A Whisper to the Living

danger.

The wedding. How could there be a wedding when the bride, groom, and father of the groom were all involved in solving different violent crimes? How could there be a wedding in which bride and groom feared the loss of their independence?

Was it too late for them to change their minds? Yes. Things she had already ordered could be kept reasonably fresh at the markets, at least for a few days, but not beyond that. People had been invited and had accepted.

When Porfiry Petrovich had kissed her and gone through the door, Galina and her two granddaughters came up from their apartment to keep Sara company.

“Where is Porfiry Petrovich?” asked the younger granddaughter. “Is he fixing someone’s toilet?”

“Perhaps,” said Sara.

Galina had brought vatrushka, sweet cottage cheese-filled pastries, from her work, and the four of them had eaten the pastries with tea and told of their day. Sara had the least to say. She had gone to her treatment earlier in the day, treatment to keep the malignancy from returning. She was reassured once again by her cousin Leon, who was also her doctor, that she was cancer free. The cost of remaining cancer free, however, was an ever-present fatigue, which she fought to keep under control.

Sara kept from slouching like Zelach or shuffling like her husband or looking blank like Karpo. She had wonderful examples in her life of how not to look. Leon had suggested that she merely remember to walk heel down first and chest up to maintain erect posture and a firm step.

Sara had reached out and touched the cheek of Galina’s older granddaughter, who smiled through her disappointment. On the one hand, nothing delighted the girl more than serving as Rostnikov’s assistant when he went on an apartment mission, tools in the box in one hand, to repair a fissure or diagnose a change in pressure. Only a complete rupture of ancient piping pleased her more. The younger girl, on the other hand, was particularly taken by Porfiry Petrovich’s nightly ritual of taking his weights out of the cupboard, pushing his bench away from the wall, and lifting. She was convinced that he was the strongest man in the world.

They had departed more than two hours ago and now Sara lay on the bed with a night- light on, glasses on her nose. She was trying to read one of her husband’s detective novels in English, but her English simply was not good enough to make the effort even slightly enjoyable. She began to think of the wedding once more.

The apartment was really too small for the wedding reception, which was to take place after the official sanction of the government wedding bureau. It would have to spill out into the hallway outside their door and probably down the stairs.

She had wanted to rent the former neighborhood Communist Party Headquarters offices, now a meeting hall for groups of almost all persuasions and perversions. Iosef had said no. He and Elena needed no meeting hall. Sara and Porfiry Petrovich, who had not had a wedding party of their own when they got married, both understood. So all would be crowded into the apartment in which she now lay.

She would have help. Some of it, like Galina’s, was welcome. Some, like that of Lydia Tkach, was most unwelcome but impossible to reject. The effort of communicating with Sasha’s mother was not worth the small woman’s willing and ever-moving hands, which jumped into service. Anna Timofeyeva had volunteered to help and Sara had said it would be most welcome, though, in fact, Anna Timofeyeva had already survived three heart attacks and seldom left the small apartment in which she lived with her niece Elena.

There would be no pretense of impressing Igor Yaklovev, who had, to Sara’s surprise, said he would attend. He had never been to the Rostnikov apartment and she had never met him. He would find it small, with old but serviceable furniture and marvelous plumbing.

Sara had tried to go back to work at the Metro Music Shop near the Kremlin. She and Porfiry Petrovich needed the income. She had been unable to handle the eight or nine hours a day on her feet and being almost constantly engaged in conversation, not to mention the need to be always well-groomed, always presentable.

It was no use. She could not read the English words. She put the book aside and turned off the light. As she did, a wonderful idea came to her, which she vowed to implement in the morning. She was asleep within three minutes.

In the morning, the wonderful idea was gone.

“Your wife was killed by Fedot Babinski,” said Iosef. “It is her blood on his hands and knuckles.”

Ivan Medivkin and Klaus Agrinkov stood silently, absorbing the information. Osip the middleweight was simply bewildered.

“Fedot killed Lena?” said Agrinkov in disbelief.

“Of that there is no doubt, according to our laboratory,” said Iosef.

“Then who killed Babinski?” asked Klaus Agrinkov.

Eyes turned to Ivan.

“Your nose is bruised,” said Iosef. “Let us see your knuckles.”

“His knuckles are always bruised,” said Klaus quickly. “His nose bleeds. Ivan is a boxer. He works out on the bags. His hands bleed and scar and grow harder. Bruised knuckles prove nothing.”

“You do not understand,” said Ivan. “When I got the call saying Lena and Fedot were at the hotel, I was here. My hands were taped.”

“Fedot Babinski killed your wife,” said Iosef.

They still stood in the same semicircle in the gym, Iosef, Zelach, Ivan the Giant, his manager, Klaus Agrinkov, and Osip, the young boxer with a towel draped around his neck.

“Fedot Babinski?” asked Ivan, looking at each face for an answer he did not receive.

“Her blood was on his hands,” said Iosef. “He hit her so hard that he broke a knuckle on his right hand.”

“Weak knuckles,” said Agrinkov. “That is why his career was over. He had to wear pillow-sized gloves just to spar with Ivan.”

“Why did he kill her?” asked Ivan.

“We do not know with any certainty,” said Iosef. “Not yet. A quarrel over something. Tryst gone wrong.”

“She had a fierce tongue,” said Agrinkov. “And a temper that could sting.”

Ivan was shaking his head, trying to figure out what he had heard.

“Our theory,” said Iosef, “is that you came to the hotel room, heard your wife being beaten, entered, and then, seeing her bloody and probably dead, became enraged and beat him to death.”

“I would have,” said Ivan. “But he was dead when I went into the room.”

“How did you get into the room?” asked Zelach.

“The door was unlocked and not completely closed,” said Ivan. “I went in and saw them both there dead. Then I ran and someone tried to stop me.”

“And you went to the room because someone called and told you to go there?” asked Zelach.

“Yes.”

“Did you recognize the caller’s voice?”

“No. I think it was a man, but I am not certain.”

If Ivan was telling the truth, it was very likely the caller had killed Babinski. The caller may even have used the telephone in the hotel room. Iosef whispered something to Zelach, who nodded and moved to the gym door.

“I dressed quickly and did not remove the tape till after. . I did not kill him. I would have, but they were both already dead when I got to the hotel room.”

“To which you were directed by an anonymous phone call?”

“Yes.”

“Man or woman?” asked Iosef.

“I am not certain,” said Ivan.

“And your bruised and bloody nose?”