

  Rostnikov nodded.

  “I told you, as far as I know, he had no enemies,” said the young man. “But you say he was with three Jews. Maybe it was just his terrible luck to be with them. Maybe … but I’m not a policeman. I hope you find who did this and shoot him the way they shot Igor.”

  “It is my experience that it seldom comes down to having to shoot criminals,” said Rostnikov. “I prefer execution by the state-far more grievous, drawn-out punishment than a quick and simple bullet.”

  Tutsolov nodded, taking it in, appearing to absorb the wisdom of the older man.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “That is all for now,” said Rostnikov. “If you think of anything, I want you to call me.”

  Rostnikov awkwardly fished a crumpled card from his wallet. It was a card for an assistant manager at a plumbing supply store. Rostnikov had written his own name and office phone number on the back. The young man took the card, examined it, and carefully put it in his own wallet.

  “You may go,” said Rostnikov.

  Yevgeny rose and nodded to Rostnikov and to Zelach, who still stood impassively behind Tutsolov’s chair.

  “One final question,” said Rostnikov as the young man reached the door. “What is your favorite color?”

  “My favorite …?”

  Yevgeny Tutsolov looked at the emotionless big man and the seated detective.

  “I … when I was a boy it was green,” he said. “Now, I don’t know. Why?”

  Rostnikov didn’t answer. Yevgeny left, quickly closing the door behind him.

  When the door was closed, Zelach said, “He’s lying, Porfiry Petrovich.”

  “I know,” said Rostnikov. “And he is not very good at it. He thinks he is good, but he’s not. However, being a liar in Russia is not evidence of guilt. If it were, the entire population would be in prison getting tattooed and the streets would be empty. What would you suggest we do now?”

  “Me?” asked Zelach. He thought for about ten seconds. “We have the rabbi, Belinsky, see if he can identify Tutsolov as one of the men who attacked him.”

  “A possibility,” said Rostnikov. “At this point it certainly would provide the strong suggestion of a connection to the murders if he were identified. However, Belinsky saw very little of the faces of two of the men who attacked him. The one he can identify with certainty is the one whose nose he broke. So …?”

  “We talk to Tutsolov’s roommate?” Zelach tried.

  “Yes,” said Rostnikov. “Leonid Sharvotz.”

  Zelach smiled.

  Tutsolov was loading a machine with crumpled white sheets when the policemen wended their way through the laundry. The strong clean smells of bleach and detergent contrasted with the faint smell of food in the tight little lunchroom behind them where they had spoken to the nervous young man. Tutsolov smiled and waved. Zelach did nothing. Rostnikov nodded.

  Rostnikov paused to thank the overweight Anna Karenina and then, with Zelach right behind him, escaped the noise of the laundry.

  When they had gone, the supervisor, Ludmilla, walked over to Tutsolov and asked him what was going on. She was not sure what she thought about the young man. She, too, knew that he was a liar. He missed too much work, and his excuses were too varied and a bit difficult to keep swallowing dry.

  “A friend of mine was murdered,” said the young man sadly, continuing to load the machine. “Almost a brother. They wanted to know if I knew anyone who might want him dead. No one would want Igor dead. He was the gentlest person I’ve ever known besides my mother.”

  “Would you like to take the rest of the day off?” Ludmilla heard herself saying.

  “Yes, please,” Yevgeny said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. “I’ll stay late tomorrow.”

  Ludmilla touched his shoulder and said nothing. She felt him trembling. From fear, grief?

  Yevgeny Tutsolov, under the scrutiny of his curious fellow workers, took off his white smock and headed for the small room near the door where the coats and boots were kept.

  There was no doubt in his mind now. Leonid would have to die. He had planned that from the beginning, but he was hoping to wait till they were safely out of the country or about to leave. But if this policeman found Leonid, Leonid might well break. Georgi, up to this moment, had posed the greater problem and had been first on Yevgeny’s death list, but things were changing, and quickly. It would have to be done tonight, risks or no risks. They would have to find it tonight. And he would have to kill both his remaining partners tonight. He could consider nothing else.

  He put on his coat and hat and went down the echoing corridor to the employee exit. As he left, he wondered where Leonid had gone that morning, why he had not been home when the police had come. Whatever the reason, Yevgeny was grateful that Leonid had gone out.

  Two hours later Georgi arrived at the hotel where Yevgeny worked. He hid by the loading dock behind a huge metal garbage container, moving when anyone came out into the cold to dump garbage or leave. His plan was simple: come out slowly behind Yevgeny when the shift in the laundry was over, and follow him till he was alone and the other workers were scattered. He would do it quickly, in a doorway or behind a wall or truck or leafless clump of trees or bushes. If Yevgeny spotted him, he would simply have to risk killing the younger man under less than ideal circumstances. There was no point in making up a lie. Yevgeny was too smart.

  Georgi moved from foot to foot, rubbed his gloved hands together, kept retying his scarf around his face, and waited till the shift ended. The workers began coming out. There were more than Georgi anticipated, but he was sure he would see Yevgeny.

  The only problem was that Yevgeny did not come out. He waited almost twenty minutes more, but Yevgeny never emerged. Had Leonid warned him? Was he still inside? He had no idea that the partner he had come to murder had left before Georgi had arrived.

  Not only had he left two hours before Georgi showed up-Yevgeny had headed directly for Georgi’s apartment after he was certain he was not being followed. He expected Georgi to be at work. His plan had been to writ
e a simple note saying “tonight,” slip it under the door, and go to the apartment to be sure the police had not found the Kalishnikov automatic. He doubted they had. They would have arrested him, or at least said something. There was something unsettlingly odd about the crippled policeman who asked questions about colors and seemed to be thinking about other things besides the man across the table.

  Yevgeny didn’t even bother to knock. As he leaned over to push the note under the door, he thought he heard a sound on the other side. He pressed his ear to the door and thought he could hear what sounded like sobbing or whimpering. Georgi did not sob or whimper. Yevgeny could do both on demand, but not Georgi. Georgi didn’t have the skill, intelligence, or imagination.

  Who was inside the apartment?

  Yevgeny hesitated and then slipped the note under the door. Almost immediately, he heard a gasp in the small apartment. Yevgeny quickly left the building and crossed the street so he could be seen by anyone looking out of Georgi’s window. He went around the block, making his way among strolling pedestrians carrying colorful and not-so-colorful plastic shopping bags covered with ads for Dockers and Mitsubishi cars, people wandering, most with nowhere to go. He completely circled the block and crossed to the same side of the street as Georgi’s apartment, being careful this time to stay out of view of Georgi’s window. He spotted a darkened doorway across the street from where he could see Georgi’s window. He went back to the corner and crossed along with a group of bundled people, half of whom walked down the sidewalk across from Georgi’s building. When he got to the darkened doorway, Yevgeny stepped into the shadows, acting as if he were reaching into his pocket for keys.

  His back to the corner, Yevgeny gazed up at Georgi’s window. He was cold. After five minutes, Leonid appeared in the window, looking out nervously. He appeared for only an instant. In the next twenty minutes, he repeated the move to the window five times, looking as if he were trying to decide something, staying back in what he hoped were the shadows of the room.

  Finally Georgi came walking down the street and entered his apartment building. Georgi should have been at work. Yevgeny watched for twenty minutes more. When Leonid failed to come out of the building, Yevgeny carefully joined a passing group of pedestrians and moved slowly, averting his head from Georgi’s window, striking up a conversation with an old man about the elections.

  Not long after, Yevgeny was in his and Leonid’s apartment. He took off his coat and boots and lay down on his bed after assuring himself as best he could that the room had not been searched. Later he would check on the Kalishnikov. He put his hands behind his head and began to plan, to figure out the puzzle.

  It was not a difficult puzzle to figure out. The question was what would he do about it and when.

  Yevgeny could not put aside the visit of the one-legged policeman who had convinced him that the move had to be that night. There was something about him, something that made Yevgeny feel that the older man might be able to see through his act. But that, Yevgeny decided as he lay in bed, was almost certainly a wrong interpretation. The policeman was like all the others he had deceived, probably not as bright as some he had dealt with.

  Yevgeny closed his eyes now, trying to convince himself that he was confident, that his intelligence and willingness to kill would see him through, that he could handle Leonid, Georgi, and the police. What he needed now was a little luck, not much, just a little for the job that had to be done tonight. He had enough information from Igor’s letter. He would use Leonid and Georgi to help him find the prize, and then, before they could move on him, he would kill both of his friends, kill them where they stood, and have the rest of the night and part of the morning to make his way to Belarus, pay a few bribes, and continue to Poland and then Germany, where he would become rich enough to call himself a prince and live like one.

  Alexi Monochov, in his saggy and faded blue prison uniform, sat at the table in the small room. Across from him sat the same three men who had thwarted him at Petrovka only a day earlier. The one in the middle, the one with the artificial leg, pursed his lips and tapped on a large envelope he held before him. The man to the right was the erect pale vampire in black whose face showed nothing. To the left sat the large-headed nervous man with glasses, the one who had figured out that Alexi’s first detonator was a decoy. It was of this man that he was most wary. There was a look on the third man’s face that Alexi could not read.

  “Alexi Monochov,” Rostnikov said, “you are a clever man, a prankster, a man with a true Russian sense of irony.”

  Alexi allowed himself only a small smile of satisfaction.

  “Your fake bomb at the American embassy fooled us all,” Rostnikov said, returning Monochov’s smile. “In addition to your sense of humor, you are a man who professes to care greatly about lives and little or nothing about individual life.”

  Alexi wondered if a few of the hairs on his balding head might be out of place. He refrained from patting them. He had dignity to maintain.

  “To save the lives of many,” he said, “it is sometimes necessary to take the lives of a few, a guilty few.”

  “But,” said Rostnikov, “according to you there are many who are guilty, many you thought deserved to die.”

  “Few and many are relative terms,” said Alexi.

  Rostnikov nodded as if in understanding.

  “Your goal was to make a point about the dangers of nuclear research, weapons, power plants. You thought you might help make the public aware of the danger.”

  “Yes,” said Alexi. “As the Unabomber did in the United States. These people are careless, stupid, and greedy. They can destroy most of mankind. We need more bombers, more protests.”

  “Nuclear research caused the death of your father,” Rostnikov said, looking at Alexi with sympathy.

  “Yes,” said Alexi.

  “But not before he blackmailed some very important people who have taken care of your mother, your sister, and you,” said Rostnikov.

  “We’ve been over this,” said Alexi.

  “And you do not intend to give us the names of these people and the crimes they committed because you want your mother and sister to continue to receive this tainted money from men you think should be dead.”

  “Yes,” said Alexi.

  “That is a contradiction,” said the gaunt man unexpectedly. “You are doing the same thing that you want stopped. You are profiting from the criminal acts of others involved in the very enterprise you wish to end. You are a hypocrite, Alexi Monochov.”

  “I have arranged for the sixteen names to be given to the police and the press when my mother dies,” said Alexi. “She is an old woman. With my mother’s help, we have put away enough for my sister, who has a good job.”

  “And you?” asked Karpo.

  “I will soon be dead,” said Alexi, head up, looking at each man across from him. “If not from my malignancy, then by execution.”

  “Your malignancy,” said Rostnikov. “The same thing that killed your father. Isn’t it odd that you chose a career in the field you hated?”

  “I could be aware of what was going on and where,” said Alexi, “of who was responsible and how I might be instrumental in stopping it.”

  “Can it be stopped, Alexi?”

  The pause was long and then the prisoner said, “No, but it can be made more safe. The public can demand so, and the politicians will listen if there is enough protest.”

  “Maybe,” said Rostnikov. “I have known politicians. They are a patient and determined breed where money and power are concerned.”

  There was a sound from the scientist with the thick glasses. Alexi turned toward him, but the man was silent, watching, listening.

  “I talked to your doctor, obtained all of your medical records,” said Rostnikov, tapping the envelope before him. “Scientific technician Paulinin, whose medical knowledge is considerable, has examined the information and consulted with others this very day. We have confirmed without a doubt that you are not
dying.”

  Rostnikov slid the envelope to Paulinin, who opened it and spread the contents before him, including X rays and graphs.

  “The neurologist who you have been seeing,” said Paulinin, “is little more than an incompetent quack. You have no malignancy. You have no cancer. What you have is a small blood clot that has grown slowly since you were misdiagnosed. Your pain increased in frequency and severity because your infection has not been properly treated. Your therapy was of no use. A simple operation to remove the clot could have been done when you were first seen. It can still be done, but it will require a competent surgeon. I know such a surgeon.”

  Alexi looked at the X rays and graphs. He knew a bit about reading such things but did not consider himself an expert.

  “These are fakes,” he finally said, handing the envelope back to Rostnikov. “I am dying. You simply want me to give you the names, the evidence. These are old X rays, old graphs. I can read the code dates in the corner.”

  “These are your father’s medical records, Alexi Monochov,” said Rostnikov, sliding another file, an old one across, to the bomber. “Your father didn’t die of exposure to nuclear material any more than you are dying from it. Open the file, Alexi. Your father committed suicide. He left a note. Read the note.”

  Monochov opened the old file. On top of a small pile of reports and papers was a note. It was definitely in his father’s hand.

  I have been exposed to high doses of radiation. The pain is unbearable. I would rather take my own life than let my family watch me suffer a long and painful death. You will be taken care of. I promise you.

  He moved to the next sheet, a report, signed by his mother.

  “She knew he committed suicide?” Alexi asked in confusion. “She knew all the time?”

  “It would appear so,” said Rostnikov.

  “And you’re telling me he did not die of massive doses of radiation?” he asked.

  “Read the record,” said Rostnikov. “It is not an external contamination from which you and your father both suffered. Put simply, Alexi, it is madness.”