Verson, the prostitute. They seldom spoke. Even after all these years it was difficult for Emil Karpo to acknowledge what he did with her. It was not that the act of sex confirmed him as an animal, that much he knew and accepted. The animalism was a distraction, one his body would not let him deny. It got in the way of his duty, but it demanded that he respond, demanded that he acknowledge the un-asked-for ache, and threatened to keep him from his work. He acknowledged and controlled this need with Mathilde Verson. What bothered Emil Karpo was that his sexual encounters with Mathilde were illegal, counter to the needs of the state. The crime was not a particularly serious one, but the fact that it was a crime was a source of discomfort for Karpo. It also disturbed Karpo that he felt something beyond sexual need when he was with Mathilde.

Rostnikov, who knew about Mathilde, considered Karpo's reluctant acceptance of illegality one of the few antidotes for the hubris of the zealot.

'That was your bad arm he was playing with back there,' Mathilde said, walking by his side. 'Are you all right?'

'Yes,' he said.

'Yes,' she repeated. 'What else could I expect you to say?'

Two young women holding hands moved toward, around, and past the strange couple.

'I would like your help,' Karpo said, looking ahead as they walked, feeling an electric sensation returning to his arm and side.

'I thought you only needed that once every other week,' Mathilde said with a smile, looking at him.

Karpo did not smile back.

'You misunderstand,' Karpo said.

'I was making a joke, Emil Karpo,' she said, shaking her head.

'I see,' said Karpo, flexing his fingers. He wondered, not for the first time, why people found it necessary to make jokes in his presence.

A man in a white shirt with an open collar glanced at the pale man flexing his fingers and then hurried past.

'What help do you want?'

'The prostitute killer,' he said. 'I may know who it is.'

'Ah,' she said as they walked.

'I know it is probably one of three people,' he added as she paused to look into the window of a hat shop on Kalinin Prospekt.

'And how am I to help?' she asked.

'You want us to catch this killer,' he said.

It was not a question, so she did not answer. She simply said, 'I want you to catch the killer. I knew one of… I knew die second victim, Illyana Osnakovich.'

'She was the third victim,' Karpo corrected.

'An important revision,' she said, still looking at the 'It might be. Information must be kept in order or' 'Do you like mat hat?' she interrupted. 'That…' he said, looking at the red hat with the wide brim. 'It does not look particularly functional.'

'It is very functional,' Mathilde said. 'I would like that hat. You would like that hat on me.'

'You are asking for a reward to do what you should do as a duty to the state,' he said seriously.

'No,' she said, squinting into the shop window and shielding her eyes with her hands to see if there were a salesperson inside. 'I'll help, but I'd also like the hat.'

'You'll have the hat,' he said, wanting to massage his left arm with his right hand but resisting the urge.

'You plan to use me to lure this killer, to identify him when he tries to kill me.'

'Yes,' Karpo said.

A car skidded on the street somewhere behind them. They did not rum to look.

'It will be dangerous?' she asked.

'Perhaps,' he answered.

'The red hat?'

'Yes,' Karpo said, looking at her. 'The red hat.'

CHAPTER SIX

Maya held Pulcharia's cheek against her own as they stood in line in front of the shoe store on Gorky Street. She cooed something meaningless into the baby's ear and bounced her gently, almost backing into the couple behind her. The man was wearing denim pants, a checked shirt, and a white American cowboy hat. He had thick eyebrows and a thick beard. The woman was dark, thin, pretty, with long black hair. She carried a large colorful handbag that clashed with her blue-and-pink long skirt with a zigzag white pattern, which in turn clashed with the tight knit blouse with horizontal green stripes. The woman's shoulders were bare and brown.

'Eezveenee' t'e, pashah' lsta' Maya said to the woman.

The woman smiled, brushed her arm where the baby might have touched her, and said, 'It's nothing. The baby is very beautiful.'

'Thank you,' said Maya, looking at Pulcharia's sleeping face to reassure herself.

'I hear the shoes are Korean,' the woman said.

'I heard Polish,' said Maya.

'Polish,' agreed the bearded cowboy.

The line moved forward, and Maya glanced across the street, where Sasha had been pacing as she waited in line. He should have been working. This was not a normal day off. He said that he had been assigned a new case, something to do with a gang of youths who were involved with some kind of extortion against shopkeepers beyond the Outer Ring Road. He shouldn't have come home to play with the baby. He shouldn't be pacing the sidewalk while she waited in line for a pair of Korean or Polish shoes. She wasn't sure they could afford shoes, but Sasha had absently told her to go ahtad, get in line. They would manage.

Maya wanted to put the baby back in the buggy, but she was afraid Pulcharia would cry. The people in line would begin by being sympathetic and understanding and end by being irritable and giving her nasty looks. The morning was hot. The line was slow. The woman behind her was young and pretty, and Sasha was brooding. Maya reached back and pulled the buggy with one hand, holding the baby tightly with the other, as the line moved again.

Across the street, Sasha approached the cart of a white-clad ice-cream vendor, gave her some coins, and waited while she opened the metal door on her cart, reached in, and pulled out two ice-cream pops. Maya watched as he carefully crossed Gorky Street, dodging traffic. Maya watched him and was struck by the feeling that this moment had happened before. That she had stood here before now and that now the moment was happening again. Perhaps she had not stood here but had been a baby like her daughter and had seen her own father crossing the street with two ice creams. She knew the word for it, deja vu, but this wasn't quite it.

'Ice cream,' Sasha said, holding one out to her. 'I read a report only weeks ago that said Muscovites eat a hundred and seventy tons of ice cream every day, summer and winter.'

Maya took the ice cream and Sasha took the baby, who stirred drowsily. Sasha handed Maya his own ice cream and gently put the baby in the buggy. Pulcharia made an irritable sound, and Sasha began to rock the buggy with one hand as he took his ice cream back from Maya with the other. A babushka farther up the line turned around with a frown to see what was going on, saw the carriage, approved, and turned back to face the shoe store with her bag in her hand.

'I feel very old,' said Maya after a small bite of the ice cream.

She looked back at the cowboy and the pretty girl in the clashing colors, who were engaged in a head-to- head whispered discussion.

'So do I,' Sasha said. 'The problem is that neither of us looks old or is old. It's a feeling that goes away.'

'But it comes back,' Maya said, taking another bite.

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