A Whisper to the Living (Inspector Rostnikov Mysteries) Read online

  “I speak your language,” Iris said in only slightly accented Russian.

  Much might come of this visit besides another prizewinning story.

  The decision to kill Iris Templeton was not arrived at lightly. No vote was taken by the three men in the office of Daniel Volkovich overlooking Red Square. It was one of three offices in which he worked throughout Moscow. This office was in the center of the city and was intended to impress visitors and business associates.

  The second office was in a rotting neighborhood beyond the Outer Ring Circle surrounding the city. This office was used for dealing with the sordid but necessary day-to-day running of Daniel’s less-than-legal businesses, primary among which was the running of the prostitution ring. This was not a simple matter. Locations had to be procured and maintained. Bribes and threats had to be made. Street pimps had to be kept in line and paid and watched carefully and punished for theft if necessary. Bookkeeping was a nightmare. The easy part was finding and keeping the girls. Once they were recruited they were kept in line with threats of disfigurement or death.

  The third office was not really an office at all but a three-room apartment not far from the Moscow river. It was in this office that prostitutes were lured, secured, tried out, and rated after undergoing a complete physical examination, including X-rays and blood work. Only then did Daniel try them out, rate them, and assign them to a pimp. The best of these women and girls went onto the list of those catering to visiting and domestic diplomats, businessmen, military, MVD, and high-ranking drug dealers.

  The next level down catered to tourists and out-of-town Russians who stayed in the second-level hotels and were directed to the prostitutes by desk clerks, cabdrivers, and policemen, all of whom also had to be paid. The lowest level of prostitutes simply stood in groups in tunnels and basements in lineups for street trade.

  Most girls came willingly offering their bodies readily hoping to make a good living for five years or so and return to the towns and farms far from Moscow.

  Daniel prided himself on his principles. The girls had to be examined every two weeks by a physician who was also on the payroll. If one was found to be ill or have a disease, she was given a bonus commensurate with her level and sent home, never to return. If a client abused a girl, he would, depending on his station in life, be warned or punished. Street trade customers were beaten and warned. Upper-level customers were informed that their abuse had been recorded on tape, which it had.

  Daniel Volkovich was very successful at his profession, and at the age of forty-two he was a very wealthy and important man. Daniel was a tall man with the smiling clean-shaven face of the kind of movie or television actor who plays a policeman or an earnest politician. His well-groomed prematurely white hair was brushed back. Daniel always wore a knowing smile that suggested he could read your thoughts. Daniel’s mother had been a prostitute, as had his grandmother. He learned the business as he learned to walk and talk.

  Now, his enterprise and his good name were threatened by the Englishwoman. It was not the first time a reporter or the representatives of some international do-good organization had posed a threat. Such people from the West were not easily dissuaded or deceived. Such people on occasion had to be eliminated.

  “I can discern no pattern,” said Emil Karpo.

  He and Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov were seated in the Chief Inspector’s office in Petrovka and had been for the past five hours. Records, forensic reports, calendars, weather reports, a chart of phases of the moon, photographs of the Maniac’s victims, and much more were piled in front of them.

  “Review,” said Rostnikov reaching for the tea in his Eighty-seventh Precinct mug. It would be their third review of the morning, none of which had suggested a new approach. They spoke slowly so that Pankov or the Yak, who would be listening either now or to the tape, could take notes.

  The dogs in the kennel across the courtyard were barking. In the years of listening to them, Porfiry Petrovich had learned to discern the different barks. There was a slow bark with a slight catch deep in the throat that indicated hunger. A rapid higher-pitched bark indicated tedium. A moaning bark suggested that someone had hit one of the dogs who had called out in fear and sympathy. Later in the day the dogs would not be barking as they sniffed through Bitsevsky Park pulling a uniformed officer behind, searching for the dead.

  “He kills on any day of the week,” said Rostnikov. “No pattern. It might be two Tuesdays in a row and then a Saturday and then a Friday. He can kill for three straight days and then wait a month before taking another victim. Phases of the moon show no consistency. There is no pattern of holidays or birthdays or days of historical or newsworthy significance.”

  He leaned back and took a sip of his no-longer-hot tea.

  “The positions of the bodies seem random,” Karpo went on. “Nothing about the clothing of the victims or their health informs us. He seems to prefer men over the age of fifty-eight, but he has also killed two young women.”

  “One of whom he decorated with wooden spikes in her eyes,” said Rostnikov, holding up a photograph to look at the grisly work of the Maniac.

  “All of the killings seem to have been done at night, and he is drawn to Bitsevsky Park.”

  “Emil Karpo, are we missing something?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Rostnikov scratched the stump of his leg thoughtfully. Then he turned his chair and looked out the window.

  “The weather is breaking,” he said. “The temperature is supposed to reach forty-five degrees.”

  Karpo nodded.

  Rostnikov reached into the top drawer of his desk.

  “I have never heard you whistle, Emil Karpo.”

  “I have never felt the need.”

  “To make music,” said Rostnikov, gently placing an odd squash-shaped instrument on the desk in front of him.

  “The appeal of music is unknown to me. I feel no need for it. It is a functionless distraction.”

  “You are a true romantic,” said Rostnikov.

  “I do not believe I am.”

  “I was engaging in irony.”

  “I see.”

  Rostnikov picked up the ocarina he had taken from his desk drawer, placed it to his lips, and blew, slowly working his fingers over a line of small holes. A piping of music emerged.

  “Here,” said Rostnikov, handing it across the desk. “It is yours. When you feel the inclination, make music.”

  Karpo took the ocarina and placed it in front of him.

  “Now I think I will take a walk in the park,” said Rostnikov.

  “He is going for a walk in the park,” said Pankov.

  Colonel Igor Yaklovev, sitting at his desk under the framed discreetly sized print of the face of Lenin, looked up at his short, always nervous assistant. One of the many reasons Pankov was perspiring was that the Yak looked very much like the Lenin in the print above Yaklovev’s head. He had cultivated the resemblance decades earlier and maintained it throughout the fall of the Soviet Union and the fickle changes in the government. It was a safe resemblance. Were it not, the Yak would see to it that he bore no similarity to the founder of the Revolution.

  “Did he say why?” asked the Yak.

  “No.”

  “Did he say which park?”

  “No, he did not,” said Pankov.

  “Guess.”

  “Bitsevsky.”

  “Good.”

  Pankov went silent, anxious to get away from the Yak. Pankov did not do well in the presence of power, which was, as even he knew, an irony, because few in the government were as fervently but patiently seeking power as the Yak. On several dozen occasions, Pankov had taken phone calls directly from one of the assistants of Vladimir Putin himself. This caused near panic in Pankov, but once, and he was certain of this, Putin himself had come on the line, thinking that he would be speaking directly to Yaklovev. Pankov had almost passed out as he identified himself and tr
ansferred the call. His hands had trembled. Perspiration on his forehead had beaded, and his underwear had tightened with moisture.

  “The journalist?” asked the Yak, folding his hands in front of him on the desk.

  “Tkach and Timofeyeva are taking Iris Templeton to talk to people for her story.”

  “I want a list of everyone she talks to.”

  “Yes.”

  Yaklovev made a note. This information might prove useful, especially if one of the supposedly tough mafiosi in the prostitution business was potentially compromised or embarrassed and the Yak could help him in exchange for future considerations.

  “The boxer has not yet been found,” Pankov added.

  Yaklovev cared little about that. Rostnikov’s annoying son and the slouching Zelach would find Medivkin, though that might not in any way add to the popularity or power of the Office of Special Investigations. Taking on such no-win cases was the price one sometimes had to pay for ultimate success.

  “Go home, Pankov,” Yaklovev said.

  “I still—”

  “Go home,” the Yak repeated with a smile his assistant would have preferred not to see.

  “Yes, thank you,” Pankov said.

  The sun would be going down within the hour. This early release would give Pankov time to pick up a few groceries, particularly a few more boxes of oatmeal. Pankov almost lived on oatmeal made with water and artificial maple syrup. Boxes of oatmeal lined his small shelves, and his small refrigerator held three bottles of syrup. Still, one could never be sure when one might run out.

  In the outer office, Pankov put on his coat and pressed the button that activated the recording of not only the mocking conversations in Rostnikov’s office but also the conversations in the outer office across the hall where the other inspectors had desks and conversation.

  Both the Yak and Pankov had been invited to the wedding of Elena and Iosef. Both had accepted. The Yak was well aware that his presence would make everyone uncomfortable. That did not bother him.

  Pankov gladly accepted when he knew that the Yak was going to attend. Pankov had never been to a wedding. Never. He had no friends outside of the thirteen members of the Monocle Club, the group of ten men and three women who not only collected the ocular affectations of the obliterated aristocracy but also knew everything worth knowing and even more not worth knowing about the lenses. Strictly speaking, the members of the Monocle Club were not his friends, but they shared a common, if arcane, interest. They met every two weeks in a small room of the Budapest Hotel, a hundred meters from the Bolshoi Theatre.

  As he stepped out of the office, closing the door quietly behind him, Pankov remembered to turn on the cell phone in his pocket. He hated the phone, but the Yak insisted that Pankov keep it charged and in his pocket where he could hear it. There was no place he could be comfortably alone and really no place where he could feel comfortable among people.

  It was his life. He accepted it. It did keep him on the fringes of power. He was the assistant and secretary, really, of a very powerful man who would only grow more powerful. This was not bad for a man whose father had been a sub-foreman in a government uniform-manufacturing factory and whose mother had been a sewing machine operator in the same factory.

  Behind Pankov as he left Petrovka he could hear a single dog wail. The sun was dropping in the west, and the temperature seemed to be rising.

  He headed for the Metro station willing his cell phone not to ring. He would ask his neighbor Mrs. Olga Ferinova what gift he should bring to the wedding and how he should dress and behave.

  Vera Korstov was a highly methodical and determined woman. She had left her apartment with a neatly printed list of six names carefully coaxed out of Ivan Medivkin. She had expected more, but this, she had been sure, would be a good start. At the top of her list was Albina Babinski, the widow of Fedot Babinski, the murdered sparring partner.

  The police, Vera was certain, would have a similar list of names with at least several duplicates. They would be looking for Ivan as she would be looking for the murderer who had set Ivan up for the crime.

  It was unlikely the police would be in a hurry to talk to Albina Babinski. They had no reason to think that she might know where Ivan was hiding.

  The apartment building, in one of the many four-, five-, and six-story concrete Stalin-era complexes throughout the city was a river map of cracks and fissures. Three men huddled in the demi-warmth of the tobacco-fouled entryway. They took some notice of her but were more interested in arguing about what they thought of the latest Russian rage against Georgia.

  Vera walked up the staircase lit only on the landings by dim yellow bulbs. She tried not to touch the walls, which were dappled with stains and graffiti, most of which brightly extolled the virtues of one gang over another.

  She found the apartment on the second floor where two women stood in opposite open doors talking. A child of no more than two clung to the dress of one of the women.

  Vera knocked at the door and prepared herself, got into character. She held her purse protectively in two hands against her stomach. She let her shoulders drop and pinched the flesh under each eye to make them moist. She knocked again, and this time the door opened a crack.

  The two women in the hall stopped talking to hear what would be said.

  “Albina Babinski?”

  Vera could see little of the woman who replied with a tentative “Da.”

  “I am sorry, so sorry, to bother you,” Vera said nervously. “I am … was a cousin of your husband from Odessa. I happened to be in Moscow with a meeting of raw sewage engineers and I heard … I’m so sorry. I haven’t seen Fedot since we were about twelve. He was always so … I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry.”

  “Come in, Countess,” said the woman on the other side of the door. “And I shall endeavor to snatch from you the halo you have been imagining about your cousin’s head.”

  Vera could smell the alcohol on the woman’s breath as the door opened. Sunlight illuminated the small, disheveled room. A dark brown sofa sat heavily across from two chrome and plastic chairs that had probably been considered modern in the seventies. A bottle with three glasses stood on a glass-and-steel table the size of a bicycle tire. The table had chosen to side with the two chairs, but the large sofa with obviously soft pillows had a distinct magnetic attraction for objects in the room that stood in deference to the largest piece of furniture.

  Albina Babinski was a mess. Her dyed blond hair was losing its color, and its loose strands were held tentatively in place with five little red plastic clips. Her brown dress was draped over her commodious frame like a Roman toga. Albina Babinski’s face was round, very round, with pink cheeks punctuated by two small pimples on her left cheek and three on her right. Thick, unflattering makeup covered her face, neck, and even the backs of her hands. Vera did, however, give the widow credit for her bright blue eyes and the look of something painful, likely the death of her husband.

  “Would you like a drink?” Albina said, motioning toward both sofa and chairs to give her visitor a choice of discomforts.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Vera, sitting on one of the chairs, which proved to be just as uncomfortable as it looked.

  Albina poured vodka into two glasses, handed one glass to her guest, and clutched the other in her hand as she plopped into the sofa, spilling a few drops of her drink in the process.

  “You may return to Odessa to spread the news that Fedot the cousin of fond memory was a walking blind erection that managed to be unable to locate me for the past four years. He was, however, more successful in locating a colorful array of other willing, waiting receptacles.”

  Vera looked down.

  “I shock you, you who deal in sewage?”

  “No.”

  “He found the wrong vessel in that giant’s wife,” said Albina, holding up her drink and looking at it as if it were a masterpiece.

  “Were there other wives, other women?” Vera asked as if amazed at the possibil
ity.

  Albina drank, held her glass to one side, leaned over toward Vera, and whispered, “Dozens. I do not know why women were attracted to him. Fedot was a decent-looking man with a scarred body, but he was hardly a Michael Clooney.”

  “I think the actor’s name is George,” said Vera softly.

  “Who gives a shit?” said Albina even more softly. “What’s your name, Countess?”

  “Vera Egorovna.”

  Albina pursed her lips, thought, and said, “Who are you?”

  “Vera Egorovna, Fedot’s cousin from Odessa.”

  “Bullshit. Fedot was taken from Riga to Moscow when he was a baby. He liked to tell people that he was from Odessa, that he had family there, but he did not. So who are you besides Countess of the sewers?”

  Vera sat up straight, put down her purse, and smiled.

  “I am a reporter for The Moscow Times.”

  “And you are going to write an article about the giant and his slut and Fedot?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much are you willing to pay for my undivided and truthful story?”

  “If there is a story, I am authorized to pay either five thousand rubles or two hundred euros.”

  “I’ll take the euros. Can you pay me now? In cash? I have bills to pay, a future to consider.”

  “I can give you one thousand rubles today and have the rest in euros delivered by two this afternoon.”

  It was, of course, a lie, but the thousand rubles would be a reasonable price for an expanded list of suspects.

  “In advance,” said Albina.

  “On the table,” said Vera. “The rest tomorrow. Before ten in the morning.”

  Albina nodded agreement and said, “What would you like to know?”

  It was almost six. There was still enough daylight for the chess players in Bitsevsky Park to see the pieces on the wooden tables. The day had grown warmer, almost fifty degrees Fahrenheit, with only a mild wind, warm enough to draw out what appeared to be the usual regulars, all of them men, most of them retirees, the out-of-work, and those who had hurried over after work. There was also a trio of what appeared to be homeless men wrapped in whatever coats and hats might come close to fitting. When the weather really broke, the present number of sixteen would double and be added to by visitors to the park who had not come to play chess.