the Black Marble (1977)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "You old devil," Valnikov chuckled.

  The big man released Natalie Zimmerman and said, "Now that we're acquainted, how about some borscht?"

  'This is my brother, Alex," Valnikov said to Natalie, who was trying to keep her gun from falling out of her purse, her huge glasses from falling off her nose, and her bra from slipping up over her nipple, so quick and violent was the assault of the elder Valnikov. The Molokan butcher was shaking up and down in laughter as he cleavered through a lamb bone like it was salami.

  "My partner, Natalie Zimmerman," said Valnikov.

  "Ah-hah!" said the elder Valnikov. "I knew she was a cop, but she's not carrying a gun on her person, I can tell you that!"

  Which propelled the Molokan butcher into a fit of bouncing laughter.

  "We can't stay, Alex," Valnikov said. "We haven't called on a single burglary victim today and ..."

  "Bull! You pop in here once a month and hardly ever come see your nephews and nieces and you can't stay! Bull!"

  "How about some tea, Alex?" Valnikov said sheepishly, as though the big man were his father, and indeed he could have been, thought Natalie Zimmerman. He was much older than Valnikov.

  "Yeah, some tea with some lunch here!" Alex Valnikov said.

  "Honest, we gotta go," said Valnikov. "How about something to take out? We can only stay a few minutes."

  "You know, you're a real pain in the ass, kid," said Alex Valnikov, shaking his head and opening the meat case while Natalie managed to slip the bra back down over the bruised nipple while the Molokan pretended not to notice. "You're a real pain, boy. You must give me an hour of your time. In a whole year!"

  "Well, I always mean to stop by," Valnikov apologized. "But you know how busy cops are ..."

  "Sure. Save that for the dummies don't know any better. I know better." Then he turned to Natalie and his eyes, as blue as Valnikov's, creased, and he said, "Now you met Valnikov the bashful. That's me."

  "I'm . . . overwhelmed," said Natalie while the Molokan whacked through another lamb shank.

  "You didn't even come Thursday night," Alex Valnikov said. "We were all expecting you to at least show up for church."

  "I went to church, Alex," Valnikov said, actually dropping his gaze before the chastisement. "I went to the cathedral, that's why you didn't see me. I wouldn't miss on Christmas."

  "You'll have lunch with me then?"

  "We'll have tea, Alex," Valnikov said. "And if you can, maybe some lunch to take with us."

  "If I can," the elder Valnikov glowered. "Listen to him. If I can."

  Valnikov was saved further scolding when an ancient crone with wrapped spindle legs came hobbling into the store. She looked first at the Molokan butcher then back toward Alex Valnikov. Then she recognized the detective.

  "Sergeant Valnikov!" she cried.

  "Good afternoon, Mrs. Rosenfeldt," Valnikov said, running his fingers through his fluffy cinnamon hair.

  "I've been wondering when you'd be back to your brother's store. We was talking about you just recently, ain't that true, Alex?"

  "Every day, Mrs. Rosenfeldt," the elder Valnikov nodded.

  "I was saying how we need a good cop in this neighborhood, like Alex's little brother. Wasn't I saying that, Alex?"

  "You were, Mrs. Rosenfeldt," Alex said. "Every day."

  "Come over here, Sergeant, let me tell you what's the latest mischief diey're up to. Come over here."

  "Yes, Mrs. Rosenfeldt," Valnikov said obediently, crossing by the meat counter while the Molokan swung the cleaver.

  "Sergeant Valnikov," she whispered, pulling him down toward her face. She was toothless and smelled of fish. "It's Myer."

  "Your husband," Valnikov whispered.

  "Yes, they're at it again. I went to visit him in the rest home over in Boyle Heights. You know where that is?"

  "I sure do, Mrs. Rosenfeldt," Valnikov nodded patiently, blinking his watery eyes.

  "He's been taking up with a hussy there. Name's Ida Schwartz. You won't believe the sex goes on there. It's a disgrace. Of course, Myer's only a man. Him I don't blame. But Ida Schwartz? She should be in San Quentin, that woman."

  "Yes, of course," Valnikov agreed. "How old is Mrs. Schwartz now? Eighty?"

  "She's eighty-three, the stinking harlot!" Mrs. Rosenfeldt cried. "I don't blame Myer. A man is all he is. And there's just so much temptation a man can take."

  "I understand, Mrs. Rosenfeldt," Valnikov nodded, gravely. His runny blue eyes were sad. Earl Scheib Lopez, 11 years old, and Ida Schwartz age 83, San Quentin cellmates.

  "Well, what can you do, Sergeant Valnikov?" the old woman demanded.

  "It's very hard to put people in state prison," Valnikov explained. "Especially for ..."

  "Adultery!" she cried.

  "Yes, especially for adultery. You see, it's not a crime."

  "What is it coming to, this world, Sergeant?" Mrs. Rosenfeldt said.

  "Now now, Mrs. Rosenfeldt," Valnikov said, leading her over to one of three folding chairs placed for the convenience of aged customers like Mrs. Rosenfeldt. "Just sit down, and my brother will fix you a nice cup of tea."

  'Tea. That would be good, Sergeant," Mrs. Rosenfeldt said, with a gummy smile. A wet star slithered from her lashless eyes and followed a jagged course through the creases of her cheeks.

  "Did I ever tell you about the samovar we had when I was a boy, Mrs. Rosenfeldt?" Valnikov said, sitting in a folding chair next to the fragile old woman. "Well, my parents carried that samovar and an ikon of St. Sergius and a picture of Nicholas the second across Siberia, all the way to Vladivostok. That's one-fourth of the world, Mrs. Rosenfeldt!"

  "Imagine," the old lady said, forgetting about Myer banging that stinking harlot, Ida Schwartz.

  "Finally they arrived at the sea, Mrs. Rosenfeldt. Can you imagine how it was then? All the Whites escaping with their families? And at last, with the help of other army officers, and mostly with the help of a fleeing nobleman my father had befriended, they crossed the great Pacific Ocean ..."

  "On a Canadian vessel!" she cackled triumphantly.

  "That's right," Valnikov smiled, his sad runny eyes wet not from tears but Stolichnaya runoff. They'd be clearing at about 2:00 p. M. if he could judge by his vodka intake.

  'They landed in Seattle!" Mrs. Rosenfeldt reminded him.

  "Yes, that's right," Valnikov nodded.

  "Is that true?" Natalie Zimmerman asked Alex Valnikov while Mrs. Rosenfeldt picked up the story of the Valnikov od- yssey and told it to Valnikov.

  "Sure," Alex Valnikov grinned. "They carried one other thing besides an ikon and samovar, and a picture of Nicholas Romanov. They carried me. I was two years old when we sailed from Vladivostok in 1922. And I was a one hundred percent, gum-chewing, Los Angeles teenager by the time that baby over there was born in the Depression. Mrs. Ro- senfeldt's heard the story a hundred times or so, that's why she s doing die telling. Keeps her mind off her sex problems with Myer. Who died five years ago."

  "You mean she doesn't accept that he's dead?"

  "In a way she does," said Alex Valnikov, wrapping the cabbage rolls and pumpernickel. "Sometimes she seems to know for sure, then other times ..."

  "Does she come in every day?"

  "Just about. And every time she sees my brother it sets her off to telling about how Ida Schwartz should be arrested. I imagine Ida Schwartz is dead by now too. We don't mind it. In fact Iosif looks forward to her stories."

  The Molokan heard his name and grinned. One tooth was missing in front. Whack! went the cleaver.

  "It's kind of a continuing soap opera," said Alex Valnikov. "My brodier has a way with old people. Look at her. She's telling him about his own family who she never met. Have some tea." He served the tea in a glass. "Russian style," he explained.

  "Tastes good," Natalie Zimmerman said, sipping the hot tea carefully.

  The big man lowered his voice and said, "How long you been working with my brother?"

  "Not long."

 
; "What do you think?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "My brother drinks all the time. He didn't used to do that. Even after his divorce. My brother wasn't a drunk even after the divorce. Now my brother's a drunk. Do all the other cops talk about it?"

  "No, I don't think so," Natalie Zimmerman said, putting her glass of hot tea on the meat counter. "Lots of veteran detectives are known to take a drink. I don't think he's known as a particularly heavy drinker."

  "My brother started acting different a few months ago." Now he was whispering. "He had a partner, Charlie Lightfoot."

  "I know about that," she nodded.

  "About the time Charlie died, he started acting . . . different. Sort of absentminded. Sort of like his mind wanders. Then the heavy boozing started. Hell, we never see him anymore! I'm not his only family. We got a cousin lives in San Pedro and we got a cousin in Sylmar. Nobody sees him. We were a close family once. I worry about my brother. I got four kids that can make you stay up nights, all the crap they step in, but I worry most about my little brother."

  "I don't think he's a real heavy drinker," Natalie Zimmerman lied, unable to look in the passionate blue eyes of Valnikov the elder. No, he's not a heavy drinker. Just a 14 karat alcoholic, is all. And a 21 karat dingaling to boot. And I'm the one fate elected to dispatch the clown with my terrible swift sword.

  "Come get your tea, kid," Alex Valnikov said, and the detective got up, patted Mrs. Rosenfeldt's hand, and joined them.

  "That's very sad," Natalie Zimmerman said, looking at the old woman who was now telling the Molokan butcher about Myer the whoremonger. That's what philanderers deserve. A cleaver. Whack!

  "Well, we don't mind sadness," Alex Valnikov grinned. "Haven't you seen Russian plays? We're only happy when we're sad." He turned to his younger brother and said, "You changed your mind? Staying for some borscht, right?"

  Valnikov smiled apologetically and sipped the tea from his glass and his elder brother sighed and handed the heavy paper bag to Natalie Zimmerman.

  "It was nice to meet you, hon," the big man said. Then he leaned over and gave her a friendly hug which didn't roll up her bra this time.

  "I'll be seeing you, Iosif," Valnikov said to the butcher, who by now was caught up in Mrs. Rosenfeldt's story of sex and depravity in the Jewish Home for the Aged.

  "I see you, Andrei Mikhailovich!" the Molokan said, waving his cleaver.

  Then Valnikov stopped at the door, where Natalie was taking money out of her purse to pay at the register.

  "Don't be silly, honey," the elder Valnikov said. Then he turned to his brother and said, "You come for dinner. Soon. You and me haven't had a talk in a hell of a long time, boy."

  "Bye, Alex. Thanks for the eats," Valnikov said, putting an arm around his brother. Then the bears danced for another moment and the elder Valnikov kissed him on the mouth. "You take care, Andrushka. You hear me?"

  When they got back in the car, Valnikov took the wheel again and headed downtown. "Now comes the best part," he said to Natalie Zimmerman, who was lost in unhappy contemplation of black marbles.

  He surprised her by parking at the Music Center. "Follow me," he said with that grin of his. She was sure now after meeting his brother. It was childlike. On Alex Valnikov the big grin didn't look so dumb.

  She'd go along with anything on this, the last day. It was the least she could do before . . . before she went to see Hipless Hooker.

  He parked on Hope Street and led her up the steps between the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Mark Taper Forum. There were a few people roaming around, mostly coming from the restaurant on the Grand Avenue level. There were tourists taking pictures of the three neoclassical buildings which make up the Music Center complex, and of the enormous contemporary sculpture called Peace on Earth. Some decided it was a totem, no, a pyramid of bodies, animals and people, piled one on top of the other like a Hollywood orgy.

  Valnikov led Natalie past the Mark Taper Forum with its quiet, asexual reflecting pool. It was windy and the snowcapped San Gabriels were visible from Bunker Hill today. Across the avenue was the county courthouse and a sculpted relief of a hopeful knight in chain mail brandishing the Magna Charta.

  Then Valnikov beckoned Natalie toward a small cluster of people: tourists, downtown civil servants, pensioners, students, who were gathered around a young man with a full black beard and a war-surplus, navy peacoat, playing "Midnight in Moscow" for all he was worth. He was only worth a few bucks.

  "They call him Horst," Valnikov whispered when they were sitting on the steps. "He's a fair musician. Plays here in the afternoons. I've heard he's a medical student."

  The bearded young violinist had an old top hat upside down on the pavement. There were a few dollar bills and some change inside, but clearly, today's session was a bummer. Horst Vanderhoof was getting set to trip on home when he opened his eyes and saw that the small audience had grown by two.

  "Charlie and I used to listen to him sometimes in the afternoons and have lunch like this. For a while, Charlie wanted to learn something about music."

  Valnikov unwrapped a mound of hot cabbage rolls and set the paper plates, plastic forks, and paper napkins in front of Natalie on the concrete steps as though he were waiting on a table.

  "Is your brother a caterer?" Natalie asked.

  "The best," Valnikov smiled. "That's a big part of his business. He caters Russian weddings and parties. There's always an excuse for a celebration. If it isn't Pushkin's birthday it's Tolstoy's. Or it's the jubilee of the Bolshoi Ballet. Or the jubilee of the day somebody's cousin became an American citizen. Or somebody graduated from barber college. Anything. "

  "Cabbage rolls," she said. "I had a Polish grandmother made these."

  "Oh, you're Polish!" said Valnikov, unwrapping the black bread and little cartons of whipped butter.

  "I had a grandmother from Poland and I think a greatgrandfather from Germany. Hell, I'm an American. What's that stuff?"

  Valnikov held a paper plate stacked with golden pastries and said, "Piroshki. They're very light and filled with cheese or meat. My brother usually makes them both ways. And these others are fruit pastries."

  "Looks good," Natalie said, as Valnikov presented the array of homemade Russian food.

  "I think you'll like this black bread, Natalie," he said. "My mother used to make white bread only on Christmas or Easter. Sometime I'll bring some plastic containers and we'll get some borscht. My brother makes the best borscht you'll ever taste. The secret's in boiling the beef beforehand. And you add dusha last. That means soul. Oh, this is lamb, marinated and barbequed. He doesn't have it every day. We're lucky."

  "It smells fantastic," Natalie Zimmerman said.

  Then Valnikov noticed the music had stopped and he saw Horst packing up his violin case and emptying out the top hat. Most of the onlookers had strolled off.

  "Wait, wait!" Valnikov yelled, putting down his plate and scurrying up the steps toward the reflecting pool.

  Then Natalie Zimmerman saw him reach in his pocket and give some money to Horst. The kid nodded, took off his top hat again, put down the violin case and opened it up.

  When he returned, Valnikov said, "The best part is having music when you eat."

  And then came the piece de resistance. Valnikov drew from the bag a half bottle of Bulgarian wine which Alex had uncorked and capped.

  "Wine too? I can't believe it!" Natalie Zimmerman said, as Valnikov chuckled and poured into styrofoam cups.

  'There's a Russian toast which says, 'If we must die, let's do it with music.' " And then Horst burst forth with five bucks' worth of Rimsky-Korsakov. Horst could burst forth much better for a tenner, but Valnikov was satisfied.

  Then Valnikov said, shyly, "Well, this is the surprise. How do you like it?"

  And Natalie Zimmerman pushed terrible thoughts from her mind and concentrated on the wonderful food and the reflecting pool, and the clear sky and the mountains in the distance. She said, "This is the loveliest lunch I've ever ha
d."

  "Na zdorovye!" he grinned happily, toasting her with the styrofoam cup.

  Jesus, he had fine table manners. The poor doomed bastard. Jesus. Then for the first time, it occurred to her she had never called him by his first name. She didn't even know his first name! Sergeant A. M. Valnikov. Val.

  "Andrei something, the butcher called you."

  "Andrei Mikhailovich," he said, careful to swallow and dab his lips with the paper napkin before speaking.

  "But what did your brother call you when he kissed you good-bye?"

  "Silly, isn't it? Kissing like that. My brother never really escaped the old ways. He's still an emigre in his heart. He's saving to make a long vacation in Leningrad someday. I think this might be the year. Business is pretty good now."

  "But what did he call you?"

  "Andrushka," Valnikov said softly. "My mother always called me that."

  "That's a nice name," Natalie Zimmerman said, looking at Horst the fiddler, who struggled a little, then got hot with Tchaikovsky.

  "Do you mean it?"

  "Sure. And what would be the Russian equivalent of my name? Of Natalie?"

  Valnikov put down the cup and listened to the music for a moment. "The equivalent would be Natalia."

  "Natalia," she said. "I've never liked Natalie."

  "How about Natasha?" he said, looking deep in her eyes. "It's more endearing. Like Andrushka."

  "Natasha," she said, pushing her drooping glasses up. "I like that better."

  "Natasha," he whispered. Then he concentrated on buttering his black bread, but his Russian heart was advancing fifteen beats a minute.

  _ _ _

  While Natalie Zimmerman and Valnikov were having a memorable lunch, Madeline Whitfield and Philo Skinner were having a memorable phone conversation.

  "It's Richard," Philo whispered into the mouthpiece. He was asphyxiating himself inside a smoky phone booth, in the heat of the afternoon, outside a motel five blocks from his business. It was the motel where he had dreamed of taking Pattie Mae to before she quit on him after the Sunday dog show. The miserable little cunt.