Martin Smith - Wolves Eat Dogs

Zhenya concentrated on the board. The head of the shelter had told Arkady how Zhenya did solitary chess problems every night until lights-out.

Arkady said, "You may wonder how it is that a senior investigator like myself is free on such a glorious day. The reason is that the prosecutor, my chief, feels that I need reassignment. It's plain that I need reassignment, because I don't know a suicide when I see one. An investigator who doesn't know a suicide when he sees one is a man who needs to be reassigned."

Arkady's move, the retreat of a knight to a useless position on the side of the board, made Zhenya look up, as if to detect a trap. Not to worry, Arkady thought.

"Are you familiar with the name Pavel Ilyich Ivanov?" Arkady asked. "No? How about Pasha Ivanov? That's a more interesting name. Pavel is old-fashioned, stiff. Pasha is Eastern, Oriental, with a turban and a sword. Much better than Pavel."

Zhenya stood to see the board from another angle. Arkady would have surrendered, but he knew how Zhenya relished a thoroughly crushing victory.

Arkady said, "It's curious how, if you study anyone long enough, if you devote enough effort to understanding him, he can become part of your life. Not a friend but a kind of acquaintance. To put it another way, a shadow has to become close, right? I thought I was beginning to understand Pasha, and then I found salt." Arkady looked for a reaction, in vain. "And well you should be surprised. There was a lot of salt in the apartment. That's not a crime, although it might be a sign. Some people say that's what you'd expect from a man about to take his life, a closet full of salt. They could be right. Or not. We don't investigate suicides, but how do you know it's a suicide unless you investigate? That is the question."

Zhenya scooped up the knight, revealing a pin on Arkady's bishop. Arkady moved his king. At once, the bishop disappeared into Zhenya's grasp, and Arkady advanced another sacrificial lamb.

"But the prosecutor doesn't want complications, especially from a difficult investigator, a holdover from the Soviet era, a man on the skids. Some men march confidently from one historical era to the next; others skid. I've been told to enjoy a rest while matters are sorted out, and that is why I can spend the day with you." Zhenya pushed a juggernaut of a rook the length of the board, tipped over Arkady's king and swept all of the pieces into the box. He hadn't heard a word.

The last regular event was a ride on the Ferris wheel, which kept turning as Arkady and Zhenya handed over their tickets, scrambled into an open-air gondola and latched themselves in. A complete revolution of the fifty-meter wheel took five minutes. As the gondola rose, it afforded a view first of the amusement park, then of geese lifting from the lake and Rollerbladers gliding on the trails and, finally, at its apogee, through a floating scrim of poplar fluff, a panorama of gray daytime Moscow, flashes of gold from church to church and the distant groans of traffic and construction. All the way, Zhenya stretched his neck to look in one direction and then the other, as if he could encompass the city's entire population.

Arkady had tried to find Zhenya's father, even though the boy refused to supply the first name or help a sketch artist from the militia. Nevertheless, Arkady had gone through Moscow residence, birth and draft records in search of Lysenkos. In case the father was alcoholic, Arkady asked at drying-out tanks. Since Zhenya played so well, Arkady visited chess clubs. And, because Zhenya was so shy of authority, Arkady went through arrest records. Six possibles turned up, but they all proved to be serving long terms in seminaries, Chechnya or prison.

When Zhenya and Arkady were at the very top of the wheel, it stopped. The attendant on the ground gave a thin shout and waved. Nothing to worry about. Zhenya was happy with more time to scan the city, while Arkady contemplated the virtues of early retirement: the chance to learn new languages, new dances, travel to exotic places. His stock with the prosecutor was definitely falling. Once you'd been to the top of the Ferris wheel of life, so to speak, anything else was lower. So here he was, literally suspended. Poplar fluff sailed by like the scum of a river.

The wheel started to turn again, and Arkady smiled, to prove his attention hadn't wandered. "Any luck? You know, in Iceland there's a kind of imp, a sprite that's just a head on a foot. It's a playful imp, very mischievous, likes to hide things like your keys and socks, and you can only see it from the corner of your eye. If you look straight at it, it disappears. Maybe that's the best way to see some people."

Zhenya acknowledged not a word, which was a statement in itself, that Arkady was merely transportation, a means to an end. When the gondola reached the ground, the boy stepped out, ready to return to the shelter, and Arkady let him march ahead.

The trick, Arkady thought, was not to expect more. Obviously Zhenya had come to the park with his father, and by this point, Arkady knew exactly how they had spent the day. A child's logic was that if his father had come here before, he would come again, and he might even be magically evoked through a re-creation of that day. Zhenya was a grim little soldier defending a last outpost of memory, and any word he passed with Arkady would mute and dim his father that much more. A smile would be as bad as traffic with the enemy.

On the way out of the park, Arkady's mobile phone rang. It was Prosecutor Zurin.

"Renko, what did you tell Hoffman last night?"

"About what?"

"You know what. Where are you?"

"The Park of Culture and Rest. I'm resting." Arkady watched Zhenya steal the opportunity to take another turn of the fountain.

"Relaxing?"

"I'd like to think so."

"Because you were so wound up last night, so full of… speculation, weren't you? Hoffman wants to see you."

"Why?"

"You said something to him last night. Something out of my earshot, because nothing I heard from you made any sense at all. I have never seen a clearer case of suicide."

"Then you have officially determined that Ivanov killed himself."

"Why not?"

Arkady didn't answer directly. "If you're satisfied, then I don't see what there is for me to do."

"Don't be coy, Renko. You're the one who opened this can of worms. You'll be the one who shuts it. Hoffman wants you to clean up the loose ends. I don't see why he doesn't just go home."

"As I remember, he's a fugitive from America."

"Well, as a courtesy to him, and just to settle things, he wants a few more questions answered. Ivanov was Jewish, wasn't he? I mean his mother was." So?

"I'm just saying, he and Hoffman were a pair."

Arkady waited for more, but Zurin seemed to think he had made his point. "I take my orders from you, Prosecutor Zurin. What are your orders?" Arkady wanted this to be clear.

"What time is it?"

"It's four in the afternoon."

"First get Hoffman out of the apartment. Then get to work tomorrow morning."

"Why not tonight?"

"In the morning."

"If I get Hoffman out of the apartment, how will I get back in?"

"The elevator operator knows the code now. He's old guard. Trustworthy."

"And just what do you expect me to do?"

"Whatever Hoffman asks. Just get this matter settled. Not complicated, not drawn out, but settled."

"Does that mean over or resolved?"

"You know very well what I mean."

"I don't know, I'm fairly involved here." Zhenya was just finishing his circuit of the fountain.

"Get over there now."

"I'll need a detective. I should have a pair, but I'll settle for Victor Fedorov."

"Why him? He hates businessmen."

"Perhaps he'll be harder to buy." "Just go."

"Do I get my files back?"