in her face, her movements, in the fact that she had served him his favorite meal. They would talk later, either in bed or seated on the sofa with the lights low.
He, too, had something to tell his wife, but he was somehow sure that what she had to say was more important. It was her look, the look of a witness who had decided after hours or days or years of agony to come forth with what she knew and could no longer keep to herself.
Dinah Washington and Porfiry Petrovich finished together. He placed the weight back on the stand, and the singer concluded with a plaintive low note that nearly brought tears to the detective’s eyes.
He sat up, reached for his towel, and wiped himself as he looked at the girls, who seemed to find even his wiping of sweat fascinating.
“You are the strongest person in the world,” said the older girl.
Rostnikov looked over at Sarah, who sat in her chair across the room reading a book.
Although neither of the two girls had spoken much since their grandmother was taken from them and sent to prison, they had done reasonably well in school from the day the Rostnikovs had taken them in. And now the girls were gradually beginning to speak more and more.
“Sometime I will take you to watch the Olympic hopefuls working out,” he said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll see one of the former champions, a few of whom are now coaches, demonstrate. Then you will see some of the strongest men in the world. And the strongest ever was …”
“Alexiev,” finished the younger child.
Rostnikov smiled. Normally at this point he would turn off the record player, which he now did, put away the bench and weights in the space he had made behind the doors of the bookcase against the wall, which he now did, and change his clothes and shower, which he did not do.
Rostnikov had many loves, beginning with his wife and son and, more recently, the two little girls who were looking up at him from where they were seated. Following his family on his list, a list of which he was never overtly conscious, were his work and his coworkers, weight lifting, American mysteries, particularly those about the police by Ed McBain, and plumbing.
On his days off Rostnikov would often spend hours searching the outdoor stalls around the city for mystery novels in English. An Ed McBain was always a treasure, as was anything in English translation by Georges Simenon, but close behind were Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, and many others.
When the weights and bench were compactly stored and the bookcase door closed, Rostnikov wiped his brow, neck, and head once more and said to the girls, “Shall we go to work?”
Both children nodded yes and smiled. Rostnikov glanced at Sarah, who looked up and smiled at the trio across the room, but there was something plaintive in her expression.
Rostnikov went into the bedroom and came back with his big plastic toolbox in one hand and five four-foot- long plastic tubes under the other arm. Bulianika and his wife on the fourth floor had come by earlier and left a message with Sarah that their sink was backed up. Sarah had said that if nothing came up at Petrovka, she was sure Porfiry Petrovich would take care of it later.
He told the older girl to get his plastic bucket from the storage box in the kitchen area. She moved quickly.
Rostnikov loved plumbing. He owned books on plumbing and pored over the diagrams even when the books were in German or any other language he could not read. From time to time Rostnikov would drop in on the Detlev Warehouse, a great indoor expanse that had once been a lightbulb factory. Now it was piled with neatly organized building parts, including piping, fittings, and tools for plumbers.
In exchange for the not inconsiderable right to evoke Rostnikov’s name and rank when trouble arose, Detlev and his son, who looked like nearly identical well-built Italian construction workers, complete with dark mustaches and faded overalls, supplied the detective with parts and tools free or at a laughably low price. The Detlevs firmly believed that they were getting the better of the deal by saving the money they would normally have to pay to the police and one of the new mafias. At night an armed guard, an off-duty police officer, protected the warehouse, but the Washtub’s reputation was far more effective.
“We should not be long,” Rostnikov said as the older girl opened the front door with one hand, carrying the bucket in the other.
Sarah nodded.
On the way to the Bulianikas’ apartment, the two girls took turns opening doors for Rostnikov, who moved slowly on his new leg, walking before him with a serious demeanor suitable to the serious business at hand.
For Rostnikov, this building, with its ancient and ill-built pipes, was his challenge. Eventually, if he lived long enough and the building continued to stand, he would probably replace every pipe, joint, toilet, and sink. Behind the walls was a network of metal and plastic that worked like a system of the human body. Water came in supposedly clean and left, usually dirty.
The Bulianikas, an old Hungarian couple whose son had moved back to Budapest years ago, welcomed the repair trio, offering tea and cookies. The girls each took one cookie, as they had been instructed, and Rostnikov said they would all have a quick tea when the job was finished.
The job turned out to be an easy one. The sink, old and cracked, was backed up with foul-smelling water and almost full to overflowing.
“First rule in a case like this,” said Rostnikov to the two attentive girls, “is not to immediately use a plunger or drain auger, that long spring. The cause may be in the fixture drain, right here, or in the main drain, which collects waste from the fixture drains. Or the problem could be in the sewer drain that carries liquid and solid waste out of the house and to the sewer. We’ve had no other complaints, so we can tentatively conclude that the scene of the crime is in the fixture. So we start by clearing the drain opening.”
One of the first things he had done when taking on the circulatory system of the ill-constructed building was to collect a few kopecks from each tenant to buy strainers for each sink. It would not solve any problems, but it would go a long way toward cutting down on clogged drains.
Rostnikov, sweating even more through his white sweat suit, removed the stopper and, using a flashlight, looked down the drain to the first bend a few feet away. He could see nothing.
Then, using his plunger, he created suction and pulled, his neck muscles bulging red, the girls standing back in awe. Nothing.
Next Rostnikov forced the long, flexible metal coil of his auger down the drain. He cranked the handle, which rotated a stiff spring when he hit what he thought might be a slight blockage. This accomplished nothing.
“Next,” said Rostnikov like a seasoned surgeon addressing a group of interns rather than two fascinated little girls, “we can do one of two things. We can use a chemical cleaner, which would probably not work because the drain is completely clogged. If it didn’t work, we would then have to contend with caustic water. So we must dismantle the trap and use the auger on the drainpipe that goes into the floor.”
The girls nodded in understanding as Rostnikov dismantled the trap, found it a bit dirty but clear, and inserted the auger into the floor drain. Again no result. He reassembled the trap and, awkwardly holding on to the sink, pulled himself up.
“The clues lead us elsewhere,” Rostnikov said, picking up his piping and toolbox.
After reassuring the Bulianikas that he was on the trail of the problem, Rostnikov took his equipment and, with the girls ahead of him opening the stairway doors, went to the apartment below, where Vitali Sharakov lived alone. His wife had left him two years earlier. She had stayed with him for years only because he had been a member of the Communist Party, the ranking member in the apartment building, who earned a good living as a district sanitation supervisor, though he knew nothing about sanitation. But Sharakov was now a sullen stoop- shouldered man whose bush of dark hair always looked as if it needed cutting and who frequently looked as if he had forgotten to shave.
He let Rostnikov and the girls in with the air of a man who was accustomed to being intruded upon and had resigned himself to a lack of privacy.
“Plumbing problem upstairs,” Rostnikov said.
Sharakov was wearing socks, a pair of wrinkled pants, and a white T-shirt with short sleeves from which his thin arms dangled like winter birch twigs.
Sharakov nodded. The room was dark except for the light from the television set placed directly in front of an old armchair. As far as Rostnikov could see, the room was neat and clean.
From the television came the voices of a couple of actors arguing about a woman who was married to one
