Stuart Kaminsky - Red Chameleon

“I’ve made a note,” Karpo said, and found Paulinin pausing to catch his eye. Normally, Karpo took detailed notes and went back to his room to transcribe them, but with one hand it was a difficult task, and he wanted no comment or glance from Paulinin. They were not friends. In truth, Karpo, the Vampire, the Tatar, wanted no friends. He wanted no obligation except to the state.

Paulinin looked at the limp arm through his thick glasses and shrugged before continuing.

“So your killer is left-handed. The Moisin has a right twist, but his bullet enters, drifts toward the left. Could be done by a right-handed shooter, but someone who is picking a target will usually wait till the target is neutral or to the right. That is conjecture, of course, based on experience.”

“Of course,” agreed Karpo.

“Finally,” said Paulinin, holding up a finger as he found the thin report he was searching for. “Your killer is strong. That rifle kicks like a member of the Supreme Soviet denied an extra box of Americans cigarettes. So, a picture is forming, comrade inspector?”

“Someone strong, probably big, left-handed, carrying something long enough to hide a long, heavy rifle.”

“That’s it,” agreed Paulinin, adjusting his glasses and reexamining the report in his hand. Karpo was clearly dismissed.

“Very good,” the detective said, not in the least offended by his dismissal. “If-when I find the rifle, I will bring it to you for positive identification.”

Paulinin laughed and shook his head. “You are looking for an antique, Comrade Karpo, a mastodon. If you find it, there will be little need to verify its relation to the crimes. If you dragged the corpse of Stalin in here and said, ‘Is this the Stalin who sat on your mother’s face, the Stalin who wore his collar too tight, the Stalin who was the premier of all the Russias?’ what could I answer?”

“You could answer like any Russian, ‘It is possible,’” Karpo said, opening the door to depart.

Paulinin was actually surprised. Never in his fifteen years of dealing with the pale, sharp bone had he known Karpo to display any humor. He turned to his report on chemical testing of vomit with professional joy as soon as the door was firmly closed.

But Karpo had meant no humor in his remark. Humor was far from his mind. It was caution he voiced, a caution he usually exhibited but which something within him now told him, urged him, to abandon. Time was, he feared, against him. The Weeper might strike again, kill another policeman. Or Karpo’s arm might be exposed, and he might be summarily dismissed. That could not, must not, happen till the Weeper was found.

He spoke to no one as he climbed the stairs. Karpo never took an elevator unless ordered to or accompanying a superior. He liked his feet on something solid. He walked home in the noon heat, absorbing but not considering the sweating figures that moved past him in shirt-sleeves or short-sleeved, loose blouses. The young woman who stared at him at the corner registered deeply but not consciously. Her breasts were large, unfettered, distracting. As he crossed Sverdlov Square and strode through the thin crowd in front of the metro station, the image of Mathilde came to him. He stopped, drew a deep breath, and willed the image to depart. He imagined a silver circle, breathed easily, ignoring the man with the loaf of bread under his arm who stared at him, and waited while the distraction of the body passed. When he moved again, he knew it would have to be addressed, that imp inside. There was no denying the animal inside. It could distract, but it also confirmed, reminded. It spoke and had to be answered, or it would play hell with even the most disciplined body, calling it from its duty. Better to respond, appease, recognize, than to suffer the distraction.

He got on the Marx Prospekt train and stood for the four stops till the Komsomolskaya Station. There were a few seats, but Karpo did not want to sit. He wanted the distraction of discomfort, relished the physical irritation to be overcome.

He departed from the train, walked slowly through the crowd, avoided bumping into a man in a railway uniform who carried a net bag filled with green apples, and headed for the long escalator. The station reminded him of an ancient time with its decadent upturned glass chandeliers, its arched columns, and curved white roof with decorative designs. He preferred the more efficient outer stations to these compromises with the past.

Ten minutes later he stood in front of his room at the rear of the fifth floor of an apartment building built less than thirty years ago and already smelling of mold and mildew. As he always did before he entered, Emil Karpo checked the thin hair at the corner just above the door hinge to be sure no one had entered the room. Only then did he insert his key and step into darkness.

The shade was, as always, drawn. There was nothing to see through the window beyond, nothing he wished to look at. He clicked on the light in the ceiling and moved to his desk to turn on the desk lamp. The room was remarkably small, small even for a poor Muscovite. It was almost a cell, a cell with a simple table desk, a bed that was little more than a cot, a hot plate in the corner, and shelves of notebooks, each with the same black cover, notebooks filled with legible handwritten reports on every investigation he had ever engaged in.

It was in such a room that Lenin had worked, and Emil Karpo did not find it constricting. On the contrary, he enjoyed the compactness, the wall that kept his energy imploded.

He sat, reached for the current notebook, opened it to the proper page with some awkwardness, since he had but one hand to use, propped the book open with another book, and began to write and to think as he wrote of the next move in his campaign to catch the Weeper.

Sasha sat up on the mattress and groped for something to cover himself, a blanket, something, but there was nothing within easy reach. He brushed his hair from his eyes and realized that he was covered with sweat. The room was small, about the size of a large office at Petrovka. It contained a worn mattress in one corner, on which Sasha was now sitting; metal shelving, rusted and cluttered with bits of wiring, machinery, and dusty cans; a very battered table covered with automobile parts; and the woman named Marina, who stood calmly and quite as naked as Sasha, at least from the waist up. She was about to pull her blouse over her head, and Sasha observed with quite conscious guilt that her breasts were much fuller, much larger and rosier, than those of his own Maya.

He watched her pop her head through the blouse and shake her hair clear. She didn’t look at the naked policeman sitting on the mattress who had, for the moment, forgotten his elusive trousers.

The ceiling of the room was high. In fact, it stretched far above them, perhaps two floors, and since the partition that defined it as a room was made only of thin planks of wood, the sound of grinding machines in the room beyond easily penetrated the sanctum of this unlikely sexual space.

Marina didn’t brush or comb her hair. With confidence she simply tossed her head like an unconscious animal that must clear its field of vision to watch for predators.

Sasha Tkach remembered his pants again, looked about, saw them across the room on a chair near the cluttered table, and tried to urge his body to rise. He touched the hairs on his stomach with a solitary finger and brought it away damp.

Why he had come to this moment of confusion and embarrassment was not completely clear to Sasha Tkach. How he had come to it was as sharp and visual as a poster for increased production glued to the temporary wall outside the Bolshoi.

The woman, Marina, had questioned him, questioned him in painful detail, about his alleged father, the kind of automobile he wanted, the deal they could make. As she had led him through the small workshop with the sullen, muscle-bound man named Ilya at their side, Sasha had the distinct impression that Marina was playing with him, smiling to herself as if she had a secret. She stayed close to Sasha, sometimes touching him, once let her breast run against his arm as she pointed to two men who were spray painting a small Volga. The Volga was basically blue, but under the hand of the two goggled men in overalls, it was turning a deep blood red.