that effect on men, the creation of a faint vibration.
He pressed ahead. “Let’s assume the person who killed Ludmila was waiting in your apartment. Where were you?”
“I was working late at the magazine with Obolensky. Maxim swooped in and said I had been reported dead, that I had jumped from my balcony and we had to get out of Moscow as quickly as possible. Because once you’re officially dead you soon will be. It’s a matter of bookkeeping. We drove all night to Kaliningrad. I didn’t know Ludmila was going to my apartment.”
“The question is who pushed her. She would have rung the bell when she got to your apartment.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“But Ludmila had a key of her own, didn’t she?”
Her voice hollowed out. “Yes. My sister was mistaken for me and she died. Now I’m alive pretending to be her.” Although she clearly despised tears, she wiped her eyes before she changed the subject. “Maxim told me about your adventure on the beach. So you met the boy called Vova.”
“He drives a hard bargain.”
“I know. I paid fifty dollars for the notebook.”
“What’s in it?”
She said, “I confess, I don’t know.”
Arkady almost laughed. “You don’t know? People are being shot and thrown off balconies for this notebook, and you don’t know why?”
“Joseph, the interpreter, was going to translate it for me.”
“And this was going to be a big story, as big as a war in Chechnya or a bomb in Moscow?”
“That’s what Joseph said. And the proof was in the notebook.”
“He didn’t give you any idea?”
“Only that it couldn’t be understood by anyone but him.”
“Why was he willing to help you? Why was he willing to put his life in danger?”
“He wanted to be somebody. He wanted to be something besides an echo, which is what he had been all his life. Besides, he thought that keeping everything in notes that only he could read would keep him safe.”
“Instead it’s poison passed from hand to hand.”
“Have you got the notebook?” she asked.
“It’s with a friend.”
“An interpreter?”
“You could say that.”
The tea had gotten cold. Tatiana stared out the screen door at a row of watermelons that had swollen and split open.
“It’s my fault,” Arkady said. “If I had just kept my nose out of it and not questioned the identification of Ludmila’s body, you might be safe.”
“Now you have to follow through. You’re the investigator.”
Arkady heard a noise. The pug had nudged open a cabinet and spilled the box of dog biscuits.
Tatiana swept them up. “What a little pig.”
“That reminds me, how did Polo get here?”
“Maxim brought him later.”
“That’s a long drive. You have to go through Lithuanian and Polish customs and all. Maxim was happy going back and forth?”
“He seemed to be.”
Arkady wondered what they would do to her, those censors who follow journalists with a pistol or a club. Just as she must have been wondering.
“Do you know Stasov?” Tatiana asked.
“We’ve talked on the phone.”
The gate was open. Arkady pulled a window shade aside to see a man in a weathered Audi parked across the street at a travel agency that promised romance in Croatia. He didn’t look like someone planning holiday.
“Do you have a gun?” Arkady asked.
“Do you?” She read his pause. “What a helpless pair of human beings.”
Arkady shrugged. So it seemed.
He went to the other rooms. The house was small and snug, feeding off one narrow hallway. The furniture was prewar oak. Ancestors looked out from oval frames. The back room had been made into a photography darkroom with a back door that did not open.
“You’re not going to find anything. Stasov took my laptop.”
“But he still thinks you’re Ludmila?”
“So far. I erased everything.”
On the bed was a backpack stuffed to the gills. It wasn’t the sign of someone resigned to being trapped.
“Where is your canary? She seems to have taken her cage with her.”
“With a friend.”
“Then you’re ready to go.”
She took a second to say, “I suppose so.”
“Where?”
She fixed Arkady with a look that told him he was asking for more trust than he had earned. After all, how long had she known him? Fifteen minutes? And what could he do for her while she was trapped?
• • •
Arkady went first with Polo and rolled the pug’s rubber ball underneath the detective’s car. The dog set in yapping hysterically enough that Arkady had to shout, “Don’t move.”
Stasov rolled down his passenger window. “What? What are you talking about?”
“My dog is under your car. If you move, you’ll run over him.”
“Then get him out.”
“I’ll try if you don’t move.”
“I’m not moving, for God’s sake.”
“He was chasing a ball.”
“Just get the fucking dog. What an idiot.”
“Do you have the emergency brake on?”
“Hurry up or I’ll run you both the fuck over.”
“He’s only a puppy.”
“He’s roadkill if you don’t get him out.”
“Can you reach his leash from your side?”
“No, I can’t reach his fucking leash.”
“Oh good, we have more people to help.”
“We don’t need more people.”
“You can’t blame a puppy.”
“I will fucking shoot you if you don’t get away from the car.”
“Well, he seems to have disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Oh, I see him. It’s all right, thank God.” Arkady pulled Polo out by the leash and picked him up. By then Tatiana had slipped out the garden gate and joined the shoppers in the stalls.
• • •
“Six letters, a breed of dog, starting with the letters
“I don’t believe this,” Zhenya said.
“Come on, don’t be such a stick. You’re doing a puzzle, I’m doing a puzzle. We can help each other. Okay, favorite television show, two words, starting with
Half an hour passed before the man in the hall pressed his mouth to the door again. “Don’t be such a hard-
