The apartment building, in one of the many four-, five-, and six-story concrete Stalin-era complexes throughout the city was a river map of cracks and fissures. Three men huddled in the demi-warmth of the tobacco-fouled entryway. They took some notice of her but were more interested in arguing about what they thought of the latest Russian rage against Georgia.
Vera walked up the staircase lit only on the landings by dim yellow bulbs. She tried not to touch the walls, which were dappled with stains and graffiti, most of which brightly extolled the virtues of one gang over another.
She found the apartment on the second floor where two women stood in opposite open doors talking. A child of no more than two clung to the dress of one of the women.
Vera knocked at the door and prepared herself, got into character. She held her purse protectively in two hands against her stomach. She let her shoulders drop and pinched the flesh under each eye to make them moist. She knocked again, and this time the door opened a crack.
The two women in the hall stopped talking to hear what would be said.
“Albina Babinski?”
Vera could see little of the woman who replied with a tentative “Da.”
“I am sorry, so sorry, to bother you,” Vera said nervously. “I am. . was a cousin of your husband from Odessa. I happened to be in Moscow with a meeting of raw sewage engineers and I heard. . I’m so sorry. I haven’t seen Fedot since we were about twelve. He was always so. . I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry.”
“Come in, Countess,” said the woman on the other side of the door. “And I shall endeavor to snatch from you the halo you have been imagining about your cousin’s head.”
Vera could smell the alcohol on the woman’s breath as the door opened. Sunlight illuminated the small, disheveled room. A dark brown sofa sat heavily across from two chrome and plastic chairs that had probably been considered modern in the seventies. A bottle with three glasses stood on a glass-and-steel table the size of a bicycle tire. The table had chosen to side with the two chairs, but the large sofa with obviously soft pillows had a distinct magnetic attraction for objects in the room that stood in deference to the largest piece of furniture.
Albina Babinski was a mess. Her dyed blond hair was losing its color, and its loose strands were held tentatively in place with five little red plastic clips. Her brown dress was draped over her commodious frame like a Roman toga. Albina Babinski’s face was round, very round, with pink cheeks punctuated by two small pimples on her left cheek and three on her right. Thick, unflattering makeup covered her face, neck, and even the backs of her hands. Vera did, however, give the widow credit for her bright blue eyes and the look of something painful, likely the death of her husband.
“Would you like a drink?” Albina said, motioning toward both sofa and chairs to give her visitor a choice of discomforts.
“Yes, thank you,” said Vera, sitting on one of the chairs, which proved to be just as uncomfortable as it looked.
Albina poured vodka into two glasses, handed one glass to her guest, and clutched the other in her hand as she plopped into the sofa, spilling a few drops of her drink in the process.
“You may return to Odessa to spread the news that Fedot the cousin of fond memory was a walking blind erection that managed to be unable to locate me for the past four years. He was, however, more successful in locating a colorful array of other willing, waiting receptacles.”
Vera looked down.
“I shock you, you who deal in sewage?”
“No.”
“He found the wrong vessel in that giant’s wife,” said Albina, holding up her drink and looking at it as if it were a masterpiece.
“Were there other wives, other women?” Vera asked as if amazed at the possibility.
Albina drank, held her glass to one side, leaned over toward Vera, and whispered, “Dozens. I do not know why women were attracted to him. Fedot was a decent-looking man with a scarred body, but he was hardly a Michael Clooney.”
“I think the actor’s name is George,” said Vera softly.
“Who gives a shit?” said Albina even more softly. “What’s your name, Countess?”
“Vera Egorovna.”
Albina pursed her lips, thought, and said, “Who are you?”
“Vera Egorovna, Fedot’s cousin from Odessa.”
“Bullshit. Fedot was taken from Riga to Moscow when he was a baby. He liked to tell people that he was from Odessa, that he had family there, but he did not. So who are you besides Countess of the sewers?”
Vera sat up straight, put down her purse, and smiled.
“I am a reporter for The Moscow Times.”
“And you are going to write an article about the giant and his slut and Fedot?”
“Yes.”
“How much are you willing to pay for my undivided and truthful story?”
“If there is a story, I am authorized to pay either five thousand rubles or two hundred euros.”
“I’ll take the euros. Can you pay me now? In cash? I have bills to pay, a future to consider.”
“I can give you one thousand rubles today and have the rest in euros delivered by two this afternoon.”
It was, of course, a lie, but the thousand rubles would be a reasonable price for an expanded list of suspects.
“In advance,” said Albina.
“On the table,” said Vera. “The rest tomorrow. Before ten in the morning.”
Albina nodded agreement and said, “What would you like to know?”
It was almost six. There was still enough daylight for the chess players in Bitsevsky Park to see the pieces on the wooden tables. The day had grown warmer, almost fifty degrees Fahrenheit, with only a mild wind, warm enough to draw out what appeared to be the usual regulars, all of them men, most of them retirees, the out-of-work, and those who had hurried over after work. There was also a trio of what appeared to be homeless men wrapped in whatever coats and hats might come close to fitting. When the weather really broke, the present number of sixteen would double and be added to by visitors to the park who had not come to play chess.
Rostnikov paused at the first table, where a thin, bespectacled old man stroked his white beard as he considered his next move. His opponent was an impatient bulky man in his fifties whose left leg bounced rapidly as his fingers tapped on the plank of the bench on which he sat.
Rostnikov had been picked up in front of Petrovka by a black ZiL belonging to the MVD, the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Seated in the back was a man with military-cut steel gray hair and eyes to match.
Aloyosha Tarasov had held out his hand to shake once Rostnikov maneuvered in next to him in the backseat.
“Porfiry Petrovich, how fares the appendage?” said the Major, glancing at the extended left leg.
“The leg and I are not yet friends, but we are making headway.”
Rostnikov had known Major Aloyosha Tarasov through decades of change in the MVD. Departments had been eliminated. Others had sprung up as the tides of political opinion changed. It was difficult to determine sometimes which department had responsibility for specific tasks. What was certain was that Tarasov had been assigned the task of finding the Maniac. It was also certain that Tarasov had not succeeded. They drove in silence for a minute or so looking out the window.
“You are welcome to the case,” said Tarasov. “My superiors, including the Deputy Director, were more annoyed that the murders took so much of their time and budget. Murder has been relegated to a very low level in the MVD. The military branches of our organization take most of our resources and present the best opportunities for high-profile success.”
“Or failure?” said Rostnikov.
“Or failure,” Tarasov agreed. “You have all of our files, with the exception of those that demonstrate the fallibility of many of the staff I was given for the search.”
Pause in the conversation and then Tarasov sighed.