A Fine Red Rain Page 6

  “We are here again,” Rostnikov said, looking around the lobby.

  “I see. I see,” said the old man, folding his hands and looking around for help that didn’t come. “I see.”

  “Good,” said Rostnikov.

  “You’ve come about the accident, about Pesknoko. Tragic. Tragic. Tragic.”

  “And Duznetzov. You know about the death this morning of Valerian Duznetzov?”

  “Comrade Valerian,” sighed the old man. “Coincidence. Yes. Coincidence. Coincidence. Amazing. Two in the same act in one day. It never happened before. Patnietsko says bad luck comes in threes. I would not like to be Katya. No. I wouldn’t want to be Katya.”

  “Katya?”

  “Katya,” said the old man with irritation. “You know. Katya.”

  “Katya?”

  “Rashkovskaya.”

  “The last …”

  “… member of the Pesknoko act. Yes.”

  With this the old man shook his head, looked down, and appeared to be lost in his thoughts.

  “When I was a boy,” the old man said, still looking down, “my father was an assistant to Lunacharsky. He, my father, called him Anatoly Vasilyvich. That’s how close they were. They started the postrevolutionary circus together. I met Gorky. Stanislavsky used to pat me on the head. Right like this. On the head.”

  With this, the old man reached down and patted the imaginary head of an imaginary boy. Rostnikov imagined his son, Josef, and interrupted. “I’d like to see this Katya Rashkovskaya. Where could I find her? And the circus director?”

  “The director?” the old man asked, stepping back. “No. No. No. The director is away, setting up a tour. Been gone for … I don’t know. Weeks. Perhaps the assistant?”

  “An assistant will be fine, Comrade,” said Rostnikov, wanting to find someplace to sit. “And Katya?”

  “Rashkovskaya, yes. I’ll see what I can find. If you’ll …”

  “I’ll go into the arena,” Rostnikov said, walking to one of the entrance doors.

  The old man mumbled something behind him, but Rostnikov kept walking. As he opened the door he heard the old man’s footsteps echo away behind him. It was not quite dark inside the arena though the lights were down except in the ring in the center. There was, as in all Russian circuses, only one ring so that all attention could be focused on an individual performance or spectacle.

  Two men in the ring were trying to get a pig to do something with a barrel. Rostnikov watched silently for a few moments and then turned and started to walk up a stairway toward the first of two promenade walkways that circled the arena.

  Behind him, their voices pleading, demanding, the two men urged the squealing pig to greater effort. It was difficult to pull his reluctant leg up the stairs, but Rostnikov went higher, searching for something. He remembered the lights above the arena, the reflecting lights that resembled a rippling circus tent. He remembered the four huge, evenly spaced screens circling the arena above the wood-paneled walls. He remembered the complex rigging, with clinking metal catching the lights high above like stars. And then, among the 3,400 seats, he found the two he was looking for, the two seats in which he and Josef had sat one night more than a dozen years before.

  Rostnikov sat in the seat he thought had been his and looked down at the two men and the pig, who seemed to be getting closer to whatever it was they were trying to do. Rostnikov watched in the semidarkness as one of the two men reached up to grasp a metal bar, suspended from the darkness of the ceiling, and bent backward. Then, suddenly, miraculously, the man kicked his feet upward, where they remained, perpendicular to the ground, defying gravity. The first man placed the pig on the contorted man’s outstretched legs, and the pig himself rose on two legs, balanced on the contorted man. Meanwhile, the standing man cooed soothingly to the pig. It was an odd but fascinating sight.

  “When we see the back of an individual contorted in fear and bent in humiliation, we cannot but look around and doubt our very existence, fearing lest we lose ourselves. But on seeing a fearless acrobat in bright costume, we forget ourselves, feeling that we have somehow risen above ourselves and reached the level of universal strength. Then we can breathe easier.”

  Without turning to the deep male voice behind him, Rostnikov said, “Karl Marx.”

  “Yes, Karl Marx,” said the voice. “You are a good Soviet citizen, Comrade.”

  “I like the circus,” Rostnikov answered, still fascinated by the men and the pig.

  “That is the Brothers Heuber and their pig, Chuska,” said the deep voice. “They are paying homage to the great political satirists Vladimir and Anatoly Durov and their pig, Chuska. Pigs are the smartest of all animals. Not dogs, not horses, not bears, not cats. Pigs.”

  “Monkeys?” asked Rostnikov without taking his eyes from the act below him.

  “Monkeys, perhaps,” said the man, moving to sit beside Rostnikov, “but only because they share with us the opposable thumb. You’ve worked in a circus? No, I’d know you. But you have the arms of a lifter or catcher.”

  “I lift weights,” said Rostnikov as the act in the ring came to a sudden end. The man who had placed the pig on the other’s feet grabbed the animal and tucked it under his arm. The perpendicular man eased himself down and the two men strode away talking, arguing, as Rostnikov turned to face the man at his side.

  “I am Mazaraki, Dimitri Mazaraki, announcer and assistant to the head of the New Moscow Circus. I used to be a trick lifter. I still do the act occasionally, but my back is not so certain as it was. Now I cannot hold up twelve young women on a platform all representing a year in a new agricultural plan, all dressed as different grains. No, now I can only do five-year plans.”

  Rostnikov took the man’s hand. It was, like the man himself, strong, firm. Mazaraki was wearing a perfectly pressed light gray suit with a one-color black tie. Standing, he would be half a head taller than Rostnikov. He was about Rostnikov’s weight and about ten years younger, perhaps forty. He had a billowing black mustache and dark wavy hair with a white streak on the left temple. Most impressive were his bearing, his straight back, his muscles straining against his suit.

  Rostnikov wondered if Mazaraki’s white streak looked like the white streak of Cotton Hawes in the 87th Precinct novels. For a moment he couldn’t quite remember on which side Hawes’s white streak was, only that it had been caused by a knife.

  “… as it usually is,” Mazaraki said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Rostnikov. “I was thinking.”

  “I said,” Mazaraki said with a weary grin, “the circus is not as busy today as it usually is. The accident. Yaro said you were here about the accident?”

  “It may not have been an accident,” said Rostnikov, watching Mazaraki’s face.

  Mazaraki smiled as if he were being told a joke. Then he realized it was no joke.

  “Not an …”

  “Perhaps,” Rostnikov said with a shrug. “Who knows? First one partner leaps from a statue and at the same time another accidentally dies in a fall. It could be a coincidence.”

  “The officer who came earlier …” Mazaraki began.

  “… did not know of Duznetzov and his flight from Gogol’s head,” finished the inspector. “I haven’t been to the circus for a dozen years.”

  Mazaraki was probably confused, which was fine with Rostnikov.

  “The safety net did not hold, is that correct?” asked Rostnikov, looking down at where the net would be during a performance.

  “That’s right,” said Mazaraki, adjusting his lapels, which needed no adjustment. “We have the best support crew in the world, the best, but Oleg may have tried to adjust the net himself. Maybe …”

  “Maybe,” agreed Rostnikov with a sigh, standing up. “I should like to talk to the surviving partner, Katya Rashkovskaya.”

  “She’s not here,” said Mazaraki. “We sent her home. This was difficult for all of us, but for her it is—it is devastating.”

  “Yes,” agreed Rostnikov, re
sisting the urge to massage his leg for the trip back down the stairs he should not have climbed. “Duznetzov drank?”

  “Yes,” said Mazaraki, standing. He was even taller than Rostnikov had guessed, not quite a giant, but a man to be looked at twice on the street. “Valerian Duznetzov was fond of vodka.”

  “Did he say strange things when he was drunk?” asked Rostnikov, starting down the stairs. A new act had begun to take over the ring for rehearsal; a wire was being strung about a dozen feet from the ground. The four gray-uniformed attendants moved quickly, quietly, efficiently, while a man and woman in zippered sweat suits waited patiently for them to finish.

  “We all say strange things when we are drunk. It is the nature of being drunk. Would you like to stay and watch for a while, Inspector …”

  “Rostnikov. No, I would like to be given the address of Katya Rashkovskaya.”

  “You say Valerian said strange things before he—he jumped from the statue. What strange things?”

  “He said he could fly and he could teach me to fly to other countries if I had the money. And he seemed to be afraid of a man who saw thunder.”

  “That makes no sense,” said Mazaraki.

  Rostnikov shrugged and continued down the steps.

  “Does a pig balanced on the feet of an acrobat make sense?” Rostnikov asked.

  “Yes,” Mazaraki said, laughing, as he followed behind him. “It all makes sense. The pig is a figure of the farm economy, delicately balanced to serve the needs of the people by the skill of the Soviet farmer, who can juggle, balance, perform near-miracles of skill. It also demonstrates the level of specialized skill Soviet society can nurture, admire, and protect.”

  “It is fascinating,” said Rostnikov, coming to the arena exit door. “But it makes little sense.”

  He turned to face the larger man, who worried his mustache with his fingers and cautiously examined this rather strange policeman. Then the bigger man grinned and shook his head as he whispered, “Perhaps you are right, but it would be just as well to protect illusions. The illusions of adults are as important as the illusions of children. I trust that this conversation is between us alone.”

  “Your trust is safe,” said Rostnikov, turning for a glance at the young woman who was climbing up to the wire. She began to bounce gingerly, her breasts rippling under the sweat suit.

  “It can’t hurt for you to watch for a minute or two,” said Mazaraki.

  “Well,” said Rostnikov, “perhaps for a minute or two.”

  The two men turned and watched the act from the darkness of the entranceway, and Rostnikov thought that it would not hurt to see Katya Rashkovskaya a little later, to eat a little later, to get home a little later tonight, to talk to Sarah about Josef’s posting to Afghanistan a little later tonight. His eyes moved to the young woman, who balanced, turned to the voice of the man who stood below her, and Rostnikov felt for an instant as if the woman were moving in slow motion.

  Precisely at noon, according to the clock on his desk, Emil Karpo placed the pen he was writing with in line with the two other identical pens on his desk and got up from his chair. He walked to the small sink in the corner of the room, filled his teakettle with water, prepared his cup, and started the hot plate, on which he placed the kettle. He took a neatly wrapped half-loaf of grainy dark bread from the cabinet under the table on which the hot plate stood, tore off a large piece of the bread, placed it on the plate that held the waiting teacup, and stood facing the wall over his bed. He began the exercises he had been taught to strengthen his left hand, began counting as he opened, closed, twisted, tensed, relaxed. He finished the last exercise within three seconds of the water’s boiling.

  Karpo removed the teakettle using his right hand, prepared his tea, and sat at the small table near the window to eat. He considered raising the window shade but decided against it, against the distraction that daylight might cause. He ate slowly, chewing fully, drinking in small sips, not allowing himself to think, concentrating on the patterns of grain in the bread, the particles of tea in the dark bottom of his cup. Emil Karpo never ate at the same table at which he worked and he never thought about his work when he ate. It wasn’t because he enjoyed eating. Emil Karpo neither enjoyed nor disliked it. He knew his body; his sense of taste responded to ice cream, a fact that caused him to avoid eating ice cream as an act of discipline. No, he ate away from his desk because he believed his mind needed cleansing, respite.

  Following the meal, Karpo cleaned his cup and plate in the sink, set them out to dry, and then stepped behind his desk chair, on which he placed his palms, and closed his eyes. Images came. He thrust them aside, ordered them to go without words, and they went. Words came. He banished them as well. When they were gone, he banished thinking about them and for what seemed but an instant Karpo heard only the possibility of a hum and saw only the faint hint of roundness. When he opened his eyes, he saw by the clock that he had been meditating for almost an hour.

  Karpo sat at his desk and reviewed what he had. The eight cases appeared to have their means of death in common: multiple stabbing, lower abdomen, pelvic area. The number of penetrations varied from seven to sixteen. The depth of the plunges was similar. The blade, according to the report by the medical laboratory technician Paulinin, was the same one in all cases. Paulinin had concluded that the killer was a man, probably reasonably large and strong.

  Beyond this, little was evident. The murders were generally in places where prostitutes could be found—a few bars on Gorky Street, near the railway stations—but there seemed to be no pattern. Two in a row were in the Riga Station area. Three were within two blocks of the Yaroslavl Station, but they weren’t consecutive. There were no murders near any of the other seven railway stations. And there was no pattern to the specific sites. Twice the killer struck in doorways. Once in a women’s public toilet. The delivery way to the Marx and Engels Museum another time. The period between murders formed no pattern. It varied from months to days. Even the time of day established little other than that the murderer probably had a job with normal day hours, since all of the murders took place in the late evening—with one exception. The second prostitute, Hild Grachovnaya, had been murdered on a Tuesday afternoon, which might or might not have meant that Tuesday was the killer’s day off. The women had nothing in common other than that they were prostitutes. Some were young. Some not so young. One was a Ukrainian. Another was a Mongol.

  The charts in front of him looked random, and Karpo knew that a further complication might be that there were other victims about which he knew nothing. There were a few missing prostitutes. But that meant little. They might even be dead, but it didn’t prove that this serial killer had murdered them. It might also be that he didn’t kill only prostitutes, that he killed other women, men, boys, children, in a different manner, that the victims dictated the way they would be killed. That might account for the misfiled report. It had been in the file along with the others. Karpo had carefully copied every word. He had his copy before him, but it made little sense. It was in the file for this killer, but it had the wrong file number, at least it had originally had the wrong file number. Someone had carefully crossed out the old number and typed in the number of this case.

  There had been a number of people investigating the murders; each one was listed on the enclosed reports, along with Anatoly Vidbraki, who had been assigned the entire series a year ago, just before he dropped dead of a heart attack. There had been a murder since then—two, if one counted the killing recounted in the renumbered report. Karpo reread his copy of the report on the murder of Sonia Melyodska. It had been a stabbing but with a different knife from all the others. The murderer had stabbed only twice and much deeper than in the other killings. The killing had been in the daytime, which was not necessarily out of the pattern, but the victim had definitely not been a prostitute. She had been a soldier in uniform on leave, and she was killed on the stairway in the Vdnkh Metro Station. The killing was even witnessed by an old woman wh
o saw only that the killer was a heavy man who fled up the stairs.

  Normally, Emil Karpo would have simply examined the report and determined that the investigating officer had made a mistake, in this case a very big mistake. That was not uncommon. Though it displeased him, Karpo had long since learned to accept incompetence and lack of dedication among the police, as he had learned to accept it among shop clerks, street cleaners, office workers, everyone. There was nothing wrong with the various economic and revolutionary plans that had been put forth to move the Soviet Union forward. The problem lay in the lack of discipline of the people, not all the people, but too many people: the very old, who were corrupted by memories of life before the revolution, and the young, who were corrupted with visions of tempting sloth in France and the United States.

  The weakness of the people, the corruption of the system, were not peculiar to the Russians. Karpo was sure of that. Triumph, vindication, for communism would not ultimately begin with the masses. It never had. It would begin with the few who were dedicated, were willing to sacrifice, to take on the burden and serve as silent examples. Lenin had done this.

  But this apparently misfiled report was not a sign of weakness and mistake. Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov had written this report, had conducted the investigation of the murder of Corporal Sonia Melyodska in the Vdnkh Metro Station. In many ways Rostnikov was a puzzle to Emil Karpo. In many ways Rostnikov, with his unstated criticism of the state, was a challenge to Emil Karpo. But Rostnikov did not make big mistakes like this. In investigations, Rostnikov seldom made any mistakes at all. He moved carefully, slowly, sometimes too slowly, but he did not make mistakes.

  The solution was simple. Karpo turned off his desk lamp, stood up, and went to look for Rostnikov.

  At the moment Emil Karpo left his small room and carefully set on the door the tiny hair that would betray an intruder, Sasha Tkach was sitting in the office of the assistant procurator for the Moscow district. Procurator Khabolov’s hound dog face was sniffing the report Sasha had written on the Gorgasali brothers, Felix and Osip, the black market dealers in videotapes and records. It didn’t seem important enough to Sasha for him to be called right to the assistant procurator’s office. It was a large, bare office with a desk in the middle of the wooden floor, a pair of large windows behind the desk, and a photograph of Lenin between the windows. Sasha Tkach had been in this office very few times. He did not enjoy his visits. He would have felt more comfortable clutching the briefcase on his lap, but he kept his hands resting gently on it as he watched Khabolov’s face.