Stuart Kaminsky - The Man Who Walked Like a Bear

“No. Is he the one who has supposedly threatened my life?”

“Yes,” said Karpo as Andrei Morchov finished his drink and placed the glass on the desk after wiping its bottom with the towel.

“Well, why are you wasting your time here?” Morchov said with a sigh. A knock at the door and Morchov said, “Yes?”

The beautiful woman with the dark hair opened the door. She now wore a white robe, and her hair was noticeably damp.

“We will be late,” she said without looking at Karpo.

Morchov, unsmiling, held up his right hand and nodded. The woman left, closing the door gently.

“I do not wish to be late, Comrade,” he said.

“I do not wish to keep you,” replied Karpo.

“Who is this Yuri whatever?” Morchov said with an impatient sigh. “And why would he wish to harm me?”

“He is a young man who works as a messenger in the Central Telegraph Office,” said Karpo.

“How young?”

“Nineteen.”

“I will exercise some caution,” Morchov said, standing. “There may be counterrevolutionary ethnic separatist groups that might wish to make a point. Terrorism is, after all, not restricted to the Arabs. I doubt if this threat is serious, but I expect you to handle it quickly. Keep me informed through my assistant. I think there is no reason for us to speak again. You understand?”

Karpo rose and nodded.

“You may show yourself to the door,” Morchov said. “Touch nothing on your way out.”

Karpo left the room. The pain returned with an acrid surge, expanding within the left side of his head, ordering him to seek darkness, the quiet, enclosed tomb of his small room. When he left the apartment, the well-built man in the suit was standing outside the door expectantly, as if he had been called.

He nodded and Karpo followed him down the hall, wondering why Morchov had been unnecessarily rude.

When he got back to his small room, Karpo, in spite of the insistent pain that demanded that he capitulate, bow to it, checked the two sets of hair and the piece of dust he had pushed gently against the hinge of his door to be sure no one had entered. Emil Karpo turned on a small light and refused to close his eyes or even blink at the cold needles the light stabbed into his head. He would stay here in darkness for no more than half an hour. He would allow himself no more than that. He would then return to his duty even if he had to suffer through the searing pain, the almost unbearable light. But before he allowed himself the darkness, he picked up his phone, which he used only in pursuit of his duty, and called Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov at Petrovka. The phone rang five times before the junior officer on duty picked it up and informed Karpo that Inspector Rostnikov had left word that he could be found at home going over reports. Karpo hung up and called Rostnikov at his home.

“I wish to report,” Karpo said.

“Proceed,” said Rostnikov.

And Karpo slowly, in detail, omitting only his own pain, related what had transpired in his visit to Andrei Morchov.

“I will have a full, written report on your desk this afternoon,” Karpo concluded.

“Comrade Morchov sounds as if he may have some idea of why this young man might want to do him harm,” said Rostnikov. “Or he may simply have a great deal on his mind, or he may simply be an unpleasant person. Who knows?”

“I was not antagonized by Comrade Morchov’s behavior,” Karpo said. “Though I did find it curious.”

“Forget the report till tomorrow,” Rostnikov said. “I won’t get in till late in the morning. There are some thefts at the Lentaka Shoe Factory I must look into. I may need your assistance with this. Shall we have someone keep an eye on our young suspect? Yuri …”

“Vostoyavek,” Karpo supplied.

“Get some rest, Emil Karpo,” said Rostnikov. “You’ll function better with some rest.”

Rostnikov hung up, and Karpo did the same. Yes, Karpo knew he would function better with rest, and he would get that revitalizing rest by lying in bed fully clothed, but first he would change those clothes, wash, shave. During the conversation with Rostnikov, Emil Karpo had decided the pain would have to wait. He would not permit it to interfere with the performance of his duties. And, later, when he did lie down, he would leave the light on.

Emil Karpo looked around his room carefully before moving to the sink in the corner. His desk, shelves full of black notebooks on each and every case he worked on, the bed in the corner, the single wooden chair, and the squat, wooden dresser in the corner were in place, and the photograph of Lenin working at his desk was where it should be, over his bed.

Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov had just finished his right-handed curls with fifty-pound weights when Karpo had called. When he had come home an hour earlier, he had changed into his blue sweat suit, pulled the weights out of the lower cabinet in the corner of the living room, laid out his blanket, and arranged the wooden chair so that he was facing into the room with the music from the record player behind him. Recently, since Sarah’s surgery, Rostnikov had found himself drawn to melancholy French music. He had traded six of his paperback American mysteries-two Lawrence Blocks, three Ed McBains, and a Jonathan Valin-for two very old Edith Piaf albums.

The weight routine required no thought. In fact, thought was to be avoided if at all possible. The workouts that left Porfiry Petrovich most satisfied, most refreshed, were those that passed without his being aware of time, passed with only a vague, blue-white hum instead of thought. But time had moved too slowly this night. He had sat on the chair, looked down at the neatly arranged weights, and smiled at his newest acquisition, a compact fifty-pound dumbbell from Bulgaria. It rested blue-black in front of him, inviting. He had listened to Edith Piaf sing about a piano and he had let the thoughts come, Sarah, the man who walked like a bear, his son Iosef, the Gray Wolfhound, Sasha Tkach’s distracted look, Karpo’s headache. The thoughts came and began to fade into the blue-white hum of soft music and the flow of energy and effort in his muscles.

The positions were awkward because of his leg, but Rostnikov had mastered them long ago. His lifts and repetitions were mostly for the upper body, arms, neck, abdomen, back. His good leg received a series of weighted rises near the end of the workout that ended with a painful but necessary manipulation of his left leg. When Sarah was home she usually helped him with the final manipulation. Rostnikov had been bending the leg and coming out of his blue-white peace when Karpo called.

Now Rostnikov put down the receiver and looked around the room. He would turn off the phonograph, put away the weights and blanket, place the chair back next to the table, and then shower, after which he would change, make the promised visit to his neighbors, the Agarevas, with his tools to fix the leaking pipe, and then return home to finish for the second time his Ed McBain novel as he ate his sandwich of black bread and thick-sliced cheese. He had one cucumber and four potatoes left plus a bottle of mineral water.

Rostnikov knew he would eat quickly, that the emptiness of the apartment without Sarah would be most evident at the table. He let the thoughts come back now, his wife and son, the people with whom and for whom he worked, but behind them loomed the large and melancholy shadow of Ivan Bulgarin, the man who walked like a bear.

At the precise moment that Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov was turning off his phonograph, Sasha Tkach was telling his wife and mother in great detail about his and Zelach’s efforts to locate a missing bus and its driver.

“Put it on television,” Lydia said, sipping her glass of tea. Lydia was small, loud, decisive, and inflexible. Unfortunately, she was, as even Maya had to admit, sometimes right. It was simply difficult to acknowledge that someone as maddening as Lydia Tkach could be right about anything. “Go on television and tell everyone to look for the bus.”