“You don’t seem concerned that I know your name and am a police officer,” he said.
“I’m not,” she answered.
“That is an attitude I have begun to encounter frequently,” he said with a sigh.
“And it disturbs you? You would rather have people afraid of the police?” she asked.
“It would make my life easier,” he said.
“But the police, the State exist to serve the people,” she said teasingly. “The people are the State.”
This was not going at all as Sasha had expected. Instead of investigating a murder he was being given a political lecture by a flower girl in the middle of a busy square. People were passing by, catching snatches of the conversation, and hiding grins. He had to regain control of the situation, though he was not sure he had ever had such control.
“I have some questions I must ask you,” he said.
“Here? Now?”
“If not here, where? If not now, when?” he answered, mocking her previous political style.
“Ask,” she said, “but ask quickly. I’m losing customers.”
Sasha selected a bunch of flowers and handed the girl a kopeck.
“For my wife,” he explained.
“In that case,” Sonia said, taking the flowers from him and holding out a different bunch, “take the time to give her the freshest ones and not just the first you see.”
“Peotor Kotsis,” said Sasha, taking the flowers from her and letting his fingers touch her hand so he could feel her response to the name at the same time he watched her expression. He detected nothing. She said nothing.
“You know the name?” he went on, now holding the flowers awkwardly in his hand.
“Yes,” she said. “How did you know I-?”
“I must find him,” he interrupted.
“Why?”
She busied herself readjusting the flowers to cover the space left by Sasha’s purchase.
“We have reason to suspect that he may be involved in a major crime,” said Sasha. “That is all I can tell you. What can you tell me?”
“Peotor Kotsis is from the same town in the Turkistan that my family is from,” Sonia said, still smiling but a smile that had lost its mirth. “The Kotsis family long before it was fashionable grumbled about independence. People in our town were afraid of him, his son, the whole family. People in our town humored Kotsis and were relieved when he and his brood left the town. Kotsis vowed to come back a liberator and a hero who had brought independence to Turkistan, to come back a hero or die a martyr.”
“And he came to Moscow?” Sasha prodded, shifting his flowers once more, sorry he had purchased them. A fat woman jostled Sasha, who immediately felt for his wallet and found it still there.
“First through the South, town to town, village to village, locating Turkistanis, recruiting their support, intimidating them into giving him and his growing band food and shelter,” Sonia said, looking beyond Sasha toward the South, though the view was blocked by a massive building.
“And you were with him?” Sasha asked.
“I was with them,” she said, nodding. “I convinced myself that I believed in the Turkistani liberation. I convinced myself because I wanted to get out of that long-dead town of decaying wood and forgotten memories. I was a young girl, and these people were wild and exciting.”
“You are still a young girl,” Sasha said.
“A young woman,” Sonia corrected, pointing a mock scolding finger at him.
“Do you know where Peotor Kotsis is?”
“You mean where he is right now?” she asked in return.
“Now, soon, whatever,” said Sasha.
“Come back here at noon,” she said. “I’ll take you home. You can talk to my father. He’ll know where Peotor Kotsis is. He’ll know where his son Vasily is. He’ll know whatever you need to know. Whether he will tell you is between you and him.”
“Noon,” he said.
She waved as he walked away, and Sasha nodded back. He wasn’t sure what he would do with the flowers. There wasn’t time to take them home for Maya, and he had things to do before he returned to the square to meet Sonia at noon.
And then he got a wonderful idea. Lydia, his mother, worked only a few minutes from here. He found a phone, made his call, and then walked up the street to the Office of Information. He identified himself to the guard at the desk and went up the elevator to the floor where Lydia worked. Although she had worked there for almost two decades, Sasha had entered the building only four times, and one of those was in conjunction with the investigation of a series of murders along the Moscow River. The murderer had never been caught.
On the sixth floor, Sasha located his mother’s supervisor, who politely told the policeman that he could certainly talk to Lydia for a few minutes. The supervisor, who was no older than Sasha, looked at the flowers without comment.
Lydia was seated at her desk in a corner away from the other workers in her section. She did not hear her son approach. But Lydia Tkach heard very little in any case.
“Mother,” Sasha announced.
She didn’t respond. He stepped in front of her into her field of vision and she looked up.
She was a small woman in a no-nonsense business suit, her gray straight hair tied back with a dark band that matched the color of her suit. Once, Sasha thought, she had been a beauty. The cheekbones were still there. The eyes were still bright.
“Who died?” Lydia shouted. “Maya? The baby? Uncle Mikhail?”
“No one died,” Sasha said, looking around as the woman at a nearby desk looked at him. “I was nearby and wanted to bring you this.”
He reached down with the flowers and her hand came up to take them and then pulled back, as if sensing a trap within the bright petals.
“What is this?” she demanded.
“Flowers, Mother,” he said. “Just flowers. I was in-”
“Bribes,” she said, looking around the room toward her fellow workers, who did their best to ignore her. “My own son is reduced to bribes with wilting flowers. I can’t be bought, Sasha. I cannot be bought. You want to throw me into the street. That you can do, but you cannot salve your conscience with a few flowers.”
“Mother, this is-”
“I don’t even like this kind of flower,” she said in exasperation. “You’ve known me thirty years and you don’t know what kind of flowers I like.”
“I’m only twenty-nine, Mother, and I thought you liked all flowers. You always say you-”
She reached over, took the flowers from him, and gave him a look of deep contempt.
“That baby needs me,” she said, fishing into a drawer for a glass, which she popped into the desk and filled with the flowers. “You don’t just take a baby from her grandmother.”
“No one is taking … Mother, we’ve been through all this.”
It was clear to Sasha that everyone within five or six miles was listening to his mother shout. They had no choice even if they had no interest.
“I’ve got to get back to work, Mother,” he said.
His mother glared up at him. Sasha leaned over the desk and kissed her head.
“The flowers aren’t so bad,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“You doing something dangerous today?” she asked, her voice dropping several decibels as she looked up at him.
“What makes you-?” he began.
“Porfiry Petrovich,” she said loudly. “Chief Inspector Rostnikov took me to lunch yesterday and told me about
