Dog Who Bit a Policeman

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Anna Timofeyeva had always been honest with herself and, when possible, with others. Now, as she prepared water for tea after locking the apartment door, she admitted that she was keeping Baku next to her at night because she wanted, needed, the company of a living creature.

  In one sense, Anna, who had suffered three heart attacks, was waiting for the fatal one, waiting to die. But in another sense, Anna had come to terms with her life. She missed the satisfaction of power and mission she had when she had been a procurator, but she had grown quite comfortable with her present life. In fact, even if she were suddenly cured, she doubted if she would be interested in returning to work, though she was only fifty-five years old. She had been a loyal, hopeful Communist, well aware of the abuses of the system and the principles of the revolution, but she had doggedly pursued her duties.

  The water was boiling now. Anna, who stood next to the stove, turned off the flame and poured the steaming water into her large glass, which contained an English tea bag.

  Since she was an atheist, Anna did not pray as she stood drinking her tea, but she did close her eyes and will that Elena would be all right. It struck her that she suddenly knew how the many wives and mothers of police officers felt each night, the fear, the attempts not to think about what might happen.

  She finished the tea, threw the bag in the garbage, rinsed the glass and said, “To bed, Baku. Tomorrow we have a satisfying and meaninglessly busy day before us, and, if we are fortunate, Elena will be home.”

  Chapter Eight

  “NO,” SAID THE WOMAN WITH her head bowed, wearing a dark veil to cover her eyes and hide her face.

  Fortunately, the veil was appropriate since it was a funeral and other women present also had their faces covered.

  The crowd around the grave site was large and dangerous. Rostnikov had hoped but not expected that it might rain, which might cut the burial short and lessen the possibility of conflict in the cemetery. But the morning was pleasantly cool, and the sky, while cloudy, gave no sign of an immediate shower.

  To the right of the temporary headstone—a ten-foot dark stone with a life-size image of Lashkovich in a leather jacket was being prepared—gathered the one-eyed Casmir Chenko and his Tatar Mafia. To the right stood Shatalov and the Chechin Mafia. Both gangs were dressed in dark suits. Four uniformed policemen from the special gang force stood a discreet distance away at the foot of the grave where the casket was now being lowered. The police were armed with automatic weapons, which two of them had put aside before the burial service began so they could search the incoming members of the two Mafias for weapons. They had found none.

  This section of the cemetery was a ghostly army of tall, black gravestones etched with the likelinesses of dead young men in leather who looked down like an army of the damned.

  “You are certain,” said Rostnikov, who stood on one side of the veiled woman. Emil Karpo stood on the other.

  “The man who was with Mr. Lashkovich is not here,” Raisa Munyakinova said. “I would like to leave.”

  “Just a while longer,” Porfiry Petrovich said gently.

  The service was being conducted by a tall man somewhere in his fifties. He wore a white gown and, before the lowering of the casket began, he had spoken in an unfamiliar language, his deep voice filled with emotion.

  “He said,” Karpo whispered, “that a good man was being buried today, a man who treated his elders with respect, his wife and children with love, and his country, Tataria, with pride. We shall miss him.”

  Rostnikov knew that the man being lowered into the ground must have treated his elders, since they included Casmir Chenko, with respect because he had little choice. Lashkovich, however, had abandoned his wife and teenage son five years earlier and never sent them a penny. The widow lived in Kazan, five hundred miles from Moscow, in what had been declared the Tatar capital. The widow lived by working in a belt factory. She was not present. As for his patriotism, a quick search had revealed that the dead man had paid no taxes. It might also be considered a less than chauvinistic act to murder citizens, as the dead man had made a career of doing.

  “Look again, Raisa Munyakinova, please,” said Rostnikov, well under the voice of the man in the white gown who shifted in Russian to an almost tearful prayer.

  “May God take the soul of this good man into his arms. May he receive in heaven all that he deserves for a life well spent in devotion and toil.”

  “Amen to that,” said Rostnikov.

  “I want to go now,” Raisa said. “I’m tired. I’m afraid.”

  “One last look,” said Rostnikov, incredibly uncomfortable and trying to bear the brunt of the weight of his body with his good right leg, using the left one to simply maintain his balance.

  She lifted her veil just enough to see out from under it and scanned the crowd once again.

  “No,” she said, letting the veil drop. “He is not here. I am sure.”

  Raisa had worked a full shift and it had been a difficult one. The Carpathian Bathhouse was nowhere near as well-maintained as the hotel health club where she had worked the night before and where the Tatar had died. She had expected another cleaning woman, Olga Sachnova, but the other woman had simply not shown up. There had been debris and wet towels. The sinks and toilets weren’t filthy but they were not clean. She had put in an extra hour, though she would never be paid for it. She did not wish to lose her job, and she could not possibly bring herself to leave any sign of dirt behind her.

  From the bathhouse, she had caught a bus and made it to Petrovka at the time designated for her meeting with the pale detective named Karpo. She had passed the police building hundreds of times and heard tales about the dark bowels of the building. Raisa did not want to enter, but she could not refuse. The guard at the gate had taken her name and made a call. Moments later Karpo had appeared and led her into the building for a nearly two-hour examination of the photographs of not only Chechin gangsters, but Tatars, Afghan veteran Mafia members, and dozens of Georgians, Moslems, Ukrainians, Estonians, and Russians of all ages. Nothing.

  The casket was now resting on the dirt bottom of the grave and three Tatars were shoveling soil over it. The man in the white gown made a motion with his raised hand and the burial was over.

  Rostnikov and Karpo had not been surprised by the appearance of the Chechins at a Tatar burial. The code of dishonor adopted loosely from an amalgam of American gangster movies required such an appearance and the presentation of a large flowery wreath to lay on the grave.

  Two Chechins in their twenties were standing back with the ready wreath and a signal from Shatalov.

  The service was over but no one moved.

  Two of the Tatar men, hands folded in front of them, and a woman headed straight for the two policemen and the veiled woman.

  “Please, please, please, let’s leave now,” Raisa said, gripping Rostnikov’s hand.

  Her grip of fear was surprisingly strong.

  The Tatar contingent stopped directly in front of Raisa, and the woman, who was young and very pretty, with Asiatic features, looked at Raisa, whose head was bent forward in a fear she hoped looked like grief.

  “My father, Casmir Chenko,” the young woman said, “wants to thank you for coming. The journey must have been difficult. Your son was a very good man and a loyal friend. You should be very proud of him.”

  The young woman lifted her right hand slightly and one of the young Tatars stepped forward, a letter-sized brown envelope in his hand. He handed the envelope to the young woman and stood back.

  “My father wants you to have this, a small token of his respect for your son.”

  Raisa wanted to look at one of the policemen to determine if she should refuse the gift. She couldn’t do so. She took the envelope and nodded. The young girl stepped forward and gave Raisa a hug, whispering in her ear, “Whatever your son may have told you, do not share it with these policemen who brought you here. Valentin would not have wished it.”

  The young woman was ad
ept at such whispered messages, and while the two policemen had not heard the words, they had heard the voice.

  “You are one of us too,” said Chenko’s daughter, looking at Emil Karpo. “A relative?”

  “No,” he said.

  “You are a Tatar,” she said, looking into the ghostly face.

  “I am a Russian,” Karpo said.

  “Then you are a traitor,” she said.

  Chenko’s daughter stepped away and the two young men followed her back toward the grave site, where the last of the dirt was being shoveled.

  “What am I to do with this?” asked Raisa.

  “Keep it,” said Rostnikov.

  “It is evil money,” Raisa said.

  “It is money,” said Rostnikov. “It can now be used to ease your life a bit. If you wish, give it to a worthy cause or someone more in need of it than you, if you can find such a person.”

  “She said it was because my son is dead,” Raisa said.

  “Consider it a mistake on their part which can benefit a woman who has to hold on to many jobs to live,” said Rostnikov. “These people do not do good things unless they have made a mistake.”

  Raisa clutched the envelope as both policemen looked away from her toward the grave upon which the two Chechins with the massive floral wreath were advancing. From the other side of the grave three Tatars stepped forward and stood in a line.

  The Chechins laid the wreath on the mound and stepped back.

  Immediately, the three Tatars picked up the wreath and threw it in the direction of the gathered Chechins. The wreath did not sail because of its weight, but skidded on the grass and halted in front of Shatalov, who stepped forward and said loudly with a tone of mock disappointment, “Bad manners, One Eye.”

  “Bad manners indeed, Irving,” said Chenko.

  The mask of disappointment left Shatalov’s face and was replaced by a cold, threatening stare. Shatalov smiled, raised his right hand, and motioned as if to an army he wished to follow him into battle. One young man with something in his hand moved forward to the flower-covered grave and in the plot next to it plunged a stake bearing a small, neatly printed sign reading, VACANCY.

  Even before they could read the sign, the Tatars, led by Casmir Chenko, had begun to advance. Shatalov’s men also stepped forward behind their leader.

  The policemen with automatic weapons moved quickly between the two groups.

  “Halt,” called the officer in charge, glancing at Rostnikov and Karpo for some direction.

  The policeman had not really expected any disruption or confrontation. He had been told by his captain that rival gangs attend each others’ funerals all the time. The important thing was to disarm both sides before the burial and, if necessary, to fire between them.

  The two sides did not halt. One of the policemen fired directly into the grave, sending up a flurry of flower petals. Rostnikov thought the fluttering colorful flowers dancing in the air looked quite beautiful. The gangs halted now and the Tatars looked angrily at the policeman who had fired into the grave of their just-buried comrade.

  The situation was about to turn ugly, and the policeman in charge, who was no more than thirty, thought that he might be about to kill his first man and possibly to be killed or beaten.

  “Take her away,” said Rostnikov to Emil Karpo.

  Karpo took Raisa’s arm and led her, clutching her brown envelope, toward the entrance to the cemetery.

  “Disperse,” the policeman said, trying to keep his voice steady.

  The two gangs hesitated. Could they back off and retain their honor? Who was the primary enemy here? The gang on the other side of the grave or the armed policemen?

  Rostnikov strode forward, allowing himself a bit more of a limp than was really necessary. It was not sympathy he sought, but time.

  “I was up before dawn,” he said aloud, stepping alongside of the policemen. “Couldn’t sleep. Too much to think about, too many problems, and the intricacies of a particularly puzzling plumbing system haunted my dreams. I couldn’t make the system go away. My dream eye followed rusting pipes moving ever faster in a maze I knew had no end.”

  “You have a point to make, Rostnikov?” called Shatalov.

  “I was up very early. I believe I said that. I put on my leg and my clothes and took the rare step of calling for a police car. It is a benefit of my position which I rarely use. But this time I wanted to get to this cemetery to watch the sun rise over the tombstones.”

  Chenko, with his single eye, and Shatalov, with his two alcohol red eyes, glared at each other in anticipation of what was coming next.

  “I did some cleaning up of weeds that had been planted here last night,” said Rostnikov. “I wish I had been here to witness this gardening, and I must say I’m surprised that the two sets of gardeners did not run into each other. Perhaps the night was long for them as well as for me. In short, gentlemen, the weapons you hid under thin layers of dirt and leaves and in the low limbs of trees nearby are no longer there. I have had then taken away to be distributed to the needy. There are petty thieves and armed robbers who can afford little more than small knives and ancient pistols.”

  Rostnikov paused and stepped out of the way of the policemen’s guns.

  “That was an attempt at mild humor,” said Rostnikov. “An attempt to diffuse a situation that will bring nothing good to any of you, should it go further.”

  “You’ll give the order if we are to fire?” asked the policeman.

  “If necessary,” said Rostnikov.

  There was a full ten seconds of silence and then laughter. Shatalov was laughing. “You amuse me, Rostnikov,” he said, chuckling. “I would like to be your friend. We could have good times.”

  Rostnikov looked at Chenko, who was not smiling and who had nothing to say. He nodded his head and the young man who had met Rostnikov at the Pushkin statue stepped forward and kicked the “Vacancy” sign, which sailed a few yards and came to rest. Chenko turned his back to the grave and with his daughter at his side strode away with the funeral contingent behind him.

  Shatalov made a gesture with his hand and his group moved directly toward the gate beyond a line of trees. Then Shatalov, the big man with the bad skin at his side, broke away from the group and moved to Rostnikov, who was saying to the policeman in charge, “I suggest you hurry to the entrance to prevent any possible further encounter.”

  “There will be no encounter,” said Shatalov. “I gave you my word that I would hold off killing the Tatar.”

  “Hold off killing anyone,” said Rostnikov.

  “I have other enemies. And we must defend ourselves.”

  “And that is why you had weapons planted here?”

  Shatalov shrugged. “Caution,” he said. “I live a life that requires constant caution.”

  “Yet you eat at public pizza bars.”

  Shatalov shook his head. “I am inconsistent, I know,” he said. “Knowing one should do a thing and actually doing it requires a battle between logic and emotion.”

  “You are a philosopher,” said Rostnikov.

  “And an actor,” Shatalov added. “It is necessary in my work. Chenko plays the wise old man of dignity. He is more cautious than I, but he has no dignity. People in our profession deserve no dignity and I don’t pretend to have it.”

  “And,” said Rostnikov, “what part do you play?”

  “The explosive, good-humored man who enjoys his ill-gotten gains,” said Shatalov. “Did you like that little gesture of mine? Where I raised my hand just a little and waved my finger slightly to dismiss my people? Very understated. Very dramatic. I think I saw Anthony Quinn do it once.”

  “Very dramatic,” said Rostnikov. “Do you believe in reincarnation, Shatalov?”

  “No.”

  “Let me tell you a story,” said Rostnikov. “An old Hindu tale I read not long ago.”

  “I have time,” said Shatalov with a smile.

  “Good,” said Rostnikov, ignoring the entourage that now
stood back, waiting for their leader. “It seems an emperor, a very powerful emperor, decided to have built for himself the biggest monument in the history of the world. The plans were laid out for him, and he was about to order that the monument be made even larger. Suddenly at his side there appeared a very small boy who told the emperor that he was the earthly manifestation of a humble god.”

  “Very interesting,” said Shatalov. “Perhaps you could be a bit faster. I think it will soon rain.”

  “It has seemed likely to rain for several days,” said Rostnikov, looking up at the clouds. “The god said, ‘behold.’ They frequently say ‘behold’ in Hindu mythology. It helps establish the tale as being from another time and place. Well, the god raised his hand and into the huge marble room in which they stood marched rows and rows of beetles, all the same, several hundred in each row, in perfect order. They marched across the floor, their millions of tiny feet scratching the marble, silent alone, loud when together. ‘What do you see?’ asked the god.

  “‘Beetles,’ said the emperor.

  “‘Each of these beetles was once an emperor even more powerful than you,’ said the god.”

  Rostnikov stopped.

  “Well,” said Shatalov. “What next?”

  “Nothing,” said Porfiry Petrovich. “That is the end. When first I read this story, Shatalov, I admit to you that it frightened me just a bit. Well, more than a bit. Is life so meaningless?”

  “It’s just a myth,” said Shatalov. “Policeman, you are mad.”

  “After a few weeks of being afraid to sleep,” said Rostnikov softly, ignoring the gangster’s comment, “I suddenly felt relieved. That I might be insignificant is not to be feared but embraced. It frees us in this life. It demands that we make our own meaning, that we are not above the morality that we must create if life is to have any meaning.”