Stuart Kaminsky - A Fine Red Rain

"None for us," said Rostnikov.

Felix nodded and poured drinks for himself and his brother. Both brothers drank with trembling hands.

"What will we do?" asked Felix, pouring himself a second drink.

"You have equipment for videotaping?" asked Rostnikov, touching a metal cabinet nearby.

"Yes," said Osip, eagerly moving to a cabinet farther down, assuming the police would take the equipment as a bribe and go away.

"You know how to use it?"

"Yes," said Felix, perhaps beginning to understand.

"Good," said Rostnikov. "Good. Show us."

For the next half hour Osip demonstrated how to use the Japanese equipment. Rostnikov paid little attention but knew that Tkach was absorbing everything. The inspector was deciding how to set the scene, where to put the blankets. Felix watched him while Osip spoke, partially losing his fear in his absorption with the machines.

"I know what you plan to do," said Felix as he downed his fourth glass of vodka. His gray face was perspiring, his mane of hair limp. "It could fail, get us all killed very quickly."

"Or it might succeed," said Rostnikov. "Success, failure, quickly, or a slow wait till the inevitable moment when the knock on the door will not be from two policemen who have an interest in saving you."

"…the tape for longer periods," Osip was saying as Rostnikov turned.

"Sasha," Rostnikov interrupted, "I've got to go find the circus woman. You finish here and tell these gentlemen what they must do next."

Tkach looked at him steadily and nodded. Rostnikov patted his friend's shoulder and went through the side door of the trailer and into the sun.

Yuri Pon was not having a good morning. First, his head hurt, a pulsing pain the source of which was surely the vodka he and Nikolai had drunk the night before. There had been too many nights like this recently. At first the idea had been to dull Yuri's nights, get him through without the dreams, the images, the longings. But last night he had simply drunk to blot out Nikolai's snoring. Yuri had already decided that he had to find another prostitute, had already met with enough failure. He needed a clear head tonight if he were to find one, to get some relief.

Second, while he had concluded that whoever had looked at the file on the eight killings the day before had probably only been involved in a routine check on something else, he could not really be sure. Inspector Karpo had made no appearance, had given no further evidence of his interest in the file.

Third, the small screw on the right side of his glasses was loose, very loose. He had tried to tighten it with a tiny screwdriver but it barely held, and every hour or so it needed tightening again. Getting his glasses repaired or replaced would be hell, take days. He took them off for the fifth time that morning and tried to tighten the small screw with his thumbnail. It moved a bit.

Fourth, Ludmilla Kropetskanoya, that dark pole of a creature, had dumped extra work on him, had told him to begin the end-of-the-year inventory and cost projections for paper, folders, and nonhardware items. That should be her job, not his. Couldn't she see, didn't she know after all these years, that the efficiency of the files was his doing? Wasn't it evident to her that all the computerizing of files was on schedule because of Yuri Pon? By the end of the current year, if he were not bothered with tasks that could be done by a bookkeeper, and if he were allowed to keep the three clerks who were assigned to the task, he would have all files transferred to the computers.

"… if we keep down the order for manila twos because we won't need them when we turn to the computers," she said, leaning over Yuri, her foul breath in his ear. What did she eat each morning? What rotting fish clung to her yellow teeth?

"I thought we were going to maintain the paper file system as a backup," he said, twitching his nose to push his glasses back. He wanted to push her back, away. God, how his head screamed.

"The latest thinking is that there will be no need for written files at all," she said. "Backup tapes will be kept. Our primary job will be to copy the written reports into the computers, file them properly, and destroy the paper."

"I see," said Yuri, but he didn't see. He didn't see why he had to be told this way, told so casually, that his records, the records he had worked on for more than half his life, were to be destroyed and that he was going to be turned into a way station between policemen and a computer. There was no art to that, no skill. He could see that the computers were more efficient, but there were nuances one couldn't program. He had seen them, the way an officer wrote something, emphasized it by bearing down, or the space that was taken, the Size of the letters. One could tell something by the writing, the individuality. Each report was different, but they would all seem the same on the computer: each letter the same size, each line the same length, only material programmed that could be retrieved.

"I see," he repeated, but if his glasses fell off, if his head began to hurt any more, if this feeling of rage and the need for relief were not controlled, he would be able to see nothing.

"Good," she said with no further explanation as she left for her office.

Yuri was sweating, his hands folded in his lap, as he looked at the long inventory sheet Ludmilla had placed on the desk in front of him. He got up and walked around the row of file cabinets that stretched for fifteen rows. In the corner, where he couldn't be seen, Yuri sat at the computer terminal, closed his eyes, and clenched his teeth. The clenching brought more pain to his head. He opened his eyes, turned on the machine, listened to it hum to life, and punched in the file number he wanted, the one for the serial prostitute killings. Then he called up the file itself and watched the names and reports go by, letting each name, each situation, recall the feeling.

Ludmilla, Nikolai, his own mother, thought of Yuri as an almost fat, dull minor bureaucrat. He was that. He knew he was that and he didn't mind, but he was more. He had watched for years as the state did nothing about these women, these women he saw everywhere. He, Yuri Pon, whom no one thought of. Ha, he didn't even think of himself. He, Yuri Pon, was slowly, systematically, ridding Moscow of a class of criminals. Jack the Ripper, the Englishman, seemed to have had something of the same idea. Jack had succeeded in changing some things, bringing down a corrupt police system. Yuri had read about him. The same thing would happen for him. The city would have to recognize the existence of prostitution, do something about it as he was doing.

The feeling he had when he did it, stalked, found, was a patriotic frenzy. He couldn't deny its sexuality but he didn't have to admit it, either. Oh, God, tonight. It would have to be tonight. He couldn't wait. And then he stopped, his eyes fixed on the screen, the words before him. Someone had recently called up this file. That was normal, but the system showed a cross-check file still hi the computer. Someone had coordinated data from other files with this one. Yuri pressed the indicated code and the letters on the screen began to roll down. It was a series of names, five names, and the personnel coordinates on each, including days off for illness, nonworking days, hours worked each day. One of the names was his.

Someone had.linked Yuri's name to the file, to the killings, but who and why? It was the same person who had pulled the paper file on the case, his file. It must be Karpo. It was not a routine check. There was no initial on the access code, though there was supposed to be. Everyone, including filing personnel, was supposed to initial any program or any use of a program. He sat looking at his name on the gray screen, and then methodically, letter by letter, the file began to disappear. Yuri looked back over his shoulder. There was no one there. He looked at the screen, panting. Someone, somewhere, was erasing the file that included his name on a list. Someone had seen what he wanted to see and now was eliminating the information. Yuri wanted to climb into the screen, follow the wiring, be led by electricity, until his own face appeared on the screen in front of whoever was doing this. He wanted to look at that face, frighten it with a grin. He put his hand on the screen to slow down the ping-ping-ping removal of each letter. Then his name started to disappear, N-O-P-I-R-U-Y. It was followed by the others, and then the screen was blank, the computer humming.