Stuart Kaminsky - Blood and Rubles

“Five dead,” said the Wolfhound, displaying to the FBI agent that he was fully knowledgeable about day-to-day criminal activity in his city.

“I will supervise Inspector Timofeyeva and conduct the investigation of the abduction with the assistance and advice of Agent Hamilton,” said Rostnikov.

“Why assign Karpo to-?” the Wolfhound began.

“Inspector Karpo has a particular interest in the street killings,” explained Rostnikov, “and I believe he will be zealous in his investigation.”

“Particular interest?” asked the Wolfhound.

“A woman who was killed in the cross fire was a friend of Emil Karpo’s, a particular friend. Her name was Mathilde Verson.”

Sasha Tkach and Arkady Zelach sat in the small, drafty flat of Dmitra Klepikova, who wore a heavy blue man’s sweater and slacks and hugged herself in a way that made Sasha wonder if she was ill. She had thin bones and was a woman who seemed to be taking the winter badly. Her skin was already dry, and her gray-white hair was cut very short. She was forty-eight years old but looked two decades older.

Dmitra had handed each of the policemen a cup of tea and then taken a seat between them. In this intimate semicircle Zelach was not at all comfortable.

Dmitra was the local uchastovaya. She was given her flat free of charge, for which privilege she was expected to know the neighborhood and its problems, to anticipate crimes, and to quickly identify those who had already committed crimes. Dmitra had a small desk in the corner of the room, and she rarely left her apartment. There were many people in the neighborhood, particularly old people, only too happy to come and chat in return for a cup of tea and a biscuit. Occasionally Dmitra made rounds so that she would be known around the neighborhood and given some respect-not as much as she had been given when she was a district Communist party supervisor, but sufficient respect to satisfy her.

She had never had a visit from criminal investigators before. In fact, she had never had a visit from any uniformed patrol at all. She had always gone to the run-down 108th Police District office to deliver her reports. In her three years as an uchastovaya she had seen Lieutenant Colonel Lorin, the head of the district of more than seventy thousand residents, only twice and had never exchanged a word with him.

“I can tell you who the local drunks are, who is likely to come home in a bad mood and beat his wife, who might break into an apartment,” Dmitra said in a very high singsong voice that began to get on Sasha’s nerves as soon as she spoke. The voice and the woman reminded him of his own mother. “But I can’t tell you with certainty who killed Oleg Makmunov.”

“You know the dead man’s name,” said Sasha.

“One of many. The police sometimes rousted him from doorways early in the morning. Another biscuit?”

Zelach nodded yes and Sasha answered, “ Da,” throwing his head back to get the blond hair out of his eyes. It was a boyish act, one that contributed to his attractiveness to women, who wanted either to mother him or to smother him. At least that was the way Sasha now saw things. At thirty-one he was no longer a boy and his hair was growing subtly darker. At home he had a wife, two small children, and a mother who made shopkeepers cringe.

“The biscuits are from Poland,” Dmitra said. She held out the small plate to the two policemen, each of whom took one small vanilla biscuit. Then she whispered, “Gift from a local vendor. The truth? Between us?”

“Between us,” Sasha said, beginning to feel quite warm in the small apartment.

“I let her set up her table in front of the metro,” Dmitra said, leaning forward. “She gives me a tin of biscuits here, a juice there. She has a prime location. You know how it is? You know what I get paid?”

Sasha was well aware of “how it is.” His wife, Maya, worked, and his mother, who had had her own place for a while, had moved back in with them and was now contributing most of her salary as a government clerk to the household. With two small children it was still difficult, very difficult, but Sasha had never taken a gift from a criminal or a suspect.

“About the murdered man,” Sasha said, giving a stern glance at Zelach, who reached for another biscuit on the small plate on the table in front of them.

“Who kills a drunk?” said Dmitra. Her shrug was a ripple of bony shoulders beneath her oversized sweater. “And especially a drunk like this Makmunov, who could barely put a few rubles together for a cheap bottle.”

“Who?” asked Zelach, who had ignored Sasha’s glance and devoured two more biscuits.

“Another drunk he got into a fight with,” Dmitra guessed. “A creature of the night even lower than Oleg Makmunov.”

“A creature of the night?” asked Zelach, his cheek full.

“Gang members wandering the streets, ready to pick a fight and a drunk’s pocket. Remember, we have no curfews any longer.”

“A gang?” Sasha said.

“A gang of the very young,” Dmitra said. “If they were older, they wouldn’t be using pieces of concrete and their feet. They would have knives and guns.”

“Wouldn’t they simply be afraid to fire weapons?” asked Sasha. “Afraid to be heard?”

“Are we friends now?” Dmitra asked, leaning forward again and speaking softly.

“Well …” said Zelach.

“Fellow members of the law enforcement team, then,” she said.

“Yes,” said Sasha, looking directly at Zelach to keep him from answering.

Dmitra sat back with her tea, comfortable in the new camaraderie she had purchased with a few biscuits. “Response time on a gunshot in this area,” she said, “is at least ten minutes from the time of the call, usually more like fifteen minutes. You could slaughter the entire Bolshoi Ballet on the Prospekt, quietly pick up the shell casings, and walk away singing those incomprehensible American songs. There are only one hundred and nine policemen in this district and five patrol cars. The police, I can tell you, are not anxious to go driving down a street where they might find themselves facing two or three men with submachine guns or those pistols that shoot through solid steel.”

“Continue,” said Sasha with an encouraging smile, not his most winning smile, but certainly one that moved beyond mere politeness.

“Whoever killed Oleg Makmunov didn’t have a gun,” she said. “And what criminal doesn’t have a gun?”

Sasha nodded for her to go on and she did.

“Almost any criminal today has a gun. Almost every civilian has a gun. Like Los Angeles. Only small children, at least most small children in this district, can’t afford guns … yet.”

“So you think this murder was committed by children?” asked Zelach, reaching for the biscuits. Sasha beat him to the plate, took one, and moved it out of Zelach’s reach. He underestimated Zelach’s determination, however, and found the slouching man leaning far forward to get to the plate. Sasha put a hand on his partner’s shoulder to move him back.

“Combined with the fact that there have been five similar killings within the past few months,” Dmitra said, “and all within two square kilometers of where we are sitting-all were drunks out late-it fits the pattern.”

Sasha had seen bands of poorly dressed children-three, six, ten at a time-hands in their pockets, smoking, looking around insolently, daring people to get in their way, begging, demanding. Some of the children were little more than babies, six, maybe seven, years old. Now, with winter coming, these children, many without homes, would be growing more desperate, needing money for clothes or for someplace to sleep.

“Where do you suggest we begin?” Sasha asked.