Stuart Kaminsky - A Fine Red Rain

The music came blaring forth again. Mazaraki stepped back into the shadows, and a dancing bear and two mandolin players dressed in plaid suits and baggy pants bounded into the ring.

"That was your killer?" asked Sarah, leaning toward her husband.

Rostnikov nodded.

He felt her grip tighten on his arm.

Emit Karpo sat at his desk on the fifth floor of Petrovka finishing his report. He had no office and his desk was number five in a line of eleven desks against a windowless wall. The windows were all in the offices on the outer wall. An officer named Fyodor sat at desk number nine talking on the telephone. Karpo could make out nothing that Fyodor said. He didn't care. But he could not ignore the snorting laugh that usually followed a deep intake of air by the other inspector.

He finished die report and looked over at the only other person in the office.

"It's almost nine," Mathilde said, playing with her wilted red hat. She seemed generally wilted. Her hair lay across her cheeks. The collar on one side of her red dress was up, the other down, and it was clear that this lack of symmetry was not a clever fashion ploy.

"It is finished," said Karpo. "I need only make copies and carry them to the deputy procurator's office."

"And then?"

"And then," said Karpo, rising, "you are free to go."

Mathilde put the hat over her face and laughed. It was a loud, rough laugh that rivaled that of Fyodor, who paused in his conversation with a smile and looked over at the woman in red to share her joke. When Fyodor saw Karpo looking back at him, however, he returned to his phone conversation.

"Something is humorous?" Karpo asked, standing in front of Mathilde, the report, in duplicate, on Yuri Pon neatly tucked into a folder under his left arm.

"I was almost killed this afternoon," Mathilde said, choking back a hiccup. "That madman almost killed me."

"I was there," Karpo said reasonably.

"Oh, yes, of course. How could I have forgotten?"

"I did not literally mean" Karpo began.

"No, you did not literally mean," she said, standing. "You literally are. Do you know that I was frightened this afternoon? Do you think it might be reasonable to offer me something? Thanks, an arm of support, an American tap on the chin for a job well done?"

"The hat…" Karpo said.

"With the money I could have made picking up Englishmen at the Bolshoi today, I could have bought five hats," she said, putting the hat on the chair.

"Well?"

"Well? Is that what you have to say? It's your turn to speak, Emil Karpo. Your turn."

Her hands were on her hips. A moist clump of hair fell over her eyes. She tried to blow it away but it didn't move. She flicked it over with her fingertips.

"You helped to catch a man who committed eight murders of women," he said evenly. "You seemed quite willing to"

"Spasee' ba, thank you," she said.

"Spasee' ba," Karpo said. "On behalf of the people of Moscow."

"I'm touched," she said with a sigh, picking up her hat again. "You are a romantic, Emil Karpo."

"I don't see how you could come to such a conclusion," he said. "Certainly not based on the information you have or on anything I have said or done here."

Fyodor laughed, and both Mathilde and Karpo turned to see if he were laughing at them. He was not.

"I was being sarcastic, Emil."

"As you well know, I have no sense of humor," Karpo said soberly. "I have no repressions and, therefore, no need for humor."

"Do you know what day it is?" she asked.

"Tuesday," he replied.

A door somewhere opened and closed, the sound echoing past them.

"Let us break the pattern," she whispered and found herself unable to repress a hiccup. "Let us go to your apartment, which I have never seen, and let us get in bed."

"It isn't Thursday," Karpo said.

"Believe me," she replied. "It will still work."

"Why do you want to do this?" he asked with genuine curiosity.

"Why? Because you are a challenge to my profession, to my craft. I am driven to make you feel, to make you react."

Karpo shook his head, unable to understand this woman.

"And I am to pay as always?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, plunking the red hat on her head. "You are to pay as always. The hat was for risking my life."

"I see," he said. "Compensation for lost income. And you don't want cash without expending labor."

"I love when you talk filthy to me," she said with a grin.

"I didn't…"

"Deliver your report and let's go," she said. "While I still labor under the delusion that there is hope for you."

The circus crowd responded with enthusiastic applause to the panorama display of the fighting spirit of the Red Army. A woman stood upon a great horse that pranced around the ring. The woman held high a red flag with the hammer and sickle. In the darkness beyond the curtain, a cannon roared. Twelve men dressed as soldiers high-stepped out and raised their rifles to the sky in salute. The applause rose again.

Rostnikov noted that the applause came nowhere near matching that which had been given to the trick horse rider or the dancing bear or the clown on the high wire or any other act before this one.

Throughout the evening, Mazaraki had moved closer to the crowd with each announcement of each act, had moved closer and closer to Rostnikov.

"For the benefit of our foreign visitors," Mazaraki had said, looking at Rostnikov during his introduction of a motorcycle act, "the New Moscow Circus does not promote the idea of danger in its performance. Skill is the focus, Soviet skills. Our people come, not in the hope of witnessing accident or death, but with confidence that they will see performers who have perfected their skills, their timing, and the potential with which they have been born and that our nation has nurtured. And yet, Tovarich," he said, looking directly at Rostnikov with a grin, "some skills have a risk of danger, and those who come through the doors of the circus must understand that there is always the slight possibility of accident for those who would challenge their skills, their muscles, their wit. There is no better place man the circus for such a challenge."

"He's talking to you," Sarah whispered.

Rostnikov said nothing. He watched the announcer hi red describe the motorcycle act, watched him back away, watched the look in the man's eyes, which he had seen many times before during investigationsa look of defiance and desperation.

The last act before the curtain call by all the performers was a magician, a magnificent magician with two bespangled women assistants whom he kept making disappear and reappear in various sections of the audience, high above on a rafter, or inside one of the four locked boxes on a raised platform.

Children clapped, men and women said "wonderful," and the performers and animals made a final triumphant appearance. As the performers left and the final strains of a march vibrated from the band, Rostnikov looked at the exit curtain, looked at Dimitri Mazaraki looking back at him. The tickets had been the first invitation. All night long, throughout the performance, Mazaraki had issued other invitations. And now came the last, a look that said "Come if you dare, but I doubt if you dare, not in my world."

It was, Rostnikov thought, the bear trapped in a shed, standing on its hind legs, growling, claws up, paws wavering, a frightening and frightened figure.

'Take the metro home," Rostnikov said to his wife as the crowd began to thin and the band stopped playing. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

Sarah looked at him and avoided a sticky, crying little boy who was being led out by his mother.

"What are you doing, Porfiry Petrovich?"

She was tired, worried, and well aware that she had no chance of changing his mind regardless of what he was going to do.