“Luck?” asked Rostnikov.
“Some,” said Karpo, who spoke softly of the missing girl and the dead young fiancé.
“I have a job for us both,” said Rostnikov.
As they went down the stairs slowly, the Chief Inspector told Karpo what he planned to do. Karpo knew better than to express his lack of enthusiasm for the plan. Too often plans of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov made little sense to Karpo, but just as often they met with success.
“Aleksandr Chenko,” said Rostnikov shortly after shaking the hand of Aloyosha Tarasov in the latter’s office.
“Coffee?” asked Tarasov with a smile that gladly revealed even, white teeth.
The MVD Major was in a civilian suit with a striking purple-and-black tie. His steel blue short-shorn hair was brushed back. Rostnikov was reminded of the American actor Viggo Mortensen.
“No, thank you,” said Rostnikov, taking a seat across the desk.
“I was about to leave,” said Tarasov. “Since you have taken over the Maniac case, I now have time for leisure activities.”
Those “activities,” as Rostnikov knew, were centered on eligible and ineligible women of ages ranging from twenty-two to forty-five. Tarasov believed that his pursuit of beauty was implicitly condoned by Prime Minister Putin himself, who was reputed to keep company with women half his age. At least Aloyosha Tarasov was not married, as the Prime Minister was. Major Tarasov had removed his wife from the scene years ago. He felt no guilt over having thrown her out of their apartment window. Everyone dies, he told himself. It is just a matter of when.
“Now, Porfiry Petrovich, what can I do for you?”
“Aleksandr Chenko,” Rostnikov repeated, resisting the urge to scratch madly at the line where the stump of his real leg met the nesting cup of his false extension.
“Who is that?”
Rostnikov paused. There were several ways to go about this, each reeking of potential danger.
“A possible suspect in the Bitsevsky Park murders.”
“So soon?” said Tarasov. “Congratulations.”
“He was questioned by you and held for sixteen hours before being released,” said Rostnikov.
“We arrested so many that-”
“This one is different.”
“So?”
“I would like whatever files you have on Chenko. There was nothing about him in the material you gave us.”
“I will look tomorrow and get back-”
“Tonight would be much better,” said Rostnikov.
“Porfiry Petrovich,” Tarasov said with a smile. “You should spend more time at things you enjoy. What do you enjoy, my friend?”
“My wife, son, two little neighbor girls, plumbing, working with weights, and American detective novels. I also derive satisfaction from my job.”
Tarasov’s smile disappeared. The Chief Inspector who sat across from him was not joking.
“Plumbing?”
“Yes. Did you enjoy spending time with your wife before she died?”
“Of course,” said Tarasov, now wary.
“I understand she fell or jumped from a window.”
“Yes.”
“The window was closed. She went through the glass and out onto the street. She could easily have opened the window before she jumped, but she chose to leap through a glass window that she could not with certainty penetrate.”
Tarasov’s smile broadened with mock cooperation as he said, “It is puzzling, isn’t it? I will see if I can find any file on this Chenko.”
When Tarasov left the room, Rostnikov immediately began to massage the end of his leg. If he scratched any harder, he knew, the itching would be even worse. He checked his watch. Almost four. He would go to Petrovka, see the Yak, and probably have time to get home for dinner and to talk to his wife. He would have just enough time to work out with the weights stored under the cabinet in the living room and work on the mystery of the backed-up drain in the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Bortkin.
Tarasov returned with a folder that he gave to Rostnikov, who placed it on his lap.
“Those are copies of everything about our interrogation and findings concerning Aleksandr Chenko.”
“You interrogated Chenko personally,” Rostnikov said, opening the file and lifting a printed sheet so that he could better see it.
“Yes, now I remember.”
“He is difficult to forget.”
“I really must be going,” said Tarasov. “Why don’t you take the file and-”
“It is thick for the file of a man who was never truly suspected.”
“No thicker than several of the others,” said Tarasov. “If you will just-”
“I will be quick as a fox pouncing on a skittish rabbit,” said Rostnikov, running his eyes across the pages.
Tarasov leaned back against the wall and took a cigarette from his pocket. He watched Rostnikov and smoked and waited.
After about five minutes, Rostnikov closed the file and rose.
“Chenko approached you when you came to look at the park,” said Rostnikov.
“I do not remember. There were so many suspects.”
“He approached you and wanted to talk to you, to tell you about his theories concerned with the murders. You told him to leave.”
“He is an annoying, bitter man,” said Tarasov.
“Like me?”
“You are very annoying, but you do not appear to be bitter.”
“In your investigation, did you come across the last name of a missing young woman named Hannah?” asked Rostnikov. “I see nothing about it in the file, but I have not looked closely enough perhaps. And if she is not in here, I will find her.”
The Major was not smiling.
“Chenko was questioned about six years ago about the disappearance of the girl,” said Tarasov. “He was released.”
“And the young man, the girl’s fiancé?”
“An accidental death.”
“Fell from a window accidentally,” said Rostnikov. “Like your wife.”
No more need be said. The ghost of Tarasov’s wife stood in the corner.
“Perhaps we will talk again soon,” said Rostnikov, leaving the office.
Pankov was mopping his forehead with an already moist handkerchief when Rostnikov entered the outer office of the Yak. The little man behind the desk stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket. He was certain Rostnikov had seen him, had added a mental note of evidence to his already substantial collection about the existence of Pankov’s fear.
“You have arrived early,” said Pankov.
“I ran all the way,” said Rostnikov, stepping forward in his awkward gait, a file folder in his hand.
Pankov’s smile came out as a nervous tic. He picked up the phone from his desk and punched in the Yak’s number, hoping that he was not disturbing the Colonel. The Yak had never really chastised or punished Pankov for errors small or great, but he lived in perpetual dread of the moment when the Yak entered a state of fury.
“Chief Inspector Rostnikov is here,” Pankov announced.
He moved the phone several inches away from his ear lest the Yak send a threatening sound. The Yak smoothly told his frightened assistant to send in the Chief Inspector.
“You may go in.”
Rostnikov shifted the file folder to his left hand and moved to the inner office door as Pankov set the phone back gently in the cradle on his desk.
Rostnikov’s mind held momentarily to the question of handkerchiefs as he opened the Yak’s door. No one used handkerchiefs anymore, at least no one Rostnikov knew, except for Pankov. Had the man an aversion to paper tissues? How did he clean the handkerchiefs? In a washing machine? In the kitchen sink? Did he strip to his underwear to iron them as he stood before the television watching and listening to the late news?