Red Chameleon Read online

  “My name is Pashkov,” he said as the woman grabbed his sleeve to turn him toward the door. “Your address was given to me by a mutual acquaintance who made me promise not to reveal his name.”

  “I don’t know what you are raving about,” she said, her face close to his, close enough for him to smell her and close enough for her to sense his slight trembling, the trembling of a wicked hangover.

  “My father is a member of the Politburo,” Sasha said quickly and thickly as she opened the door and pointed out with her wrench.

  “How fortunate for you,” she said sarcastically.

  “I’m looking for an automobile,” he tried, standing in front of the door. “A very good automobile.”

  She didn’t slam the door. He tried to fix a slightly vapid smile on his face as he examined her. Her fine smooth face almost hid her emotions, but Tkach had been an investigator for almost six years, and he saw suspicion flicker in her eyes. He saw no sign, however, of fear and decided that in many ways this was a most formidable and admirable woman.

  “Who sent you here?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No names. I don’t want yours. You don’t want mine.”

  “I already have yours.”

  “I forgot,” Tkach said. “I was drinking with a friend last night—”

  “Come back in,” she said, reaching out to lead him back through the door. Before she closed it, she stepped out and looked around. Tkach watched her with admiration. A woman like this could take charge, find apartments, cars, get things done, and have time left over for massive warmth and babies.

  “I’m looking for a car for myself,” he said when she faced him. He spoke above the noise beyond the gray partition. “I’m willing to pay reasonably, and if things work out, I have friends who might also be willing …”

  She was examining his face intently. Sasha was well aware of it, but he did his best not to reveal what he was seeing.

  “If you are the police,” she said slowly, “then you can simply have this building examined when you leave here. In that case, there would be no point in denying what we have here.”

  “Wait,” Sasha said, stepping forward, uncomfortably warm, wanting to loosen his absurd tie.

  “If you are who you say you are, however,” she went on, paying no attention, “then we might as well attempt to negotiate. You are good-looking enough, but you don’t strike me as either discreet or terribly intelligent.”

  Tkach’s vodka tremor turned to anger, but he controlled it, recognizing that the woman might be testing him. In one sense, it didn’t matter. She had as much as confessed, and she was quite right: all he had to do was force his way past her, go to the nearest phone, and have the place surrounded in a few minutes. But now he wanted to play this game through, to beat her. If it was chess they were to play, he wanted her respect when the game was over.

  “I’m not accustomed to insults,” he said, letting some of his anger out. “I went to Moscow University. I am certified in economics. I—” he fumed angrily, hoping that he was playing his role with indignation.

  A smile touched the quite lovely full lips of the woman. Tkach did not like the smile or the words she spoke.

  “Come,” she said. “I’ll show you some cars, and perhaps we can make a deal.”

  At this point Tkach considered that it might be wiser to concede the chess game and win the war, but he did not get beyond the consideration. He felt the presence behind him and knew it was confirmed by the woman’s blue eyes that glanced over his shoulder. Someone was behind him, someone who would surely stop him or attempt to stop him if Sasha went for the door.

  “Good,” Tkach said, sighing. “Do you have a drink of something? I’ve come a long way.”

  He turned toward the wooden partition from beyond which the noise continued to come and found himself almost nose-to-nose with a man with a flattened, slightly red nose, a burly, rugged-looking man, and straight black hair falling over his forehead. He was well muscled, surly looking, and not at all pleased by the look that the woman was now giving to Sasha Tkach, whom she was beginning, apparently, to accept as someone she might well enjoy playing a game with.

  On Gorky Street, across from the Central Telegraph Office, is the Moscow Art Theatre. The building is decorated with reproductions of the Orders of Lenin and the Red Banner of Labor awarded to the company. There is also a banner with the image of a seagull, the emblem of the theater, adopted from Chekhov’s play, which had its premiere at the Moscow Art Theatre. There are two other buildings of the Moscow Art Theatre, one on Moskvin Street, the other on Tverskoi Boulevard.

  The Moscow Art Theatre was founded in 1898 by the theoretician-director Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Both Chekhov and Gorky were associated with the theater, which continues to specialize in the plays of the two authors.

  Rostnikov had been in the theater only three times before this Saturday morning’s visit. It wasn’t that he disliked theater. On the contrary, he enjoyed the idea of theater, but his interest lay not in traditional performance but in those works that generated the energy of other places.

  He had left word in Petrovka about where he was heading and had taken advantage of his temporary restoration to authority by ordering a car and driver and indicating that it was by order of the deputy procurator. The police garage had not questioned him, though the car had been five minutes late, during which time Porfiry Petrovich had stood in the street, making people uncomfortable by trying to imagine what crimes they were capable of. Murder, he knew, was within the scope of anyone, given the proper motive or circumstances. He never searched faces for murder. It was the pickpockets, robbers, and car thieves he tried to imagine behind the somber passing faces.

  Tracking down Lev Ostrovsky had proved to be quite easy. The All-Russia Theatrical Society had furnished an address and the information that Ostrovsky, though he was eighty-three, still worked at the Moscow Art Theatre. So Rostnikov had sat back, watching the tall streetlamps hum past as the faceless driver went down Gorky Street and turned at the Art Theatre passage.

  Getting inside proved slightly difficult. He had told the driver, a young man with a bulbous nose, to wait at the car. The man, in uniform, had nodded without expression. It had not only occurred to Rostnikov that the driver might be either a KGB man or an informant for the deputy procurator; it had been a certainty. Since Porfiry Petrovich’s unofficial demotion, he was watched, reported on, considered by various offices, each working separately, building files, wasting the time of many people. But, Rostnikov mused as he limped away from the locked front door and searched for a stage entrance, what useful work might they otherwise be performing, these people who spied on him? Perhaps they could be loaded on a truck and sent to Yekteraslav to work in the vest factory.

  Washtub, he thought to himself, finding a heavy wooden door that did open, you fantasize too much. It will make you dream. Dreams will turn to hopes. Hopes will turn to longing. Longing will turn to despair. Despair will turn to laughter. And laughter will get you in trouble.

  Beyond the wooden door, Rostnikov entered a dark world. A vast, high, dark world in contrast to the burning summer brightness of the outside. The smell of theater struck him. It was like old wood and comfortable carpeting and paint. His eyes adjusted and turned to the voice addressing him.

  “What is it you want?” The speaker was a young woman in a black dress, her hair pulled back and tied with a black ribbon. She was vulpine beautiful, a type of face that suggested weary cleverness, of having seen so much that a little more would not be surprising. Her words challenged him to come up with a tale.

  He reached into his rear pocket and grunted out his identification, noticing that his leather wallet was bulging and frayed. The bulge came partly from the bills he carried for needed purchases and partly from his unwillingness to part with little bits of paper on which notes were written to remind him of various things he never got around to doing.

  The young woman�
��s eyes darted at the wallet and back to his face. He had no doubt that she had actually looked at the card. She appeared to be quite unimpressed. “I repeat, comrade inspector. What is it you want? We are in production at the moment and have—”

  “Lev Ostrovsky,” he put in, looking around now that he could see. He was standing in a narrow corridor with a string of lights heading deep inside the building. To each side of the corridor were doors, but he could make out no sounds within them.

  “I don’t—” She began with a sigh, which Rostnikov recognized as the prelude to dismissal.

  “You will,” he assured her, cutting in again. It was time to assume a new role. “Lev Ostrovsky is here. I wish to see him immediately. I do not have time to watch you perform. I am in a good mood, a remarkably good mood considering many things I have no desire to share with you, but that mood can so easily become—” He held up his thick right hand palm down and let it flutter like a wounded bird.

  The young woman folded her arms across her small breasts and let out her third sigh of the brief conversation. Rostnikov decided that she was not an actress. Her repertoire of mannerisms was too limited. Either she was without experience or simply had not cultivated her talents.

  “Down this corridor,” she said through closed teeth and over a very false cordial smile. “Turn left at the end and then right.”

  With that she turned and walked to a door, her heels clicking on the wooden floor, and made her exit.

  Rostnikov, uncertain of the directions she had given, limped down the corridor, listening for the sound of a voice, a movement. When he had turned the second corner and was headed toward a door to his right that said Stage Entrance, he heard the sound of music.

  He went through the door to the stage, following the music, moved up a low flight of stairs, and found another door. Beyond this door was the rear of the stage. The music was louder, an orchestra. It was familiar and not familiar. The backstage area was even darker than the corridor. Rostnikov moved carefully toward a light ahead that accompanied the music. Beyond a chair and a bank of switches for lights, Rostnikov found himself to the right of the stage of the theater. On the stage, illuminated by an insufficient light from high above, stood a man with a mop. On a chair near the old man was an old record player. The volume was very high and the man very old.

  “Lev Ostrovsky?” Rostnikov shouted over the music, but the bent man simply soaked his mophead from the pail in front of him and kept his back to the policeman. Rostnikov could see in the dim light the drying soapy trail on the polished wooden floor of the stage. Beyond the dim light in darkness were hundreds of seats. He listened to his voice break against the far wall of darkness.

  The old man did not turn immediately as Rostnikov stepped forward and turned off the record player. Silence thundered, and Rostnikov was suddenly aware of the mop squeaking over the floor.

  It took the old man a beat or two to realize that the music was gone. He straightened and turned to face Rostnikov. There was a slight smile fixed on the ancient face, a smile that Rostnikov recognized as not one of amusement of the moment but the permanent mask some people wore. He was a short man in trousers held up by suspenders over a long-sleeved blue work shirt. He grasped his mop in two hands and pursed his lips as he examined the heavy man in front of him.

  “What was that music?” Rostnikov asked, but the old man simply continued to stare. So Rostnikov shouted his question again.

  “The soundtrack from Rocky,” Ostrovsky said in a willowy voice as he looked at the record player.

  “Rocky?” asked Rostnikov, feeling as if he were in some absurdist play and that hundreds of first-nighters were just behind the light, trying to suppress coughs of laughter.

  “An American moving picture,” Ostrovsky explained. “I bought it from an American. Actually, I traded for two tickets to Vassa Zheleznova. I got the better deal.”

  Rostnikov nodded in agreement, partly to preserve his voice and partly because he could think of no appropriate rejoinder.

  “‘He reminds me of a policeman’,” the old man said, his smile still fixed, his right hand leaving the mop to point at Rostnikov. “‘A policeman I once knew. In our theater in Kostroma we used to have a policeman—a tall fellow with bulging eyes. He didn’t walk. He ran, didn’t just smoke but practically choked on the fumes. One got the impression he wasn’t so much just living as jumping and tumbling, trying to reach for something quick. Yet what he was after, he himself didn’t know.’”

  “I’m—” Rostnikov said, but he had forgotten to shout, and the old man continued, no longer looking at the policeman but out into the audience.

  “‘When a man has a clear objective, he proceeds toward it calmly. But this one hurried. And it was a peculiar kind of haste—it lashed him on from within—and he ran and ran, getting in everybody’s way, including his own. He wasn’t avaricious. He only wanted avidly to do all he had to do as quickly as he could. He wanted to get all his duties out of the way, not overlooking the duty of taking bribes. Nor did he accept bribes. No, he grabbed them in a hurry, forgetting even to thank you. One day he got himself run over by some horses and was killed.’”

  The old man turned to face Rostnikov, who was now convinced that he was dealing with senility and had best be simply polite and depart.

  “Did your policeman have a name,” Rostnikov said. “This one does.” He pulled out his wallet and displayed it, though the man had obviously recognized him for what he was.

  “There was no policeman,” Ostrovsky said, shaking his head. “I was acting. You couldn’t tell I was acting? That’s the goal, the very thing all these young actors miss the point of. That business about the policeman was one of Tatyana’s speeches from Gorky’s Enemies. Have you ever seen it? “

  “No,” Rostnikov admitted. The stage was cool, and the chief inspector half expected the ghosts of past audiences to reveal themselves and laugh at his confusion.

  “Too much talk,” the old man said, holding up his arthritic right hand and opening and closing it to show what talk was. “But I got you, huh? I can still act circles around these people today, these actors.”

  He demonstrated his ability to act circles around those who frequented the stage by swirling his mop in a circle on the floor.

  “I can see that,” Rostnikov said.

  “I actually met Anton Chekhov when I was a boy,” Ostrovsky said, pointing to a spot on the stage where he presumably met Chekhov. “Right here.”

  “Chekhov died before you were born,” Rostnikov said.

  “Then it was Tolstoy I met,” the old man said with a shrug.

  “Abraham Savitskaya,” Rostnikov said. His leg was beginning to stiffen. He shuffled to the single chair on the stage, moved the record player to the floor, sat, and looked up at the old man, who had been struck dumb by the name from antiquity.

  “He’s dead,” said Ostrovsky, his permanent smile going dead.

  “How did you know?” Now Rostnikov was directing, acting to the nonexistent audience. He was back in his familiar role.

  “Everyone’s dead.” The old man shrugged. “I have a stage to mop.”

  “Mikhail Posniky,” Rostnikov shouted as the old man made a move to resume his work. The name stopped his motion. Rostnikov had a few more he could pull out if need be.

  “Dead,” Ostrovsky said.

  “No, I think he murdered Abraham Savitskaya two nights ago here in Moscow.”

  “I haven’t seen either of them for … a thousand years,” Ostrovsky said. “Who can remember—”

  “You remember lines from old plays.”

  “Ah,” the old man said, his smile strong and crinkly. “That is fantasy, easy to recall. Reality, now that is not nearly as real to an actor.”

  How long could an eighty-year-old man stand up? It was an experiment that Rostnikov might have to make to get some answers.

  “A brass candlestick,” Rostnikov said. “Do you remember a brass candlestick that Abraham Savitskaya owned?”
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br />   The old man’s face looked blank, and he began to shake his head when an image came, a memory. He shuffled a foot for new balance.

  “No, it was Mikhail who left with the candlesticks,” he said, seeing some vague image in the past. “Mikhail and Abraham left together, going to America, they said. Each had a little suitcase, and Mikhail had the candlestick. His mother had given it to him just before he left. Why do I remember such things, such details? Who wants to remember such things?”

  Rostnikov had no answer, only questions. “And have you seen either of them since they left the village, left Yekteraslav?”

  “Who?”

  “The men, Posniky or Savitskaya.”

  Ostrovsky shrugged. “Rumors—I heard rumors from people I ran into from the village, just rumors, rumors, rumors. You know rumors?”

  “I know rumors,” Rostnikov admitted to the parched mask of a smiling face that moved slowly toward him. “What kind of rumors?”

  “That Mikhail had become a big gangster in America, just like the movies. Tiny Caesar, the Godfather. Guns. Everything. It was possible. Who knew? He was a hard boy, a hard young man. I was a clown.”

  “Savitskaya?”

  “Ah,” Ostrovsky said, moving close enough to whisper. “A macher.”

  “A macher?”

  “That’s Yiddish,” Ostrovsky confided. “A dead language for dead Jews like me. Savitskaya was a dealer, a man not to be trusted.”

  “One more name,” Rostnikov said, standing up. “A fourth young friend of yours from the village. Shmuel Prensky. What became—”

  Rostnikov had simply been finishing the routine, looking for another step, another lead. He had not anticipated the reaction. Lev Ostrovsky went an enamel white and trembled. The smile became a grimace of pain or fear.

  “Dead,” Ostrovsky said, holding his mop handle, his knuckles twisted and white.

  “When did he—”