Stuart Kaminsky - Tarnished Icons

“How did you feel about it?” asked Rostnikov, thinking about the bomber to whom he had just spoken.

“Feel? Sad, angry. I wanted revenge.”

“Revenge,” said Rostnikov, putting the finishing touches on his bird. “Did you ever get your revenge?”

“No,” said Zelach.

“And plainly it has not driven you mad,” said Rostnikov.

“No,” said the even more confused Zelach.

“Do you still think of revenge?”

“No,” said Zelach.

“Come,” said Rostnikov, rising with difficulty. “Later we’ll have birds to draw, colors to see. Now we catch a murderer.”

Ludmilla Henshakayova was startled by the knock at her door. She had been sitting at her window looking out at the snow starting to fall again. In the corner a man on the television screen began to laugh. Ludmilla didn’t know why he was laughing and she really didn’t care. He and the electric picture box were there for mindless company. Ludmilla did not like to be alone.

Another knock.

Ludmilla did not live in the best of neighborhoods. Her apartment building was in fatal disrepair, and from her window not far from where the trolleys turned she could see only the ancient cemetery and its occasional visitors. Mostly, from the window, she watched the ugly huge crows perch on the tombstones, leaving their claw prints in the snow. Ludmilla was nearly seventy and barely able to survive on her pension plus the money she made selling flowers in front of the Bolshoi when the opera, ballet, or other event was going on. Such events were frequent, and Ludmilla needed the money badly, but recently the cold had gotten to her, and Kretchman, the flower supplier, had suggested that she stop until the weather grew warmer. But how could she?

A third knock.

Ludmilla sighed and over the sound of the laughing man on the television shouted, “Who?”

“Police,” came a woman’s voice.

“I don’t believe you,” said Ludmilla, looking at the dead bolt and four locks on her door.

“I’m here with another officer,” the woman who claimed to be a police officer said. “We’ll slip our identification cards under the door.”

Ludmilla still sat. The man on the television had stopped laughing. Perhaps the snow would stop soon. There was a Mozart opera at the Bolshoi. She couldn’t remember which one, but there would be Americans, French, Canadians. They and the newly rich young Russians were her customers.

The cards came under the door.

“They could be forged,” Ludmilla said. “Anything can be forged if you have the money.”

“We are here to talk to you and about the man who attacked you,” came a young man’s voice.

“That was ten years ago,” said Ludmilla.

“Almost,” said the woman outside.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ludmilla said firmly.

“We think he is still attacking women,” said the female voice outside. “We think he is hurting them badly, raping and beating them. We think he may eventually kill one of his victims.”

“Go to them,” shouted Ludmilla, knowing that her next-door neighbor, Maria Illianova, was listening to every word.

“You are the only one who has seen him,” said the woman.

Ludmilla sighed, got up on her arthritic legs, and moved slowly to the door. When she got there, she looked down at the two identification cards, but she didn’t bend to pick them up.

She opened the door.

Sasha and Elena heard the locks click and watched the door come open. According to their information from the original report of the attack, Ludmilla Henshakayova was a large woman of not yet seventy. The woman before them in a loose-fitting dress was thin and seemed ancient. She looked at Sasha and Elena and then stepped back so they could enter the small apartment.

Sasha paused to pick up their identification cards and hand Elena hers.

The door closed and Ludmilla said, “With two police inside, I can lock it later.”

On the television, the laughing man was now interviewing an actor. Ludmilla couldn’t remember his name but she recognized him. He sat across from the laughing man, confident, handsome, legs crossed.

“Ludmilla Henshakayova,” Elena said gently to get the woman’s attention.

“I’m sorry,” said Ludmilla. “I suffer from the Russian diseases of fear, loneliness, melancholy, and a desire to forget the past.”

The room was not at all what either Elena or Sasha had expected. The neighborhood was nearly a slum and had been for years. Half a block away sat the remains of a building so poorly constructed it had collapsed about four years earlier, killing more than a dozen people.

But this room was immaculate. The walls were clean. Two framed posters of flowers were side by side on one wall. The other walls were bare. The concrete floor was covered by a large, darkly ornate rug, and the chairs and narrow bed in the corner were covered in matching knitted covers of yellow and green. The fourth wall held a full bookcase that stood about six feet high and fourteen feet across. In the corner were two chairs and a table covered with a bright yellow tablecloth. On a polished table in a corner sat the black-and-white television where the laughing man and the movie star were talking.

Both Elena and Sasha saw the low armchair at the window. Elena’s aunt had a chair near their window, where Anna Timofeyeva sat for hours, sometimes the whole day, except to do her prescribed walking and to eat a little. Elena sensed her aunt’s memories in that chair. Sasha imagined his mother, Lydia, in such a chair, but not for long. Lydia had the patience of a fly. Sasha sensed his mother’s fear of loneliness and her ever present impatience. Lydia would not sit still in such a comfortable chair for more than five minutes before she rose and began searching for someone to call, something to do.

“Sit,” said Ludmilla.

“May we turn the television off?” said Elena.

“Yes,” said Ludmilla, going back to her chair at the window.

Sasha anticipated her, stepped ahead, and turned the chair slightly so it could face the two investigators, who sat in the straight-backed wooden chairs. Sasha glanced out of the window at the cemetery. A trio of crows swooped down on a large tombstone that was leaning decidedly to the right.

“A little girl detective,” Ludmilla said with a shake of her head as if she expected no more than madness from the new Russia. “A pretty little girl.”

Elena wasn’t sure whether she should be flattered or insulted.

“The attack,” Elena said.

They had decided that whichever one of them seemed to have the better rapport with the woman would lead the questioning.

Ludmilla now looked at Sasha.

“And a boy detective, too. A boy detective with eyes as old as mine. You know, I used to be a poet. I can show you some of my books, the magazines in which I was published, some posters for readings I did all over the Soviet Union.”

She paused and looked up at the two posters on the wall. Sasha and Elena followed her gaze. Indeed, under the flowers both posters carried printed announcements of appearances and readings. One poster was in French. The other was in Russian.

“I no longer write poetry. And then …”

She trailed off, pulled her distant memories in, and sat up to say with renewed strength, “Tea?”

“No, thank you,” said Elena. “We know it has been a long time, but we have very little information on the attack.”

If it hadn’t been for Karpo’s notes, the information they had found in the general files would never have led them to this woman. There had been only a brief entry. Ludmilla’s name, age, and address. There was also a note on the standard form indicating the location where she was attacked and a description of both the method of attack-knife, sneaking up from behind, hand over the eyes-and the attacker. The attacker’s description was simply “Young man, dark hair, brown eyes, khaki jacket. Attempted to take victim’s purse. She fought him off.”