“I…I…,” stammered the old man, anxious to please.
“No,” said the son, hugging the blanket over his vulnerable legs. “He said nothing. He just ran down Petro Street.” Pytor Roshkov had decided to fix his eyes on the fascinating painting on the wall of the first meeting of the Presidium.
“Then you don’t know if he was a foreigner,” Karpo continued.
“No,” said the son.
“Yes,” said the father.
“If you would try less hard to please me and harder to simply tell the truth, you will get out of here much faster and back to your home or work,” Karpo said. “However, if you continue like this, it may take hours before we feel we can let you go. Now, can you describe the man you saw running from the cab on Petro Street?”
“I…,” began old Roshkov and stopped, clamping his jaw tight with an audible click.
“No,” said the son. “He was a regular man in a black coat and hat and he was young, at least he was fast like a young man.”
“And you heard Ivan Sharikov say ‘Granovsky’?” asked Karpo.
“We don’t know any Ivan Sharikov,” wept the old man. “We are just shopkeepers. We aren’t political, just poor peasants who…”
“Sharikov was the taxi driver who was murdered,” Karpo said evenly.
“Granovsky,” said Pytor, moving his eyes from the painting to look at Karpo, but unable to hold the look.
“So,” babbled the old man, “it’s simple. You find this man Granovsky who killed the cab driver, and everything is fine. So simple. How many Granovsky’s can there be in Moscow? Our police can find him like that.”
“Old man, you are babbling with guilt,” Karpo said softly, wanting to shake the trembling creature into simple responses. “I don’t care what you have done. I want information.”
“Done?” said the old man, rising and pointing a thick finger at his chest. “Done? We have done nothing, nothing. If you mean those shoes, well, those shoes. How were we to know the soles were cardboard. We bought them from…”
“Father, shut up,” shouted the suddenly frantic son rising to quiet the old man and letting the blanket drop to the floor.
“But…” continued the old man, prepared to confess to seven decades of crime. The naked son clasped a hand over the old man’s mouth and Karpo glanced at the uniformed officer who was trying to control a grin.
“Get them out,” said Karpo.
“We want to help,” said the old man, leaning forward on the table as his son retrieved his blanket.
Karpo left the room, feeling the aura of a coming headache. He would retrieve the sickle from the evidence men and work on that. The sickle would be tangible and might say much without speaking. A pinpoint of irritation vibrated somewhere in Karpo’s brain, and he thought of Rostnikov’s question about the American actress. A voice wanted to ask Karpo how anything could be accomplished in such emotionalism, irrelevance, and chaos, but he stilled the voice before it could speak and remembered Rostnikov’s past successes and reminded himself that the Roshkovs were a step in the movement toward an ideal Soviet state, a movement which he knew would not he an easy one.
Perhaps the room was not getting larger. It was a thought he had never considered and the voice of his father had never suggested. This thought came in something like the voice of the cab driver he had killed, the cab driver with the bloody face, the gross pig of a cab driver to whom he owed so much. The smashing of the vodka bottle. The moisture of the vodka in his face. The feeling of solidity when he plunged the bottle into the fat surprised face. The two men in the snow. It had been a warning to stay alert.
He sat on the floor of the apartment, his coat still on, the darkness surrounding him. As the minutes passed, the light from the single window illuminated the familiar room, but it looked unfamiliar, new to him. The world had changed. And then the room had threatened to grow. He had scrambled from the floor to the old chest of drawers, his parent’s old chest and had pulled out the heavy hammer. The handle had been made on the farm by his father and the heavy iron head purchased before he was born. It felt solid, good, and cool. He let the metal head cool his burning cheek and forehead, but the room threatened to grow and he thought again that the room might not be getting larger. What if he were growing smaller? The thought made him shriek and shiver. There should be someone to help. He should turn the lights on, but he couldn’t move. He wanted to put the idea away but it was fascinating. Maybe he would just keep getting smaller and smaller and when she came in in the morning after work, she would step on him, squash him like a bug. There would be a small spot of blood on the floor and she would make a sandwich and go to bed, not knowing what she had done.
But he knew what she had done. Granovsky was smart, so smart, but he was no more and there was no heaven or hell for him. Now he, sitting there with the hammer, was in control of the world. He could kill a cab driver to verify his experience. He was not growing smaller. The room was not getting bigger. It had always passed before and would pass again. He would sit, covered with a terrible sweat, and he would feel fear and no one would help him. She had promised to help him, to stay near him, but that had been a lie. He had only the voice of his father and victims and the hammer. He cuddled the hammer, placed it under his arm, put it between his legs like a wooden erection and laughed. He had taken charge of the world. There would be no more fear or listening to others or standing in line. She would find out. She had changed all this and would get her reward, and the reward would be the hammer as Granovsky’s reward had been the sickle. There should be something beyond that, something to do. Others to be shown, taught. It would come. He knew it would come. He thought of one of his mother’s meals of sausages and dumplings and cheese and the thought held at bay the growing of the room.
CHAPTER FOUR
The file on Aleksander Granovsky had been thick and neat. Sasha Tkach expected as much and knew that the K.G.B. must have drawers of files on Granovsky, but they were files he could not hope to get or see. He had taken the file to the large office room where he had shared a desk with another junior inspector named Zelach. The bottom drawer was supposed to be Sasha’s for records, storing tea, but Zelach kept infringing on the space with his own things. Sasha did not mind sharing the drawer. He minded Zelach’s sandwiches, which left a garlic smell on all of Sasha’s notes and papers.
The lights in the large room were dim, and one or two other inspectors were working. Sasha thought he heard the grunt of a greeting from Klishkov, but he couldn’t be sure. The room was, even when full, a quiet place in spite of the twenty or thirty people who rambled in it at any given time. If one had to shout at a suspect or underling, one was expected to move to an investigating room. The room was also clean, almost antiseptic. One could never go back into the garbage to retrieve an inadvertently discarded note.
Sasha had compiled a list of Granovsky’s acquaintances. The compiling had not taken long, perhaps an hour, even with corresponding addresses, but it was a bit too early to begin to act. There was nothing wrong with questioning people at four in the morning, but Rostnikov had told him to be friendly and persuasive rather than demanding. It was an easier order to give than to execute, for Sasha knew from experience that his youth and disarmingly innocent face would not carry him far in most investigations. Muscovites were too cautious. Innocence was something they distrusted in anyone and were particularly wary of in a policeman.
Sasha pulled out his lunch and began to eat it at his desk, after looking across the room to see if the other officers were interested in his activities. Inspectors were not supposed to eat at their desks. They were supposed to go to the building cafeteria. By pretending to reach for files in his drawer, Sasha managed to sneak bites of the sandwich and wonder if he had enough money to stop at a
The door opened across the room and Emil Karpo, looking like the angel of death searching for his next victim, strode in, carrying a sickle. Sasha sat up with a mouthful of sandwich, and Karpo glanced in his direction. Sasha nodded, trying to hide his bite of sandwich with a gulp that sent him into a choking gasp. Karpo paid no attention and moved to his own desk, where he placed the sickle gently in front of him and closed his eyes.
By six, Sasha Tkach had had enough waiting. He had memorized the list of twelve names but not the
