“I am going,” said Ivan.
Gorodeyov shrugged and said, “Suit yourself. Think about what I have said. Consider. The Union of the Return is here to welcome you as a brother.”
“Yes, I have a red car,” said Klaus Agrinkov.
The fight manager and the two policemen were sitting in a corner of the gym, where Agrinkov held in place a heavy dangling canvas bag. A big heavily perspiring young man in sweat-soaked gray shorts and a green T-shirt pounded away at the bag, pushing Agrinkov back half a step with each blow.
There was no one else in the gym, which smelled even more stale and rancid to Iosef than it had earlier.
“Popovich here is big, strong, willing,” said Agrinkov, “but he lacks something.”
“Heart?” said Iosef.
“Power in his left jab,” said Zelach.
Both the fighter and the manager looked at Zelach, and Agrinkov said, “You’ve seen him fight?”
“No,” said Zelach. “But he does not put his weight from his left leg into the blow.”
“See?” said the manager to the boxer. “If the policeman knows, everyone will know. Go take a shower.”
“No hot water,” said the fighter, chest rising and falling.
“Then shower cold or towel down and go home and shower.”
Popovich walked off, using his teeth to take off the lightweight gloves he wore.
“Only one Medivkin,” said Agrinkov, watching his fighter walk away. “He is not just a giant of a man. He has the determination, the will to win. I had it, but not the size to make it to the big money as a heavyweight or the ability to get my weight down to where I could be a middleweight.”
“Red car,” said Iosef.
The fight manager considered, folded his arms over his chest, and pursed his lips in thought. He wore a gray cotton shirt with long sleeves and the word “Medivkin” across the front.
“Ivan did not kill her,” he said. “I would stake my life on it. I would stake my mother’s soul and that of my father on it. He could not. I am certain.”
“Not because in losing him you would also lose your most precious asset?”
“Of course I want to keep him fighting, winning, making us both rich, but he is my friend first. He did not kill Lena. He loved her beyond reason. She did not deserve his love, but he loved her.”
“You picked him up at the apartment of Vera Korstov,” said Iosef. “He called you. Where did you take him?”
“I took him to the new Russia Hotel.”
“You did not,” said Iosef. “We would know by now if you had. A famous giant boxing champion wanted as a suspect for murder does not just check into a large hotel unnoticed.”
“That is where I left him,” Agrinkov insisted.
Zelach was staring at the battered nose of the manager, the badge of pugilistic honor. The image of the old Chinese man moving in slow motion near the single barren tree came to Zelach. He wondered if this man had ever tried tai chi.
“We can arrest you for assisting in the hiding of a fugitive,” said Iosef.
“What good would that do?” asked Agrinkov.
“None, other than to let the world know that not only is your meal ticket wanted in association with a particularly unpleasant murder but that you too are wanted in connection with the crime. It might make it very difficult for you to continue to function as a manager.”
“The public will thank me.”
Iosef knew Agrinkov was right, but the policeman pressed on.
“He is just postponing the inevitable,” said Iosef.
“Aren’t we all?” said Agrinkov.
Agrinkov shook his head, unfolded his arms, and slapped his calloused hands against his thighs.
“I tell you I do not know where he is. He did not ask to be taken to a hotel. He asked to be taken to a Metro station and. .”
“Compound of the Union of the Return,” said Zelach.
Both of the other men looked at him.
“In your office where we were this morning,” said Zelach, “there are photographs on the wall. One was of a training camp in Saslov. You were smiling and so were Artyom Gorodeyov, the head of the Union of the Return, and Deputy Russian Minister Borodin. His arm was around your shoulder. The Union of the Return compound is no more than two hours from Moscow.”
Iosef smiled.
“I could be wrong,” said Zelach. “I probably am.”
“But maybe you are not,” said Iosef, who turned his head to Agrinkov, who was rubbing his thumbs against his fingers nervously. “I think you are not.”
“I have told you nothing,” said the manager.
“You have told us everything,” said Iosef. “We are going to this compound to get Medivkin and you are going with us.”
Iosef motioned for Agrinkov to move ahead of him. Were the former boxer to put up a fight, Iosef, though certainly strong, and Zelach, a zealous combatant, would probably be no match for him. For an instant Iosef wondered if his partner might possess some strange martial-arts moves in slow motion that would subdue even the strongest of men. Little that Zelach could do would surprise Iosef.
“Artyom Gorodeyov will not easily give up someone under his protection,” warned Agrinkov as he moved ahead of them.
“Then it will be his mistake. Move.”
Iosef did not want to draw his gun, but he would have if the man in front of them showed any signs of resistance. Iosef Rostnikov, unlike his father, had a very short temper, which he strove, usually with adequate success, to keep under control, but he would not actually fire his weapon on an unarmed suspect.
Zelach shuffled at the rear. The image of the slow-moving Chinese man under the light rain returned and Zelach had an almost uncontrollable urge to call his mother to see if she was all right.
Emil Karpo had been slowly taking notes as he went through the building in which Aleksandr Chenko lived. Karpo had spoken to twenty-two tenants, all of whom, with the exception of an older blind couple, answered his questions with some degree of nervousness. They were anxious to rid their apartments of this pale specter of a policeman who stood erect, asked questions slowly, listened carefully, and watched them without blinking.
From most of those to whom he spoke he learned little or nothing. Few people, even those who lived on the same floor, remembered Chenko at all. Those who had encountered him said he was a pleasant young man who smiled when he passed and seemed pleased to see them when they encountered him at work at the nearby Volga Supermarket II. Most important, Karpo found that the blind woman, Kesenia Ivanovna, who was sixty-two years old and on a pension from the Moscow sewage authority, knew the histories of almost all her neighbors.
Aleksandr Chenko, she told Karpo as her husband sat nodding in agreement and confirmation, had suffered a rejection about six years ago. A young woman had told him that she planned to marry another man, an acquaintance of Chenko’s. In fact, Chenko had moved into this building just to be near the young woman.
“Tragedy,” said the blind woman, looking at a blank blue-white wall. “The man she was to marry had a tragic fall from his apartment window and the young woman disappeared.”
“Her name?”
“I do not remember,” the woman said.
“Hannah,” said the old man.
“Yes, Hannah,” the woman agreed.
“Hannah. .?”
Both of his hosts shook their heads to indicate that they did not know.
“His name, the dead man who fell from his window-,” the blind man began.
“Or jumped in grief,” said the woman.
“But he died before she was missing,” said the man.
“That is right,” the woman agreed.
Rostnikov caught up with Karpo on the third floor of the apartment building as he came out of the apartment being shared by three friends in their forties from Novosibersk who all worked as custom brick shapers for the dozens of new construction projects around the city. The trio had appeared quite guilty, but of what Karpo did not know or care. They knew nothing of Aleksandr Chenko.