Stuart Kaminsky - Blood and Rubles

“You’re crazy,” said Yevgeniy, pressing a napkin to his cheek. The napkin was already dark red with blood.

“Precisely,” said Alexei. “I am insane. I hope it is only temporary, that sometime after I kill you and Anna, my sanity will return. That happens sometimes, doesn’t it, policeman?”

“Chief Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov,” Rostnikov said.

“Do you think I am out of my mind?” asked Alexei, his weapon pointed at his wife.

“Yes,” said Rostnikov. “But it is complicated. You are crazed by what has happened to you, but you think you are not. You think you are only pretending to be insane so that you will not be held responsible for killing your wife and brother.”

“Either way, I’m crazy,” said Alexei with a grin.

“True,” said Rostnikov, “but we have a strange judicial system. I have seen demonstrably mad killers sentenced to death or prison and quite lucid murderers declared insane.”

“But did they go through what I’ve gone through?” Alexei shouted.

“My wife and I are caring for two young girls,” said Rostnikov, unbuttoning his jacket. “Their grandmother, with whom they were living, could barely feed them. She shot a food-store manager, killed him, and sat down on a little stool. What she had gone through had driven her quite mad. She is now in prison and will probably spend the rest of her life there. Would you like another example?”

“No,” said Alexei. “I still intend to kill these two.”

“Alexei,” said his wife, “I am sorry.”

“Sorry,” Alexei said with an animallike snort. “You expect me to believe that?”

“No,” she said. “You misunderstand. I am sorry you got away. I am sorry that fool Artiom didn’t kill you. I’m sorry the plan didn’t work, such a simple plan and such fools to deal with. I sometimes wonder why I get involved with men who are fools.”

“Am I a fool, Anna?” Alexei asked as his brother reached for a fresh napkin and began to sob.

“A clever fool,” she said, folding her arms.

“Are you afraid, Anna?” asked Alexei.

“No,” she said. “I know that is what you want, and perhaps you deserve it, but I am not afraid. I’m weary of all of you.”

She turned her back on her husband and walked to the window.

“Was I so bad to you?” Alexei shouted.

“Yes,” she said softly, closing her eyes.

“How?” he demanded. “What did I do that deserved my murder?”

She shrugged and said, “Little things, big things. I’m not going to give you a long list. The way you laugh, snore, gloat. The business stories you tell over and over. Your pitiful sex. There’s much more. What difference does it make? You are going to kill me soon.”

“If you put down the gun,” said Rostnikov, “I will arrest them both for your kidnapping. When they come out of prison, they will be old. They will have missed life while you are free to start a new life without them. Isn’t that better than killing them?”

“Is it?” asked Alexei.

“Yes,” said Yevgeniy eagerly.

Anna, her back still turned, shrugged.

“I do not want to live in a prison,” she said. “I would prefer to die now in my own home.”

Alexei shook his head and ran his fingers across the growth of beard on his mask of pain. “I deserve satisfaction,” he said. “I deserve having you try to talk me out of killing you. I deserve to have you sobbing like Yevgeniy when I kill you.”

Yevgeniy was leaning stiffly back in his now-blood-splattered chair. He looked at Rostnikov for help.

“I will give you no satisfaction,” she said, looking out the window.

“Take them,” Alexei Porvinovich said, lowering his gun and his head. “Take them now.”

He sat on the sofa, a bit dazed, the weapon in his lap.

Rostnikov rose, using both arms of the chair, and said, “Yevgeniy Porvinovich, Anna Porvinovich, I arrest you for the crime of kidnapping and attempted murder. Other charges may be brought following an investigation.” Rostnikov went around the table and reached for the weapon on Alexei Porvinovich’s lap. Alexei did nothing to stop him. He looked straight ahead.

Anna turned from the window and said, “The cloth coat, Yevgeniy. The fur would be stolen by the police, and you might bleed on it.”

“I need a doctor,” Yevgeniy said.

“You’ll get one,” said Rostnikov. “Let’s go.”

They moved forward.

“Where are the two dead men?” Rostnikov asked.

Alexei told him.

“I’ll be back. Have some tea. Get some sleep,” Rostnikov said.

Alexei nodded, reached for Anna’s lipstick-stained cup, and drank what was left.

In the hallway Rostnikov dropped the gun to his side and walked behind the two prisoners. Yevgeniy held a napkin to his wound and looked as if he would fall over.

“I doubt if either of us will go to jail,” Anna Porvinovich said to Yevgeniy. “Stop weeping. If we do have to spend time in prison, I doubt it will be for very long. There are people to bribe and men to reason with. Isn’t that true, Inspector?”

“Probably,” said Rostnikov, wondering how he was going to get the two of them to the closest district station. He had not wanted to call for a police car from the apartment. He had wanted to get them out quickly in case Alexei changed his mind and went for a weapon.

“We worked well together,” Anna said, turning to look at him with a smile.

“Let us say, your performance was excellent,” Rostnikov said. “Deprive the poor victim of his satisfaction.”

“While you,” she said, “promise him a punishment for those who have harmed him, a punishment you cannot deliver.”

“We were wonderful,” said Rostnikov.

Anna smiled at his irony. It was a smile of perfect white teeth. Rostnikov felt that she was a rare combination of seductiveness and intelligence, with more than a touch of madness.

“When we are safely wherever you are taking us,” she said, “I would like to make a few phone calls. And I would like you to come back and arrest Alexei for threatening to kill me. Yevgeniy and I had nothing to do with Alexei’s kidnapping. You have no witnesses now that this Solovyov is dead, no witnesses but my vindictive and deluded husband.”

They were in the elevator now. Yevgeniy, his face blood-red, leaned back until his head bounced against the wall.

Anna continued. “Perhaps this Artiom made up a story about my involvement in his crime. He made certain suggestions-certain advances toward me-which I rejected. He may have taken Alexei out of revenge and told him I was involved in order to torture my poor husband.”

“You are probably the most dangerous woman I have ever met,” said Rostnikov.

“Not the most dangerous person?” she asked, meeting his eyes.

“The most dangerous person I have known senselessly murdered at least forty-two people,” said Rostnikov.

“If I thought it would do any good, I would seduce you,” she said as the elevator doors opened on the ground level.

This time Yevgeniy purposely banged the back of his head on the wall.

“No good at all,” Rostnikov confirmed.

They stepped outside the building. A cab sat free only a few feet away. The driver looked at the trio, particularly the box-shaped man with the machine gun and the man with the bloody face, and sped off down the street.

“What now?” asked Anna.

“We find a phone,” said Rostnikov.

She was now near enough that Rostnikov could smell her. He hoped she would move away. He hoped she would stop talking. He hoped there was a phone nearby.

Karpo knew little about computers, which was why he sat in his small office reading the manuals that he had obtained from Colonel Snitkonoy’s little Pankov, who had a computer on his desk. There were many people he could ask about how to insert the disk and read it, but this he would not do.