Stuart Kaminsky - The Dog Who Bit a Policeman

Years ago, actually not that many years ago, Yevgeny and Oleg had played side by side. Yevgeny was a striker. Oleg was a left-wing. Together they had set park league records, and Oleg had gone on to the professional ranks and a coaching career.

Now, Yevgeny could barely get his foot on the ball.

He had murdered a man. Yulia had photographs and tapes that could mean the end of his career, especially the one that seemed to show Yevgeny nude in bed with an equally nude young man who was kissing him. Yevgeny remembered no such incident. It was Oleg who liked other men, not Yevgeny; Yevgeny had been outspoken in his condemnation of drug use, gangs, homosexuality, and alcohol. His positions were part of the campaign that was winning over the hearts and minds of those who had enough of the pleasures of democracy. Yevgeny was not a Communist, never had been, but he truly believed that the best path to gainiing the rights of hardworking and voting Russians was a return to sanity and order with a new, more temperate democracy.

Yevgeny tilted his head back, rubbed his very bristly chin and face, and knew what he must do. He could not sit all day on this bench watching children play and waiting for the rain. Yulia might or might not return. She would certainly be questioned by the police. No, he could not sit here all day and possibly all night.

He had to relocate some fragment of his dignity. He decided to call his wife and son and ask them to come and get him.

Rostnikov got the message from Karpo. It was sitting on his desk when he returned to Petrovka as thunder shook the walls of his office. Thunder, but still no rain. Rostnikov wore a strange suit of light blue pants and a dark blue jacket he had accepted from Leon’s collection of his late father-in-law’s clothes.

One who didn’t know him might think that the Washtub was making some kind of fashion statement. Those who knew him or of him by sight and who saw him enter the building and go up to his office thought that there was some reason for disguise, though they wondered how anyone who looked like Rostnikov, walked like Rostnikov, and was as familiar to the criminal world as Rostnikov, could possibly think that a disguise would be effective. Maybe the Washtub was simply going mad. Even Rostnikov was not immune to lunacy.

Porfiry Petrovich wanted to call Sarah, had planned to call Sarah, but the message from Emil Karpo changed that. He called Karpo in his cubicle across the hall, and Karpo appeared with the copy of his clipping.

“The same weapon killed both the Tatar and the Chechin,”

said Karpo, placing the copy of the newspaper article on the desk in front of Porfiry Petrovich.

Rostnikov read the article and then placed his calls and scratched at his artificial leg where it itched. Karpo stood in front of the chief inspector’s desk, waiting patiently.

It took Rostnikov almost an hour to reach the two Mafia leaders, and in neither case did he talk to them directly. He gave the message to each person to whom he spoke that Shatalov and Chenko should meet him in one hour at the tourist stolovaya, the self-service restaurant, directly across from the Old Moscow Circus.

“It is a small restaurant, as you may know,” he told each man.

“Filling it with men carrying guns will not encourage business.

Only Chenko and Shatalov will be inside.”

In both cases, the person on the other end of the phone said that they would pass on the message.

“It is essential,” said Rostnikov. “Tell them that I know who the killer is.”

Rostnikov hung up the phone after the second call and sat back.

“Emil Karpo, the world is a strange, sad, wonderful, and horrible place, and Moscow is at the very center.”

“I know,” said Emil Karpo, and Rostnikov believed that the gaunt specter before him did know.

“Did you also know that I am keeping voluminous notes for a book I am writing on the tastes, beliefs, interests, and hobbies of Russians? That I am planning to contact an American agent who will sell it for two million dollars? That I will buy a very small restaurant near my apartment where I will be manager, Anna Timofeyeva will come out of retirement to be the chef, and you will be headwaiter?”

“I do not wish to be a headwaiter.”

“I know, Emil. I was joking.”

“I know you were joking,” said Karpo.

“It is part of my lifelong goal of making you smile, though I fear your laughter might cause your death,” said Rostnikov, examining Karpo’s pale solemn face for some sign of amusement, the slightest twitch in the corner of his mouth, a telltale pursing of the lips.

“Humor has no function for me. I was fortunate to be born without the ability to see humor in anything. I recognize irony, as I have just done with your joke, but it does not amuse me. It does not distract me.”

“That is unfortunate,” said Rostnikov. “Distraction is my solace.”

“And justice, which is unattainable, is mine.”

There was a matinee at the Old Moscow Circus. Rostnikov and Karpo had arrived early, and Porfiry Petrovich had talked to the owner of the very small stolovaya with only three tables and a stand-up cafeteria-service counter that ran the length of the shop. The man who owned the shop owed Rostnikov a big favor. The restaurant owner, whose name was Cashierovsky, said he would put a

“closed” sign in the window immediately. The show was beginning at the circus in fifteen minutes, and most of the remaining restaurant patrons would be attending it.

“Can I bring you something?” the man had said. “My pleasure to treat you?”

“Pahmadoori? ” asked Rostnikov.

“Yes.”

“Good, then booterbrod pahmadoori, tomato sandwich,” said Rostnikov. “And a mineral water. Emil?”

“Nothing.”

“You will hurt Cashierovsky’s feelings,” said Rostnikov, who had chosen the table farthest back from the door, which he faced, with Karpo opposite him.

“Tea and a roll,” said Karpo.

“He is a monk,” Rostnikov explained.

Cashierovsky smiled. He knew well who the Vampire was.

Cashierovsky hurried to fill their order, put out the “closed” sign, and shooed out the remaining patrons, telling them that he had to shut down because he was going to the circus.

They were early. It still wasn’t raining.

The day and the view of the circus reminded Rostnikov of another day several years earlier, when he had stood in the rain and watched a circus performer commit suicide by leaping from the head of the statue of Nikolai Gogol in Gogol Square. It had happened right before the eyes of Rostnikov and the traffic policeman in the nearby tower, in addition to dozens of spectators, some of whom had urged the man to jump.

Rostnikov loved circuses. He had taken Iosef many times when Iosef was a boy. He had already taken the two little girls twice. And Sarah, Sarah loved the beautiful, sad clowns and the graceful aeri-alists. Perhaps he could get tickets after this meeting and take Sarah, the girls, and their grandmother. Perhaps he would invite Iosef. Maybe he could even talk Karpo into coming.

Yes, perhaps, and perhaps a circus fairy would leap from the pages of a Lermontov book and give him the money to pay for such an outing.

He wanted to call Sarah, but there was no way of doing so now.

He would simply go home after this meeting and discuss the surgery.

Cashierovsky, a small, pudgy man with very little hair and a wheeze of asthma abetted by the growing pollution of the city, moved as quickly as he could to serve his guests.

“Looks good,” said Rostnikov. “Emil?”

“It looks very good.”

“Tomatoes were a treat when I was a boy,” said Rostnikov, picking up his sandwich.

Cashierovsky stood waiting.

“Delicious,” said Rostnikov, chewing on the bite of sandwich he had taken.

Karpo bit into his roll. “Very satisfying,” he said.

“Peto,” Rostnikov said, “some men will be here in about ten minutes. Two men, I hope. Would you leave the door unlocked and stand near it in case others wish to ignore the ‘closed’ sign?”

“Of course,” said Cashierovsky, already moving back behind the counter.

“You remember my friend Cashierovsky?” asked Rostnikov, savoring his sandwich and mineral water.

“Yes,” said Karpo, slowly eating his roll and sipping his tea.

“Three students from Moscow University beat him, his wife, and his sons, because they are Jewish. They broke his windows and told him to move.”

“What a memory,” said Rostnikov, genuinely impressed, since the incident had happened almost a decade earlier when Rostnikov was still chief inspector in the Office of the Procurator General.

Karpo had not helped with that case. Rostnikov had quickly found the three students and given them the choice of court and certain prison, or dropping out of school and going their separate ways outside of Moscow, after turning over a sum sufficient for Cashierovsky to repair his restaurant. He had also warned them that they would be watched for the rest of their lives, that they were now in the central computer.

The trio had left within a day.

Had they remained, Rostnikov was certain the insane justice system would have been sympathetic to them and probably let them go with a mild warning and a token fine that would not even repair one window they had broken. As for keeping their names in a central computer, it was little better than a joke. Rostnikov wondered what university students were being taught if they did not know the system was nearly useless. The only ones at the time who had decent monitoring systems were the KGB, and they would have no interest in cluttering the memories of their computers with such matters.

But that was long ago. Times had changed. The bureaucracy was different. Things were worse.

Chenko, the one-eyed Tatar, was the first to arrive. The young man who had met Rostnikov before his first encounter with Chenko came out of a car illegally parked at the curb. The windows of the car were tinted. The young man looked both ways and around the street. Then he looked through the window, saw Rostnikov, and returned to open the back door of the parked car. A moment later Chenko came out of the car and quickly entered the door of the restaurant, which the young man helped open for him.

The man stood outside the door, his back to the restaurant, and Chenko moved forward to the table.

“What is this?” said the Tatar.

“A tomato sandwich,” said Rostnikov.

“I don’t like jokes,” said Chenko, cocking his head from side to side to look at the two men.

“Neither does my associate,” Rostnikov said, nodding at Karpo.

“Please sit.”

“If this is a trap,” Chenko said, “my men have been ordered to kill both of you very painfully and then to do the same to all the members of your families till your line is erased.”

“That,” said Rostnikov, “is very colorful. The Godfather, something like that. I believe you, Casmir Chenko. Your problem is that if we were to be killed, our friends would destroy your families. We could start a regular old-style feud with our descendants killing each other, forgetting eventually why they were doing so. This is not a trap. Please sit.”

The gnarled, one-eyed man sat at the table with his back to the side wall. He was between the two policemen.

“Mineral water? Something to eat?”

“Nothing,” said Chenko. “I will remain here for five minutes, no longer.”

At this point, Cashierovsky appeared with a large, round metal tray covered with small plates of food- ukha, fish soup; meat boiled in kvass and served with kasha. He placed the plates and forks out for the men, and, after putting the empty tray on the counter, the shopkeeper moved to stand next to the front door of his establishment, as Rostnikov had asked him.

Rostnikov’s eyes moved to the door as did Chenko’s single eye.

Karpo did not turn. He finished the last piece of his roll and served himself a plate of kasha. Rostnikov ate with one hand, the other in his lap within easy reach of the weapon under his jacket.

Chenko started to rise. “I will not talk to him,” he said.

“You don’t have to,” said Rostnikov. “I would like you to simply listen to me. Sit, please.”

Rostnikov knew that Chenko’s gesture had been for show. In his call asking the Tatar to meet here, he had been clear that Shatalov would also be present.

Outside the door Shatalov posted his own man, who stood facing Chenko’s young man. There was certainly a carful of Chechins close by.

Shatalov moved to the table. His smile was gone. He did not look at Chenko. “There is no point to this,” said Shatalov. “It is too late for talk. I agreed to a truce and he. . that smirking Tatar murdered one of my best men.”

“You are here, sit,” said Rostnikov. “Casmir Chenko did not murder your man as you had not murdered his man.”

“I. .”

“You will please sit,” said Rostnikov loudly, bringing a fist down on the table that made the two men outside the restaurant and Peto Cashierovsky start nervously.

Shatalov sat and motioned to his man outside that everything was calm. Chenko did the same.

“I now know you have a temper, policeman,” said Shatalov, “and terrible taste in clothes.”

“My anger comes unbidden. As for the clothes, I had an accident,” said Rostnikov.

“Others can be arranged,” said Shatalov, looking at Chenko for the first time.

“Easily,” said Chenko.

“One-eyed, wattle-necked rooster,” said Shatalov, whose white hair looked even whiter than it had the day before.

“Irving,” said Chenko.

“Do you want to know who killed your men and why, or do you want to simply leave here ignorant and continue the war that is costing you lives and rubles?” asked Rostnikov.

“Why do you care?” asked Chenko.

“Innocent people will die,” said Rostnikov. “I don’t care about you or your men. Innocent people have already died because of you.”

Rostnikov picked up the newspaper article which he had placed facedown on the table. He handed it first to Chenko, who cocked his head to one side to read it with his good eye. When Chenko was finished, he handed it back to Rostnikov, who handed it to Shatalov, who read it quickly and returned it to the policeman.

“The name of the boy who died when your men had a street fight, a fight over an insult, not even over territory, a fight. . the name means nothing to you, either of you? The underlined name?”

“Nothing,” said Chenko.

“Nothing,” said Shatalov.

“Emil, tell them the name of the killer of their men.”

Karpo did as he was told.

“I don’t know this person,” said Shatalov.

“I don’t either,” said Chenko.