Rostnikov vacation ir-6

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Sasha nicked his cheek. He sensed blood but ignored it, though he could not ignore the truth. He would not quit. It made little sense. Maya had said that it was because Sasha had never known his father that Rostnikov had become a father figure. Maybe, Sasha admitted, it was something like that.

  He put the razor down on the little metal rack hanging from the shower head and rinsed off, being careful to place the precious bar of soap carefully back in the rack, where it would not be worn away by the shower water. A trickle of blood from his cheek joined the water going down the drain. He stopped singing abruptly and watched it dreamily. His hand reached up and turned off the water, but Sasha did not move. There was a mirror outside the shower, but he did not want to look. He touched the washcloth to his cut and tried to awaken from the trance.

  When he pushed back the curtain, Zelach was standing there with a look of concern on his face.

  "Are you all right?"

  In fact, Zelach was the superior officer. In practice, they both knew that Sasha was in charge. Zelach had seen other policemen go into a zombie mode. It was usually the smart ones, the sensitive ones, like Sasha. When it happened, these officers were sent on vacations, from which some of them returned, while others went on to become clerks or bartenders.

  "I'm fine," said Tkach, reaching for the towel on a hook outside the door.

  "You're bleeding," said Zelach.

  "I know," Sasha said, stepping out. "I'm fine. Go back in front of the door. I 'm fine.''

  Zelach turned reluctantly and obeyed.

  Sasha dried himself slowly and then wiped the moisture-covered mirror and looked at himself. On the surface it was an innocent, youthful face with a spot of blood on the left cheek. It was not a Jewish face, but many Jews he knew, including Rostnikov's wife, did not have faces that were particularly Jewish looking. He reached for the glasses and put them on. Even then he did not look Jewish, though he did look like a sloo 'zhashchee, an office worker, a bureaucrat. The thought depressed him. He dressed quickly, determined to go out and find a phone so that he could talk to Maya and hear Pulcharia's voice before her bedtime.

  Yakov Krivonos looked down at Carla's body. Her red hair spread out, framing her face, and the blood dripping from her nostrils mingled with it. He would write a song about this moment, even though the dull streetlight robbed the scene of its true color.

  It suddenly seemed very important that he remember Carla's last name. She had told him once. It was something like No 'veey got, New Year. No, no, it wasn't.

  She was certainly dead, and since he had thrown her out the window, the least he could do was remember her last name. Looking down at her did nothing to help him. Someone behind him on the compact disc player shouted with joy. A breeze sucked in through the shattered window, trying to push Yakov gently back. He considered, seriously considered, leaping from the window ledge. He was almost certain he could fly, well, not quite fly, but keep himself suspended by will, moving slowly down. Yes, he could do it. He seemed to remember having done it before. He stepped onto the ledge.

  Then he saw the face of death look up at him, and he hesitated. There, floating white below him, moving forward across the street, eyes fixed on him, the face floated in a sea of black. Perhaps if he jumped death would catch him.

  He looked around for Jerold, almost called for him to come and see the face of death, but Jerold had dropped Carla and gone home. Yakov looked down again, and death was no longer there.

  What had Carla done? It had only been seconds ago, and yet he couldn't remember what had caused him to push her through the window. It had something to do with … Yes, she had called him a name, but what name? What difference did it make?

  Far away he heard the sound of a police siren. Amazing. Could they be coming this way already? Where had this sudden efficiency come from? Reluctantly, Yakov Krivonos stepped back from the window and looked around the^room. It would be better to leave. He did not want to die before he saw Las Vegas, but what should he take with him?

  He stepped over to the table and scooped most of the remaining capsules Jerold had left him into his palm and then plunged the handful into his pocket. He repeated this twice. The money on the table he folded over and stuffed in his rear pocket. His two-handled blue canvas bag with "Miami" emblazoned on it lay on the bed. He walked slowly to it, scooped it up, and moved to the CD player.

  Yakov began dropping the CDs into the bag. Music continued as he worked. It was, he thought, like a scene from Miami Vice. He had three videotapes of Miami Vice.

  Jerold had watched with him, telling Yakov what was happening. Yakov loved the dealers, the wild dealers, who took, killed, laughed. They were alive. The police on those shows were bores who triumphed not because they were better but because it was time to end each episode.

  That was it. Yakov had what he needed. The sirens loomed closer. He moved to the window and looked down again. Three men and a woman stood around Carla's body.

  Another woman knelt at Carla's side.

  "Leave her," Yakov shouted. "She looks beautiful."

  They looked up at him, startled, transfixed.

  Yakov shook his head at then" stupidity. He rummaged through the bag of CDs, finding one by Sting. Carla had liked it. Yakov hated it. She could have it. He hurled it down, launching it with a flip of the wrist. The silver disc sailed past the windows below, skimmed the top of the car Carla had hit, and shot over the head of the kneeling woman. The people scattered, and Yakov wasn't sure whether to find another expendable disc, take another capsule, or just get out.

  He was reluctant to simply leave. Carla had given her life for this moment.

  The other movie Jerold had shown him, the other one Jerold liked, the one with James Cagney. Jerold had said that Yakov looked like James Cagney. This did not please Yakov at first, but he had gradually grown used to the idea.

  Yes, standing in this window, he was ready to explode. "Look, Mother. On top of the world," he shouted in English.

  But Yakov was not going down with the building. He turned away from the window and headed for the door. The CD was still playing. How could that be? He had fought with Carla about it, and she had been dead for hours or minutes.

  His hand was reaching for the knob when someone knocked once.

  Yakov pulled his hand back as if the knob were white with heat. He knew who was at his door. Death was at his door. He should welcome Death. Better, he should kill Death. Then everyone would live forever. Rules would have to be made so there would be no more babies or the world would overflow.

  Yakov looked at himself in the mirror next to the door, the mirror in which Carla spent so much time admiring herself. The gnome with orange hair arranged in five spiked points grinned at him. His orange shirt, which matched his hair, was buttoned at the collar, and his jeans were properly faded.

  Death knocked again, and Yakov shouted, "Wait a moment. I'm thinking."

  What would happen to someone you killed if Death died? This was profound. Jerold should hear it. If the sirens would stop, if the music would stop, if Death would be patient, Yakov would have the riddle of life solved. Before he was even eighteen, Yakov Krivonos would be famous, or he would be if he chose to be, if he chose to share his secret with the world.

  "Fuck them," he said. "It's mine."

  "Police," the voice of Death said. "Open the door."

  Yakov reached into his canvas bag for a trick and came up with his Sturm.44mm Blackhawk revolver. Yakov had to put his canvas bag down so he could hold the nearly three-pound gun in both hands. He leveled the 7 1/2-inch barrel at the door and waited for Death to knock again.

  There was no knock, and Yakov sensed that he had little time. Death might not be so easy to stop. He put the revolver down and reached back inside the canvas bag for a second weapon, a compact rifle he held at his side, his left hand on the pistol grip, his right steadying the stock of the weapon.

  He fired, holding the rifle steady, as Jerold had taught him. A hole appeared in the do
or, and the bullet sang across the hall and through the door of the next apartment. He fired again. Another hole. From outside in the hall a woman screamed, and a man shouted at her to shut up.

  Yakov moved to the door and fired twice more. And then he opened it and stepped out. Death was not on the right but standing at the end of the corridor on the left, blocking the stairwell about twenty yards away, a small pistol aimed at Yakov, whose rifle hung at his side in his right hand.

  "Drop the weapon," Death said, and Yakov sighed.

  It wasn't really fair. Carla had been twenty-three. She had lived five years longer than Yakov would, for Yakov knew he would not drop the weapon, that he would lift it and aim and fire and that the man who was certainly Death would shoot him before he could do so.

  The shot came before Yakov could get his weapon into both hands. It came howling over the nearby siren, the music, the crying woman in the apartment across the hall. Yakov paused. The bullet had gone through him or missed. There was no pain. Death turned and fired down the stairwell at his right. Yakov raised his rifle and aimed at Death, who stepped away from the stairwell, raised his right foot, and kicked at the door of an apartment. The doors, as Yakov knew, were made of thin pressed wood. He had kicked his in three times in the month he had been using the apartment. So it was no surprise that Death disappeared into the apartment as Yakov fired, blowing a fist-sized hole in the corridor wall.

  "Yakov," Jerold called.

  "Yes," Yakov called back, firing again.

  Jerold stood at the top of the stairs, gun in hand. Jerold, so confident, a bearded aristocrat, a gangster, a real gangster, just as Yakov wanted to be.

  Jerold was teaching him many things, weapons, organization. Jerold was teaching him English so that Yakov could live in the United States, in Las Vegas, when it was over.

  "Come on," Jerold called.

  "My discs," Yakov called.

  "No time," Jerold said calmly. "Come with me. We'll get more."

  "You can't get Madonna," Yakov said, looking back at the apartment but walking toward Jerold. Tears were coming to his eyes. The loss of Madonna was too much to bear, was too unfair, given the miracles of this night.

  "Yes, I can," said Jerold, who had his gun trained on the door of the apartment through which Death had plunged. "Let's go."

  Something stirred inside the apartment. Jerold fired and nudged Yakov down the stairway.

  "Hurry," Jerold commanded without the slightest sign of panic, although the police siren had stopped very close by.

  Jerold covered their retreat to the next landing and urged Yakov down the hall to an apartment that was unfamiliar to the young man. Jerold tucked his pistol away, took out a key, opened the door, and ushered Yakov inside. The room was dark. Jerold closed and locked the door.

  "Stand still," he said, and Yakov could hear Jerold's feet move across the wooden floor.

  Yakov's stomach gave a first warning. He was coming down, coming down from whatever height he had reached with the help of the capsules. He did not want to come down. He wanted to remain in the dark and float, upside down, right side up, until there was no up or down. And then came a panic.

  "Lights," he said. "Lights."

  A light came on from a kitchen alcove on his left, and he could see Jerold, and behind Jerold he could see a woman seated at a small table. The woman's arms were taped together and then taped behind her head. Her legs were taped, too, as was her mouth. Her eyes were wide, tear-filled and frightened.

  "Come," said Jerold, who turned to a window behind the woman.

  Yakov moved past the woman, pausing to stare into her eyes. His nose almost touched hers, and he tried to smell her fear and see himself in those frightened eyes.

  "Carla is dead," Yakov said in English, following Jerold to the window and slinging the rifle over his left shoulder. A wooden plank about two feet wide lay between this window and an open one in the next building, four feet away.

  "I know," said Jerold softly, also in English. "I saw her. Go ahead."

  "Shouldn't we kill her?" Yakov said, pausing to look at the woman, who whimpered.

  "There's no reason," said Jerold. "The policeman saw us both."

  "It was a policeman," said Yakov with a laugh, gripping the shoulder strap of the rifle. "I thought it was Death."

  "Crawl," said Jerold.

  And Yakov went through the window, and over his shoulder and the barrel of the rifle, against which he rubbed his cheek, he whispered, "You can get Madonna?"

  "Yes," said Jerold. "You'll have much more than Madonna after Thursday. Just be ready."

  "Walther and I will be ready," Yakov said. "We will be ready."

  FOUR

  The food at the Lermontov Hotel was all right for quantity. Anton saw to that when Sarah and Porfiry Petrovich entered the dining room. He flitted from the Rostnikovs to the American couple who had checked in three days before to the Sabolshevs from Minsk to the twig of a man who spoke with an accent that Rostnikov recognized as Romanian.

  "Anton works hard for his tips, Porfiry Petrovich," Sarah said. "We should remember that when we go."

  She was holding her plate in front of her. On the plate was a mound of something dark, a treacherous hill of kasha, mystery vegetables, and small, dark, jagged pieces that may have been meat. The entire creation was topped with a tiny cap of barely cooked dough. At the base of this mountain was a thin white sauce in which floated two very thin slices of tomato. Rostnikov's plate was identical, as were the plates of all forty-six people in the room.

  "This way," Rostnikov said, nodding toward a table near the window where the new American couple sat, forks in hand, glasses of pee 'va, tepid beer, near their plates of food.

  The man looked up as Sarah and Rostnikov approached.

  "Have a seat," the man, who had two chins and very white hair, said.

  Rostnikov and Sarah put down their plates and sat.

  "You speak English?" the man asked.

  "Yes," said Rostnikov.

  "What the hell is this stuff?" he said, pointing at the mound in front of him with his fork.

  "Lester," his wife, a thin woman with dyed blond hair, whispered.

  "I'm curious, is all," Lester said.

  "I think it is cheburekl, an Armenian meat pie fried in fat," said Rostnikov.

  "Appetizing," said the man, with a frown.

  "Lester," said the wife, trying not to move her lips, as if her act of inept ventriloquism would hide her words from the Rostnikovs. "You don't need to offend-"

  "Am I offending you?" Lester said, looking at Sarah and Porfiry Petrovich.

  "We did not cook the food," Rostnikov answered.

  "See," said Lester. "They don't like it, either."

  The subdued chatter in the room was broken by the sound of a concertina.

  "Oh, hell, no," groaned Lester. "She's back."

  "Lester," his wife warned, looking apologetically at Sarah, who was much more discomfited by the American woman's embarrassment than by Lester's complaints.

  "Is that native Crimean music?" Lester asked, leaning over toward Rostnikov to be sure he was heard over the noise of the concertina playing a particularly bad version of a folk song Rostnikov recognized but could not name.

  "I don't know," said Rostnikov.

  Sarah was picking at her food. Rostnikov had almost downed the entire mound.

  "Look at her," Lester said in disgust, pointing his chins at the concertina lady.

  Rostnikov dabbed at his mouth with his napkin and turned to look at the slightly overweight woman in a generic native costume. Her face was round, overly made up, her mouth

  fixed in a huge smile, in contrast with her eyes, which looked pained.

  "She's not bad," said Lester's wife, looking for support from Sarah and Rostnikov.

  "She is trying," said Rostnikov.

  "It's damn painful," said Lester. "This is the nightly entertainment they promised us? Every night that poor creature comes in playing the same songs a
nd ending with the national anthem of the day. If she tries 'The Star-Spangled Banner' tonight, I'm walking the hell out. The woman is depressing. Every night I've been here I've gone to bed depressed."

  "Tomorrow we go to the Nikitsky Botanical Garden," said the wife, trying to change the subject.

  Sarah nodded politely, though she was having great difficulty picking up enough of the English to truly understand.

  "Our son lives in St. Louis, two blocks from one of the biggest botanical gardens in the United States," said the man. "We go to St. Louis every year, and we haven't had the slightest interest in seeing the botanical gardens once in eleven years. Now I go five thousand miles to see the same trees and flowers I could have seen at home."

  The concertina lady stopped. While she engaged in her nightly ritual of trying to get some of the disgruntled diners to dance, Lester leaned over the table and held out his hand.

  "Lester McQuinton," he said.

  "Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov," Rostnikov said, taking the huge hand.

  Rostnikov was not surprised by the strength of the man's grip. In spite of the fat, Lester McQuinton's arms were solid, his chest large. It was clear, however, that Lester McQuinton was surprised by the grip of the compact man across from him.

  "My wife's Andrea. We call her Andy," said Lester, nodding at his wife but keeping his eyes on Rostnikov, for whom he had developed a sudden respect.

  "My wife is Sarah," said Rostnikov. "She speaks very little English."