The Man Who Walked Like a Bear Read online

  “Gentlemen, to work,” said the Wolfhound, moving to the window to look out at the streets of Moscow.

  The three men rose, Rostnikov more slowly than the others.

  “Porfiry Petrovich, you will remain for a moment.”

  Grigorovich garnered his papers and hurried militarily to the doorway through which Pankov had already scurried. When the door was closed, the colonel moved to his desk and said, in English, “The weather in your state, I understand, is conducive to the growing of corn.”

  “It is,” said Rostnikov in English.

  “Fine.” The Wolfhound signed some documents and went on in English, “Perhaps a reciprocity of agricultural and machine tools will be an eventuality between your state and our proper representatives.”

  “It is a possibility, Colonel,” said Rostnikov.

  The Wolfhound turned with a smile and continued in English, “How is the progression of your wife, Inspector?”

  “She is progressing, Colonel. Thank you.”

  “A good wife is a stone to hold one down,” said the Wolfhound.

  “A rock to rely on,” Rostnikov corrected gently.

  “Da,” the Wolfhound said seriously, returning to Russian. “A rock to rely on. The American idiom contradicts itself and is often difficult to fathom.”

  “Yes,” agreed Rostnikov.

  “The Russian language, in contrast, has a singular clarity of meaning.” And then in English, “I then bid you good morning.”

  The Wolfhound returned his pen to the desk and looked up at Rostnikov. Once when they were preparing a list of names of MVD officers to escort a visiting policeman from Kiev, Rostnikov had offered the colonel a pencil so they could make adjustments in the list if they wished to do so. The colonel had smiled and continued to use his pen, saying, “I never use a pencil. I haven’t the time to change my mind.”

  “Good morning,” Rostnikov replied and went through the door of the Wolfhound’s den and out to meet the day.

  Sasha Tkach had one hour for lunch. His wife, Maya, had asked to meet him in front of the memorial chapel on Kuibyshev Street, directly across from the Ploschad Nogina Metro Station. Sasha crossed Kirov Street, moved past the Dzerzhinsky Metro Station, and hurried down the Serov passage past the Polytechnical Museum to Kuibyshev Street.

  He pulled the collar of his jacket down now that the light rain had ended. He crossed the street and saw his wife and baby daughter at a bench. Maya saw her husband crossing the street and turned the baby, who was standing in front of her holding on to the bench. Pulcharia was just beginning to stand, though she needed something or someone to hold on to. She saw Sasha as he approached and began to wave; the tassels on the blue knit sweater she was wearing bobbed with her zealous wave, and Sasha smiled at his daughter’s open, toothless grin.

  “It’s at’e’ts, your father,” Maya said, and she, too, smiled as Sasha leaned over to kiss them. They had been married for almost three years now and the baby was nearly a year old. It seemed to Sasha that they had been married much longer. He could not remember the details, the day-to-day rituals of his life before this woman and child.

  “I haven’t long,” Sasha said, taking a sandwich from Maya.

  There was at least the hope of sun now.

  “What we can get, we take,” she said, tearing off a piece of bread and putting it into Pulcharia’s waiting mouth.

  Maya’s words resonated with a Ukrainian accent that Sasha found exotic. He knew what she wanted to talk about, and he knew that it couldn’t be avoided.

  “Lydia,” Maya said.

  “Yes,” said Sasha with a sigh.

  They would soon be moving from their apartment into a slightly larger one. The move had come about after a complex series of trades arranged by a friend of Lydia’s from childhood. Their apartment would go to an old couple and their daughter. The old couple, in turn, would give their centrally located apartment over to an accountant for the Ts UM department store, where Maya worked part time. Sasha and Maya would then get the accountant’s apartment, which was larger than their own though farther from the city. Everyone got something they wanted from the trade and lost something. The old couple got a slightly larger apartment but gave up their proximity to the central city. The accountant would be close to his work, and Sasha and Maya would have more room. The problem was Sasha’s mother, Lydia. The nearly deaf Lydia still worked at the Ministry of Information as a file clerk, but she would be retired in a little over a year. Sasha was well aware that his mother was difficult to live with under the best of circumstances, and having her around constantly was trying even for her son. They had spent their entire married life sharing the apartment with Lydia.

  “You’ll have to tell her, Sasha,” Maya said gently.

  The baby pulled at Sasha’s trousers and he handed her a piece of bread. Maya took the bread from the baby and tore it into smaller pieces before handing her a single piece.

  “She’s my mother,” Sasha said, looking into his wife’s dark eyes. “How does one tell his mother she can’t live with him? Especially my mother. Could you do it to your mother? Besides, the apartment is really hers. We moved in with her.”

  “My mother wouldn’t want to live with us,” Maya said. “But could I do it? Yes, if I had to. And we have to, Sasha.”

  Sasha could hear his mother’s voice vividly, sharply in his mind. He almost turned on the bench to look for her. A passing shopper smiled at Pulcharia, who offered the woman a piece of her bread.

  “She arranged for the new apartment,” Sasha reminded his wife, who reached over and brushed the hair from his eyes.

  “And she gave birth to you and you love her and she drives you mad and she drives me mad,” Maya said gently. “Your aunt wants her. Your aunt is lonely.”

  “They don’t get along,” sighed Sasha. “You know that.”

  “Lydia doesn’t get along with anyone.”

  “She gets along with you,” he said, reaching over to pick up the baby, who was reaching out to him.

  “I get along with her,” Maya corrected.

  “She has to be told,” he said, kissing his daughter.

  “She’ll be one bus from us,” said Maya, touching his hand. “She can come twice a week. We’ll probably get along better with her.”

  “I’ll tell her tonight,” Sasha said, looking around at a pair of old women walking arm in arm down the sidewalk.

  Maya leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. Her kiss was warm, and he smiled.

  “After all,” he said to the baby, “what can your grandmother do to me?”

  Pulcharia, who was named for Lydia’s mother, decided her father had made a joke and she laughed, but her father did not laugh with her.

  FOUR

  ZELACH WORE HIS MOST attentive look. His lips were tight and his eyes narrowed and fixed on Rostnikov. Zelach tried to hold his thick body erect in the chair, but it refused to cooperate, requiring Zelach to expend great amounts of limited will and mental resources on the effort. Such a concentration and expenditure of effort to juggle his air of attention while at the same time actually listening to Rostnikov was a greater task than his body was equipped for. Zelach settled for a look of greater and greater concentration in the hope that he would either deceive his colleagues and superiors or something magical would take place. Adding to his discomfort was the fact that Zelach was very hungry and lunchtime had come and gone.

  Zelach had neither wit nor talent, and he was well aware of this lack, as was Rostnikov. At first Zelach, known to the investigators on the fourth floor as Zelach the Slouch, had been a pimple on the side of Rostnikov’s small team, but gradually he learned that his survival was dependent on the good will of the inspector. When that realization came, Zelach discussed it at length with his mother, with whom he had lived his entire life. Zelach gave his loyalty to Rostnikov, though he never felt comfortable with his superior, never knew when the Washtub was making a joke or being serious, never knew when he might be making one of those joke
s at the expense of Arkadi Zelach.

  Karpo, as was usual in these meetings in the small questioning room, stood at near attention near the door, a notebook in his left hand, a Soviet ballpoint pen in the right. He stood behind Zelach, who had the constant urge to turn around and look at the gaunt detective to be sure that the sham of Zelach’s life was not being penetrated by the emotionless, dark eyes.

  “Zelach, you have that?”

  Zelach nodded slightly with a wry smile of understanding, though he had no idea what he was responding to.

  “At this point we have only the concern of a possibly disoriented parent,” Rostnikov continued. “Since she came to us, we will make discreet inquiry and”—he tapped the neatly typed report in front of him—“I will begin to process your report for circulation to the proper agencies. That will take, I believe, about three days.”

  Karpo nodded almost imperceptibly. He had just been told by Rostnikov to put aside his current investigations and make inquiries into the allegations of Elena Vostoyavek that her son was planning to kidnap Commissar Andrei Morchov. Officially, he knew, they should report the incident immediately to the KGB. He also understood that Rostnikov planned to hold the report for three days so that Karpo could pursue the investigation. It was routine, but Karpo felt the necessity of recording his concern.

  “I believe the ramifications of this incident make it essential that we inform the KGB immediately,” Karpo said softly. At that moment Emil Karpo smelled lilacs and knew without putting words to it that he was receiving the first warnings, the aura of a migraine. The odors that came to him were always unbidden, evoking memories he could not quite identify from a childhood he preferred not to remember. Flowers, chicken zatzivi, cleaning fluid.

  “And they will be informed,” Rostnikov said. “By me, personally. This report will be in the hands of the KGB by this afternoon. I have the feeling, however, with their current range of interests it will take them a few days to give the situation their full attention.”

  Karpo nodded, took a note, and stood erect again. He knew that there were many ways to forward a report to another branch and be sure it was delayed or lost. The sender could present evidence of having forwarded the report, and the receiver would be embarrassed by its failure to follow through on the report. Karpo knew that Rostnikov had recently buried a sensitive report in the middle of a series of overly detailed accounts of forty minor cases of economic violations, ranging from the sale of fruit from an unauthorized stand on October 25th Street to the smuggling of two Canadian tires into Moscow in the van of a Leningrad Symphony cellist. As far as Karpo knew, the KGB had still not discovered the buried report.

  “Sasha, you have the information on the missing bus,” Rostnikov went on.

  “Bus number forty-three on route seventy-five was reported missing at eleven forty-six this morning,” Tkach said, looking up from his notebook, which lay open on the table in front of him. “The driver has a history of abuse of alcohol, and the assumption of the director of traffic for the sixth district is that he is asleep somewhere in the vehicle. I have issued a directive on the bus and driver to all uniformed and nonuniformed divisions. Other bus, taxi, and trolley drivers have been informed to look for bus forty-three.”

  “You believe he is drunk somewhere, Sasha?” Rostnikov asked, looking up from his notepad. “You know how many buses there are in Moscow?”

  “There are four thousand, six hundred thirty-four buses in Moscow,” replied Karpo, who resisted the urge to touch the left side of his head, where he knew the throbbing would soon begin. “This is the first time in the forty-six years of recordkeeping that a driver is reported to have taken a vehicle, though there are two reports, one in 1968 and another in 1975, of children attempting to drive away in city buses.”

  “You don’t believe the driver took the bus,” Rostnikov went on, looking down at his pad.

  “I have drawn no conclusion,” said Karpo. “There is insufficient information for a conclusion. There is only, at this point, history and precedent, both of which suggest that there may be another explanation.”

  “When an incident defies the statistics, what do we do with the incident?” Rostnikov asked, looking up.

  Zelach turned uneasily in his chair. He was afraid the question had been directed at him.

  “We incorporate the incident into the data base and alter our statistics,” replied Karpo. “There is no such thing as a transcendent or deviant incident or crime. All crimes must be part of the total if they are not to be lost.”

  Rostnikov nodded and Sasha Tkach looked at his watch. If he got started on the investigation within the hour, checked to see if anyone had yet spotted the bus, perhaps he could wrap up before it got too late and be home in time to intercept his mother, who was going to have dinner with Sasha’s aunt.

  “So,” Rostnikov went on, putting the final touches on his drawing of a coupling for a toilet pipeline, “do we have a theory or set of theories of criminal behavior that we apply to reported crimes, or do we gather information on the crimes and hope they tell us something, present a pattern, contain within them a direction or answer?”

  Tkach shuffled in his seat. Rostnikov ignored him and waited for an answer.

  “You wish me to acknowledge intuition,” Karpo said evenly.

  Rostnikov shrugged.

  “I wish Tkach and Zelach to investigate the disappearance of a bus,” replied Rostnikov. “I wish to know what they will do if no one reports having seen bus forty-three by the end of this day.”

  “It should not be difficult to find a bus,” said Zelach, wanting to participate and thinking that he finally understood something that was being discussed. “A bus is … big.”

  “Perhaps we should get started,” Tkach said, standing.

  “The American detective Dashiell Hammett once had to find a stolen Ferris wheel,” said Rostnikov. “He found it quickly, though no one reported a Ferris wheel parked on a side street or sitting atop a roof. How do you think he did this, Sasha?”

  Tkach, who had taken a step toward the door, paused and ran his hand through his hair, brushing it back from his forehead.

  “Why would anyone steal a Ferris wheel?” Tkach said impatiently.

  “Precisely, Sasha. That was the question Hammett asked himself,” said Rostnikov with a smile.

  “To use its parts,” said Zelach. “Or as a prank.”

  “Who would have the equipment to steal a Ferris wheel?” asked Rostnikov, pushing back from the small desk and reaching down to massage his leg back to life.

  “The Ferris wheel was almost certainly stolen by a circus or a carnival,” said Karpo. “They would have the equipment and a reason. They would also have the perfect place to hide it, in plain sight.”

  “Yes, Emil,” said Rostnikov, rising. “And where might you find bus forty-three—if it has not been drunkenly absconded with by the driver? Zelach?”

  “With other buses?”

  Rostnikov nodded his approval.

  “Who else has buses besides the bus company?” Rostnikov asked, this time looking down at the drawing.

  “We will find out,” said Tkach, putting his notebook in his pocket. Without another word, he was out the door. Zelach stood, paused for a beat to see if he would be asked another question, and, seeing that Rostnikov was occupied with his drawing, left the room behind Tkach.

  “Emil,” Rostnikov said as Karpo turned to the door, “do you know what meditation is?”

  “There are,” said Karpo, “a variety of definitions, ranging from engagement in concentrated thought on a specified and minimal subject to a relaxation technique that at its religious extreme strives for the absence of thought.”

  Rostnikov held up the drawing he had been working on. It looked to Karpo like a pair of rods connected by a bandage with a clamp on it.

  “Each day is another layer of weight and complexity. If we are fortunate, we can keep from being crushed, but to do so we must have a portal to temporary peace, a me
ditation.”

  “Mystical,” said Karpo.

  “On the contrary, one of my meditations is plumbing,” Rostnikov said. “Have you ever tried to get your building director to arrange for repairs? It can’t be done. I do it myself. I do it with books and trial and error. I lose myself in leaks, plastic pipes, and wrenches, and when I am finished, in contrast to what happens frequently in an investigation, something that did not work, works. It is a meditation and satisfaction. If you have a leak, Emil Karpo, let me know.”

  “I would think your time could be better spent, Inspector.”

  “What is your meditation, Emil Karpo?”

  “I neither have nor need one. I work.”

  “And you like your work,” said Rostnikov.

  “I am satisfied that within the parameters of our system and the reality of human fallibility I perform a worthwhile societal function,” Karpo said.

  “Do you know the story of the man who lost his ego?” asked Rostnikov, moving past Karpo to open the door. “It’s Dostoyevski.”

  “No,” replied Karpo.

  “It is of no consequence. Let us go out and save Mother Russia from the criminals,” Rostnikov said after a small smile. “And if possible, take care of ourselves at the same time.”

  Emil Karpo was not quite sure of what Rostnikov had just told him. The inspector had grown more and more cryptic and preoccupied in the past months. Karpo was sure it had something to do with Rostnikov’s wife and son, Iosef, who, Karpo knew, was no longer in Afghanistan. Karpo also knew that Iosef was, or so Rostnikov had been told, on a special secret assignment for the army. Iosef was a pawn, a hostage of the state to keep in check the inspector, who had frequently stepped on the very large toes of the KGB. Though he had been much decorated and had nearly lost both his life and leg in the war against the Axis, Rostnikov had never, since Karpo had known him, displayed the slightest revolutionary zeal or interest in politics. And yet Rostnikov was known to be the most effective and relentless criminal investigator in Moscow. It was a constant puzzle for Karpo but one he tried not to address. To even consider it was a distraction from his duty.