was backing away toward the street.
Neither man fired again for a beat. Karpo knew he could not fire again at this distance, that there was too much danger of hitting one of the people running away behind Jerold, who raised his weapon for another shot at Karpo, who rolled to his right, pushing the table at which they had sat and sending it and the umbrella toppling. Jerold was out of time. He turned and ran down Kalinin Prospekt to the curb. Karpo rolled from behind the fallen table and kicked the fallen umbrella away as Jerold got into a dark car that had pulled to the curb.
Karpo could not see the driver clearly, but he could see that it was a young man, a young man with glasses and short hair, and he was sure that it was Yakov Krivonos.
As the car pulled away, hitting the rear of a white Volga waiting in front of it, Karpo ran toward it. But when he reached the street, the dark car was weaving through traffic.
Karpo was already moving toward the waiting white Volga that Krivonos had hit when he noticed something on the curb. He paused for an instant only to satisfy himself that it was blood. He had hit Jerold.
The driver of the Volga, a thin, bald man wearing a dark suit, stood at the curb, his keys in his hand, looking at the armed specter advancing on him. The bald man threw down his keys and went down on his knees, covering his eyes with his hands, sure that he was about to die.
It was too late. Traffic had closed in on the street. The rush home had begun.
The black car was lost.
'Get up,' said Karpo. 'I'm a policeman.'
He put his gun back into the holster under his jacket and kicked the man's keys back to him. Behind him, Karpo could hear the intentionally unpleasant sound of a police vehicle. There would be no point in walking away. He was well aware that he would be easily identified by his description and that there would be a report about the shooting on the desk of the Wolfhound within the hour. But the colonel was a busy man and might not get to that report for hours.
No, Karpo decided, it would be best to return to Petrovka, quickly prepare his report on the incident, get the information Inspector Rostnikov wanted from the computer, and leave before he was again summoned to see the colonel.
A few things had changed this morning. Jerold was injured. Krivonos had definitely changed his appearance, and Jerold had said enough to make Karpo very anxious to talk again to Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.
EIGHT
'And now?' yakov krivonos said as he watched the thin woman with stringy hair tear away Jerold's pants.
'Nothing changes,' said Jerold, who was lying on his stomach in the position the stringy woman had guided him.
'Nothing changes,' Yakov agreed, looking around the room.
The room smelled of medicine and tobacco, and the woman, in a baggy black dress with somber purple circles, did nothing to enliven it. She barely spoke and acted as if Yakov were not even in the room.
Yakov had driven more than twenty miles on the Kashira Highway to Gorki Leninskye and to the small house where the woman who now worked on Jerold's pants had opened the door and ushered them in without a word.
'I need my gun,' said Yakov, walking around the small room that had been set up as a surgery. 'I need my music. When are you getting me another Madonna?'
'Now you need me,' said Jerold as the stringy woman cut away the leg of his pants. 'Later, you will have Madonna.'
Yakov paused in his wandering about the room to look at the bullet wound in Jerold's right side. He knew it would be worth seeing. The front seat of the car he had stolen was soaked with Jerold's blood, and though Jerold had neither moaned nor complained, his voice had dropped just a bit during the ride, and his breathing was definitely heavy. By the time they had reached this house, Jerold was definitely quite pale.
Jerold's wound was dark and round, big enough to put a finger in. Yakov wondered if Jerold would scream if he suddenly poked his finger into the wound. Would the doctor who displayed no emotion scream if Yakov then licked his bloody finger?
These were important questions. Questions that should be in a song, a song Yakov should, would, write. Carla had thought his idea of writing songs was ridiculous. She had never said so, but he knew what she thought. He had wonderful ideas for songs. Maybe he would get a group together quickly and perform at the Billy Joel after he killed Yuri Blin. No, he would be in Las Vegas. It was gone. The question he wanted to put into a song. It was gone.
Carla had suggested that he write his ideas in a little notebook. Perhaps he would. When Jerold gave him the money, he would write songs, learn to play the guitar, get the best teacher.
'The bone is not broken,'' the stringy woman doctor said. She had put on a pair of rubber gloves and probed the wound. Jerold had not uttered a sound.
' 'I can remove the bullet,'' 'Remove it,' said Jerold, turning on his side to look at her.
' 'You will need blood,'' the woman said, moving to a sink in the corner in which she dropped the bloody rubber gloves.
' 'Then get it,' said Jerold.
The woman looked at him and nodded, and then she looked at Yakov.
'I'm going out in the woods to play music on Waltherand Blackhawk.'
The woman looked at Yakov, who met her eyes. It was Yakov who turned away.
'Blackhawk is in the car,' said Yakov, looking around the room for something to touch, something to play with.
Yakov considered the possibility of killing the doctor when she finished working on Jerold, but there were many reasons why he knew he would not. He didn't like the idea of touching this emotionless creature. He was afraid she wouldn't react, would just look at him with disapproval regardless of what he did to her, and maybe, as Carla had done, she would taunt him. That was it. Now he remembered why he had thrown Carla through the window. She had taunted him because he was unable to rouse himself, to keep himself erect. Carla had said it was the pills Jerold was giving him, and Carla had smiled. Carla no longer smiled.
'The one who shot you,' said Yakov, looking at himself in a mirror over the sink and trying to recognize the Yakov he knew in that clerk's face he saw. 'The one who tried to kill me. I can go back and kill him while she takes care of you.'
'Stay here,' said Jerold behind him.
'You'll take days, a week to-' Yakov said as the stringy woman left the room.
'I will be up in two hours. Nothing changes. And we do not have to kill the policeman. He is of no importance.' ' 'He shot you,'' said Yakov, turning away from the mirror. There were sharp instruments here, scalpels. It would be fun to hold one, turn it over, let it catch the light. He had done that before, not so many years before.
'Revenge is meaningless,' said Jerold, finding it difficult to hold his head up.
'Someone does something to me, it sits in my chest like clay,' said Yakov, pointing to his chest. 'I want it out.'
'Stop thinking of immediate gratification. Think of living in Las Vegas.'
Yakov grunted. He saw no scalpel.
Perhaps he would like to live in Hollywood instead of Las Vegas. That would be nice, too. To be rich anywhere in the United States would be nice. To meet Madonna would be nice, but there was a lump of clay forming in the chest of Yakov Krivonos, and it was slowly molding into the face of the policeman who looked like Death. He did not want to look down at it, but he knew he must.
Jerold's eyes were closed as he lay back on the table, but the doctor was looking at Yakov. He avoided her eyes.
'I'll give you something,' she said flatly, moving to a cabinet in the corner and opening it.
