Martin Smith - Tatiana

Svetlana wiped her nose.

“Did she scream or did she shout? There’s a difference.”

Tears blurred her eyes but she said nothing.

“Did she call your name? You were the only other person in the building. Didn’t she know you were home?”

“I’ll get you the key,” Svetlana said.

There, he thought, not much crueler than carving out the answer with a knife. He needed the key. For an investigator, that excused everything, and when she opened her door, he stepped in after her.

A modest attempt had been made to turn the front room into a seraglio. Cheap Indian bedspreads hung in swags on the walls and over a narrow bed. A lava lamp stood on a nightstand, the lava limp on the bottom. Otherwise, Arkady saw nothing that couldn’t be fit into a suitcase for a quick getaway. And cats. They swarmed over and around Arkady’s feet, mewing piteously. While he was immobilized, Svetlana went to a connecting room and returned with a shiny, freshly cut key.

“A new copy?” Arkady asked.

“I’m so disorganized. I keep losing them.”

Most of the cats were gray striped, one a tabby, and another white.

“They earn their keep. Every night I chase them out to catch rats, except Snowflake.” She picked up the white cat. “Snowflake likes to hide and stay behind.”

“You discovered her body?”

“Yes. There was no one else to hear her scream.”

“Exactly what did you hear?”

Svetlana set the cat down. “Noises.”

“Noises like. .?”

“I don’t know. Furniture being moved.”

“She was your friend. Did you go to her door to ask why she would be moving furniture at midnight?”

“No.”

“Did she ever bring men to her apartment?”

“Of course. She was a very busy writer. That’s the thing about being like me and a writer like her, you meet all types.”

“All types?”

“She was involved in a lot of causes.”

“Such as. .?”

“Chechens, criminals, veterans.”

“Violent types?”

“Sure.”

“Were they violent with her?”

“No. Anyway, the police said it was suicide.”

“After moving her furniture.”

“The police said her door was locked. She was alone.”

“These officers, did you get their names?”

“Just police. They took my name in case there were questions.”

“Were there?”

“No.”

“But you identified her?”

“Yeah. What a mess.”

“I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“Thank you. You’re the first one to say so.”

His questions were repetitious, even confusing. It was like walking all around a horse before buying it. From the time Svetlana heard the scream until she found the body, how much time had elapsed? Five minutes? Ten?

“More like five.”

“It took you five minutes to react?”

“I guess so.”

It took a healthy young woman that long to descend six flights of stairs? If Svetlana was not an unreliable witness, her story had holes and ellipses.

“You’re sure you were alone in your apartment?”

“Yes. I told you before.”

“Right. How long are you going to stay here?”

“I don’t know. It’s day-to-day.”

Or minute-to-minute, Arkady thought. He took her cell phone number and gave her his card. “If you remember anything else, give me a call.”

Svetlana asked, “Those five minutes, do you think she was still alive?”

“From that fall? I think she died instantly. I doubt she felt a thing.”

“Who would do that?”

“I don’t know, I think Tatiana Petrovna had so many enemies they were tripping over each other.”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t. Just curious.” An afterthought occurred to him. “How did your cats get on with her dog? I saw a dog in pictures of her.”

“Her pug? Little Polo? What a coward. He didn’t dare come in here.”

• • •

Arkady paused to pull on latex gloves before opening the door. He had high hopes. He expected the apartment to be a reflection of a well-ordered mind, and clean surfaces meant good fingerprints.

The balcony curtains were closed, allowing only chinks of light. He threw a light switch to no effect and remembered that the building’s power had been turned off. The beam of his penlight zigzagged to the dangling wires of a ceiling fixture. He aimed down and found that he couldn’t move without stepping on open books or broken glass. He let the beam crawl across the room to a sofa that was upended and gutted, spilling foam. Next to it was a desk stripped of its drawers. Folders were dumped out of file cabinets. Bookshelves were swept clear and loose papers strewn everywhere. Scattered shoe boxes held audiocassettes that went back twenty years according to their labels. The flotsam and jetsam of a professional reporter.

He took long, cautious steps to the kitchen. Everything that had been in a drawer or cabinet was on the floor. Knives glinted through a mélange of yogurt, melted ice cream and breakfast cereal. Both the refrigerator and the range had been moved aside. Two dog bowls, one upside down. In the bathroom, the medicine cabinet had been emptied into the sink. In the bedroom the mattress was filleted, her wardrobe tossed on the floor.

He crossed to the balcony and opened the doors. This was Tatiana’s last view, bleaker than Arkady had anticipated, far from the glass towers of millionaires. Even with the doors folded, there was only room on the balcony for two people. A plaque on the rail said, PLEASE DO NOT PLACE OBJECTS ON LEDGE. Good idea, Arkady thought. In the corner of the balcony lay an ashtray and a shriveled geranium in a pot.

He returned to the living room, crushing a shoe box of tapes on the floor, and picked up a tape recorder. He expected dead batteries. Instead he heard the stutter of machine-gun fire and a woman’s voice say, “Both sides have the same weapons. That’s because our Soviet soldiers have traded their weapons for vodka. Here in Afghanistan, vodka is the great equalizer.” Arkady tried another tape. “The sirens that you hear are ambulances taking children to a hospital already overflowing with casualties, over two hundred so far. It’s now clear there was no rescue plan. The prime minister has yet to visit the scene.” And a third. “The bomb went off during rush hour in the metro. Bodies and body parts are everywhere. We’re trying to move closer but some tunnels are so filled with black smoke it’s impossible to breathe or see.” History rushed by.

He put in a new cassette. At first he thought it was blank and then he picked up her low, soft voice. “People ask me is it worth it.”

A pause, but he knew that Tatiana was there on the other side of the tape. He could hear her breathing.

The next morning, Arkady felt curiously well. Part of it was Vicodin and part a sense that he had come into direct contact with Tatiana Petrovna and had an idea where to begin. Sergei Obolensky had been one of the few men who put up a fight outside Tatiana’s apartment building. He had been Tatiana’s closest friend on the magazine Now .

“It’s more like Now and Then, ” Obolensky said. “We pulled our latest issue so we could rethink our policy on investigative journalism. Maybe we’ll have to put in a horoscope instead of investigation. Maybe we’ll print only horoscopes. I’m not going to make the magazine’s staff risk their lives. Personally, I’ve decided I’m too old to die. It’s very simple when you’re young and you don’t have a family and financial obligations. At my age, it’s a mess. No story is worth that.” Obolensky rubbed the bruises on his shaved head. “Nothing compared to a punctured lung.” He brought a bottle of vodka and two glasses from a desk drawer. “I normally don’t drink in the middle of the day, but as we are two survivors of the Battle of the Bullhorn, I must salute you.”