A Fine Red Rain

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Yuri Pon did not follow them. He felt ill. His stomach was sour and the acid taste snaked into his mouth. The evening was hot and he had had a hard day. Nikolai would probably have passed out by now, so it would be safe to go back to the apartment. Tomorrow or the next night Yuri would try again. It would be hard to wait. He would try someplace else. He would be patient, careful, efficient. He would control his emotions. He would make his contribution. Tomorrow or the next night.

  When Rostnikov walked down Krasikov Street toward his apartment that evening, he had a plan for the night. First, he would engage in small talk with Sarah. Before they ate, he would spend his forty minutes lifting weights in the corner of the room and she would read or watch television. During dinner he would suggest that they go for a walk and Sarah would accept. She would also know that he had something serious to say. On the walk he would tell her about Josef’s posting to Afghanistan, try to comfort her, and hope she would have some words of comfort for him. They would stop for something, maybe an ice cream, and come home early to talk or read. It would, he thought, be a slow, perhaps sad, night in which he would not think of the KGB, of the Gray Wolfhound, of the man who had dived off Gogol’s statue. He hoped it would not be one of those nights when bad news angered her, turned her against him, transformed him into the evil cossack of her imagination. These outbursts were always brief and regretted, but they lingered in his memory and he feared that frequent setbacks would increase the periods of anger. Her anger made him feel helpless. Rostnikov could deal with murderers, pompous superiors, scheming KGB officers. He could play their games, even gain a satisfaction from small triumphs, but his wife’s emotion swept him away. He never considered joining her in anger. Rostnikov had learned even as a boy not to be angry. It wasn’t that he controlled his anger. It was simply that he didn’t feel it. The world was strange, sad, ironic, comic, even terrible, and, yes, there were people who were monsters. It wasn’t that he forgave them. He often thought that anger might be far more satisfying than the frequent state of amused melancholy with which he felt most comfortable.

  When he reached the apartment and stepped in, Porfiry Petrovich saw and accepted that the night he had planned was not to be. At the wooden table that had been given them by Sarah’s mother sat his wife and two men. Sarah, her red hair tied loosely back, looked up at him with a small smile. Rostnikov moved to her and kissed her moist forehead. The warm evening brought out her distinct, natural smell, which always came back to him as a nearly forgotten pleasant memory.

  He shook hands with Sasha Tkach and then reached out with both hands to shake the left hand of Emil Karpo. Karpo’s grip was firm.

  “The hand is strong,” said Rostnikov, sitting at the last unoccupied chair and reaching for the bread in the center of the table. Tkach had a teacup in front of him.

  “It is better than it was yesterday, and yesterday it was better than the day before,” Karpo said.

  “Cousin Alex is a good doctor,” said Sarah with pride.

  “He’s a good doctor,” Karpo agreed.

  Rostnikov looked at his two unexpected guests, who looked at each other to determine who would speak first. When Porfiry Petrovich was chief inspector in the Procurator’s Office, the three of them had been an unofficial team. Rostnikov had used their strengths, worked around their weaknesses, encouraged their initiative. In turn, they had given him loyalty. It was not the first night they had sat around this table, and Rostnikov hoped that it would not be the last. From his pocket, Rostnikov removed the pistol he had taken from Katya Rashkovskaya and placed it carefully on the table.

  “It is no longer loaded,” Rostnikov said, turning to Sarah.

  “Did someone … ?” she began.

  “Just to shoot a toilet,” said Rostnikov.

  “A TK,” Karpo said quietly, looking at the weapon. “A six-point-three-five-millimeter blowback automatic of good quality. The pistol was supposedly designed by a man named Korovine in 1930. There is a mystery about Korovine. He designed weapons in Belgium during the First World War and took out a patent for a double-action internal-hammer lock for automatic pistols, though there seems to be no evidence that it was ever actually manufactured. Then, after disappearing for almost ten years, he designed the TK in the Soviet Union and was never heard of or from again.”

  “So you can tell me nothing about this weapon?” Rostnikov asked with a smile.

  “On the contrary, Comrade Inspector,” said Karpo. “It is striker fired and … You are making a joke of some kind?”

  “A poor one, Emil,” said Rostnikov with a sigh, looking at Tkach, who stared into his empty teacup.

  Rostnikov caught his wife’s eye and nodded at Tkach.

  “More tea, Sasha?” Sarah asked, getting up.

  “A little,” he said, pushing back the wisp of hair that fell over his eyes.

  “Sasha was saying that the baby is outgrowing her clothes,” Sarah said, moving to the teakettle on the stove in the kitchen. “She’ll be ready for the suit I knitted for her when the first cold days come.”

  Rostnikov removed the pistol from the table, placed it back in his pocket, chewed on his bread, and waited. Sarah came back with a cup of tea for him and poured more for Tkach, who thanked her.

  “Today I went to the circus, the New Circus,” Rostnikov said after swallowing a mouthful of bread.

  “I was near there this morning, near the university,” Tkach said. He seemed about to add something but stopped.

  “All right,” Rostnikov said with a sigh. “Emil, you begin.”

  Karpo looked at Sarah and then at Sasha before fixing his eyes on Rostnikov and saying, “You were principal investigator on the murder of Sonia Melyodska, a soldier, in the Vdnkh Metro Station last year. You filed a report.”

  “In November, the third week,” Rostnikov, said, reaching for another piece of bread.

  “Precisely,” Karpo agreed. “

  “And?”

  “And why did you file the report with those of the serial killer of prostitutes?” Karpo asked.

  The normal question at this point might have been Why do you want to know? or What’s going on? But Rostnikov had learned to be patient with Emil Karpo, whose own patience was infinite and whose sense of humor was nonexistent.

  “I did not file it with the reports on the serial killer of prostitutes,” Rostnikov said. “It never entered my head that there could be a connection. I investigated for two weeks, relatives and friends of the murdered woman, the possibility of a random killing by a subway thief. I worked with Zelach searching for witnesses. Nothing. I submitted the report to open file.”

  “I found it in the file of murdered prostitutes,” Karpo said.

  Rostnikov was well aware that the prostitute killer was not Karpo’s responsibility. It might be reasonable to ask why he was even reading the file. Rostnikov didn’t ask. Instead he looked at Sasha Tkach, who didn’t appear to be listening.

  “Sasha,” Rostnikov said, rubbing the stubble on his own chin. “How would you account for this puzzle?”

  “I, I wasn’t …” Tkach stammered as if awakened from sleep.

  “You should,” Rostnikov said.

  Sarah asked if the two guests were staying for dinner. Both said they were not. She excused herself and began working in the kitchen while the three men continued.

  “Emil has found a report on a murder I investigated in the wrong file,” Rostnikov explained.

  “A misfiling.” Tkach shrugged. “Someone pulled your report and accidentally placed it in the wrong file. It happens.”

  “The number on Inspector Rostnikov’s report is in the three hundred series. The number of the serial killing file is in the two hundred series. They are not close,” said Karpo. “In addition, the original number on Inspector Rostnikov’s report has been lined out and the new number written neatly in its place. There are no initials to indicate who did this or why.”

  “So?” asked Tkach, looking at Rostnikov.

  “Someone mus
t think my killer and the serial killer are the same,” said Rostnikov. “But who thinks so and why? Why would anyone besides me even pull the report? Why would they refile it without talking to me and to the investigator in charge of the serial murders? I gather that—”

  “I called Inspector Ivanov,” said Karpo. “No one spoke to him about the report. He did not make the change. He suggested that I simply pull it out and return the report to the proper file.”

  “No doubt he also wanted to know why you were reading the file of a case assigned to him,” Rostnikov said.

  “I told him it seemed to be tied in to a case on which I was working,” said Karpo.

  “Well, Sasha?” asked Rostnikov, reaching for the last of the bread. The smell of boiling rassolnik rybny, noodle soup, had reminded Rostnikov of his hunger.

  “A joke?”

  “The risks associated with such a joke make that unlikely,” said Karpo, who had obviously thought about this possibility.

  “A lunatic in the file room?” Tkach tried again. “Sabotage? The KGB? A test?”

  “All possible,” said Rostnikov. “But there is another possibility.”

  “I don’t see it,” sighed Tkach.

  “That there is a person, possibly an officer, who has access to the files and knows something but is unwilling or unable to come forward and say it. Perhaps he knows of KGB involvement in the murders, or that a prominent figure or the relative of a prominent figure, possibly even a member of the Politburo, is involved in the murders. It has happened before. This officer is suggesting that someone else pick up the pieces.”

  “There is another possibility,” said Karpo.

  “That the murderer is a police officer who wanted the reports of his killings kept together,” said Tkach.

  Rostnikov smiled in appreciation and reached over to pat the younger man’s back.

  “Stay for soup,” he said. “Sarah, is there enough soup?”

  “Enough for all. More than you and I can eat,” she called back.

  Tkach nodded and Karpo said nothing for an instant and then nodded his agreement. Rostnikov got up and moved into the kitchen to get another loaf of bread. Sarah looked at him as she cut a cucumber.

  “Don’t look like that, Porfiry Petrovich,” she said quietly.

  “Look? Look like what?” he answered, reaching over her for the day-old black bread in the cupboard.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” she whispered.

  “Talk about?”

  “Josef,” she said. She cut the cucumber into smaller pieces, turning her head from him. “I got a call at the shop today to tell me that he had been, had been transferred to Afghanistan. They said they had already told you.”

  “That was kind of them,” Rostnikov said, putting his arm around her shoulder.

  “No, it wasn’t,” she said, holding back the tears.

  “No, it wasn’t,” he agreed. “It was a warning to me, to us.”

  She said nothing.

  “We’ll talk later,” he said and returned to the other room to pass the bread around and pour fresh tea.

  For the next half hour they worked out a plan to deal with Karpo’s case. Only after they had finished their dinner did Rostnikov turn to Tkach.

  “This morning I located, and obtained evidence against, two black marketers dealing in video recorders and videotapes,” he said. “I turned my report in to Deputy Procurator Khabolov, who said that he would personally investigate. I believe he may plan to profit by and from these black marketers.”

  “And this surprises you?” Rostnikov said, looking at Karpo, whose thin lips were even more pale and tight than usual. Corruption was accepted by most Soviet citizens, but to Emil Karpo every act of corruption was an attack on the system to which he had dedicated his life. Corruption by a member of the police was especially painful. Karpo’s impulse, Rostnikov was sure, was to confront and punish, to punish severely.

  “No,” sighed Tkach. “I’m afraid that I will be used to cover for whatever he plans to do, that I will be blamed if he is found out.”

  “A reasonable conclusion, from what we know of Deputy Khabolov,” said Rostnikov. “And you’d like some help in protecting yourself?”

  “Yes,” said Tkach.

  “And the black marketers?” asked Rostnikov.

  Tkach shrugged.

  “One of them has a daughter, a young girl,” Tkach said softly. “She’s about nine or ten.”

  Rostnikov looked at Karpo, who betrayed his feelings only by meeting the inspector’s eyes.

  “Emil Karpo thinks that the existence of the child is not relevant, that we do not excuse corruption for any cause, that the child might well be better off as a ward of the state. Am I right, Emil?”

  “You are right, Comrade,” Karpo said.

  “I don’t know,” said Tkach.

  “Well,” said Rostnikov, standing to ease the strain on his leg, “let’s see what we can work out.”

  At precisely eleven o’clock that night, Osip and Felix Gorgasali sat in their trailer, the blackened curtains down, and talked quietly so they would not wake Osip’s wife and daughter. They talked about, wondered about, feared, what they would have to face the next morning. A uniformed policeman had arrived late in the evening at the trailer to inform them that they were to be in the office of Deputy Procurator Khabolov at exactly eight the next morning. The policeman had given no explanation, and they had been too stunned to ask for one.

  From time to time, Felix muttered nichevo, the Russian word for “nothing,” which conveyed resignation, stoicism, the idea that whatever might be the problem, you shouldn’t let it get to you. Life is too full of explosions. One cannot allow oneself to be destroyed by fear of them.

  “Nichevo,” Osip agreed, wondering which shirt to wear the next morning, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  At precisely eleven o’clock that night, Sasha Tkach rubbed his wife’s back as they lay in bed. They didn’t speak. Maya loved to have her back rubbed, and let out a soft, appreciative purr as he moved his hands up from her spine to her shoulders.

  The book of fairy tales was propped against the table near the baby’s bed. Pulcharia turned and gurgled in harmony with her mother’s hum, and Sasha smiled in the darkness, forgetting his anxiety.

  At precisely eleven o’clock that night, Yuri Pon considered smashing a chair over Nikolai’s head. Nikolai, the filthy dwarf, was snoring, snoring as he never had before. Yuri went to Nikolai’s bed and prodded him. The sleeping man snorted, spewed forth an alcoholic belch, turned on his side, and snored much more quietly. Nikolai had not changed clothes, had not shaved, had simply taken off his shirt and shoes and fallen asleep.

  The prodding by Yuri would be effective for about ten minutes while Nikolai approached wakefulness and then gradually retreated to the depth of whatever dreams he had, dreams that quickened his heartbeat and made him snore like a wounded cat.

  Yuri wanted to sleep, had to sleep. He had to get up early for work. There was so much to do. But going to sleep with this snoring and the feeling of incompleteness was impossible. It was as if Yuri were hungry, but he had eaten ravenously when he got home that night, had eaten and eaten as he had as a boy, a fat boy. The eating left him still hungry, but hunger wasn’t quite what he now felt. Unfulfilled. That was it. There was only one thing that would make that feeling, that near-pain, go away. He would have to do more work for the state, for the people, for Russia. He would have to find a prostitute soon. He would have to find her and kill her. If he lived long enough, he might have to find and kill every prostitute in Moscow inside the Outer Ring Road. There might be hundreds. They might be replaced by others. He might be caught. That would be the worst of all, to be caught and sent to jail knowing that they were still out there. It would be like forever living suspended over a jigsaw puzzle with one piece left to put in and never being able to place the piece where it belonged. As he lay in the darkness of the room, he imagined himself standing over a table w
ith a jigsaw puzzle laid out before him. He couldn’t see the puzzle but he knew he held the final piece in his hand. He couldn’t quite see the piece, either, but he knew it was heavy, too heavy to keep holding. He also knew that he could not put it down, and he struggled to stay awake, not fall into this dream, a dream he had created. His eyes wouldn’t open. In his near-dream he looked down at the puzzle and suddenly knew the puzzle was very important. It was more than just a thing to pass the time. The solution to the puzzle would be the solution to something about himself.

  He forced himself to look, forced himself to pull the image that lay flat and unfinished before him into perspective. It was a woman, the head and shoulders of a woman, but he could not make the image hold still, become sharp, and the piece in his hand made his muscles ache with pain. He turned his eyes to his hand. He turned slowly in fear and saw that his upraised right hand clutched a human eye, a pulsating human eye with a nerve dangling between his fingers like a red worm. Yuri wanted to scream, drop the eye, but he knew he couldn’t. The eye in his hand looked down at the puzzle, and Yuri followed its gaze and saw that the woman in the puzzle was missing an eye. For an instant, less than the time it would take to be sure, he thought the woman in the puzzle was his mother and then it was a woman he sometimes saw at the grocer’s and then it was no one he knew and then it was the face of the uniformed woman he had killed in the subway, the one on the stairs, the one who had said something to him, called him a name, when he accidentally bumped into her. He had seen that she was nothing but a prostitute in a uniform. Even if she were really in the army, she would be a prostitute when she got out, as she had surely been before she went in. She had called him a name, had called him a perverted fat pig. After all he had done, all he planned to do. He who was always so careful, so neat. She had called him a pig and he had lost control, had pulled out his pocket knife, had shown her what a pig could do. And now he stood holding her eye. Had he cut out her eye? He didn’t remember. He didn’t think so. He couldn’t remember the report. Perhaps he could check it in the morning. He didn’t want the eye that squirmed in his hand, squirmed wet like petroleum jelly as his arm turned to stone. Yes, he would return the eye. Oh, please, let him return the eye, he begged whatever gods might be, begged his hand, but neither the gods nor his body answered.