Red Chameleon (11 page)

They were standing in the hall now near a window open to let in some touch of air in the summer heat. The moist taste of coming rain prickled Rostnikov's cheek and gave him a curious satisfaction. The sound of barking German shepherd dogs in the police kennels below the window gave a faraway sense of melancholy to the scene.

“Emil,” Rostnikov said, walking at the side of the taller, gaunt man whose limp left arm was plunged into the black sling under his jacket, “have you ever read
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
?”

“No,” said Karpo as they stepped aside to let a uniformed young man carrying a stack of files hurry past them. “Should I?”

“There is a passage in which the drifting young boy hears the faraway sound of someone chopping wood,” Rostnikov said. “The sound of something far away, the echo of each plunge of the ax blade into the wood. It is a passage of great beauty, Emil. It is a passage which vibrates like a summer day in Moscow.”

“I see,” Karpo said, unable to fathom the cryptic turns of mind of the limping, near block of a man at his side. Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov was an enigma in the life of Emil Karpo but one that the younger man accepted, for he respected his superior's abilities.

But Karpo knew that Rostnikov was not infallible. Occasionally, he failed to see something, to detect. The example was immediate. Rostnikov obviously had no idea that Karpo planned to make himself the next target of the rooftop Weeper.

Sasha Tkach had a headache. He was not much given to drinking vodka. He was well aware of the damage it did to those around him, and he often had the impression that at night Moscow was a vast matrix of drunks who staggered about like giddy or morose zombies. He had heard that it was worse in other countries—Iceland, the United States—but Moscow surely had a high percentage of those who sought escape in alcohol. One of those who did so was his neighbor Bazhen Surikov, the carpenter. Surikov liked to suggest that he was a painter. He wore a small beard like a caricature of a 1920s Parisian artist and even dabbled in painting, though Sasha thought the few works he had seen by the wiry man were at best mediocre. However, Sasha did not consider himself an art expert. He did, however, consider himself a man with many problems.

He and Maya had not exactly quarreled the night before. She had attempted to talk about their future, and he had attempted to avoid it. He was tired, sore from the bout with the blacksmith, angry at his assignment, and unable to think of a solution to the problem of what to do when the very visible child in Maya's stomach decided to face the world.

Sasha's mother, Lydia, offered no help, only her usual wisdom. “It will work out. Each day passes, and a new one comes. We have bread on the table, shoes on our feet, a bed to sleep on.”

One could not quarrel with such wisdom, especially when one's mother was nearly deaf and interested in preserving platitudes rather than coping with reality.

And so when Bazhen Surikov had suggested that Sasha join him in his apartment to look at a new painting, Sasha had gone, leaving mother, wife, and soon-to-come child in their two-room apartment. And when Bazhen had shown him the idiotic painting of a horse or a boar or a bear on its knees, Sasha had been properly complimentary, which resulted in the offer by Bazhen of a shared bottle of vodka. Nearly two hours later, when Sasha had managed to return to his apartment, Maya looked at his smiling face and put down her book, undecided about whether to get angry or weep. She did neither but turned to go in the bedroom, realized her mother-in-law was in there, and then faced Sasha with a pleading look that said clearly, “See, I have no place to go when I am hurt, angry. And soon there will be a baby, your baby.”

The next day, the vodka was no longer in effect, the sun was hot, and Sasha had no heart to pretend that he was the spoiled son of a member of the Politburo. He had some sense, he thought, of how an actor must feel who has a hangover, an ulcer, a nagging wife, and a dying friend and who must still step upon the stage to pretend for two hours that he is Alexander the Great.

Sasha had already had a meeting with Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov; he had gone to two locations on his list and crossed out both, convinced that they were not what he was searching for. He had been especially disturbed by the fact that in his early-morning meeting, Porfiry Petrovich, who usually gave suggestions and attention and consideration to even minor cases, seemed to be indifferent to Sasha's investigation in spite of the fact that pressure was now being exerted because “an important official” had been the victim of the car thieves.

Sasha had taken the green metro line, the Gorkovsko-Zamoskvoretskaya line, to the end, gotten off at Rechnoi Vokzal, and wandered in unfamiliar territory in search of the building from which it had been reported that a large new car had been seen. The report was almost two weeks old and had come from a woman who, the report noted, was a notorious local busybody, the kind who would come up to you on the street and tell you to straighten your tie. Sasha Tkach knew the type; one of them had married his father and now lived in Sasha's small apartment.

Finding the building was difficult, but he continued. The directions had been poor, but find it he did, a one-story brick building that looked as if it had once been a small factory. There was a large car or truck entrance with a sliding metal door closed over it. The windows of the building were dirty, and one could not see because the curtains were closed. It meant nothing, this twenty-third location he had checked in two weeks while others were seeking snipers who shot policemen and mysterious old gunmen who stole candlesticks. Life was not always fair.

Sasha found a door at the side of the building, blinked once, sighed deeply, feeling sorry for himself, knocked, and entered before someone could say, “Come in,” or, “Stay out.”

Beyond the door, Tkach found himself facing a quite beautiful blond young woman, full and athletic looking, who wore no makeup and needed none.

“That door is supposed to be locked,” she said, her eyes meeting Sasha's. “This is a private club for potential automobile mechanics.”

Tkach looked past her without letting his eyes roam. There was a wooden partition behind them, a dirty wooden partition painted gray, behind which he could hear the scraping of machinery, the clanking of metal on metal. There was something defiant and attractive about the young woman holding a small wrench in one hand, her other hand on her hip. Even the smudges of dirt on her dark overalls were somehow appealing. A shiver of fear and physical attraction passed through the detective, and he felt confident that if he had not finally found what he was looking for, he had surely stumbled upon something the woman was trying to hide.

“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.