Stuart Kaminsky - The Dog Who Bit a Policeman

Tomorrow, when he was the object of jokes at Petrovka, he would concentrate on thoughts of his and Elena’s future. There was no doubt that word of his calling out a squad to arrest an innocent construction worker would be all over the building, and that there were some who would make lame jokes about the event.

Think of Elena, he told himself, removing the pillows from the couch and opening it into a bed. Think about telling your father and mother. He finished making the bed, propped up his pillows, and turned on the television. There was nothing worth watching.

He turned it off and then turned off the lights.

Tomorrow he would ask Elena if she had changed her mind, tell her that he would understand. He was certain she would not change her mind and that she had already taken plenty of time to decide.

Overall, thought Iosef, it had been a good day.

He lay back in his bed and fell asleep almost instantly.

Emil Karpo sat at the desk in his cell-like room, entering new data in his black book on the new Mafias. Even though he had a computer, Karpo did not fully trust it. He had heard tales of computers losing data, breaking down, crashing in bad weather. He would enter the data on the computer tomorrow night.

Karpo was fully dressed, scrubbed clean with rough soap, teeth brushed, face shaved.

He wrote his last word for the night, closed the book, and turned to look at the painting of Mathilde Verson on the wall.

Emil Karpo had only one bright image in his dark room, the painting of Mathilde, the reminder of a great failure.

Emil Karpo needed the smiling image of Mathilde on the wall to remind him that she had been real. Her red hair was flowing, her cheeks were white. Karpo’s memory held the black-and-white images of hundreds of criminals, but they were flat, dead images.

He turned away from the painting, rose, removed all his clothes, and hung them neatly in his closet. Everything in the closet with the exception of the few things Mathilde had bought for him were black. He closed the closet door and moved naked to the cot. Before he turned off his single light next to the cot, he tried to imagine Raisa Munyakinova in her holding cell. He could not. He simply knew she was there.

She had done no more than he had considered. Mathilde had been gunned down on the street between two Mafias. Raisa’s son had been torn by bullets. But Karpo was certain he would not be able to kill as she had. His belief in Communism was gone.

Mathilde was gone. All he had was the daily solace of doing his job, a job that would never end.

He turned off the light.

It was raining, finally it was raining, a light but insistent morning rain.

The Yak stood at the window of his office, hands clasped behind him, looking into the Petrovka courtyard below.

“You will turn over all of your notes on the dogfights, the killings, and the foreigners you have arrested to me,” said the Yak.

“This is now an international issue and I shall present it to the proper agencies of investigation. You have done a good job, as usual, Chief Inspector Rostnikov.”

Rostnikov was seated behind the dark conference table in his usual seat. He was slowly drawing pictures of birds in flight. He imagined that one of them was Peter Nimitsov.

“As for the Pleshkov investigation,” Yaklovev said, his back still turned, “there are some irregularities, but the case is closed. Your son has done an excellent job. Please prevail on him to go on quietly to his next assignment. Tell him that his mistake yesterday in calling out the special squad is of no consequence.”

“I will,” said Rostnikov. “He will find the ham thief.”

“Finally,” the Yak said, turning to face the man whose eyes and pencil were fixed on the notebook before him. “The Mafia killings.

They continue. They grow worse. But you have taken into custody someone who committed some of the murders. We can inform the media, give her name.”

“A mistake,” said Rostnikov without raising his eyes.

“Mistake? I’ve read the report from you and Emil Karpo. What is the mistake?”

“She didn’t do it,” said Rostnikov. “Mistakes can be made, as they clearly were in the case of the prominent Yevgeny Pleshkov.”

Silence except for the rain hitting the window.

“I see,” said the Yak. “All right. The woman is of no consequence to me. What do you intend to do to insure that she. .?”

“She has relatives in Odessa,” said Rostnikov, “but I don’t think she will leave the grave of her child.”

“Would she go to Odessa if the body of her son were moved with her and a reasonably impressive headstone placed over his grave?” asked the Yak.

“Perhaps, yes, I think so. I will have to ask her.”

“Do so,” said the director, moving behind his desk. “If she decides to cooperate, and I’d like you to be your most persuasive, tell Pankov that I want him to make the necessary financial arrangements.”

Rostnikov closed his notebook, put his pencil in his pocket, and stood up. It was the director’s turn to look down at the work on his desk, pen in hand.

“Your wife,” he said. “I understand that she did not need the surgery.”

The fact that the Yak knew did not surprise Rostnikov.

“Fortunately not.”

“Good,” said Yaklovev. “I am not without compassion, Porfiry Petrovich. I may have little of it, but that which I do have I husband and give out only to those I respect.”

“Thank you, Director Yaklovev. Will that be all?”

“New assignments tomorrow,” said the Yak. “New successes.

New enemies. That will be all today.”

The cemetery was empty except for two badly matched figures, a man in a black raincoat and a hood and a woman in a raincoat of crackling gray plastic.

They walked together to the sound of pounding rain, knowing where they were going. They had been there before, the grave of THE DOG WHO BIT A POLICEMANNN275

Valentin Lashkovich. In the day since they had last been here, a headstone, life size, with an image of Lashkovich etched in the dark stone, had replaced the old one. Lashkovich on the stone was thinner than he had been in life, his dark suit nicely pressed.

The flowers on the grave were fresh, bright and varied, though the rain was beating down the petals. There were many wreaths and bouquets. The grave was completely covered with brightness. As in the deaths of other Mafia members, Emil Karpo knew the number of flowers would dwindle till, in less than a week, there would be none.

Raisa and Karpo looked down at the grave, their feet growing wet as the rain soaked the ground.

Karpo leaned over, gathered an armful of flowers, and handed them to Raisa. He took an even bigger armful. Then the woman led the way as the rain came down even harder.

The grave she led him to was in a far corner where the graves were close together and there were only stones set flat in the ground with the names of the dead chipped neatly but simply into them.

The one for Raisa’s son was no different than the dozens of others.

Karpo knelt and placed his armload of flowers on the small grave. Raisa did the same. Mathilde was buried in another place and time, and flowers from the grave of a killer would never do.

But Raisa did not seem to mind.

“The sky is crying for my child. It waited for me to be able to come here and cry with it.”

She expected no answer and received none.

The two stood over the grave as the rain seeped through their protective covering. They said nothing. There was nothing that either of them wished to say. They stood for almost forty minutes, when the rain suddenly stopped.