The search lasted much of the afternoon, with Iosef finding very little. The Yalutshkin woman had been questioned for a variety of incidents, all dating back several years. There were probably many more incidents that he could not find. She had witnessed a murder, been present at the suicide of a young woman who jumped through a window at a party, reported the theft of a number of possessions taken from her apartment when she was out “with a friend” all night. It was all petty, and as with most high-class prostitutes, she was never arrested for streetwalking or in connection with any drug offenses. What Iosef did walk away from the computer with was an address where Yulia lived four years earlier and a very bad headache.
As he rose, the sour-faced muttering woman, whose fingers had been dancing on the keyboard in front of her while she looked down at a pile of documents through the lenses of her half-glasses, paused. “I have American aspirin,” she said, stopping her typing and glancing up at Iosef.
“How do you know I have a headache?”
“That screen,” she said. “There’s something wrong with it.
Everyone who uses it gets a headache. Maybe it’s too bright. And I eat a handful of aspirin three times a day. I think I am addicted. I know I need them.”
“American aspirin would be very helpful,” he said.
The woman reached under her desk, lifted up a large black bag with a large black zipper, and fished out a white plastic bottle. She handed it to Iosef.
“Thank you,” he said, starting to open it.
“Keep it,” she said, “I have many. You’re Porfiry Petrovich’s son.”
“I am.”
“He is a good man in a world of filth.”
Iosef didn’t know what to say. So he nodded.
“I may be overstating the condition of the world in general and Moscow in particular,” she said, removing her glasses and placing them next to her computer. “Sitting here for eleven years, reading what I read. . it may give me a distorted picture of the world, but I don’t think so.”
“Thank you for the aspirin,” Iosef said.
The woman nodded, put her half-glasses back on, and went back to racing her fingers over the keyboard.
Zelach had turned up several things, including another address where Yulia Yalutshkin had lived.
The two detectives, after Iosef had taken four aspirin, were on their way to the most recent address they had found. When they got to the building on Monet Street just off Ostrov, Iosef had the feeling that they would not find Yulia Yalutshkin here. In the past several years, assuming her record was reasonably accurate, she had almost certainly moved beyond this neighborhood.
The five-story apartment building was run down, its white concrete facade a dirt-covered and splotchy gray. Inside the doorway, THE DOG WHO BIT A POLICEMANNN79
the hall needed sweeping and the inner door, which supposedly required a key, was opened by Iosef with his police identification card. There really wasn’t an inner lobby, just a stairwell of concrete.
The detectives moved upward, following the light from a window on the first landing.
The apartment was on the second floor. Iosef and Zelach walked down the narrow corridor lit only by a window on each end. It was early in the afternoon but there was noise coming out of many of the apartments, the noise of loud television, louder arguing voices, children laughing and crying. There were also smells, not exactly good ones, but definitely strong and cabbage-sweet. The walls were painted something that used to be yellow.
Iosef was accustomed to such places, though the soft little ball of depression still came to life inside his chest. Zelach, on the other hand, did not seem to notice.
“Here,” said Zelach, stopping in front of one of the doors on his right.
Iosef nodded at the shadow of the Slouch, and Zelach knocked firmly. There was a sound of music, soft and classical, beyond the door. Iosef guessed that it was Mendelssohn. There was no answer.
Zelach knocked again as Iosef moved to his side so that both men were facing the door when it opened.
“Kto tahm, who is it?” came a woman’s voice.
“Police. Office of Special Investigation. I am Inspector Rostnikov. I am here with Inspector Zelach.”
“I cannot talk,” the woman said. “I’m going out and I am late.”
“This will be very brief,” said Iosef.
“I don’t. .”
“Then,” said Iosef with a tone of regret, “this may not be so brief.”
“Identification. Under the door.”
Iosef and Zelach knew this routine. They removed their identification cards and slipped them under the door. In truth, the cards proved nothing. They could be purchased for a few thousand rubles, maybe much less with the new currency.
The door opened and a petite, beautiful woman with short blond hair stood before them, one hand holding out the cards to the two men, the other behind her back. She was obviously dressed for the evening in a black tight-fitting dress and costume-jewelry pearls and earrings. Her makeup was minimal and carefully applied. Iosef ’s less-than-successful year as an actor and playwright had taught him about makeup and costumes. This lovely woman was ready for a show.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Police,” said Iosef. “We have a few questions about Yulia Yalutshkin. May we come in?”
“Vighdyeetyee, come in,” she said, stepping aside, her hand still behind her back.
They walked in, leaving the door open.
“I have no answers,” the woman said. “I don’t know her.”
“How long have you lived here?” asked Iosef pleasantly.
“Three years.”
“Yulia Yalutshkin gave this as her address two years ago.”
“We shared the apartment briefly. I haven’t seen her in. .”
“You can put the gun down,” Iosef said.
The woman looked at the faces of the two detectives, shrugged, and took her hand from behind her back. Both detectives recognized the.22 North American Mini-Revolver. She put the weapon in a small black purse on a nearby coffee table and closed the door.
“This is a dangerous building,” she said.
“It is a dangerous world,” said Iosef.
“I have had to show it more than once,” she said, turning to them and folding her arms, defiant. “I have had to fire it twice. I think I shot one of the three men on the stairs whose unspoken but clear intentions were rape or theft, quite possibly both.”
The apartment was clean, neat, and inexpensively but, to Iosef, tastefully furnished with slightly out of date modern chrome and vinyl furniture. It was a typical Moscow apartment. Small everything. Small living room with an attached little kitchen area. The kitchen was barely big enough to hold a metal-legged table with four chairs around it. The music came from a CD player.
“I don’t have much time,” the woman said, looking at her watch, unfolding her arms, and lighting a cigarette. “So. .” She didn’t offer the two men a seat.
“Yulia Yalutshkin,” said Iosef. “The reputation of an important man, perhaps the life of an important man is in danger, Miss?. .”
“Katerina Bolkonov,” she said. “I really must go soon. There’s a tea dance for Russian women to meet American businessmen looking for wives. If I’m late, I may not be noticed again.”
“We’ll be brief,” said Iosef. Zelach stood at his side, hands folded in front of him. “Does someone else live with you here?”
“My son,” she said. “He’s twelve. He’s at school. If a rich American picks me, my son can move with me to the U.S. and become an American. We can escape this existence.”
“Yes,” said Iosef.
Zelach was silent and impassive. The idea of living anywhere but Moscow seemed vaguely frightening to him. To go to a place where people spoke another language, had strange thoughts and expecta-tions, was almost a nightmare. Torture for Zelach would be telling him he and his mother had to move to someplace like Paris, London, or Boston.