"The bone is not broken,'' the stringy woman doctor said. She had put on a pair of rubber gloves and probed the wound. Jerold had not uttered a sound.
' 'I can remove the bullet,'' "Remove it," said Jerold, turning on his side to look at her.
' 'You will need blood,'' the woman said, moving to a sink in the corner in which she dropped the bloody rubber gloves.
' 'Then get it," said Jerold.
The woman looked at him and nodded, and then she looked at Yakov.
"I'm going out in the woods to play music on Waltherand Blackhawk."
The woman looked at Yakov, who met her eyes. It was Yakov who turned away.
"Blackhawk is in the car," said Yakov, looking around the room for something to touch, something to play with.
Yakov considered the possibility of killing the doctor when she finished working on Jerold, but there were many reasons why he knew he would not. He didn't like the idea of touching this emotionless creature. He was afraid she wouldn't react, would just look at him with disapproval regardless of what he did to her, and maybe, as Carla had done, she would taunt him. That was it. Now he remembered why he had thrown Carla through the window. She had taunted him because he was unable to rouse himself, to keep himself erect. Carla had said it was the pills Jerold was giving him, and Carla had smiled. Carla no longer smiled.
"The one who shot you," said Yakov, looking at himself in a mirror over the sink and trying to recognize the Yakov he knew in that clerk's face he saw. "The one who tried to kill me. I can go back and kill him while she takes care of you."
"Stay here," said Jerold behind him.
"You'll take days, a week to-" Yakov said as the stringy woman left the room.
"I will be up in two hours. Nothing changes. And we do not have to kill the policeman. He is of no importance." ' 'He shot you,'' said Yakov, turning away from the mirror. There were sharp instruments here, scalpels. It would be fun to hold one, turn it over, let it catch the light. He had done that before, not so many years before.
"Revenge is meaningless," said Jerold, finding it difficult to hold his head up.
"Someone does something to me, it sits in my chest like clay," said Yakov, pointing to his chest. "I want it out."
"Stop thinking of immediate gratification. Think of living in Las Vegas."
Yakov grunted. He saw no scalpel.
Perhaps he would like to live in Hollywood instead of Las Vegas. That would be nice, too. To be rich anywhere in the United States would be nice. To meet Madonna would be nice, but there was a lump of clay forming in the chest of Yakov Krivonos, and it was slowly molding into the face of the policeman who looked like Death. He did not want to look down at it, but he knew he must.
Jerold's eyes were closed as he lay back on the table, but the doctor was looking at Yakov. He avoided her eyes.
"I'll give you something," she said flatly, moving to a cabinet in the corner and opening it.
"He must be able to function," Jerold said, eyes still closed.
The woman did not answer. She opened the cabinet and removed a bottle, which she opened. The capsules she poured into her palm were red and white. She handed them to Yakov, who gulped them down dry.
Before he could stop himself, Yakov said, "Thank you."
But his mother did not answer.
The call from Emil Karpo came in the afternoon, when Rostnikov and McQuinton, the American, were seated in the lobby of the Lermontov, reading. Rostnikov was reading his badly battered copy of Ed McBain's Ax for the seventh time, and the American. Lester McQuinton, was reading the copy of Lawrence Block's When the Sacred Ginmill Closes that Porfiry Petrovich had lent him.
Rostnikov had spent almost two hours getting to the weight room at the hospital, working out and making his way back. McQuinton had been standing in the lobby, waiting for lunch to be served, when he returned.
"I can't get used to eating lunch at two," he said. "Women aren't back. Want to join me?"
Rostnikov had accepted, and they had eaten the communal mound of an unidentified rice creation with pieces of meat that was heaped upon their plates and served with a vegetable on the side that looked something like okra.
They spoke English at lunch, and Rostnikov had suggested an afternoon of reading while they waited for their wives to return. McQuinton had readily agreed.
"Andy thinks we should be doing, seeing something all the time," he said. "She wants to cram everything in. She thinks it's a waste to relax here when we can relax at home. You know your friend from last night is watching you again?''
Rostnikov had nodded and sat in a chair near the window. Though he was not the least bit chilled, Rostnikov had also brought a sweater from the room, which he wore buttoned to the neck. He had handed McQuinton the Block book he had brought down from his room after noting that his room had been gently, professionally, searched. Misha Ivanov was seated across the lobby, a newspaper in hand, making no effort to conceal the fact that he was performing his duty. He was watching Rostnikov. Rostnikov had been right. Ivanov had not been relieved of his assignment in spite of his direct contact with Rostnikov.
For Rostnikov, it was an afternoon of waiting. There was nothing to be done until Ivanov approached him. Nothing to be done until Karpo called. Nothing to be done till Sarah and the American woman returned. And, as always, doing nothing was the most difficult job of all for a policeman. It was the task that took the greatest toll, that started the policeman thinking about the pettiness of his superiors, the unfairness of his lot, the boredom that often resulted in failure and waste and guilt for having wasted time. Doing nothing, though it was essential, was the greatest threat to a policeman's stability and sanity.
When the call came from Karpo, Rostnikov excused himself to McQuinton, coaxed his left leg into near cooperation, and moved across the lobby to the booth, knowing Misha Ivanov was watching him across the room.
"Emil Karpo," he said when Karpo identified himself. "Have you had a busy day?"
Karpo recounted his encounter with Jerold and paused while Rostnikov digested the tale.
"Politics and ideology," said Rostnikov. "Passionate murder, drugs, even madness, are so much easier. In America, the police hardly ever deal with politics and ideology."
"The people in America shoot each other for nothing," said Karpo. "For stepping on gymnasium shoes." ' 'I didn't say it was better, just easier,'' Rostnikov replied.
"I have seen the list of investigative officers from all branches who are now on vacation. It was far too long to print out without being questioned, and it is not an unusual number for this time of year. There is an upward-percentage variation of only two percent. I have also noted those who are on vacation in the Yalta region. That, too, is not an unusual number, an upward variation over the past six years of five percent. What is unusual is the rank and profile of those on vacation."
"Enlighten me, Emil Karpo," he said, looking through the little round glass door of the phone booth at Misha Ivanov, who was looking directly back at him.
"An unusually high number of senior investigators in all branches are now on vacation," he said. "Normally, the vacations of senior investigators are staggered. The statistical variation is off by more than eighty percent.'' "Do you like computers, Emil Karpo?"
"I find them useful," he said.
"You speak to them well," said Rostnikov.
"I do not speak to them," corrected Karpo. "They provide data based upon programs properly established to retrieve information. The computers at Petrovka, if the individual has proper access coding, are capable of retrieving a great deal of interest."
"It has been said," Rostnikov replied, "that Lenin loved telephones, loved them so much that he covered the desks of his apartment with them and actually had the central Moscow switchboard operator located right outside the office in his apartment."