“But your wife is not dead,” said Artiom, looking into the purple face of madness.
“No,” said Porvinovich, “but she soon will be.”
This time there was a burst of fire from the weapon, not just two shots. Artiom’s initial reaction was surprise and then relief that he had not been shot. Suddenly the pain came. In his stomach. He looked down. Three, maybe four holes bleeding as one.
“I’m dying?” Artiom asked.
“I certainly hope so,” said Porvinovich, who fired once again.
This time Artiom felt nothing.
Elvira Chazova arrived just before the police ambulance. A neighbor, with what appeared to be sympathy, but was certainly satisfaction, had knocked at her door and told her that her boys were being arrested in the street right outside.
Elvira had grabbed the baby and run past the neighbor. From across the street she saw a man lying on the ground and another man kneeling next to him. The nosy widow from the first floor across the street stood in her doorway watching. Other eyes looked down from darkened rooms.
Her sons were in a circle, handcuffed around a lamppost.
“My babies,” she screamed.
The slouching man on his knees rose and stepped toward her. Two men leaped from the ambulance and hurried to the fallen man.
Just before she reached her sons, Zelach stepped in front of her.
“They are bleeding,” she moaned. “Look at them. Babies. You have beaten my babies.”
The three boys looked at their mother, ashamed to have been caught. It was the baby in the woman’s arms who began to cry.
“I must take care of my babies,” she insisted.
“They are under arrest,” Zelach said.
“My little ones?”
“Attempting to rob and murder a police officer,” Zelach said.
“They wouldn’t attack a police officer. They wouldn’t hurt anyone,” she said. “Won’t someone help us?”
The baby cried. Sasha Tkach was put on a stretcher and carried to the ambulance. As the stretcher moved past the three handcuffed boys, they looked at the barely conscious policeman with vague curiosity.
At that moment a police car, one of the “new” BMWs, which already had over two hundred thousand kilometers on it, pulled up to the curb, lights flashing. Two young policemen got out of the car.
“Help me,” Elvira Chazova cried, showing her screaming baby to the two officers, who registered no particular emotion.
“Those three,” said Zelach as he handed the handcuff keys to the first officer to reach him. “Beating and attempted murder of a police officer. Don’t let them run.”
The officer nodded. The mother reached out an arm to stop him.
“My babies would never do such a thing. It was someone else. Wasn’t it?”
“Someone else,” said Alexei Chazov. “We were just coming home. We saw the man on the ground. We went to help him. Then this guy came out and started to beat us.”
“That’s right,” said Boris and Mark.
The young policeman had unhandcuffed the Chazov boys and was leading them to the waiting car.
Elvira started toward the police car. Zelach stepped into her path.
“What will happen to my poor children?” she cried. “What will happen to me? There is no money.”
“What will happen to my partner?” said Zelach.
The police car’s doors closed. Zelach turned his back on the woman and motioned to the officer, who was driving the car. Zelach climbed into the backseat, muscling the boys over to give himself room. There was enough room for all of them. The brothers were small.
“Drop me at the hospital,” Zelach said. “Then take these three to your lockup. I’ll come by later to write a report.”
The car started. The officer in the front seat who was not driving made a note on the pad snapped to his clipboard. Elvira Chazova appeared at the window of the police car and screamed over the sound of her infant, “Where are you taking my babies? Tell me. I have a right to know. This is a democracy now.”
“This is a lunatic asylum now,” the young policeman in the passenger seat said.
The police car pulled into the street. Elvira looked around. The widow had gone back inside. No faces were at the windows. No one came out and no one called down to her.
She stopped screaming and patted the baby gently on the head as she moved to the sidewalk across from her apartment building. The street lamps were not bright, but she could see the blood of the policeman on the stone wall and the concrete sidewalk. There was quite a bit of blood.
Elvira shook her head. The baby was crying much more quietly now. She had picked up the almost naked child and run with her into the cold night. Elvira moved back across the street whispering to the child to be quiet. She would put the baby to bed and then sleep for a few hours. The coming days and nights would be a hell for her. She needed her rest, if only a few hours.
This was a new world, she thought. There was always hope.
Yevgeniy Porvinovich lay on his brother’s bed while his brother’s wife went through the ritual of massaging and petting him to climax even though he was not capable of erection. Yevgeniy was especially unresponsive. Anna rubbed her bare breasts against his legs, moving upward, barely tickling. Yevgeniy, who had pronounced himself unable even to consider sex, groaned.
Anna Porvinovich was especially patient. It was a small enough price to pay, and it was something she could stop doing completely when she was a grieving widow. Yevgeniy’s principal interest in the plot to kill his brother was the business. He had a reasonable grasp of that business and, propped up by Anna, he was confident that he could handle it. Maybe he wouldn’t be quite as successful as Alexei, but everything was already going, the deals were already in place with both the police and the mafia. There wouldn’t be that much to do.
“You like that?” she asked in the darkness.
“Yes,” he said.
Her breasts were hanging between his open legs now, and she felt a distinct firmness beginning in her brother-in-law.
“The police know,” he said.
“They don’t,” she whispered. “Shhh.”
“They know,” he insisted, sitting up.
She sighed, turned on the lamp that was on the table next to the bed, and reached for her cigarettes. She patted his shoulder. Yevgeniy was terrible in the dark. In the light he was much worse. Now that he was beginning to whine, she began to alter her plans slightly. Yevgeniy would have to die. Perhaps an accident. Perhaps suicide because he could not consider living without his dear only brother. It would have to be soon. She couldn’t tolerate him much longer.
She lit her cigarette with the gold lighter and looked at Yevgeniy, who looked quite frightened.
“It will be fine,” she reassured him, but her thoughts were elsewhere.
She needed a man to run the business or to appear to do so. After a decent interval following the death of her husband and Yevgeniy, she would pick out a worthy successor, a younger successor, a younger, good-looking, not particularly bright successor, such as Artiom, who would be long dead by then. It would be preferable if the successor was married, so that she would not have to spend too much time with him playing games. She was growing tired of playing games.
“Sleep, Yevgeniy,” she said, gently easing him back. “You’ll feel better. I’ll be right at your side.”
He lay back and closed his eyes. To Anna he looked dead. She assumed that her husband was already dead. Her choice of men had been most unfortunate. Artiom Solovyov had proved less determined and capable than she had expected. He had certainly killed Alexei by now. She hoped that he was not fool enough to call her again.
She rose from her bed, put the cigarette between her teeth, slipped into her art deco green silk robe, and turned off the light. There was a bed in the next room. She would sleep there, with a door between her and Yevgeniy’s inevitable snoring.