“You had a message from Procurator Timofeyeva,” he said. “A taxi driver was killed a little while ago, two witnesses. Before he died, the taxi driver said, ‘Granovsky!”
“Karpo,” Rostnikov said pulling his coat on, “you take that. I will pay a visit to the K.G.B. in the morning and we will meet at Petrovka…when we can meet at Petrovka.”
The trio of dark figures moved past Rostnikov, who turned for a last look at Granovsky-an angry man and look what his anger got him. There was perhaps a lesson in this room, on that face. Rostnikov absorbed the lesson without thinking about it.
“Do any of you remember the name of the American movie actress with the yellow hair that kept falling in her face?” Rostnikov asked. “She had to keep blowing it out of her eyes.”
“Veronska Lake,” said the man with the bag, moving to the corpse.
“No,” sighed Rostnikov scratching his ear, “the hair wasn’t designed to be over the eyes. It was always by accident.”
“I see,” said the man with the thick dark glasses, groping his way to the kitchen in search of the tea.
“Maybe it was Deanna Durbin?” said the man with the camera.
“No,” said Rostnikov, “thanks.” It was one of those annoying things of no consequence that would drive you mad if you couldn’t remember. There was a chance, not much of a chance perhaps, but a chance that Rostnikov’s career might be in danger, but this nearly forgotten American movie star had cropped up and had to be named to set his mind at rest. It would come, it would come.
An hour later Emil Karpo entered the M.V.D. building on Petrovka Street. The armed duty guard looked at him with no sign of recognition but made no move to stop him. The older officer at the desk, fully uniformed, white-haired, involuntarily nodded in greeting at the striding Karpo, though he knew Karpo was not one to respond to social gestures.
A dark suited man named Klishkov passed Karpo on the way down. Klishkov who bore an ugly red scar across his face and nose from an attack by a drunk, glanced at Karpo, who let his eyes respond in unblinking acknowledgement.
The door to Room 312 was closed but a light was on behind it. It was one of many “discussion” rooms in Petrovka. Such rooms could be used for meetings, conspiracies, or interviews with suspects or witnesses. Because of the uneven heating of the building, some of the interview rooms were painfully cold in the winter while others were oppressively hot. This was a cold one. Karpo opened the door and faced two men across the small table in the center of the room. The Roshkovs, father and son, were startled and started to rise. Karpo ignored them and turned to the uniformed officer who stood in the corner. The officer, well aware of Karpo’s reputation, moved smartly forward and handed him a clipboard with a report attached. Karpo took it and read it ignoring the sudden babbling of Vladimir, the elder Roshkov.
“We’ve done nothing,” pleaded the old man, “nothing.” His eyes, yellow and soft, were moist with self-pity.
Karpo handed the report back to the officer and faced the old man. The sudden attention caught the old man in mid-sentence, stopping him. There was something about this corpse-like policeman that made such rambling pathetic even to Vladimir Roshkov, who had spent an eighty-year lifetime perfecting it, but the pause was only that. Vladimir Roshkov could no more hold his tongue than he could join the Bolshoi Ballet.
“Officer, sir,” he pleaded, actually bringing his hands together, “we did nothing. We were on our way to work, to work. There is no crime in going to work, is there sir, comrade, officer?”
Karpo said nothing but turned his eyes on Pytor Roshkov who sat sullen, a coarse brown police blanket wrapped around his legs.
“Are you ill?” Karpo asked.
“No,” said Pytor, “I have no pants. That cab tore off my pants, and the police wouldn’t let me go home for another pair. Mind you, I’m not complaining. I understand, but…I understand.”
“My son is not complaining at all,” shouted the old man, rapping his son on the head. “He’s happy to help any way he can. We both are, but we had nothing to do…”
“Sit,” commanded Karpo, and the old man sat next to his son, his voice momentarily stilled but his mouth was open and ready, his teeth poor and jagged.
“You saw the man get out of the cab?” Karpo said, standing with his hands behind his back over the two men.
“Yes,” said the old man, “he was all in black, a madman. I thought he was going to kill us. His clothes were good, not new. My first thought was, ‘Here is some capitalist tourist drunk and up to no good.’ ”
“He was a foreigner?” tried Karpo.
“Yes,” went on the old man, “definitely a foreigner, English or American, he…”
“Did he speak?” tried Karpo.
“I…I…,” stammered the old man, anxious to please.
“No,” said the son, hugging the blanket over his vulnerable legs. “He said nothing. He just ran down Petro Street.” Pytor Roshkov had decided to fix his eyes on the fascinating painting on the wall of the first meeting of the Presidium.
“Then you don’t know if he was a foreigner,” Karpo continued.
“No,” said the son.
“Yes,” said the father.
“If you would try less hard to please me and harder to simply tell the truth, you will get out of here much faster and back to your home or work,” Karpo said. “However, if you continue like this, it may take hours before we feel we can let you go. Now, can you describe the man you saw running from the cab on Petro Street?”
“I…,” began old Roshkov and stopped, clamping his jaw tight with an audible click.
“No,” said the son. “He was a regular man in a black coat and hat and he was young, at least he was fast like a young man.”
“And you heard Ivan Sharikov say ‘Granovsky’?” asked Karpo.
“We don’t know any Ivan Sharikov,” wept the old man. “We are just shopkeepers. We aren’t political, just poor peasants who…”
“Sharikov was the taxi driver who was murdered,” Karpo said evenly.
“Granovsky,” said Pytor, moving his eyes from the painting to look at Karpo, but unable to hold the look.
“So,” babbled the old man, “it’s simple. You find this man Granovsky who killed the cab driver, and everything is fine. So simple. How many Granovsky’s can there be in Moscow? Our police can find him like that.”
“Old man, you are babbling with guilt,” Karpo said softly, wanting to shake the trembling creature into simple responses. “I don’t care what you have done. I want information.”
“Done?” said the old man, rising and pointing a thick finger at his chest. “Done? We have done nothing, nothing. If you mean those shoes, well, those shoes. How were we to know the soles were cardboard. We bought them from…”
“Father, shut up,” shouted the suddenly frantic son rising to quiet the old man and letting the blanket drop to the floor.
“But…” continued the old man, prepared to confess to seven decades of crime. The naked son clasped a hand over the old man’s mouth and Karpo glanced at the uniformed officer who was trying to control a grin.
“Get them out,” said Karpo.
“We want to help,” said the old man, leaning forward on the table as his son retrieved his blanket.
Karpo left the room, feeling the aura of a coming headache. He would retrieve the sickle from the evidence men and work on that. The sickle would be tangible and might say much without speaking. A pinpoint of irritation vibrated somewhere in Karpo’s brain, and he thought of Rostnikov’s question about the American actress. A voice wanted to ask Karpo how anything could be accomplished in such emotionalism, irrelevance, and chaos, but he stilled the voice before it could speak and remembered Rostnikov’s past successes and reminded himself that the Roshkovs were a step in the movement toward an ideal Soviet state, a movement which he knew would not he an easy one.
Perhaps the room was not getting larger. It was a thought he had never considered and the voice of his father had never suggested. This thought came in something like the voice of the cab driver he had killed, the cab driver with the bloody face, the gross pig of a cab driver to whom he owed so much. The smashing of the vodka bottle. The moisture of the vodka in his face. The feeling of solidity when he plunged the bottle into the fat surprised face. The two men in the snow. It had been a warning to stay alert.