streets would be empty. What would you suggest we do now?”
“Me?” asked Zelach. He thought for about ten seconds. “We have the rabbi, Belinsky, see if he can identify Tutsolov as one of the men who attacked him.”
“A possibility,” said Rostnikov. “At this point it certainly would provide the strong suggestion of a connection to the murders if he were identified. However, Belinsky saw very little of the faces of two of the men who attacked him. The one he can identify with certainty is the one whose nose he broke. So …?”
“We talk to Tutsolov’s roommate?” Zelach tried.
“Yes,” said Rostnikov. “Leonid Sharvotz.”
Zelach smiled.
Tutsolov was loading a machine with crumpled white sheets when the policemen wended their way through the laundry. The strong clean smells of bleach and detergent contrasted with the faint smell of food in the tight little lunchroom behind them where they had spoken to the nervous young man. Tutsolov smiled and waved. Zelach did nothing. Rostnikov nodded.
Rostnikov paused to thank the overweight Anna Karenina and then, with Zelach right behind him, escaped the noise of the laundry.
When they had gone, the supervisor, Ludmilla, walked over to Tutsolov and asked him what was going on. She was not sure what she thought about the young man. She, too, knew that he was a liar. He missed too much work, and his excuses were too varied and a bit difficult to keep swallowing dry.
“A friend of mine was murdered,” said the young man sadly, continuing to load the machine. “Almost a brother. They wanted to know if I knew anyone who might want him dead. No one would want Igor dead. He was the gentlest person I’ve ever known besides my mother.”
“Would you like to take the rest of the day off?” Ludmilla heard herself saying.
“Yes, please,” Yevgeny said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. “I’ll stay late tomorrow.”
Ludmilla touched his shoulder and said nothing. She felt him trembling. From fear, grief?
Yevgeny Tutsolov, under the scrutiny of his curious fellow workers, took off his white smock and headed for the small room near the door where the coats and boots were kept.
There was no doubt in his mind now. Leonid would have to die. He had planned that from the beginning, but he was hoping to wait till they were safely out of the country or about to leave. But if this policeman found Leonid, Leonid might well break. Georgi, up to this moment, had posed the greater problem and had been first on Yevgeny’s death list, but things were changing, and quickly. It would have to be done tonight, risks or no risks. They would have to find it tonight. And he would have to kill both his remaining partners tonight. He could consider nothing else.
He put on his coat and hat and went down the echoing corridor to the employee exit. As he left, he wondered where Leonid had gone that morning, why he had not been home when the police had come. Whatever the reason, Yevgeny was grateful that Leonid had gone out.
Two hours later Georgi arrived at the hotel where Yevgeny worked. He hid by the loading dock behind a huge metal garbage container, moving when anyone came out into the cold to dump garbage or leave. His plan was simple: come out slowly behind Yevgeny when the shift in the laundry was over, and follow him till he was alone and the other workers were scattered. He would do it quickly, in a doorway or behind a wall or truck or leafless clump of trees or bushes. If Yevgeny spotted him, he would simply have to risk killing the younger man under less than ideal circumstances. There was no point in making up a lie. Yevgeny was too smart.
Georgi moved from foot to foot, rubbed his gloved hands together, kept retying his scarf around his face, and waited till the shift ended. The workers began coming out. There were more than Georgi anticipated, but he was sure he would see Yevgeny.
The only problem was that Yevgeny did not come out. He waited almost twenty minutes more, but Yevgeny never emerged. Had Leonid warned him? Was he still inside? He had no idea that the partner he had come to murder had left before Georgi had arrived.
Not only had he left two hours before Georgi showed up-Yevgeny had headed directly for Georgi’s apartment after he was certain he was not being followed. He expected Georgi to be at work. His plan had been to write a simple note saying “tonight,” slip it under the door, and go to the apartment to be sure the police had not found the Kalishnikov automatic. He doubted they had. They would have arrested him, or at least said something. There was something unsettlingly odd about the crippled policeman who asked questions about colors and seemed to be thinking about other things besides the man across the table.
Yevgeny didn’t even bother to knock. As he leaned over to push the note under the door, he thought he heard a sound on the other side. He pressed his ear to the door and thought he could hear what sounded like sobbing or whimpering. Georgi did not sob or whimper. Yevgeny could do both on demand, but not Georgi. Georgi didn’t have the skill, intelligence, or imagination.
Who was inside the apartment?
Yevgeny hesitated and then slipped the note under the door. Almost immediately, he heard a gasp in the small apartment. Yevgeny quickly left the building and crossed the street so he could be seen by anyone looking out of Georgi’s window. He went around the block, making his way among strolling pedestrians carrying colorful and not-so-colorful plastic shopping bags covered with ads for Dockers and Mitsubishi cars, people wandering, most with nowhere to go. He completely circled the block and crossed to the same side of the street as Georgi’s apartment, being careful this time to stay out of view of Georgi’s window. He spotted a darkened doorway across the street from where he could see Georgi’s window. He went back to the corner and crossed along with a group of bundled people, half of whom walked down the sidewalk across from Georgi’s building. When he got to the darkened doorway, Yevgeny stepped into the shadows, acting as if he were reaching into his pocket for keys.
His back to the corner, Yevgeny gazed up at Georgi’s window. He was cold. After five minutes, Leonid appeared in the window, looking out nervously. He appeared for only an instant. In the next twenty minutes, he repeated the move to the window five times, looking as if he were trying to decide something, staying back in what he hoped were the shadows of the room.
Finally Georgi came walking down the street and entered his apartment building. Georgi should have been at work. Yevgeny watched for twenty minutes more. When Leonid failed to come out of the building, Yevgeny carefully joined a passing group of pedestrians and moved slowly, averting his head from Georgi’s window, striking up a conversation with an old man about the elections.
Not long after, Yevgeny was in his and Leonid’s apartment. He took off his coat and boots and lay down on his bed after assuring himself as best he could that the room had not been searched. Later he would check on the Kalishnikov. He put his hands behind his head and began to plan, to figure out the puzzle.
It was not a difficult puzzle to figure out. The question was what would he do about it and when.
Yevgeny could not put aside the visit of the one-legged policeman who had convinced him that the move had to be that night. There was something about him, something that made Yevgeny feel that the older man might be able to see through his act. But that, Yevgeny decided as he lay in bed, was almost certainly a wrong interpretation. The policeman was like all the others he had deceived, probably not as bright as some he had dealt with.
Yevgeny closed his eyes now, trying to convince himself that he was confident, that his intelligence and willingness to kill would see him through, that he could handle Leonid, Georgi, and the police. What he needed now was a little luck, not much, just a little for the job that had to be done tonight. He had enough information from Igor’s letter. He would use Leonid and Georgi to help him find the prize, and then, before they could move on him, he would kill both of his friends, kill them where they stood, and have the rest of the night and part of the morning to make his way to Belarus, pay a few bribes, and continue to Poland and then Germany, where he would become rich enough to call himself a prince and live like one.
Alexi Monochov, in his saggy and faded blue prison uniform, sat at the table in the small room. Across from him sat the same three men who had thwarted him at Petrovka only a day earlier. The one in the middle, the one with the artificial leg, pursed his lips and tapped on a large envelope he held before him. The man to the right was the erect pale vampire in black whose face showed nothing. To the left sat the large-headed nervous man with glasses, the one who had figured out that Alexi’s first detonator was a decoy. It was of this man that he was most wary. There was a look on the third man’s face that Alexi could not read.
“Alexi Monochov,” Rostnikov said, “you are a clever man, a prankster, a man with a true Russian sense of irony.”
