Blood and Rubles ir-10

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  She reappeared at his apartment that very night. This time they made love on his bed, which, he reminded himself, badly needed clean sheets. She did not seem to mind the sheets. This time when they finished, she smoked her long cigarettes and they talked. Or rather she talked-about her life, her husband, his wealth, and her attraction to Artiom, who was strong and uncomplicated.

  She could not tell him when she would next appear, so he had taken to staying home with his television and his bare feet. He had hired a woman to come in and straighten his room and clean his linens. He sat waiting. Four days passed before Anna Porvinovich reappeared, looking sad and running into his arms, pressing into him passionately.

  Less than two weeks after she had first come to him, Artiom agreed to kidnap and murder her husband. She made suggestions about time and place, where they might take him, how to handle it, and though he had been more than a bit reluctant when she brought up the idea of kidnap and murder, she had been very convincing.

  He easily obtained the weapons from one of his mafia customers, recruited his assistant, Boris, with promises of money, and imagined a life of wealth and leisure with Anna.

  The kidnapping went reasonably well, and the plan seemed to be fine. But it had all quickly become very complicated when Porvinovich comprehended what had happened and who was responsible. Accepting Porvinovich’s offer was out of the question. He had done this for Anna. But that was of small concern now that the police seemed to know what he had done. His simple visions were now of dark cells and sodomy and of weeping in the night. He hoped that he was not tried and executed for what he had done. Worse yet, Artiom had heard stories about how the police simply executed criminals in the street and put a cheap gun in the victim’s hand to make it look as if he had resisted arrest.

  All of this was on Artiom’s mind as he put his key in the door of the apartment and wondered if there was anything he could take for his headache.

  Something seemed wrong. Artiom closed the door. The light was on. Porvinovich sat in a chair across the room, half turned from the door. He did not acknowledge Artiom’s arrival. Artiom looked at Boris, who was seated in his chair across the room. His mask had been removed, and he looked up at Artiom with a plea in his eyes.

  For an instant Artiom stood before the door looking from man to man. Then he realized that his assistant did not have the weapon in his hands, on his lap, or on the floor beside him. He also realized that Boris’s hands were behind his back.

  Artiom froze. Boris let out a tiny sob. Porvinovich rose from his chair, the automatic weapon in his hands. He was smiling.

  “You’re late,” Porvinovich said, his words slurred by his shattered, swollen face.

  “Things … the police know … I came to release you.”

  Porvinovich smiled again.

  “I’ll ask you a question. You answer truthfully and briefly.”

  Artiom wet himself. He nodded.

  “It was my wife’s idea, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Artiom. “All her idea.”

  “She made love to you a few times and you agreed to murder her husband,” said Porvinovich.

  The man bound on the chair sobbed a little louder.

  “To kidnap you,” said Artiom. “Not to murd-”

  He was cut short by a sharp sound from the weapon in Porvinovich’s hands. Artiom closed his eyes and then opened them, fairly certain that he had not been shot. He looked at Porvinovich, who nodded toward Boris, who was slumped forward, held up only by the cord that tied his hands behind him to the back of the chair. There was blood dripping from a wound in the man’s chest and even more blood coming from the bent-over head of the man, who was surely dead.

  “You killed him,” said Artiom.

  “You lied.”

  “I …”

  “You were going to kill me. She told you to.”

  “Yes,” said Artiom, unable to take his eyes from the bleeding dead man. “I’ve never killed anyone. She-”

  “I believe you,” said Porvinovich.

  Artiom did not feel relieved.

  “The neighbors,” Artiom said desperately. “Some of them must have heard the shots.”

  “Two shots. A car backfiring. Light bulbs falling,” said Porvinovich. “They will mind their own business. I assume she picked this place.”

  “Yes,” said Artiom.

  “Then it is unlikely that any neighbors here would report what may have been two gunshots. You agree?”

  “I agree,” said Artiom. “May I sit? I don’t feel …”

  Porvinovich pointed the barrel of his weapon at the chair he had stood up from. Artiom, wet and sick to his stomach, made his way to the chair and sat. Porvinovich stepped back half a dozen feet.

  “Have you ever met my brother?” asked Porvinovich.

  “No,” said Artiom, gripping the sides of the chair to keep his hands from shaking.

  “I’ve had all day to think about this, Solovyov,” said Porvinovich. “All day. I am a smart man cursed with a scheming wife who cares as little for me as she does for you. I’m sure she cares even less about Yevgeniy.”

  “Yev-?”

  “My brother, whom, I am now certain, she has helped nurse back from impotence. Without Yevgeniy, who is not smart-don’t ask me why some genes pass to one child and not to another-she cannot handle the business. It is my belief that without me he cannot handle it either. If you had a reasonable amount of intellect, you would understand that you are not part of her future plans. My guess is that she has already arranged for your death within a very short time. And that she realizes she will have to do it herself. Yevgeniy is incapable of either complex thought or direct action.”

  Porvinovich paused. Artiom nodded.

  “Do you want to know what happens next, Artiom Solovyov?”

  Artiom wasn’t sure that he did. He resisted the sudden, compelling urge to turn his head and look at his dead assistant.

  “I’ll tell you,” said Porvinovich, leaning back against the wall. “I’m afraid the events of the day have made me temporarily insane, especially when I discovered that you had murdered my wife and brother.”

  “Your wife and …?”

  “You just came in and told me that you had murdered my wife and brother,” Porvinovich said. “I was enraged. I rushed at you, took you by surprise. You fired, killing your assistant. I wrenched the gun from you and you started toward me. I shot you.”

  “But your wife is not dead,” said Artiom, looking into the purple face of madness.

  “No,” said Porvinovich, “but she soon will be.”

  This time there was a burst of fire from the weapon, not just two shots. Artiom’s initial reaction was surprise and then relief that he had not been shot. Suddenly the pain came. In his stomach. He looked down. Three, maybe four holes bleeding as one.

  “I’m dying?” Artiom asked.

  “I certainly hope so,” said Porvinovich, who fired once again.

  This time Artiom felt nothing.

  Elvira Chazova arrived just before the police ambulance. A neighbor, with what appeared to be sympathy, but was certainly satisfaction, had knocked at her door and told her that her boys were being arrested in the street right outside.

  Elvira had grabbed the baby and run past the neighbor. From across the street she saw a man lying on the ground and another man kneeling next to him. The nosy widow from the first floor across the street stood in her doorway watching. Other eyes looked down from darkened rooms.

  Her sons were in a circle, handcuffed around a lamppost.

  “My babies,” she screamed.

  The slouching man on his knees rose and stepped toward her. Two men leaped from the ambulance and hurried to the fallen man.

  Just before she reached her sons, Zelach stepped in front of her.

  “They are bleeding,” she moaned. “Look at them. Babies. You have beaten my babies.”

  The three boys looked at their mother, ashamed to have been caught. It was the baby in th
e woman’s arms who began to cry.

  “I must take care of my babies,” she insisted.

  “They are under arrest,” Zelach said.

  “My little ones?”

  “Attempting to rob and murder a police officer,” Zelach said.

  “They wouldn’t attack a police officer. They wouldn’t hurt anyone,” she said. “Won’t someone help us?”

  The baby cried. Sasha Tkach was put on a stretcher and carried to the ambulance. As the stretcher moved past the three handcuffed boys, they looked at the barely conscious policeman with vague curiosity.

  At that moment a police car, one of the “new” BMWs, which already had over two hundred thousand kilometers on it, pulled up to the curb, lights flashing. Two young policemen got out of the car.

  “Help me,” Elvira Chazova cried, showing her screaming baby to the two officers, who registered no particular emotion.

  “Those three,” said Zelach as he handed the handcuff keys to the first officer to reach him. “Beating and attempted murder of a police officer. Don’t let them run.”

  The officer nodded. The mother reached out an arm to stop him.

  “My babies would never do such a thing. It was someone else. Wasn’t it?”

  “Someone else,” said Alexei Chazov. “We were just coming home. We saw the man on the ground. We went to help him. Then this guy came out and started to beat us.”

  “That’s right,” said Boris and Mark.

  The young policeman had unhandcuffed the Chazov boys and was leading them to the waiting car.

  Elvira started toward the police car. Zelach stepped into her path.

  “What will happen to my poor children?” she cried. “What will happen to me? There is no money.”

  “What will happen to my partner?” said Zelach.

  The police car’s doors closed. Zelach turned his back on the woman and motioned to the officer, who was driving the car. Zelach climbed into the backseat, muscling the boys over to give himself room. There was enough room for all of them. The brothers were small.

  “Drop me at the hospital,” Zelach said. “Then take these three to your lockup. I’ll come by later to write a report.”

  The car started. The officer in the front seat who was not driving made a note on the pad snapped to his clipboard. Elvira Chazova appeared at the window of the police car and screamed over the sound of her infant, “Where are you taking my babies? Tell me. I have a right to know. This is a democracy now.”

  “This is a lunatic asylum now,” the young policeman in the passenger seat said.

  The police car pulled into the street. Elvira looked around. The widow had gone back inside. No faces were at the windows. No one came out and no one called down to her.

  She stopped screaming and patted the baby gently on the head as she moved to the sidewalk across from her apartment building. The street lamps were not bright, but she could see the blood of the policeman on the stone wall and the concrete sidewalk. There was quite a bit of blood.

  Elvira shook her head. The baby was crying much more quietly now. She had picked up the almost naked child and run with her into the cold night. Elvira moved back across the street whispering to the child to be quiet. She would put the baby to bed and then sleep for a few hours. The coming days and nights would be a hell for her. She needed her rest, if only a few hours.

  This was a new world, she thought. There was always hope.

  Yevgeniy Porvinovich lay on his brother’s bed while his brother’s wife went through the ritual of massaging and petting him to climax even though he was not capable of erection. Yevgeniy was especially unresponsive. Anna rubbed her bare breasts against his legs, moving upward, barely tickling. Yevgeniy, who had pronounced himself unable even to consider sex, groaned.

  Anna Porvinovich was especially patient. It was a small enough price to pay, and it was something she could stop doing completely when she was a grieving widow. Yevgeniy’s principal interest in the plot to kill his brother was the business. He had a reasonable grasp of that business and, propped up by Anna, he was confident that he could handle it. Maybe he wouldn’t be quite as successful as Alexei, but everything was already going, the deals were already in place with both the police and the mafia. There wouldn’t be that much to do.

  “You like that?” she asked in the darkness.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Her breasts were hanging between his open legs now, and she felt a distinct firmness beginning in her brother-in-law.

  “The police know,” he said.

  “They don’t,” she whispered. “Shhh.”

  “They know,” he insisted, sitting up.

  She sighed, turned on the lamp that was on the table next to the bed, and reached for her cigarettes. She patted his shoulder. Yevgeniy was terrible in the dark. In the light he was much worse. Now that he was beginning to whine, she began to alter her plans slightly. Yevgeniy would have to die. Perhaps an accident. Perhaps suicide because he could not consider living without his dear only brother. It would have to be soon. She couldn’t tolerate him much longer.

  She lit her cigarette with the gold lighter and looked at Yevgeniy, who looked quite frightened.

  “It will be fine,” she reassured him, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

  She needed a man to run the business or to appear to do so. After a decent interval following the death of her husband and Yevgeniy, she would pick out a worthy successor, a younger successor, a younger, good-looking, not particularly bright successor, such as Artiom, who would be long dead by then. It would be preferable if the successor was married, so that she would not have to spend too much time with him playing games. She was growing tired of playing games.

  “Sleep, Yevgeniy,” she said, gently easing him back. “You’ll feel better. I’ll be right at your side.”

  He lay back and closed his eyes. To Anna he looked dead. She assumed that her husband was already dead. Her choice of men had been most unfortunate. Artiom Solovyov had proved less determined and capable than she had expected. He had certainly killed Alexei by now. She hoped that he was not fool enough to call her again.

  She rose from her bed, put the cigarette between her teeth, slipped into her art deco green silk robe, and turned off the light. There was a bed in the next room. She would sleep there, with a door between her and Yevgeniy’s inevitable snoring.

  ELEVEN

  Weary Men

  Rostnikov had taken a cold shower well after midnight. It was not cold by choice. First he had undressed and dropped his clothes on a chair, being careful not to wake the girls. The water was no more than a halfhearted trickle, but Rostnikov was accustomed to that and to the hard, abrasive Chinese soap that did wonders for getting rid of grease, rust, and dirt but did nothing for the condition of one’s skin.

  Naked, leg aching, and not in one of his better moods after being dressed down by Colonel Snitkonoy, Porfiry Petrovich had crept as quietly as he could through the darkness and into bed. The blanket was cool, almost cold, the way he liked it. Sarah turned and asked dreamily, “What time is it?”

  Rostnikov turned his head to look at the illuminated dial of the bedside clock and answered, “Nearly two.”

  “What did he want?” she asked, just barely awake. She moved into his arms.

  “To tell me I had been a bad child, that I had kept secrets from my superior.”

  “Did you?” she asked.

  “Keep secrets? Frequently. Gregorovich is an open microphone to Klamkin in the Ministry of the Interior. And who knows what our Wolfhound tells those to whom he must report and retain the illusion of comradeship?”

  “The girls were afraid you were being taken away like their grandmother,” Sarah said.

  “I’ll talk to them. I’ll tell them I’m the police, the plumbing policeman, that no one takes me away, that I take people away, that … I must get some sleep.”

  “I was waiting for you,” she said.

  “I knew you would be,” he said, hugging her
to him. Her hair brushed his face. It had grown completely back since the surgery, which had almost taken her life and her wits.

  “Tomorrow night,” he said, gently rubbing her back in the darkness. “Tomorrow night we will make love. Disappointed?”

  “Tomorrow night,” she said, kissing his cheek. “You shaved.”

  “In the shower.”

  “Tomorrow night you may be more tired,” she said, running a hand over his chest. “And why waste a perfectly good shave and a freshly scrubbed body?”

  It had been months since Sarah had initiated any sexual contact-months of recovery. Twice over the past few weeks Rostnikov had touched her in the ways she knew meant that he wanted her. She had responded lovingly. But this was the first time she had initiated it. He could not refuse.

  When he looked up at the clock later, it was nearly three. Then he slept until the phone woke him slightly after five. It was still dark. Rostnikov sat up and grabbed the receiver before the second ring. He listened, whispered, “Yes,” and hung up. Ten minutes later he was dressed, his hair combed. The hardest part about dressing was getting a sock and shoe onto his left foot. Bending the deformed leg was agony. Usually Sarah did it for him, but during her long illness he had grown accustomed to the pain. By the dim bulb of a night-light near the bed the two girls shared, he found a jar of cold coffee and half of a large loaf of bread. He drank the coffee directly from the jar, finishing it. He ate some of the bread as he wrote a note to Sarah.

  “You are back,” came the voice of a little girl from the bed.

  “Shhh,” whispered Rostnikov. “Your sister is asleep.”

  “Did they take you where they took my grandmother?”

  “No,” he whispered. “My colonel had an urgent plumbing problem. He needed the plumbing policeman.”

  The girl giggled.

  “Go back to sleep,” he whispered, moving toward the door, a large piece of bread in his hand. “There is school to attend, and I will be needing my plumber’s apprentice to be well rested for emergencies.”