“None as good as Tchaikovsky,” said Sasha, trying to contain himself.
“It cannot be helped,” said Nimitsov, rising.
“A good fight and a dead pit bull. I’m more interested in our progress in getting me and my animals into the syndicate,” said Sasha, reaching over to put down the coffee cup.
“We will make arrangements before the fight,” said Nimitsov, moving toward the door. “We will discuss our future before the fight.”
“What about now?” asked Sasha.
Nimitsov simply shook his head.
“Then tonight, before the fight,” Sasha said. “I am not losing my best dog without assurance that the sacrifice will be worth it.”
“You’ll make a great deal of money tonight,” Nimitsov said.
“I want a future with a great deal more than I can make in one night. My dog doesn’t fight and die till we talk and I get some information from you.”
“Dmitri,” Nimitsov said, shaking his head and touching the scar across his nose. “I could kill you here and now. I would enjoy doing it. I have not yet decided whether I like you or not.”
“We will have a deal tonight before the fight,” Sasha repeated, folding his arms in front of him. “Or I will take my animals and go back to Kiev.”
“I’ve decided. I don’t like you,” said Nimitsov, “but I would be doing just as you are if I were in your position. All right.”
“What about the police?” asked Sasha. He had almost forgotten this part, which Rostnikov had said was essential. Without it, Nimitsov might wonder why he was not more curious about the fact that a police officer had been not only watching him but sleeping with him.
“We will take care of that,” said Nimitsov. “Now don’t say another word. I am not in my best mood and I do not like demands.
Boris will be back to pick you up at eight. We will have dinner. You will get your dog and we will go to the arena.”
Sasha knew he had gone as far as he could go. He sensed that the young man in the rumpled suit was on the verge of a violent explosion.
The two visitors left.
When the door closed, Sasha groped his way back to the chair.
His hands were trembling. Maybe, he thought, his mother, Lydia, was right, that he had a family, that he should get out of this before he was killed. He knew he wouldn’t quit, but the thought had come quickly and seriously to him. He could not stop his hands from shaking.
Chapter Ten
Elena sat up in one of the two hospital beds in a small room off of Leon’s office. The room was reserved for patients Leon did not believe would be best served in a hospital.
In this case, however, the request to keep Elena in the private room came from Porfiry Petrovich, who stood next to the bed, looking down.
Elena’s injury was ugly but was not nearly as bad as it appeared at first glance. The teeth bites were deep but they were in the fleshy part of her shoulder. No muscles had been torn or ripped, though the dog’s teeth had gone deeply in. The blood had been easy to stop and the wounds had required surprisingly little su-turing.
“I can,” Leon had said, “arrange for rabies injections.”
On this Rostnikov deferred to Elena, who wore a clean but not becoming white hospital gown.
“No,” she said. “I saw the dog that attacked me, at the arena.
I don’t see how he could be rabid.”
“It is a risk,” said Leon, looking at her bandaged and taped shoulder, her arm in a sling.
“A small one,” said Elena.
“A risk,” Leon repeated.
“I do not believe the dog was rabid,” she repeated.
“Nor do I,” said Rostnikov. “I have dealt with rabid animals before. They were wild, could not be stopped in their attacks.
They looked mad except in the earliest stages. This dog did not appear to be rabid. However, I believe I may be able to get the dog tonight.”
“Well,” said Leon. “It is your life. I will give you an address and a name where you can take the dog for testing.”
“I will ask Paulinin,” said Rostnikov. “You know him.”
“Yes,” said Leon. “I’ll leave you. I have patients. I’d say you can leave this afternoon, but sit still, take the pills, and be back tomorrow for me to look at the wound.”
“Can she stay overnight?” Rostnikov asked. “I would prefer that no risk be taken that she might be seen.”
“Overnight,” Leon agreed. “No longer, please.”
With that, Leon went back to his other patients and Rostnikov turned to Elena.
“I’ll tell Anna Timofeyeva,” he said.
“Yes,” said Elena.
“You want a book to read?” asked Rostnikov, pulling the Ed McBain novel from his back pocket.
“Maybe later,” she said, looking at the window. “I could have been killed. I would have been killed if you. .”
“But I was,” he said. “May I sit?”
“Oh, yes, please.”
Rostnikov sat with a sigh of relief. He had examined his trousers, which were torn beyond repair, but he did not have time to take care of them. Perhaps he could stop at home for another pair, not that he had that many, before heading for Petrovka. He sat quietly.
“You want to check on Sasha,” she said.
“In a little while.”
“I think I should like to get some sleep now,” Elena said. “The pills, the. . I’ll be better with a little sleep.”
“You want a medal?” asked Rostnikov. “I can get you one.”
“For being attacked by a dog and surviving?”
“Medals are easy to come by and there are still those who respect them.”
“Not Anna Timofeyeva,” said Elena.
Rostnikov agreed. “There was a policeman I worked with when I was a young man,” he said. “He was older than I was, funny, totally corrupt. I learned from his example how not to be-have and think. His name was Ivanov. Big man, bad teeth, very bad teeth, laughed a lot when we were alone, uniform was always too tight. One day, winter, he went off on his own, told me to wait at a kvass stand while he met with an informant who didn’t want anyone else to know who he was. I stood shivering. Then I heard shouting and a gunshot. I hurried as quickly as my leg would allow into the building where Ivanov had gone. I found him lying in an open courtyard used by the building tenants as a garbage dump. He had slipped on a patch of ice. His gun had accidentally discharged.
“I called for an ambulance. Ivanov was in pain. He had shot himself through the shoe and blown off the big toe on his right foot. His shoulder was separated and he had a concussion, and there was much blood from the laceration of his scalp where he had hit the sharp insides of a broken old radio. He was bleeding from both ends.
“Ivanov was given a medal. A general who had served in the war against the Nazis came to the hospital to present the medal.
Ivanov said he had seen a known criminal enter the building and that he, Ivanov, had been ambushed. Pictures were taken of the wounded policeman. The unnecessarily large white bandage that covered Ivanov’s head was a banner over his brave smile. Ivanov told me when we were alone that he had entered the building to pick up a regular payoff from a black-market dealer in electrical goods. I was disciplined for not backing up my mentor in spite of the fact that he had ordered me to stay in the street drinking kvass.
“A few days later, a petty thief was shot down by another policeman, a friend of Ivanov, who identified the dead man as the one who had ambushed him. Ivanov’s friend also got a medal.
“Now a hero, Ivanov, when released from the hospital, was promoted and insisted on working with his equally heroic, medal-winning friend who had courageously confronted and killed the enemy of the state.
“Ivanov and his friend appeared at public events, particularly when a police officer was honored. Ivanov and his friend were transferred to the Ministry of the Interior and eventually to the personal protective staff of the minister himself. Ivanov’s friend eventually became minister, and Ivanov was retired with a generous pension after years of additional corruption on a much grander scale than when I had worked with him. He asked me once if I wanted a medal. He was in a position then to give them himself. I politely said no. So, Elena, you want a medal?”