A Whisper to the Living ir-16

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  As soon as Neatly dropped her at her apartment, Iris locked the door behind her, put her bag on the bed, opened it, and found the small tape where she had placed it inside a stocking.

  She pulled out her tape recorder, inserted the tape, and hit the “play” button. She let it run and then hit the “fast forward” button.

  The tape was empty, nothing but the rush of ambient air. She turned the tape over. The other side yielded no voices.

  Iris sat on the bed for about thirty seconds before she allowed herself a smile. Sergei Bresnechov, Tyrone, had fooled her. He had made a deal with another, perhaps several others, buyers, perhaps Pavel Petrov. It was too late and she was too tired to work it out now. She would sleep on it. In the morning it was sure to make more sense.

  Just before she fell asleep it came to her. Tyrone would not make a deal with Petrov, the man who was responsible for the destruction of his apartment, the beating he had endured, and all that had been taken from him. No, Tyrone would want to cause maximum pain to the murderous Petrov. Tyrone would turn the tape over to the police or, better yet, make a deal with someone in the police to help him torment Petrov.

  And just as she was dozing, at the very moment when thoughts and dreams are forgotten, Iris came up with a name: Colonel Igor Yaklovev. And then she was asleep.

  15

  A Power Play over Borscht

  General Misovenski sat red faced and in full uniform to impress Colonel Igor Yaklovev, who was dressed in a gray suit and matching tie. The General wanted to remind the Colonel who the superior officer was at this table. The General had already pressed home his superiority by indicating where he and Yaklovev would lunch.

  Now they sat over brandy after a meal of cold borscht with cucumbers, beets and sour cream, and chicken tabak.

  “A satisfactory conclusion to the Maniac murders now that he has been identified?” asked the General.

  “Yes,” said the Yak. “The Maniac taken out of the picture, no trial, which might suggest a lack of investigation by your office, your team presented to the world as coming to the rescue of my chief investigator. Your highly efficient team came into the room and almost killed my Chief Investigator.”

  “It could not be helped,” said General Misovenski. How is your man-Rostnikov, right?”

  “He was shot in the shoulder and leg,” said the Yak. “Fortunately, it was his artificial one. It resulted in only cosmetic damage.”

  “You were clearly and emphatically in support of the elimination of the Maniac.”

  “I was.”

  A look of sudden concern passed over the General’s face.

  “You are not wearing a wire, are you, Colonel? I should not take it kindly if you are.”

  “I assure you I am not,” said the Yak, sipping the amber drink. “However, I was the last time we met.”

  “You are joking.”

  “No.”

  The General sat back and adjusted his collar. His medals jingled oh, so quietly.

  “This seriously challenges our friendship.”

  “We are not friends,” said the Yak. “We are business associates.”

  “I am your superior officer.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I were to order you to turn over your recording?”

  “I would gladly give you a copy.”

  “But there would be more. You are treading on dangerous ground, Igor Yaklovev. What do you want?”

  “For you to continue to protect my office and provide assistance as we need it. And, in the future, be very careful when you have your men fire guns when my inspectors are present.”

  “Yes, what else?”

  “Chief Inspector Rostnikov wants your Major Aloyosha Tarasov to be punished.”

  “For what?”

  “You and I know full well that he murdered his wife, pushed her from a window.”

  “Why does this interest your Inspector Rostnikov?”

  “He wants justice.”

  The General shook his head.

  “He is my best officer.”

  “Yes.”

  “I will take care of it. Anything else?”

  “No.”

  General Misovenski finished his brandy and considered himself most fortunate to have gotten away with so much and to have paid so little for it. Of course the Colonel had the tape, which could be brought forth at any time. There was no use searching for the tape. There were probably half a dozen copies well hidden anyplace in the world.

  “I should like you to consider becoming my deputy,” said the General.

  “I would prefer not.”

  “I could order you.”

  “We could take the decision to a higher authority.”

  The General was well aware of a supposed direct connection between Yaklovev and the Prime Minister. He was not prepared to challenge it.

  “Well,” said the General. “I can do one more thing.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can pay for this marvelous lunch.”

  “Thank you.”

  The General motioned to the waiter to come over with the check.

  “Coffee and a light fruit compote?” asked the waiter.

  “Yaklovev?”

  “No, thank you.”

  The Yak had not mentioned the other tape in his possession, the one that would damn Pavel Petrov. He might never mention it.

  The General waved the waiter away, placed his hands on the table palms down, and, with a smile, said, “You are a devious man. Take care of yourself, Yaklovev. Take very good care.”

  16

  Whispers at a Wedding

  Without looking up, Zelach knew his mother was at the top of the stairs. He even knew what she was wearing, but that was not a prescient knowledge. She always wore the same thing, a dull dark smock with bright flowers. She had three of them of variously minimal hues.

  “You are all right?” she said softly.

  “I am all right,” he said, trudging up the stairs, trying not to bother Mr. and Mrs. Gornick in the apartment next to theirs or the Volstoys right below them.

  “A giant attacked you,” his mother said.

  “Yes,” he said. “But I am fine.”

  He was not surprised by her observation. She had extra-sensory powers, which had been tested and tested, checked and rechecked, at the Moscow Institute of Paranormal Research. He too had been tested, examined, prodded, and punctured and found to have abilities that did not match those of his mother.

  He was at the top of the stairs now. She reached out and touched his left cheek.

  “You are hungry,” she said. “I have sausage and cabbage for you.”

  The sweet smell of sausage and cabbage filled the stairway.

  “I am hungry,” he said.

  She put up her right hand to hold the smock closed against her pendulous breasts. She was overweight and had a heart problem. She ate carefully, but both mother and son knew the battle with heart disease would soon end.

  He followed her into the apartment, took off his jacket, and deposited it on the chair near the door with a heavy thump.

  He sat and she poured him a small glass of white wine. She joined him. He did not ask how she knew when he would be home so that she could have his dinner on the table. That was one of the things he would miss, one of many things, when she was gone.

  “You have a question, Akardy,” she said, picking up her fork.

  He ate slowly and considered his response, though he knew he was about to ask his question. The only issue was how he would couch it.

  “Do you believe in an almost instant deep attraction of one person to another?”

  “You mean love,” she said.

  He said nothing for a moment, forkful of sausage on the way to his mouth, and then, “What if your affection is addressed toward someone with great problems?”

  “Akardy, there are some things I cannot penetrate that require normal conversation.”

  “Love,” he said. “I think I am in love.”
>
  “The problem?”

  “She murdered her husband and tried to kill an innocent woman.”

  “And you love her?”

  “Her rage at her husband was well justified. Her life has been one of misfortune.”

  “Sometimes one cannot help being attracted to or falling in love with the wrong person.”

  He shrugged and went on eating. Then he sensed a sudden stiffening of his mother’s body, a catching of breath. At first he thought it might be her heart, but then she sat upright and said, “She will not go to jail.”

  He believed his mother.

  “I think you will help her. I think you may regret it.”

  “You are certain?”

  “No,” she said. “Never, but as close to certainty as one can get. One more thing.”

  “What?”

  “Do you not know?”

  It came to him.

  “For dessert you have plum pudding.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Tell me more about this woman you love who murdered her husband.”

  Yuri Platkov sat at the end of the bench gnawing at a bright orange carrot. In the middle of the bench sat the one-legged policeman. Both the boy, who was on his way home from school, and Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov watched the afternoon traffic go by.

  Over the last two days, the temperature had risen again, and a wet snow that turned to slush formed a thin, shoe-penetrating lake of dirty water.

  Finally, Rostnikov, without looking at the boy, said, “We have switched from less-than-nutritious candy to healthy vegetables.”

  Yuri looked at what was left of his carrot, which was not much, and answered, “The school.”

  The boy, fair skinned, thin, with dark hair sticking out around the earflaps of his woolen shirt, crunched loudly on his carrot.

  Rostnikov nodded in understanding.

  “Carrots are not bad.”

  Rostnikov, hands folded in his lap, nodded.

  “Would you like one? I have two more.”

  “Yes.”

  The boy dug a plastic Baggie from his book bag, unzipped it, and handed Rostnikov a carrot.

  “You got him, the Maniac.”

  Rostnikov took a bite of carrot.

  “He was eternally detained.”

  The boy nodded as he pulled his legs back to avoid the splash of a group of hurrying men and women anxious to get home.

  “Shot when he was going to try to kill you. A SWAT team.”

  “Would you believe me if I told you I was never in any danger from the Maniac, that I could have brought him in if men firing automatic weapons had not appeared?”

  “Yes, I believe.”

  “However, I was shot.”

  “How? Where?”

  Yuri was looking at the policeman with great interest.

  “In my leg and shoulder. Fortunately, one bullet hit my artificial leg, where it was removed without pain. The other bullet went through my arm and scraped a bone.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “A bit.”

  “May I see the bullet holes?” asked Yuri.

  Rostnikov awkwardly leaned forward, pulled up the leg of his pants, and pushed down his sock. The sight of the washtub of a man displaying his artificial leg for the boy in the slushy cold caused usually weary commuters to hesitate, look, and continue. A few considered informing the police. More simply averted their eyes and walked on.

  The boy looked at the dent on the artificial leg, which the policeman pointed out.

  “To show you the wound in my shoulder would require me removing my coat, shirt, and undershirt and you would see only a white bandage. I am sorry.”

  “Do not be. You found him, for which I am pleased.”

  Rostnikov pulled up his sock, dropped his trouser leg, and sat back.

  “My grandfather, who has been known to stumble around the park and on the street, might have been next.”

  “And you have great affection for your grandfather?”

  “No. Maybe. Sometimes. You are telling me a great deal about your case. Do you usually go about telling boys in the park what you are doing?”

  “No, I do not. I suppose I like you.”

  “I like you too. Another carrot?”

  Rostnikov looked down at his hand. The carrot was gone. He had not even noted its passing.

  “I think not,” said Rostnikov.

  “Then it is over. No reason to return to this bench, the park.”

  Rostnikov let out a small grunt as he watched a young woman make a dangerous crossing of the street. She held a large purse in one hand and kept her small hat in place with the other.

  There were still the copycats to deal with. He was not prepared to share that information with the boy on the bench.

  “Perhaps I will find myself back here from time to time,” said Rostnikov. “It is a pleasant place to watch pretty girls, to think, to find stimulating conversation.”

  “You like superheroes?” said Yuri.

  “X-Files. My son gave me an ‘I Want to Believe’ T-shirt some years ago. I frequently sleep in it.”

  “Your son?”

  “He is a policeman too and probably older than your mother and father.”

  “Then you are old?”

  “As old as Moscow itself.”

  “I am going to be a policeman,” said the boy. “Of course I am only eleven, so I may change my mind.”

  “Return to this bench and keep me informed of your various changes of mind.”

  “I should go home now.”

  “We should both go home now.”

  The boy bounced up. Rostnikov positioned his nonexistent leg and pushed himself up slowly with a hand on either side of him.

  Yuri Platkov held out a thin right hand and Rostnikov took it lightly with respect.

  “It is nice to see you again. My name is Yuri Sergievich Platkov.”

  “And mine is Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.”

  “That sounds like a very old-fashioned name.”

  “I am a very old-fashioned man.”

  The sun had begun to rise by the time Emil Karpo reached the street on which he lived. He had traveled without luggage and had not slept going or coming back from London.

  One block away, he could see a gathering in an alcove near the entrance to his building. As he moved quietly closer, he could see that it was a group of six boys, bezprizorniki, children of the streets, homeless, dangerous. They were all bent over, looking down at something he could not see, calling out encouraging words.

  Karpo touched the shoulders of two of the boys in his way. They looked up at him and parted. In the doorway was a boy with a stick. He was perhaps fifteen years old. He was dirty, as were they all, and their clothes were odd in size and they were obviously not slaves to fashion. The older boy was jabbing a black cat trapped against the door. With nowhere to go, the cat sat back and waved a paw at the prodding stick.

  The boys called out, “Get him, Borka. Kill him. Let’s eat him.”

  Karpo leaned over, took the stick from the boy called Borka, broke it, and dropped it on the pavement.

  Borka, whose face was lopsided to the left, stood up in anger. He was almost half a foot shorter than Karpo, who knelt to pick up the cat, which did not resist.

  Karpo tucked the cat under his right arm and faced the boy as he rose.

  The boy could not decide whether to search for a way to back down or attack the intruder. There were six of them and only one of him. Every boy in the group had been through fights over food or shelter in which their lives were at stake. They would win, though something about the man’s pale, expressionless face made Borka hesitate.

  “Give us your money and we will let you pass,” said Borka, moving to block the entrance.

  “I cannot do that,” said Karpo.

  “Why not?” asked one boy to his left.

  “Because I am a police officer.”

  Karpo pulled his badge from his back pocket and held it up.

  Borka gla
nced at it and said, “We have faced policemen before.”

  “Then,” said Karpo, returning his wallet to his pocket. “We shall have to see how you manage with this one.”

  A caw of insults came from the mouths of those surrounding him as he moved to the door and removed the key from his pocket.

  “Meduk, asshole.”

  “Govniuk, shit head.”

  Karpo could sense one of the boys, not Borka, step behind his back. He turned and faced a boy of no more than ten with a six-inch piece of pipe in his right hand.

  The insults stopped. There was a mad look in the eyes of the boy and Borka stood at his shoulder.

  “Bash him, Nicki,” a boy in the semicircle called.

  As the boy was about to strike, Emil Karpo softly said, “No,” and the boy lowered his weapon. Karpo entered his apartment building and with his free hand made sure the door was locked behind him.

  “We know where you live,” called Borka.

  The threat meant little to Karpo. They would not want to do battle with a policeman, a policeman who would certainly have a hidden gun. There was nothing to be gained from confronting this unblinking ghost. The gang would almost certainly not return.

  After climbing the stairs, he checked the door for the telltale hair that would inform him whether he had had company. There were no signs of company. He entered and put the cat down. The room was cold. The window was open. Nothing had been moved. Nothing had been touched. The narrow bed was hunched in one corner. The chest of drawers stood against one wall, with the freestanding closet at its side. Under the window stood a small, round wooden table with two chairs, and at the foot of the bed against the wall was a small sink and counter, with minimal dishes and utensils and a microwave. A few groceries, most conspicuously a large box of instant oatmeal, were lined up next to the microwave.

  The entire remaining wall was covered with notebooks dealing with the investigations of all cases with which Karpo had been involved. The unresolved ones, the ones he worked on in the evenings and on his days off, were neatly labeled to the left on plain wooden shelves he had built.

  He removed his clothes and placed them all neatly on a chair after removing something from his pocket. He held it up, looked at it, and brought the ocarina that Porfiry Petrovich had given to him to his lips. He blew into it gently, one note only. The cat’s ears turned to him and twitched. He placed the ocarina on his desk.