The Dog Who Bit a Policeman - Stuart Kaminsky

“I got here as quickly as I could,” he said.

Elena stepped back to let him in. Anna Timofeyeva sat at the window, her cat, Baku, in her lap, her puzzle before her.

Elena closed the door.

“How are you?”

“Alive,” said Elena. “Thanks to Porfiry Petrovich.”

“How are you, Anna Timofeyeva?” he asked the woman at the window.

“There was a time when even if I were in the throes of a heart attack, I would answer ‘fine.’ Ever the stoic Communist bureaucrat.

There were other times when I welcomed the question so I could complain about my condition. It was a very short period. I quickly learned that few cared for details and few would accept a simple answer. You ask me now and I answer as I am answering you, fine.”

“That’s good,” Iosef said.

“It’s not true,” said Elena, cradling her injured arm with her healthy one. It looked to Iosef as if she were cradling an infant.

“My Aunt Anna had words with Lydia Tkach last night. Sasha’s mother demanded that she find him immediately, that. . well, it was a domestic issue. Anna Timofeyeva said she could do nothing.

And. .”

“I banished her from these two rooms,” said Anna, looking out the window, stroking the cat, whose eyes were closed in ecstasy.

“Now I’m feeling like an irritable old woman who sees from her window the wife of a fugitive hiding from a charge of armed rob-bery. I should make calls, ask if she is using her real name, let the police take over. But what do I do? I decide to watch her, wait for her fugitive husband to appear, then call Porfiry Petrovich. The hero in the window.”

“Like Rear Window, ” said Elena.

“What is Rear Window? ” asked Anna Timofeyeva.

“A movie about what you are doing,” said Elena. “The man watching is almost murdered by the killer.”

“Was he a policeman?” asked Anna.

“The killer?” said Elena, hiding a smile.

“The man watching,” said Anna.

“No, a photographer.”

“That explains it. Come, look.”

Iosef and Elena went to the window. The curtains were drawn back as they were always during the day. In the large concrete courtyard, children played, chasing each other, riding tricycles, hiding behind the concrete blocks that were supposed to be decorative.

Five young women sat on the concrete seat with a concrete table between them. The sky promised rain, but it had for almost a week and had not delivered.

“The one with the baby,” said Anna. “Her child is the little blond boy chasing the girl.”

“He’s cute,” said Elena.

Elena stood up, wincing. Bending to look out the window had brought blood rushing painfully to her wound, which began to THE DOG WHO BIT A POLICEMANNN251

throb. She would have to take one of the pills Sarah Rostnikov’s cousin had given her.

“He is presentable,” Anna went on, changing quickly into the deputy procurator she had once been. The transformation was dramatic. The block of a woman who had begun her career as a factory worker and loyal Communist who believed in the revolution was now sitting up. Her voice had grown stronger, deeper, official.

“The woman is using the name Rosa Dotiom. Her real name is Rosa Dodropov. Her husband is Sergei Dodropov. Two years ago he robbed a bank. He was positively identified. He got away with lots of money. No one knows how much. The bank lied. The money was illegal business money from gangsters. He is wanted by the police. He is wanted by the bankers, who are afraid he will be caught and talk. He will come back here. She is waiting for him.

See, she waits.”

“How can you tell?” asked Iosef, who was still looking out the window.

“By how often she glances around in anticipation,” said Anna.

“It is not a look of fear. It is a look of hope. She has been looking like that for more than a week. He will show up soon. Do you want to be the one to call or should I?”

“Call my father, Anna Timofeyeva.”

“You believe me?”

“I have been taught by my father that you were a great procurator, one who did not act rashly.”

“Good,” she said. “But I’ll give you a demonstration of my training. You are angry, Iosef, very angry. And you are nervous and determined.”

“Yes,” said Iosef.

“You realize, Elena, I have just done more talking and shown more emotion that I believe I have done in the rest of my adult life.”

“Yes,” said Elena.

Anna looked down at the cat, which may have been asleep in her lap. Anna sighed.

“You want privacy?” she said.

“Well. .” Iosef began.

Baku awakened as Anna rose.

“I am required to take a nap,” Anna said. “I do not like wasting the time, but I cannot avoid it. Give my regards to your father.”

Anna stood straight and walked without any hint of her problem to the bedroom, where she closed the door behind her.

Elena moved back to the window and looked out.

“She has me doing it,” said Elena with a smile. “I feel I have to take her place on the vigil.”

“You are really all right?” he asked.

“I will be fine,” she said. “I will be in pain for an undetermined period of time, but I will then be fine.”

“Elena,” he said, “I don’t have much time and I don’t know why I am doing this again now. It is probably not a good time. Maybe it is my fear of losing you.”

“I am not yours to lose,” she said, standing straight and facing him.

“But I would like you to be,” he said.

“You are proposing again.”

“I am proposing again.”

“It is not a good idea,” Elena said. “You will worry about me on the job, and I will worry about you, and I will worry about you worrying about me, and. . you see?”

“I worry about you now,” he said.

“Then I will accept your proposal,” she said.

“You will?”

“You expected rejection again,” she said, stepping in front of him.

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t know how to react to acceptance.”

“Start by very gently kissing me and avoiding contact with my arm,” she said. “And continue by taking a seat, so we can discuss what this means.”

Iosef was dazed. Elena came into his arms and he was very careful as he kissed her. It was a long, open kiss that Iosef did not want to end.

Elena sat in her aunt’s chair. Iosef sat across from her in the chair that visitors were often directed to.

“You’re not on some pain medication that is causing this reaction? You are not going to change your mind in a day or two?”

“No, Iosef, I will not. But there are things I must tell you about my past, about. .”

“And I have things too,” he said. “Unless you must, I would prefer that you tell me nothing about you that would cause either of us pain.”

“And you do the same,” she said, reaching forward to touch his hand.

“And I will do the same,” he said.

“Do you believe in signs?” Elena went on.

“Mysticism?” he said, adding perplexity to his emotions of the moment. “God? ESP?”

“Perhaps,” she said, looking out the window again.

“Not really,” he said.

“Look out the window, Iosef,” Elena said. “Less than a minute after you propose and I accept, Aunt Anna’s bank robber appears.

It is a sign for policemen.”

Iosef leaned over to look out the window. A small blond boy was running toward a young man who stood next to one of the concrete blocks that surrounded the courtyard. The woman Anna had been watching said something to the other women and got up.

“I’ll call for backup,” he said, picking up the phone. “Elena, I love you.”

“I’ll lose some weight,” she said.

“No,” he said, “don’t. You are beautiful as you are and. . this is Inspector Rostnikov. . no, the other one. I need backup, quickly.”

Elena and Iosef smiled at each other. Iosef ’s anger was gone, the Pleshkov situation of minor interest compared to the beauty of this moment.

He hung up the phone.

“They’ll be here soon,” he said.

“Meanwhile,” she said, “we can watch and talk. We have plans to make.”

It was dangerous. It was stupid, but Sasha was frantic. When the meeting with the Frenchmen was over, hands were shaken, drinks downed, and talk was almost nonexistent.

“At some point, if we are to work together,” said the rugged youngest man, “you will both have to learn a little French, come visit us in Marseilles.”

“I am very bad with languages,” said Sasha.

“And I am not interested in any language but the one of my people,” said Nimitsov.

More amiable silence. A few toasts to the future. The old men showed nothing.

When the rugged Frenchman looked at his watch and said,

“Time to go,” Sasha followed Boris and Nimitsov into the entry hall. The door closed behind them.

“I have to make a call,” said Sasha.

“No time,” said Peter Nimitsov.

“There’s plenty of time,” said Sasha.

“Who are you calling?” asked Nimitsov.

“A woman,” said Sasha, flashing a huge false and leering smile.

“No time,” Nimitsov repeated. “We must get back, prepare.”

“I could have had the call finished by now,” said Sasha. “I must make the call.”

Nimitsov played his teeth against his lower lip and nodded at Boris. “There’s a phone in the kitchen. Boris will show you. Be quick.”

There was no doubt that Nimitsov was suspicious. There was no doubt that making this call was madness. There was no doubt that Sasha didn’t care.

Boris led Sasha through an arch, down a stone-floored hallway lined with cabinets containing dinnerware, large serving bowls, service for dozens.

They entered the large kitchen. There was an oven, a refrigerator, a freezer locker, a stone table in the center of the room and knives, pots, and pans hanging on hooks along the wall.

“There,” said Boris.

Sasha went to the phone on the wall, picked it up, and dialed his home. After three rings, Maya answered.

“Maya,” he said, trying not to betray himself to Boris. “It is me, Dmitri.”

“Dmitri? Sasha, are you drunk in the middle of the day?”

“No,” he said with a laugh.

“Someone is listening to you?”

“Of course,” Sasha said, grinning hugely.

“They could. . maybe someone is listening on an extension?”

she said.

“It’s possible,” he said, winking at Boris.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Don’t you know?”

“Dmitri,” she said, using his cover name, “you are mad.”

“It’s worth the risk. Don’t leave.”

“Your uncle Porfiry came to talk to me about our problem,” she said.

“And?” he said, knowing that his mother had certainly interfered again.

“Are you going to be home soon?”

“Late tonight,” he said. “Will you be there?”

“You are in danger.”

“Of course,” he said.

“Be careful. We will be here.”

“I have to go now,” he said, looking at Boris. “Wear your silk nightgown, the clinging one.”

“If I had such a thing, this would not be the night I would wear it. Be careful.”

Sasha hung up and sighed deeply. “It’s good to keep them happy,” he said.

“Till you tire of them,” said Boris.

“True,” said Sasha. “Let’s go.”

One hour later Sasha was in a dogfight arena, definitely upscale compared to the one where he thought he would be, the one he had been in the night before. This room was air conditioned and im-maculately clean. There were fewer seats, but the men in them were better dressed and the betting in the first fight had been handled by men in matching dark suits. Drinks were served. If there were a shooter present to control any dog that might go wild, that shooter was not immediately visible. It was all very respectable, and the noise level, except when the fights were taking place, was relatively low and conversational, with much laughter.

The first was not civilized. A pair of malamutes from the same litter were matched against each other. One dog was completely white except for a healed pink scar on his rump where hair would not grow. His brother was black and white. The trainers had held the straining dogs back till a man in dark slacks and a white jacket over a black shirt with a white tie announced that all bets were in and the trainers could release their dogs.

There was no familial recognition in the animals, which attacked each other with fury. They were noisy even above the frenzy of the crowd. Sasha turned his eyes from the animals and looked at the front row where the three Frenchmen sat, not joining in the insanity, not interested in the battle before them. In seats flanking the three were four men, one almost as old as the two older Frenchmen. The other three were young, wearing masks of indifference.

Twice, Sasha had caught one of the young men looking at him.

When Sasha decided to meet his eyes, the man did not turn away.

Definitely a bad sign. It was also a bad sign that all of the Frenchmen were armed. Sasha had looked for and immediately seen the signs of weapons under their jackets.

When Sasha turned back to the fight, it was over. The all-white dog was bloody. His brother lay dying with a terrible gash across his nose and right eye. The white dog was restrained but tried to get at his brother, to finish him. The dying dog snapped at the trainer who tried to help him up. The dying dog whimpered from the effort. The trainer backed away.

Sasha still had to deal with whether to let Tchaikovsky try to win or to do something to insure the dog’s loss. Sasha had not the slightest idea of what he could do to hamper the dog, and besides, he had decided that he had no intention of contributing to the murder of the animal.

Sasha looked at the seven men in the front row. The one who had been looking at him looked again. Nimitsov was suddenly at Sasha’s side.

“We are next,” said Nimitsov. “You know, this used to be a children’s circus arena? I’ve considered staging fights between children.

There are plenty of them on the street. You could give them knives and promise them more money than they dreamed of if they won.”

Sasha looked at the smiling young man at his side. Nimitsov was not just evil, he was quite serious and quite mad.

While the blood was being cleaned from the dirt ring, Sasha decided that he had to act, even though the action was loathsome.

“I understand French,” Sasha said, pretending interest in the cleanup.

“Interesting,” said Nimitsov. “I may learn the language. Now that we have French partners.”

“They plan to kill both of us,” said Sasha.

Nimitsov turned to look at Sasha. They were only a few feet apart.