Stuart Kaminsky - Tarnished Icons

While the people of the right and left and middle were marching and buildings were in flames, Lydia offered each of the state employees who worked in the store the opportunity to stay and work for her with the incentive of bonuses if business went well. Some stayed. Some left. They all thought she was a bit mad. Gradually the bread shop workers learned that it was to their advantage to produce and to be reasonably respectful to customers.

Now, more than three years later, Tkach’s Bread Shop, which sold only one size of loaf at a price lower than competing shops, was a thriving business with long lines. It was an assembly line of bread, and prices were listed in rubles and dollars.

Once, a little more than a year before, a gang of young men, too few to be called a mafia, too many to be ignored, and too violent to be reasoned with, had come to the shop and demanded a regular weekly protection payment. The bread shop manager had called Lydia, and she had agreed to meet the gang the next Tuesday morning. When the gang of tattooed young men in leather jackets arrived, they were greeting by the old lady and three men who displayed both their weapons and their police identification. One of the policemen looked like a boy but had a glint of near madness in his eyes. A second policeman was bulky and looked a bit dull-witted. The third was tall and dressed in black, with a paste-white face and sparse combed-back hair. Ultimately the gang decided the money they might collect from the bread shop was not worth a confrontation with these three. Six months later a larger, older gang of Georgians also backed down when Sasha and his fellow policemen showed up. The few rubles they would collect from Lydia were simply not worth dying or going to jail for.

Now, with no protection to pay, Lydia was even further ahead of her competition, and the bread shop thrived. When Lydia died there would be a significant business to be left to her son and grandchildren. She had arranged the proper papers and paid the right people so that this could come to pass.

Somehow, though she didn’t tell him, Lydia expected Sasha to know all this and be grateful. Normally, however, he had other things on his mind, dangerous things that worried Lydia.

Sasha put his daughter down and went through the door, closing it quickly behind him. As he ran down the stairs, he brushed back the strand of hair that had regularly fallen across his eyes since he was a boy. There was more than a bit of truth in what his mother had said. There was danger, now more than ever before, and there were always bribes and women. He did have a temper. There was, however, a great deal to be angry about.

One of those things was a violent rapist who had survived long enough to earn a nickname, the Shy One. He had managed to commit at least twenty reported rapes without once being seen by his victims, who ranged in age from sixteen to sixty-seven. He had come upon them from behind and dragged them to a dark street or park or train yard. He warned them not to scream, and then he raped them from behind.

The first reported rape had been over two years ago. The rapist had worn a condom and left no semen traces to analyze. After each sexual attack he had beaten the victim, hitting each woman in the head when he was finished. With each attack the beatings had grown worse. All of the victims had received hospital treatment. Seven had required surgery. Two had lost sight in one eye. And the Shy One left no clue at all, which was why the National Police were happy to turn the case over to the Office of Special Investigation and why the Wolfhound had turned it over to Sasha and Elena Timofeyeva with the vague suggestion that Elena might be used as a decoy and Sasha, with his youthful appearance, might watch over her with little suspicion falling on them. The Wolfhound’s ideas were always vague, intentionally so. If his investigators succeeded, he could take credit for their success. If they failed, he would view their failure with paternal sympathy and clear disappointment.

The Shy One had no time pattern, no particular night of the week, no pattern of months, and only the vaguest broad sector of operation. Some of the victims said they heard a car door close immediately after they were attacked, but none could identify any car.

Sasha tried to come up with an idea as he jogged to the bus, but all he could think of was that his mother would be there when he got home and he would have no peace.

Emil Karpo had awakened at five in the morning, just as he had done for more than twenty years. He had awakened in total darkness without an alarm clock. He turned on the small table lamp next to his narrow bed and rose slowly. For weeks after Mathilde Verson’s death, he had slept with the small light on as he had as a young boy. Then, one night, he had turned it off. He slept without clothes despite the weather. Though the past night had been cold, it was no colder than a typical Moscow winter night. On warm nights in the summer, he slept on top of the thin sheet and thick blanket. On cold nights like last night, he had slept under the thick blanket that had been a gift from Mathilde. Mathilde, who had been torn to pieces in daylight on a busy street. She had been caught in the crossfire between two rival mafias. Mathilde had been a full-time telephone operator and a part-time prostitute with a sense of humor Karpo did not understand. They had, over the years, moved from a regular Thursday rendezvous to a teasing friendship to a serious relationship. Karpo wondered what there was in him that had made the bright, pretty woman want to be with him.

Emil Karpo had no illusions about himself. He was tall and incredibly gaunt, though he worked out in his room each morning. He was very pale and wore his straight and thinning hair brushed straight back. Until Mathilde, he had never worn anything but black. She had gradually changed that, but now he was back to his black attire. With Mathilde he had smiled a few times, very small smiles that only someone watching closely would have noticed. People did not tend to watch Emil Karpo closely. He was well aware that both the criminals and police referred to him as the Tartar or the Vampire. Neither name displeased him. It did not hurt to have a reputation. But Mathilde had seen past his white, cold image. Zeema, the winter, suited him and now it was Dikabr’, December, which suited him best of all months.

He looked around the room. Against one wall was a bookcase filled with black notebooks covering the details of every case on which he had ever worked. He had a special marking on those books containing cases that had not been solved. On the desk before the bookcase stood an old table. Two months ago, Karpo had purchased a computer, which rested on the table. It was crude, an old Macintosh II, but it had been expensive. That didn’t matter to Karpo. He had saved most of his salary. He could have lived better, perhaps eaten better, certainly dressed better, but he had simply put his money-cash-in a well-hidden place outside of his room.

Karpo was slowly transferring all of the data from his black books to the computer. He had been reading books on computers and had become convinced from using the one belonging to the Office of Special Investigation that a careful recording of the data in his notebooks might enable him to cross-check information from thousands of crimes and perhaps find information that would tie some things together.

On the wall near the door to the hall sat a chest of drawers, so old it was almost an antique. There was a painting on the wall. Mathilde had painted it. Craig Hamilton, the black FBI man who had been one of the agents assigned to help in the Russian fight against organized crime, lived in Washington and was a lover of art who frequently visited the National Gallery with his family. He had declared Mathilde a talented artist. Mathilde had given the painting to the Rostnikovs. Karpo had come to his room shortly after her death to find the painting on the wall. Each morning he paused, as he did now, before he began his workout to gaze in the semi-darkness at the reclining figure of a woman looking up a grassy hill, her face away from the viewer, her red hair, like a young Mathilde’s, billowing in a gentle wind. At the top of the grassy hill stood a small house. On the wall behind Karpo’s bed was the door to the closet where his dark clothes hung neatly in front and the clothes that Mathilde had bought, made, or convinced him to purchase were in boxes on the shelf. The fourth wall was to the right of Karpo’s bed. It had the single window that Emil Karpo opened only in the morning to determine the weather.