Stuart Kaminsky - Blood and Rubles

She wants him to go down on one knee and light it for her, like the man in the painting, Rostnikov thought. Hamilton made no move while Anna Porvinovich paused and then accepted a light from Yevgeniy, whose hand was shaking.

“Can you make a list of people whom Alexei Porvinovich knows-those with whom he does business, those he may have offended, anyone …?”

“I do not think Alexei would like you to have a list of his business associates,” Anna answered. “But … all right. You will have such a list in an hour.”

“And you, Yevgeniy,” Rostnikov said. “Can you help make this list for us?”

“Yes,” he said. “If there’s any chance we can save Alexei, I will do whatever is necessary.”

“Do either of you like to dance?” Rostnikov asked.

“Do we …” Yevgeniy began, confused.

“I like to dance,” Anna said. “And Yevgeniy is a hippo on the dance floor. I have more than once had the misfortune of having him step on me.”

Yevgeniy shook his head.

“Alexei, does he dance?” asked Rostnikov.

“A little,” she said. “Does it matter?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. Do you read?”

This time Anna looked just the slightest bit annoyed. “Yes, I can read and I do read. I am currently reading a book in French. The newly discovered Jules Verne novel. But-”

“Are you enjoying it?” Rostnikov interrupted.

“Not very much.”

“Then why read it?” Rostnikov asked.

“When I begin a book, I always finish it. When I go to a play or a movie, I always sit through it. I do not leave anything unfinished.”

“I understand,” said Rostnikov. “And you, Yevgeniy?”

“I don’t think this will help my brother.”

“Humor me,” said Rostnikov.

“I am not reading a book. I don’t read many books. I am a businessman.”

“What do you do with your time besides work?” asked Rostnikov.

Anna now looked at Rostnikov as if he were a madman. “Go to museums, clubs,” she answered. “Read an occasional book. Hold an occasional tea. Time passes. I find things with which to fill it.”

“Yevgeniy?”

“I am in business with my brother. That leaves me little free time. I normally spend it with my family.”

“Family?”

“Wife, mother-in-law, daughter, dachshund.”

“How old is your daughter?”

“Sixteen,” he answered with restrained anger.

Rostnikov rose, finished the Pepsi in his hand, and placed his drink on the table. Hamilton got up. Yevgeniy got up. Anna Porvinovich remained seated.

“I’ve seen that pose,” Rostnikov said, looking up at the painting.

“I wish I had lived in the late twenties or early thirties, in France or America, or even England.”

“I quite agree,” said Rostnikov, moving to the door with Hamilton. Yevgeniy, anticipating the move, had hurried ahead of them to open it.

“We will send someone back to install the telephone recording device,” said Rostnikov.

And then the two men were in the hall walking to the elevator.

“What do you think, Agent Hamilton?” Rostnikov asked in a whisper.

Hamilton answered in English. “Anna Porvinovich gave me a clear invitation to return for more than talk of her kidnapped husband. I don’t know if she was serious or if she does that in the hope of manipulating all men.”

“She is a beautiful woman,” said Rostnikov in English. “Do you think she had her husband kidnapped?”

“Possibly,” Hamilton said. “But if she did, her act is all wrong. She should be playing the distraught wife and she seems too smart not to know it.”

“I agree,” said Rostnikov. They both entered the elevator, and Hamilton pushed the ground-floor button.

“With what?” Hamilton asked.

“That she may have been responsible for her husband’s kidnapping and that she is very smart. Why would we suspect a woman who is not playing the role of the grieving wife? Why would we not assume that she is likely to be innocent of wrongdoing precisely because she is calm and carrying on a possibly innocent flirtation with an FBI agent?”

“You are too convoluted in your thinking,” Hamilton said.

The elevator stopped and the two men walked out into the lobby.

“It is my heritage,” said Rostnikov, limping toward the door beyond which the armed soldier stood. “Over eight hundred years of trying to outwit authorities who can do what they want to you makes a people suspicious of authority and turns many of them into good and devious actors.”

They were on the street now. The policeman was standing erect instead of slouching.

“Your name?” Rostnikov asked.

“Officer Boris Guyon.”

“Boris Guyon,” he said. “Do you like to dance?”

“I … do not know how to dance well, but what I can do I like … have liked.”

“Thank you,” said Rostnikov.

He and the FBI agent walked to the car, where Hamilton paused and said, “Are we going anywhere else where I have to take off the hood ornament and the windshield wipers?”

“Yes,” said Rostnikov.

Hamilton waited till they were both in the car before he said, “Why all these questions about dancing?”

“It is not dancing that is important,” said Rostnikov. “It is getting to know people. If you talk to them about crime, they have prepared answers, wary answers. If you talk to them about what they read, drink, do, you often discover quite a bit about who you are dealing with. And if you ask them mad questions, they are often caught off guard and reveal something of their true selves.”

Hamilton pulled into the nearly empty street and said, “Did you find out anything about Yevgeniy and Anna with your questions?”

“Quite a bit,” said Rostnikov. “Are you aware that we are speaking English?”

“Yes,” said Hamilton.

“Do you remember when we began speaking English?”

“In the corridor outside the apartment,” Hamilton answered in Russian.

“Why?”

“I didn’t want them to know what we were saying,” said Hamilton, now clearly determined to speak Russian.

“No,” said Rostnikov. “The door was closed and we were speaking softly.”

“Your theory?”

“The woman had made you nervous and you were looking for something that would make you feel more comfortable-your own language,” said Rostnikov. “Turn right at the next corner.”

“Yes, the woman made me feel nervous, and the fact that Yevgeniy Porvinovich kept touching the gun under his jacket as if he might pull it out and start shooting if someone said a wrong word.”

“That too,” agreed Rostnikov. “So what would you do next?”

“Go to the telephone company and see if Anna Porvinovich really received a phone call yesterday,” said Hamilton. “No call and we go back and confront her.”

“I think you will find that the call was made,” said Rostnikov. “I could be wrong, but Anna Porvinovich is, as we said, very smart. I’m hungry. You?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Then park right over there, near where those two people are talking. The building behind them is where I live.”

“The photographs,” said the man in the blue smock. He was looking at Karpo over his glasses and holding out a set of full-color photographs. “They’re all of the man with the tattoos. The other victims are nowhere near as interesting.”

Emil Karpo took the photographs and looked at each one slowly.

One of the “not so interesting” dead was Mathilde Verson.

The man in the blue smock was Paulinin, who presided over a morbid flea market in his laboratory two floors below street level in Petrovka Headquarters. Paulinin had a mass of wild gray-black hair on an oversized head. He watched Karpo’s face as the policeman went through each photograph of the naked body of the man whom Rostnikov had found sprawled on the hood of a car twenty feet from where Mathilde Verson had been shot while drinking tea. Karpo had already seen photographs of Mathilde and had looked at her body. He had resisted the urge to touch her flowing red hair and had tried instead to create a mental picture of her that would stay with him till he died.