might be the surest of them all. Besides, he was a Russian, a Muscovite. It wasn’t just a matter of love or loyalty. It was part of him. His thoughts, past, future were within a few miles of where he now sat worrying about his son, the plumbing, a murderer, a stubborn procurator with a heart condition, a young officer fighting a sense of guilt, and a murder which made him uneasy in ways he could not quite understand.
He rose from the table, reached over with the remnants of his bread to soak up the last bit of moisture from the soup in his bowl, popped the bread in his mouth, and moved to the corner of the room.
“You shouldn’t lift those things after a meal,” Sarah said.
“Later I’ll be too tired,” he countered. Their dialogue had been almost exactly the same on this point for years, but neither could resist it. “I’m preparing for a competition.”
Sarah cleared the dishes and said nothing.
“The weight lifting competition for strong old men,” he said, removing his jacket and shirt and rummaging for the old sweat shirt he wore while lifting.
“Maybe you can get strong enough to lift Samsonov over your head till he promises to fix the toilet,” she said, turning on the kettle on the single burner to create some hot water to clean the dishes.
Rostnikov prepared his weights. It was awkward for him to bend with his bad knee and even more awkward to do the actual lifting. He would definitely forego, if possible, the dead lift and the clean and jerk if the competition permitted. After all, he was a war hero. Compensation should be made for that even if it couldn’t get his toilet fixed.
He was into his fiftieth right arm bend with twenty-five pounds when the phone rang. He kept lifting. Almost all the calls to the apartment were police business, which was why he had the phone. But this time a finger of fear went down his back and made him shiver. It might be about Iosef.
Sarah answered. “It’s for you. Karpo.”
Sarah did not like Karpo. She had met him once, and he had made not the slightest attempt at being civil. Rostnikov assured her it had nothing to do with her being Jewish, that Karpo treated everyone exactly the same- badly-but Sarah did not like him.
“Rostnikov.”
“Inspector, I’ve taken the liberty of having a car sent for you,” said Karpo. There was something strange about his voice as if he felt the need to say each word precisely. “If you would meet me at the Metro entrance at Komsomol’skaya as soon as possible, I will explain. We may have the Granovsky murderer trapped. All exits are blocked.”
“I’ll be there quickly. You sound-” Rostnikov began.
“I have been shot,” said Karpo.
Rostnikov hung up and moved across the room quickly to put on his shirt, jacket, and coat.
“I must go out,” he said. I don’t know when I will be back.”
“You’re sweating,” Sarah said. “You’ll catch cold.”
“I’ll be in a warm car.”
She nodded in resignation.
“Porfiry,” she began as he opened the door.
“Yes,” he said, looking back.
“As always,” she said with a smile.
He returned her smile.
“There’s a hockey game on the television. Why don’t you watch it and report to me when I get back,” he said, closing the door.
He didn’t hear her say to herself, “I hate hockey.”
The path that had taken Emil Karpo to the Komsomol’skaya station with a bullet in his right shoulder had begun shortly after he had left Rostnikov’s office at Petrovka. He had weighed the possibility of taking a bus to Granovsky’s apartment and decided he could make just as good time or better by walking the several miles. The walk in the falling snow had proved to be the easiest part of his night. When he got to the apartment building, he began systematically to question the tenants.
The knock and the announcement, “Police,” got the doors open, and one look at this gaunt specter insured cooperation, but there was little to be learned from most of the people in the building. Some denied even knowing that Granovsky had lived in the building, an obvious lie. Others wanted so much to cooperate that they were prepared to describe endless streams of wild-eyed anti-revolutionary visitors. One woman, who worked in a state pharmacy, claimed that she could smell drugs on Granovsky’s visitors when she passed them in the halls. An old couple named Chernov, who lived below the Granovsky apartment, complained about noise from above but could supply no leads. It soon became fairly clear to Karpo that there was little to be learned from the neighbors, but he also knew enough not to stop. Then, on the fifth floor, he had found Molka Ivanova, a woman so small as to be within a fraction of being a dwarf. She was but one of the one hundred thousand Ivanovas in Moscow, for Ivanova is a more common surname in Moscow than Smith or Jones is in New York. But she proved to be a singularly important Ivanova. Molka Ivanova was a bookstore clerk who shared her apartment with her granddaughter’s family. The granddaughter knew nothing, but Molka was clearly frightened. Karpo bullied his way into the apartment. Molka’s fear was not the result of a normal fear of an honest person confronting the police. She had a secret. It might mean nothing. It might mean everything. She might have a black market purchased television set or forbidden book. Karpo had no time to be discreet and no talent for it.
“The neighbors tell me you know something about the murder of Aleksander Granovsky,” he said, looking down two feet at the woman with his unblinking brown eyes. Her own were fluttering rapidly and she held the top of her dress as if in fear that this ghost was going to attack her.
“It’s nothing,” she said, looking in the direction of her granddaughter and a teen-age boy who sat silently, pretending to pay no attention to anything but the books they held in front of them.
“Tell me the nothing,” he said.
“Well…” she began.
“Now,” he insisted with a smile that chilled the old woman.
“I did hear him…”
“Granovsky?”
“Yes,” she said. “I heard him arguing in the hall last night walking up the stairs. I was coming back from the market. Market Number forty-seven. They had cabbage, green cabbage-”
“On the stairs,” Karpo interrupted.
“They were arguing. He was threatening him.”
“Someone was threatening Granovsky,” Karpo supplied. “Please call him Granovsky.”
“I don’t know whether to call him comrade,” she replied in fear.
“Do so,” said Karpo.
“This man in black was drunk. He was shouting at Comrade Granovsky, saying he was disloyal, should be killed like a dog. Comrade Granovsky ignored him, and the man grabbed him. He’s a big man. Comrade Granovsky spat in his face. Or the man spat in Comrade Granovsky’s face. I don’t remember which. It was very brief. Then Comrade Granovsky pushed the man.”
The retired librarian’s hands went out to demonstrate the push and stopped short of the stomach of Emil Karpo.
“Then?” urged Karpo.
“Comrade Granovsky hurried up to the sixth floor where he lives with the man behind him shouting. And that’s all I heard.”
And, thought Karpo, many others must have heard it too and conveniently forgotten.
“Who was this man in black? You know him.” The second sentence was indeed a statement and not a question, though Karpo only sensed that it should be.
“His name is Vonovich, Mikel Vonovich. He lives down the hall in five hundred ten,” Molka Ivanova said. “He is a cab driver. A big man, as tall as you but bigger across.”
Karpo moved to the door and heard a voice behind him which must have been the granddaughter’s.
“Don’t tell him where you found out. Please.”
Karpo closed the door behind him, moved down the hall, and found five hundred ten. There was no answer. Karpo had decided to get a key and examine the apartment and was turning to find the building manager when
