Stuart Kaminsky - The Man Who Walked Like a Bear

“Can you tell me who killed the man on the bus?” Tkach asked.

“Yes,” said Kostnitsov with a grin, showing most of his ill-treated teeth.

“Then make our jobs easy. Give us his or her name and we’ll get a nice commendation from the party secretary,” said Tkach.

“The person who pushed the victim down may not have fired the gun,” said Kostnitsov. “The person who pushed him down was about forty-eight years old, a man, probably medium build, white and pale, dark hair with a bit of gray in it. If you find a suspect I will give you a definite identification.”

Zelach, in spite of himself, laughed, then wished he had not. Kostnitsov advanced on him.

“DNA,” hissed the blue-smocked wraith in Zelach’s face. “Do you know what that is? It is in every cell of your less than adequate body. You identify a spleen and don’t know what DNA is. Is there hope for such an unbalanced creature?”

The medicinal smell of the lab was beginning to make Tkach ill, that and the memory of a recent knish. He had a sudden internal flash of Kostnitsov opening his stomach and examining the contents, including the knish, to determine the precise moment of his death. Tkach wanted to flee.

“DNA is the genetic material,” Tkach said.

Kostnitsov nodded and turned to him.

“Each person has his own pattern,” the scientist said, moving to his desk, pushing papers away in search of something as he spoke. “It is better than fingerprints. The odds of duplication are almost nonexistent. Every cell in the body has this print. Our dead man grasped the wrist of the man he was about to strike. He picked up a few surface cells and even a trace of hair. You bring me even a strand of hair of this man and get me into an electron microscopy laboratory and I will identify him.”

“Amazing,” said Tkach, which was just what the scientist wanted to hear. Kostnitsov found what he was looking for on his desk, a pad with notes and numbers scratched on it. He brought the pad to Tkach, who asked, “Can you tell us anything else?”

“Other people handled the body,” Kostnitsov said, pointing to the pad in front of Tkach’s hand. “One of them, was a woman. All of them except the first man are young, relatively young, younger even than you. At least three of them, including the first man, were Turkistani.”

“Turkistani?” Zelach asked before he could stop himself.

“Conjecture, conclusion, but almost certain,” Kostnitsov said, still taking his pad back from Tkach. “Tobacco bits on the victim. Someone who carried him. Turkistani tobacco. Also one small thread of a jacket made with wool dyed in Turkistan. Wool not sold in Moscow. No one would want it if it were. Inferior material. But who knows what people will wear?”

“You are sure?” said Tkach.

“No, I am not sure, but the weapon is one that has been linked in reports-number ten twenty-three, January last year; number four thirty-two-eleven, Kirov, April this year; four others all linking the Stechkin with clashes involving Turkistani separatists. Look at the computer. Madmen and madwomen.”

Zelach couldn’t imagine anyone nearly as mad as Kostnitsov but he said and did nothing to betray his thoughts.

“We are looking for a medium-height Turkistani about forty-eight years old,” said Tkach.

Kostnitsov nodded and looked at his pad.

“Do you read poetry, Comrade Inspector?” the scientist asked.

“Occasionally,” Tkach said, which was true primarily because Maya thought it was romantic to be read poetry to late at night. If the conditions were right and Lydia were not snoring too loudly in the other room, and the baby wasn’t restless, Maya would …

“Good,” said Kostnitsov. “Because facts are of no use without poetry. It is poetry that makes sense of facts. You understand. Get me an electron microscope and I’ll make real poetry. I’ll see into the very soul of a chromosome, the secret segment of a twisted thread of the very fabric of human existence. I’ll imagine myself into the smallest piece of evidence and give you the very face of criminal and victim. Is that not poetry?”

“It is poetry,” Tkach agreed.

“I have work,” Kostnitsov said with a sigh, turning away from the policemen. “Next time send Karpo.”

The scientist moved to a white metallic box on his lab table. The box was marked in ink with the words “Clopniki Investigation-Foot.”

Zelach and Tkach departed before the box was open.

There is a point, Rostnikov knew, at which you must stop pushing or the balloon will break. When he was a small child, he had heard about balloons, thought they were the most amazing things imaginable, wanted desperately to see, touch one. Finally, one morning when he was no more than five or six, he was walking to the market on Herzen Street with his mother and saw a man with balloons, white balloons. There were slogans written on the balloons, and children were flocking around the man. There was no helium, no gas of any kind in the balloons, but they jostled upward and back in the wind.

Porfiry Petrovich’s mother had watched her son turn his head to the balloon man as they passed, and though they were late and the lines would be so long at the market that they would have to wait many hours for whatever food, if any, was available, she let him stop, let him join the other children.

Porfiry Petrovich had reached over the shoulder of a little girl to touch a single, stray balloon that dipped toward him. He had stretched, strained, and finally, when the balloon fluttered down over the heads of the screaming children, Porfiry Petrovich and the little girl had both touched the balloon. The little girl had grabbed the sphere and smiled at Porfiry, and the two of them had explored the soft, strange thing while the balloon man chatted, encouraged the other children, and held the balloons aloft out of their reach.

And as Porfiry and the little girl touched the balloon that they held between them like a magical bubble, it burst. Porfiry was never sure whether it was his touch or hers that broke it. The moment of ecstasy was replaced by fear. Porfiry had looked around for his mother. She was hidden by the crowd of children who had turned to him and the little girl with the deafening pop of the balloon.

The tall balloon man had stepped through the crowd and looked down at Porfiry, who stood close to the little girl. She had taken his hand. The man leaned down to Porfiry and the girl. Porfiry could smell his breath, the dry, distant odor of tobacco like his uncle Sergei.

“What is your name?” the man had said.

Porfiry held back the tears, eyes darting for his mother, hand holding tight to the little girl’s fingers.

“Porfiry Petrovich,” he had answered. He could not remember if the little girl had given her name.

“Remember this, Porfiry Petrovich,” the man whispered in his ear, raising his eyebrows to play to the crowd of children, who laughed. “Treat precious things gently. If you press the balloon too hard, it will break. Will you remember that?”

“I will remember,” Porfiry had said.

“Good!” the man had shouted, standing up. “Then here is a gift.”

He handed Porfiry and the little girl each a balloon on a string and turned to the crowd of children who clamored around him, begging, calling, crying for a balloon of their own.

The little girl had dropped his hand and run away, and Porfiry Petrovich had raced around the crowd and found his mother.

“What is written on the balloon?” he asked.

“Sacrifice for the Revolution,” she said. “There’s a free circus tonight. That is the theme.”

The balloon had lasted almost till evening before a small leak drained and withered it.

“Porfiry,” Sarah said gently.

“Yes,” he answered, looking at his wife in the bed. The sun was going down and the ward lights would soon be coming on, the harsh white lights that cast the skin a sickly orange. Rostnikov wanted to be gone before that light came to his wife’s face, but he knew he would not leave till she ordered him to do so.