Not a literal giant, but at six-foot-ten and weighing 310 pounds, he qualified in the eyes of most people. Ivan’s face was slightly contorted and his head shaved. He could charitably be called homely. Those with less charity called him ugly.
Everything about Ivan was a bit off, even his smile, which came out as a horrific grin. He did have strong, white, and even teeth, though most were not his own. When he removed them, even he beheld himself in the mirror as incredibly homely.
However, Ivan was admired throughout Russia. People came to see him, wish him well, give him advice, ask for his autograph, or have a photograph taken with him. Ivan always obliged and tried not to grin when he heard the click of the camera button.
Ivan was a boxer, a very good boxer whose record as a professional was twenty-nine wins and no losses, with eighteen knockouts.
He was not only powerful-his right hand was compared to a trip-hammer-but he was also a surprisingly agile boxer who used his long arms to fend off jabs and tie up opponents who tried to get in close to throw a desperate punch.
It had happened by chance. First, in the small town of Galich where he was born. He was recruited to play basketball. He had no talent for it. His parents were a midwife and a postal clerk of average height and no great skills. And then he had been discovered by Klaus Agrinkov, who was visiting his sister in Galich. Klaus had been a middleweight until age and a soft belly had ended his career. Klaus had achieved world-class rating and even fought his way into contention before being knocked out and suffering a dangerous concussion at the hands of a promising Kenyan who went on to the championship. Klaus jokingly sparred with Ivan for a photo in the Galich newspaper. Klaus was impressed by the big man’s natural ability.
And so it began.
And now five years later Ivan the Terrible was scheduled to fight in New York for the championship of the world. But an adjustment, postponement, or cancellation of the bout would have to be announced because Ivan Medivkin was being sought for the murder of his wife and his sparring partner, both of whom had been furiously beaten to death in a room in the Golden Apple Boutique Hotel.
Some of this Inspectors Iosef Rostnikov and Akardy Zelach knew before they entered the Moscow Circle Health and Gymnasium, not inside the Inner or Outer Ring but on a run-down street in an eastern Moscow suburb.
“Have you ever boxed, Akardy?” asked Iosef.
Iosef was a good-looking man of average height, with the first signs of gray in his short sideburns. He was not as broad as his father, but time was slowly changing that. Iosef was scheduled to be married in less than a week to Elena Timofeyeva. He had evaded the inevitable far too long, and so had she. Love was undeniable, but so was apprehension and even fear.
“I boxed in school, a little,” said Akardy, whose nickname, the Slouch, was almost inevitable.
Akardy Zelach, slightly taller than Iosef and about the same weight, walked and stood with an unconfident slouch. At the age of forty-one, Zelach lived with his mother and took care of her. There was almost nothing he thought that he did not share with her, including the way she looked and walked. There was something almost benevolently bovine in their looks. This was mitigated by the glasses Akardy had been forced to wear in the past year. He now had the look of a cloddish university professor who specialized in something vaguely arcane, like plant life in the mountains or literature of the Inuit. This was a false impression. Akardy was, in fact, not very bright. He was a man of many small talents and a wide range of interests, but a stunning intellect was not one of them.
The two inspectors worked well together and enjoyed each other’s company. Iosef was a born leader, ready to confront authority. Zelach was a follower.
They mounted the narrow stairs accompanied by the smell of sweat and tobacco. Iosef went first. Above them was the sound of a man shouting. The door at the top of the stairs was marked only with the crude and faded drawing of a boxing glove.
When the two detectives entered, they could both see and hear the shouting man who paced alongside a floor-level boxing ring. Inside the ring two small men in sweatpants, T-shirts, and headgear were trading punches with oversized boxing gloves.
There were dirty wall-to-ceiling square windows on one wall and posters announcing old fights, many with renderings of real boxers. The newest posters were of Ivan Medivkin, “the Giant.”
The room was decidedly cold. The cold did not seem to affect the shouting man who wore trousers and no shirt. A white towel was draped over his left shoulder.
Iosef and Zelach approached. The man’s hoarse voice vibrated through the room, which was lit only by the morning sun that managed to make its way through the dirty windows.
“Drop your right one more time and I climb in there and show you what can happen to you,” the man shouted.
One of the two boxers touched his thumb to his forehead to signal that he understood, and the young men in the ring went at it again.
“Better. Better, but don’t drop it.”
“Klaus Agrinkov?” Iosef said.
The shouting man held up a hand without looking. The movement was designed to stave off for a minute or two whoever had called his name.
“What happened to your left hand? Are you suddenly paralyzed? Should I call a doctor? Use the damn thing!”
Klaus Agrinkov turned his head now and looked at the two visitors.
“Police?”
Iosef nodded. Zelach adjusted his glasses.
“You found him?” asked Agrinkov.
“No, not yet,” said Iosef.
Agrinkov wiped his face with the towel, looked at Iosef, and said, “I know you.”
Iosef had seen the man before him fight at the end of his career. It had been a bizarre spectacle in which the six-round boxing match was held after the presentation of a play Iosef had written before he had become a policeman. Agrinkov, paunch already showing and hair already graying, had handily beaten the twenty-year-old sailor who had won the fleet middleweight championship the previous year. It had been no real contest. It had looked to Iosef like a father beating his son in a fury for showing a lack of respect.
“Gronsky Theater eight years ago. I wrote the play that was presented before your fight.”
“I remember you, but I never saw your play. I don’t have the patience for plays or movies or books.”
“That night your patience was rewarded,” said Iosef. “The play was a misconceived effort, a didactic ramble. The audience was wrong, but even so the play should have been staged after the fight. Actually, it should not have been staged at all. The people of Moscow do not need to be lectured about Chechnya.”
The punches, grunts, and footsteps of the men in the ring punctuated the conversation.
“Is there somewhere quiet where we can talk?” asked Iosef.
Agrinkov shrugged and said, “This way.”
And then back at the men in the ring he shouted, “Take a break. No, do not take a break. Go work on the bags.”
As they walked across the gym, Agrinkov exchanged the towel for a blue sweatshirt on a folding chair standing lonely, facing nothing.
“I’d be better off going into the ring myself next week. In here.”
He held open a windowless door to let the policemen walk in. He followed and closed the door on a large room with a cluttered desk and what looked like a massage table covered with a thin white mattress. The walls were covered with framed photographs of boxers and unframed posters from past battles. There were five chairs scattered around the room in no pattern. Agrinkov slipped on his sweatshirt and sat behind the desk. Iosef and Akardy both found chairs and turned them toward the desk. They sat.
“We looked for you at the Novotny Gymnasium,” Iosef said. “They sent us here.”
“Here,” Agrinkov said with a sigh as he looked around the room. “This is where I started managing eight years ago, picking up promising thugs, like the ones you saw out there sparring, from the streets. Booking whole
