Stuart Kaminsky - The Dog Who Bit a Policeman

“Then there is no danger?” she said.

“There is always danger,” he said. “But in this case it appears the danger is only slight, very slight. Remember the last time when I told you that there was distinct danger?”

“Of course,” she said.

“There was,” he said. “And I was honest with you, as I am being now.”

“When can we do it?” she asked.

“I’ve spoken to the surgeon, the same one who operated last time,” he said. “Tomorrow morning. Possibly the next day.”

“So soon?”

“I think it would be best,” said Leon, patting his cousin’s hand.

“The day after tomorrow,” Sarah confirmed.

“Eat nothing after midnight tomorrow,” he went on, still holding her hands. “Be at the hospital at six in the morning. No, make that seven. They always tell you to come at least an hour earlier than necessary. I’ll be there through the whole operation.”

“This,” said Sarah, looking around the beautiful room, “will be very difficult.”

“I know, but you will be all right.”

“No,” she said with a smile. “The difficult part will be telling Porfiry Petrovich and Iosef. The difficult part will be losing my hair again. You know it has not grown in as thick as it was before the last operation.”

“It will grow back and look as beautiful as it does now,” he said with a smile. “And it does look beautiful.”

Sarah nodded her head, but her heart told her something quite different from what her cousin was saying.

Inspector Emil Karpo stood in yet another hotel shower room as a body was being removed. He recognized the dead man as Shatalov the Chechin’s closest bodyguard. The big man had stood behind Shatalov at the burial of Valentin Lashkovich the day before, and he had stepped forward in front of Shatalov when it looked as if there might be a confrontation with the Tatars. Now the big man lay white and dead, and Karpo stood with the security guard Petrov, looking down at the body. Karpo had called Paulinin before coming to the hotel. Karpo had arrived as the cloudy gray dawn was breaking.

“Your name is Viktor Petrov,” Karpo said to the security guard looking down at the body. “You were wounded five years ago in a gun battle with some young teens.”

“Yes,” said Petrov. “How did you remember that and my name?”

Karpo didn’t answer. The man known, among other things, as

“the Vampire,” had not visited him when he was in the hospital.

Rostnikov, who had also been on the siege of the boy thieves, had, however, visited him twice.

“You have done well here,” Karpo finally said.

“Not well enough,” Petrov said. “I heard no shots, and whoever did it managed to get by the guards at all the exits.”

“It would seem,” said Karpo. “Repeat again what the dead man said to you.”

Viktor repeated the words precisely.

Karpo nodded. He asked Petrov more questions and examined the room and the body without touching anything. That would be Paulinin’s job, and he knew the technician would be upset if something were moved or touched, including the body, before he had an opportunity to study the scene.

Something about the dead Mafia man’s words touched a memory in Karpo. There had been a shoot-out between the Chechins and the Tatars nearly a year ago. In addition to one Tatar, several bystanders had been killed, including an old man and a little boy.

He remembered the mother in tears after the battle, holding her dead son in her arms. It reminded him of two things. One was a scene from the movie Battleship Potemkin in which a mother carried her dead son toward the czar’s soldiers, only to be cut down by bullets herself. The other was the death of Mathilde Verson, killed in a cafe in crossfire from two other Mafias. Mathilde had been a prostitute, a woman of great strength and good humor whom Karpo had visited weekly. She had always looked at the policeman, who frightened others, with amusement and understanding. Gradually they had developed a relationship and he had considered her the only living person besides Rostnikov to whom he felt close.

That closeness and Mathilde’s genuine concern for him had begun to bring Emil Karpo to life.

Karpo had slept little on his narrow bed during the night that was coming to an end. He had been plagued by a migraine. The migraines had been coming more regularly recently, and the pills he had been given were of no use if he did not take them before the onset of the pain. Since his warning auras of smells and white flashes had not been coming since Mathilde’s death, he had to suffer the headaches in the darkness of his room, feeling the waves of nausea rise and fall inside him. The headache had gone shortly after the phone call. He had been called because Rostnikov was out and the dead man was a member of one of the two Mafias Rostnikov and Karpo were investigating in connection with what looked like the assassinations of their members.

Paulinin arrived with his familiar large metal box that looked more appropriate for going fishing than for investigating a crime scene. Emil Karpo knew better.

“Good,” said Paulinin, looking over his glasses. “It’s you, Emil Karpo. I had to deal with that Zelach and Rostnikov’s son earlier today.”

“Last night,” Karpo corrected.

“Last night. Last night. You are right,” said Paulinin. “Precision is essential. Three times in two days I have been called from my lab.

I don’t like to leave my laboratory. You know that. Very irritating.

Very irritating. What do we have?”

Which meant, Karpo thought, that Paulinin had spent the night in his laboratory.

Paulinin looked at Petrov and then at the naked corpse. “Are they going to take this one from me before I get a chance to really know him?”

“I will do my best to prevent that,” said Karpo.

“I begin,” said Paulinin, moving toward the body.

The police ambulance arrived at the hotel, and the two paramedics went up the elevator with their rolled-up canvas stretcher.

People crowded the lobby watching, wondering what was going on.

The people behind the desk were of no help, and there was no manager present to give information on the situation.

Rostnikov was gone by the time the ambulance arrived. He had left quickly, silently, carefully, and relatively unseen. There was no sign of the dog or of the man who had told him to kill Elena.

Five minutes after their arrival, the paramedics came down the stairs. The elevators were far too small to hold a stretcher with a body on it.

The body they carried under the bloody white sheet was that of Elena Timofeyeva. Many in the lobby were familiar with such sights. Others were not. Was this an accident? Suicide? Murder?

Who was under the sheet? What had happened? They were given no answers. The paramedics moved to the door, which was held open for them by the doorman. The stretcher was placed inside the ambulance. The doors were closed and the ambulance quickly departed.

When he stepped out onto the sidewalk with a small group of curious hotel guests, he spotted the man who had released the dog.

He did not, however, see the dog. The man watched the proceed-ings for a few moments, till Elena’s body was in the ambulance.

Then the man smiled with satisfaction.

A dozen or so people watched the ambulance pull away. One of the watchers was having his pocket picked by a gypsy. The gypsy tucked the man’s wallet into his pocket and started across the street toward the railway station.

Down the street the man who had released the dog was getting into a parked car. Rostnikov could not make out the car’s license.

Rostnikov considered letting the gypsy go. Rostnikov had a great deal to take care of, but if he let the gypsy escape, the crime would twist inside him. It would take weeks to go away. It had happened before.