Red Chameleon Read online

  “He wept,” Mikiyovich said, raising his arms, the remnant of sandwich in one hand, a domino in the other. “I was getting some air on the roof at nine.”

  “You went to the roof to drink,” Karpo corrected.

  “Never,” Mikiyovich said indignantly.

  “You had been warned about getting drunk on duty, so you went up to the roof,” Karpo went on. “If you lie to me again, we go to Petrovka for a talk.”

  “I went to the roof to drink,” the man said, shifting himself inside of his slightly oversized uniform.

  “And,” Karpo prompted.

  Behind them on the Prospekt a Zaporozhets-968 automobile tried to pass a bus and caught a piece of the bus’s rear fender. Bus driver and car driver raised their fists at each other, and the car sped on.

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Mikiyovich said, sighing. “In the dark I heard something, a snap, something, maybe a gunshot, maybe not. It came from the far end of the roof overlooking the front of the hotel.”

  “You saw nothing?” Karpo said.

  “Nothing,” Mikiyovich said, shaking his head firmly to emphasize his lack of information. “Too dark and I was not curious. I am not a coward. I was in the army. I have a medal for the Battle of Leningrad.”

  “And you knew Lenin,” Karpo said without a trace of sarcasm.

  “I saw him once when I was a boy,” the man said proudly.

  “I do not doubt that you are a hero,” Karpo said. “What did you hear?”

  “Crying, just crying.”

  “Man or woman? “

  “Who knows?”

  “Guess,” Karpo prodded, moving slightly so the sun would fall directly on the man as he tried to look up at the policeman.

  “A man,” Mikiyovich said.

  “Old, young?”

  “More young than old,” the man said. “I’m guessing.”

  “Big or small man?” Karpo went on.

  “Big or small—how should I know? Can I see in the darkness?”

  “Did it sound like a big or small man? The weeping, any movement.”

  “A regular man,” the old man said. “He wept. He coughed. A regular man.”

  “He coughed?” Karpo asked.

  “He coughed,” Mikiyovich agreed, coughing to demonstrate how insignificant the sound was.

  “What kind of cough?”

  “What kind of cough?” the old man repeated as if he were talking to a madman but remembering that this was a police madman. “I don’t—”

  “Deep, the cough of a smoker, a sick cough?”

  “The first time a little cough, more like clearing the throat, and the second time a cough like when you have the grippe. Who can remember such things?”

  “You remembered,” Karpo said, turning his back and walking away.

  Mikiyovich shrugged his shoulders and watched the policeman move down the walk with the crowd. A shudder ran down the old man’s back, and he prayed to the unknown god that one was no longer supposed to believe in that the wounded bat of a policeman never returned to blot out the sun again. He started to take a bit of his sandwich, changed his mind, threw the remains in his bag, packed up his dominoes, and hurried to a state store where he still might be able to buy a bottle of kvass before his lunch break was over.

  While Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov was beginning to consider the facts in the case of the murder of the old Jew in a bathtub and Emil Karpo was questioning the hotel porter, Sasha Tkach was engaged in the investigation of a crime of far less moment than murder. Sasha had been selected for this investigation by the new assistant procurator because Sasha did not look like a policeman. At twenty-eight, he looked like a tall, young student. With the new clothes that had been provided for him, he looked like a prosperous young university student. His looks belied his feelings.

  Sasha’s wife, Maya, was about to have a baby, and they feared the consequences of living in those two rooms with a child and Sasha’s mother, Lydia, who was becoming more and more difficult with each day. He could not afford to pay enough nalevo, money on the side, to get a new apartment. Now he stood in front of an old building that looked as if it had once been a barn, on a small street just off of Volgograd Prospekt. He had taken the Zhadanovsko-Krasnopresnenskaya line of the metro to the Tekstilshchiki station and walked the five blocks, pausing to check off the name of the shop in his notebook even before he arrived.

  His task was simple and boring, to visit every known automobile repair shop in the Moscow area, both the officially listed ones and those operated unofficially. For a city the size of Moscow, the list was quite small. For an individual taking the metro in the August heat, the list was monumental.

  For almost four months, a well-organized team of automobile thieves had been focusing on the cars of the very rich, the very powerful. Normally, car theft in Moscow was routine; no part of a car was even safe overnight. Drivers routinely unscrewed outside mirrors and lamps and removed windshield wipers. Complaints were frequent, but the police had more important things to do, at least until this new gang had boldly gone into operation. They had begun by stealing two black Volgas belonging to politicians of more than moderate influence. A few months later, a black Chaika had been stolen from in front of the dacha of a member of the KGB not far from the Outer Ring Road. The Chaika had belonged to an admiral. So rare are these cars that the center VIP lane of major thoroughfares, reserved for government use, are known as “Chaika Lanes.” The final blow, however, came when a black Zil limousine, the hand-tooled car that no more than two dozen members of the Politburo and a few national secretaries of the Communist Party owned, disappeared from in front of the apartment building where the then-acting head of the KGB resided. It was forcefully and officially denied to an English journalist who heard about the theft that the auto belonged to the distinguished old gentleman, but whoever it belonged to, the Zil, complete with armchair seats, air conditioning, telephones, and a bar, was gone.

  The question of who might be buying these automobiles—the Zil alone would bring about $125,000 if someone dared purchase it—remained unanswered. The procurator general, however, had moved the investigation to high priority, higher than at least forty outstanding murders and a major drug ring. The highest priority, however, was given to keeping anyone from finding out about these bold and embarrassing thefts. So, boring though it might be, Tkach’s task was deemed an important one. His charge had been simple and probably impossible.

  “Find these enemies of the state before they steal one more vehicle essential for the security of our government,” Assistant Procurator Khabolov had told him. And now Tkach stood in front of a building that had once been a barn.

  Sasha Tkach, who had never owned a car and had seldom driven one, stepped through the side door next to the large corrugated and firmly closed steel sliding door and entered the shop.

  He found himself standing in front of a wooden counter in a small customer area. The counter was covered with small pieces of metal, some of it oily but much of it rusting into the wooden counter like ancient fossils. Beyond the counter was a small open space with a concrete floor. On the floor were various unidentifiable pieces of machinery of sizes ranging from that of a coffee cup to what looked like a truck engine. A metallic buzzing filled the ill-lighted space, vibrating up Sasha’s back and down his arms.

  “Hello,” he shouted.

  The figure in a gray bulky one-piece work suit huddled over the piece of machinery on the floor paid no attention and continued to attack the mass of metal with a whirring tool that sent up sparks.

  Remember who you are supposed to be, Sasha told himself, and he shouted again, louder, pounding a fist on the counter. Small pieces of unembedded metal jiggled and danced around his fist, and the figure with the whirring machine turned to face him, eyes hidden behind goggles. The figure turned off the machine.

  “What?” said the man in a surly voice to the perspiring policeman.

  “I want to talk,” Sasha said.

  “Talk
,” said the man without removing his goggles.

  “It is confidential,” Sasha went on. “Your name was given to me by a friend who did not wish his name to be used.”

  The man stood up now and removed his goggles, letting them dangle around his neck. His face was grimy and his body huge and hulking.

  “A man?” he said, slowly getting to his feet. He walked to the counter to look at Sasha and placed the heavy electric tool on the counter with a thud.

  “A man you would know,” Sasha said, lowering his voice confidentially.

  “My name is Nikolai Penushkin,” Sasha said, emphasizing the surname, which was that of a reasonably well-known member of the Politburo. “My father is … someone whose name I am sure you know.”

  The man’s face was dark, covered with grime. “Your father sent you to me?” the man said.

  “No,” Sasha corrected slowly. “A friend sent me. A friend who thought you might be able to help me locate a car.”

  “A car?”

  “To buy,” Sasha said.

  “You want to buy a car?”

  “Yes,” Sasha said, happy that some progress was being made. “A very good car. I can pay in rubles or even American dollars if necessary.”

  “I don’t sell cars,” the man said.

  “My friend said that you might know someone who sold cars, very good cars,” Sasha pushed. The man was not gifted with great intelligence.

  “I know someone who sells cars,” the grimy giant agreed.

  “I would like a very fine car,” Sasha said slowly, as if talking to a child. “A Zil, a black Zil.”

  “I—I’ve never been close to a Zil,” he said. “Why are you coming to me? I have a little shop. I couldn’t even touch a Zil. You have important friends—”

  “Ah,” said Sasha, now whispering. “But there are no Zils available. I heard that one was … missing and that you might know the person who found it and that the person who found it might be willing to part with it for the right price.”

  The big man studied Sasha’s face for a few seconds, and the policeman tried to look like a spoiled son of an influential father. He grinned into the huge dark face and was about to speak again when a massive paw shot out and grabbed his tie. Sasha felt himself being strangled as the big man lifted him over the wooden counter. Sasha’s feet clanked against the electric tool and over bits of metal.

  “Idle parasites of the rich,” the man whispered. “The state is being strangled by nakhlebniki like you. Your fathers struggle to make a world built on the bodies of those who died in the Revolution, and you drag us down.”

  The man had pushed Tkach against the corrugated steel door, which rattled behind him.

  “No,” Tkach managed to croak when the man put him down but didn’t release his grip on the policeman’s tie.

  “I’ll give you a lesson your father should have given you when you were a child,” the giant said.

  Tkach managed to reach under his jacket with his left hand and fumbled his pistol out with an awkward twist. The giant paid no attention. His eyes, brown and deep, were fixed on Tkach’s. He was about to push his open palm against the policeman’s nose when Tkach stuck the pistol in his face, aimed at the man’s right eye.

  Instead of dropping him, the huge man smiled. “I’ll eat that gun,” he said.

  “I’m a policeman,” Tkach said, gasping. In another second, he would either have to shoot this innocent lout or take a beating.

  The man clearly didn’t believe Tkach would shoot. He had heard too much of the cleverness of the idle rich. The man, whose name was Vadim, though Sasha Tkach would never learn it, knew he was not himself clever, but he had faith in his instincts.

  “I’ll show you my identification card,” Tkach said, still holding the pistol in front of the brown eye.

  Vadim hesitated, and Tkach, still holding the gun, reached in with his free hand to pull out his identification card. He held it in front of Vadim’s face and prayed that the man could read.

  “So,” said Vadim, not letting go, “you are a corrupt policeman trying—”

  “To catch automobile thieves,” Tkach finished. “I’m going to every repair shop, every dealer, every—”

  The man hesitated, shook his head, and put Tkach down.

  Sasha, his eyes still on the mechanic, slowly put his identification card and his gun away.

  “If you have any idea of who might …” Sasha began talking through a rasping throat and adjusting his tie, but Vadim had already put his goggles on and had stepped away to reach for his tool. Sasha stopped talking and edged toward the counter as the man picked up the tool and turned it on. The whirring was deafening. It struck Sasha that the giant might decide to turn the swirling blade on his visitor. Before that could happen, Sasha took four steps across the floor, scrambled over the counter, and went through the door into the street where he took in three deep drafts of hot summer air and cursed the day he had ever decided to be a policeman.

  When the waiter in restaurant number four of the massive Hotel Rossiya reached for the odd package on the table, a hand clamped his wrist, squeezing feeling from his fingers.

  The waiter’s name was Vladimir Kuznetsov, and until this moment he had been having a good day. He had a pocketful of change in tips from the French, Canadian, Italian, and American businessmen and tourists he had served, and in a few hours he would be off for a one-week vacation. There was not much to Vladimir Kuznetsov. He was a thin sparrow of a creature whose needs were small and ambitions even smaller. At present, his sole goal in life was to free himself from the viselike fingers around his wrist.

  Kuznetsov had just deposited two plates of pickled fish in front of the two sullen foreigners who had been drinking for an hour like native Muscovites, but they were not Muscovites; Vladimir was sure of that.

  The younger of the two men, who had grabbed his now-senseless wrist, said some nonsense in English that sounded like “Kipyur hans hoff.”

  The very old man looked at Vladimir but showed no emotion. He took a drink of vodka, pulled the long, wrapped package out of the waiter’s reach, and said something in English to the younger man, who finally let Vladimir go.

  “Forgive us,” said the old man in Russian, but a Russian had sounded old, unused, and tinged with another accent that sounded American. The old man displayed no look of regret on his face. His eyes, instead, were far away or long ago.

  “I understand,” Vladimir said, resisting the urge to massage his feeling-deprived hand and wrist. He would not give the Americans the satisfaction. On the other hand, he decided not to insult them. Everyone knew Americans were mad, violent, but having behaved with violence, they often responded with guilty generosity. These were well-dressed men with money. A sizable tip might be in order.

  Vladimir walked off slowly, with, he felt, dignity. He weaved his way around the tables, filled with people, most of whom were in military uniforms. He paused inside the door to the kitchen and looked back across the dining room at the two men at the table. Only at that point did Vladimir rub his wrist and look at it, pulling back the cuff of his frayed white shirt. Through the small window in the door, Vladimir could see that the old man had forgotten his fish and had laid his hand on the package Vladimir had been punished for almost touching. The younger man ate, but he kept his eyes respectfully on the old man, who was saying something.

  Misha Kvorin was smoking as he leaned against the wall behind Vladimir. The two were not exactly friends, though they had known each other for more than ten years. Misha had the sour, sagging face of a pike.

  Misha, looking, as always, bored, pushed himself from the wall, pulled down his black jacket, and slouched toward the door to look over Vladimir’s shoulder across the room.

  “The two at eighteen,” Vladimir said. “The old one and the mean-looking one. You see—you see that thing wrapped on the table?”

  “I see,” Misha said with a little cough.

  “What do you think it is?”

  �
�A package,” Misha said, turning away.

  “I tried to move it out of the way, and the younger one grabbed my wrist. I had to almost twist his arm off to make him let go.”

  “So?” said Misha, stepping aside so another waiter, almost as old as the old man at the table, could get past and out the door with a tray of zakuski.

  “So,” Vladimir said, “we should tell the police when they leave.”

  Misha gave a small and not amused laugh. “You want to go to the police? Who goes to the police, about anything? What do the police do? And this, over this? A package a foreigner won’t let you touch? A package he puts right out on the table in plain sight?”

  “But—”

  “What do you think is in it? A shotgun?” Misha laughed, searching for his cigarettes. “Drugs? The severed limb of a Politburo member?”

  “At least we should tell Comrade Tukanin,” Vladimir tried again. Comrade Tukanin was the party organizer for the kitchen workers. He had the reputation of being more eager than any other group leader in the massive hotel. That’s what he would do after the Americans were gone. He would make out a report to Tukanin. Maybe it would lead to the Americans being questioned by the police, made to feel uncomfortable or frightened. And who knows, maybe the two Americans did have something in that package they shouldn’t have had.

  Vladimir brushed past Misha, who gave him a look that made it clear Misha thought Vladimir was a pain in the face.

  As it turned out, Vladimir got a ruble from the Americans and decided that filling out a report might delay his vacation or result in his being called back early to discuss his suspicions. Deep down he knew he had never really intended to file a complaint. Grumbling was one thing, action quite another.

  And so Vladimir Kuznetsov never did find out that wrapped inside the paper between his two Americans was a cheap, heavy brass candlestick.

  THREE

  ROSTNIKOV DIDN’T GET HOME TO his apartment on Krasikov Street till almost eight. He had spent the day on the case of the old Jew who had been murdered. Normally, other cases, problems, requests, needs, public testimony, would take up his time, intrude so that a murder like this would drag on and probably be forgotten. But Rostnikov had plenty of time and no distractions, since the assistant procurator was keeping him isolated from the mainstream of activity at Petrovka.