Stuart Kaminsky - People Who Walk In Darkness

“The third man,” Iosef repeated.

“What third man?” asked Zelach.

“Two blood types on the body of my guests are Type B. So, I believe, is the man who tortured them. Ironic. Torturer and victims are blood brothers. But there is a third blood type, AB, on the skin of these two men. My guess is that all three men struggled, were beaten, bled on each other. We are fortunate. The third man carries the virus for narcolepsy. The man was bitten by a tsetse fly. It is, therefore, likely that he is from somewhere in the south of Africa.”

“Because tsetse flies are only found in Africa?” said Zelach.

“No, because my two friends here bear tattoos on the backs of warriors from the same Southern African tribe, a Botswanan tribe.”

“Warriors?”

This from Iosef.

“Yes,” said Paulinin. “Perhaps, but modern ones. These tattoos are only an homage to the past. They are like the tattoos prisoners wear to mark them as being from a particular gang.”

“Anything else?” asked Iosef.

“One moment,” said Paulinin, moving back into darkness, changing the CD. When he returned he looked at Iosef.

“Rachmaninov,” said Iosef.

Paulinin smiled.

“There is one more thing. Pa’smatril . Look.”

He turned the tortured dead man on his side and said, “You have to look very carefully.”

Paulinin pressed his finger into a red spot on the dead man’s back. His finger disappeared into the body.

“They both have them. The other one’s is on his thigh, like little pockets.”

“Drugs,” said Zelach.

“Diamonds,” said Iosef.

“Possibly,” said Paulinin.

Iosef did not press the issue. He was certain. The meeting in Porfiry Petrovich’s office made it clear that they were all in search of diamonds.

“Now,” said Iosef, “if you can only tell us where to begin looking for this third man. .”

“Four-seven-two-four Kropotkin Street,” said Paulinin.

“You cannot know. .” Zelach could not stop himself.

“Rent receipt in my friend’s pocket,” said Paulinin, touching the nearest corpse.

“ Spa’siba . Thank you,” said Iosef.

“Yes,” added Zelach resisting the urge to run out of the laboratory.

“Zelach wants to know if it is true that you have Stalin’s head and Lenin’s teeth and eyes,” said Iosef.

No, no, no, thought Zelach looking at Paulinin.

“I have treasures pathological, historical, and cultural,” said Paulinin who was looking over his glasses at Zelach. “It would be unwise to share treasure. Let yourselves out.”

Rachmaninov bloomed in the garden of glass, wood, and metal at their backs as Iosef and Zelach moved toward the door to the corridor.

A voice spoke cheerily behind them.

Paulinin was talking to the dead men. The scientist seemed certain that the dead men also talked to him.

And in some sense, he was right.

“Bedraggled,” LydiaTkach said, looking at her son.

Sasha was at the mirror in the tiny bathroom adjusting the white shirt under his tan zippered jacket. She had followed him before he could close the door.

Sasha, examining his face, had to agree. The unruly line of hair still came down to cover his forehead, only the hair was no longer really the color of corn. He was handsome still, but the appealing boyishness was missing. Undercover assignments were still his lot, but he could no longer pass himself off as a student or an innocent. His blue eyes betrayed him.

“Look at you.”

Sasha looked at his reflection and saw sympathy in the eyes that met his. Lydia was retired, no longer the tyrant who held together a gaggle of functionaries in a government office. Lydia, long hard of hearing, tended to shout when she was displeased. She tended to shout when she was happy. Shouting was her conversational currency and Sasha had endured it for more than thirty years.

“I’m looking,” he said. “What am I supposed to see?”

It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it as soon as the words had been spat from his lips, but he could not give up the small vestige of childish defiance.

“You are supposed to see a husband,” she said. “You are supposed to see a father with two children, one of whom is ill in an awful, dirty city of murderers.”

“The children are not ill and Kiev is neither dirty nor full of murderers.”

Why could he not silence himself?

“What was I saying?” she asked, looking at the dull green painted wall of the bathroom.

“You were telling me what I am supposed to see in the mirror.”

He turned to face her. She was small, lean, strong, and reluctant to wear the perfectly satisfactory hearing aids he had bought her.

“Yes, you are supposed to see a policeman, a policeman who could be shot or stabbed or beaten on the head or run over by a car.”

“Don’t forget poisoned,” he said, moving past her into the living room.

“You are not funny,” she said, following him.

“I know. It is one of my many failings. What are you doing today?”

“I’m working at not changing the subject when I talk to my only child. Did you see someone in the mirror who has been drinking too much, like his long-dead father?”

“My father died in a car accident.”

“Hah.”

“Hah?”

“I suspected poison at the time,” she said, trying without success to lower her voice in case some governmental agency thought enough of her to eavesdrop on her every word. “He was engaged in very sensitive government work.”

“Yes,” said Sasha, knowing that his father had been no more than a senior file clerk in the Underministry of Vehicles.

Now she followed him into the little kitchen where he opened the refrigerator door, removed the sliced brown bread and the last of the ham they had been nursing through meals for three days.

“You have never said anything about poison,” Sasha said, knowing that he was lost, lost in one of those futile conversations with his mother.

“I didn’t want to trouble you,” she said. “Put mustard on that.”

Sasha paused, plate of butter in his hand.

“Who doesn’t like mustard? Let’s have a show of hands,” he said, holding up his free hand.

“You are mocking your mother,” she said loudly with mock resignation.

“I have never liked mustard,” he said, placing the butter dish on the small table.

“And that has been your downfall.”

“Not liking mustard has been my downfall?”

“Being difficult has been your downfall,” she said, reaching out to tear off an edge of the ham he had placed on the table.

“I am not yet hopelessly fallen,” he said.

She said nothing, watched him make a sandwich, considered giving him more culinary advice, and thought better of it.

“You should stop being a policeman,” she said. “It is dangerous and you are no longer as alert as you once were.”

“Which of us is?”

Now they were into a familiar conversation they had repeated dozens of times.

“I’ve talked to Porfiry Petrovich about my concerns for your safety,” she said, folding her arms over the green dress she mistakenly believed flattered her.

“Many times,” Sasha said.

“Yes, many times.”

The sandwich was finished. It was a monument to distracted inefficiency. He took a bite.

“You should sit when you eat. It is bad for your digestion to eat while standing.”

He moved toward the door.

“It is worse to eat while walking,” she said.

She walked behind him to the door. He finished downing what he had in his mouth, paused, and turned to face her. She was a head shorter than he, which made it easier for him to lean over and kiss her head, which he did.