She was sitting at her small table near the window, sharing a dinner of potato broth, bread, and sliced tomatoes with Baku, who purred, closed his eyes, and paused to rub his heavy orange body against her. Then came the knock and she said, “Come in, Porfiry Petrovich,” and in he came.
“You know my knock?” he said, stepping in. Baku looked up suspiciously, recognized him, and went back to his broth.
“That, and I was thinking about you. You want some soup?”
Rostnikov shrugged and placed the candlestick on the table as she got up, pulled a bowl from the nearby small cupboard, and poured him a bowl of soup from the pot on the small burner.
She didn’t ask him if he wanted bread, simply gave him a dark slice.
“A present?” she said, looking at the candlestick.
“You wouldn’t want it,” he said. “If I were religious, I would say it is haunted. Perhaps it must be returned to its rightful owner, but I think that owner is dead.” He dipped a piece of bread into the soup, sopped up the liquid, and then ate it. The soup was unseasoned, though hot. Anna Timofeyeva was not a good cook.
“That’s what you have come to tell me? A fairy tale about a brass candlestick?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve come to ask your advice, perhaps for your help. Three old men are dead. It is somewhat complicated, but two of them were killed by another old man named Shmuel Prensky, a fourth man.”
He paused, but the name of Prensky meant nothing to her.
“Your successor has told me not to pursue this case, that I have been denied access to central files.” He finished his bread by placing a slice of tomato on it and downing the half sandwich in two bites.
“And …” she said while he swallowed his food.
“And I want to get into the files. I want to find Shmuel Prensky.”
He told her the entire story, from the moment he was assigned the case through his finding of the body of Lev Ostrovsky. A look he recognized had come over her. He imagined her back in her office, uniform tight, the picture of Lenin in his monastic room over her head as she weighed possibilities.
“If you go back to Petrovka, you will have to drop the case. Khabolov will dismiss you.”
Rostnikov agreed and reached over to pet Baku, who lay on the table watching him.
“You have dropped the Savitskaya case,” she said. “You can call in and so report. The killer confessed and was run down by a hit-and-run driver. The case is closed. I still have a phone. You can do it from here.”
“And then?” he said.
“Then you pursue the case of the murdered old actor. It is a different case. He gave you the name of Shmuel Prensky.”
“I need the files,” Rostnikov said, sighing.
“And you want me to get them for you,” she said, standing up to remove the dishes. “I have taken to drinking one glass of wine each night. Your doctor, Alex, prescribed it. You’ll have a glass?”
She brought two glasses and a dark bottle from the cupboard.
“It’s Greek wine,” she said. “A gift from the chief procurator, who has, I’m sure, dismissed me from his mind, which is understandable. He has not, however, revoked my privileges, as you well know.”
“So,” he said, taking the wine she poured for him in a kitchen glass.
“So, I will do it. We will get a taxi after you call in, and I will go to the central files. If the name of Shmuel Prensky is there, I will find it. I warn you, I am very poor with those computers. If the information is new, I probably will have difficulty with it.”
“This is an old man, comrade Anna, a very old man. His deeds are buried in Soviet antiquity.”
She shrugged and smiled, happy to be active.
“Make your call and watch the television. I may be an hour or more.”
Before she left, he called Petrovka and left a message for the assistant procurator, indicating that the killer of Abraham Savitskaya had almost accidentally fallen into his lap and that the case was now ended and he was going out for dinner and a movie. The operator at Petrovka indicated that Procurator Khabolov was trying to reach him, but Rostnikov sighed and said he would come to see the assistant procurator first thing in the morning.
After Anna Timofeyeva left, he stroked Baku, who leaped heavily onto his lap, sipped Greek wine, and watched a travel show on the television. The show was about Hong Kong and made the Oriental city look like a vast, noisy illuminated toy. He wanted to visit Hong Kong now almost as much as he wanted to see America.
After an hour he called home and told Sarah he was working late. She told him Josef had called and would be in for a short visit in a few days. She sounded genuinely happy, and Rostnikov sensed that things were going better for him at home. Sarah also said that calls had come every half hour for Rostnikov to get in touch with Procurator Khabolov.
“I have called in,” he said. “I will see Comrade Khabolov in the morning. Meanwhile, I must eat, perhaps take in a show, and pursue another case for at least a few hours.”
Sarah said, “I understand,” and by the way she said it, he was sure that she did, indeed, understand. Their phone had been tapped since his unsuccessful attempt to blackmail the KGB into letting him emigrate to the United States. While the tap was often an inconvenience, it could sometimes be used to bolster his lies and deceptions. He hung up the phone to wait.
Anna Timofeyeva came back almost three hours after she had left and found Rostnikov dozing in a straight-backed chair with Baku asleep on his lap. She sat down in front of him and shook his right leg.
“I’m awake,” he said without opening his eyes. “You had trouble?”
“I had trouble,” she said, and his eyes opened. “The traces of Shmuel Prensky are very old, comrade, very old. References to him exist going back to 1932. He held minor positions in the Stalin rise, and then he disappeared. He was a Jew. Many Jews disappeared. You know that.”
“But now he has appeared again.” Rostnikov sighed, placing Baku gently on the chair he vacated.
“I’ll do more tomorrow,” she said. “The records are old. The strings are thin. The boxes heavy. The clerks irritable.”
“Thank you, Anna Timofeyeva,” he said, going to the door.
“We’ll talk tomorrow, Porfiry Petrovich,” she said. “It felt good to be active. I’ll walk an extra mile tomorrow.”
He waved his candlestick to her and the cat and left.
Rostnikov’s initial plan was to walk home. It was about four miles, but the sky was now clear and the evening cool. He walked, candlestick under his arm, unaware of the people who moved out of his path, deep in thought. He had gone no more than a mile when he knew his leg would permit no further exercise. Besides, he longed for, needed, his weights, needed the strain of muscle to clear the wine and confusion. As he turned his head, looking for the light of the metro station he had just passed, a cab pulled up to the curb.
Through the open window, the cab driver, wearing a black cap, called, “You want a cab?”
Rostnikov opened the door, got in wearily, sat back with his candlestick, and closed his eyes. The cab eased into the night traffic and jostled him comfortably. Less than ten minutes later, the cab pulled up in front of Rostnikov’s apartment building. Instead of paying, Rostnikov sat silently waiting, looking at the back of the cab driver’s head. Rostnikov had not given the driver a destination, had not given his address. He had waited for the man to ask, but when the question had not come, he had sat back to absorb and wait, the candlestick ready in his hand.