Black Cat and the Adventures of Pike

Chapter 7 Part III

2010-03-08T20:11:00.005-07:00

“I don’t believe him anymore. He stole all these things,” Olga told Svetlana. “All these clothes, shoes, the earrings. He stole them, and didn’t get them on the black market as he told me. He is a thief. I wonder if he is a real officer. Do you think I should report him?”
Svetlana was horrified.
“Report him? Are you out of your mind?! Didn’t you see the tattoo on this woman’s hand with your own eyes? You need to break it off with him while you can. Tell him you met someone else. Lie, don’t bring up that woman, or the earrings. Just end it with him.”
Olga said she will think about it, and the next morning she was found dead.
***
“He killed her,” Svetlana says to Rubachin. “You should come to the restaurant and arrest him. They come every Saturday night.”
Suddenly, out of nowhere, an aged and frail man in filthy clothes appears in front of them. His damaged body with no legs is wrapped in colorful shawls and scarves making him look like a gypsy.
“Spare a few kopeika for a cripple?”
The man’s face looks brown and dirty against the blinding white snow in the park. He smiles a wide smile flashing Rubachin and Svetlana his black rotten teeth. The beggar is sitting in a sled; two ski polls are tied to his hands.
Rubachin pulls out a few kopeika out of his pocket and puts them in the shaky, unexpectedly young looking hand of the beggar.
“Here, take this,” he says softly. He thinks about other beggars who overflowed Moscow after the war. Their continued existence on this earth depends entirely on the charity of poor, non-party, civilian community.
Svetlana stares at the beggar. “Sorry, I have no money on me,” she says, her voice croaks, and she looks at Rubachin as if searching for his support.
“Thank you, comrade,” the cripple nods at Rubachin and sleds away, his ski polls working fast.
Rubachin watches him disappear down the alley, staggered by how strong the beggar’s upper body looks.
“I will keep your name out of the reports as I promised,” Rubachin gets up from the bench. His legs feel stiff and frozen. “Let’s go and get something to eat,” he stretches out his hand to help Svetlana to her feet.
She shakes her head.
“I’ll have another cigarette and go home.” Her bright eyes look at Rubachin, searching for something in his face.
A sudden and unpleasant chill creeps up Rubachin’s spine. Something is bothering him but he cannot grasp it.
“I just need a moment alone,” Svetlana adds.
Rubachin nods, thinking that the beggar said or did something odd.
“If you ever need anything, find me,” he says, still puzzled by the colorful beggar, and extends his hand to Svetlana.
Instead of shaking his hand, she holds Rubachin’s big, warm hand in her small, frozen palm, squeezing it lightly. Both of them do not say a word.
Rubachin slowly walks away, telling himself that he should have insisted on taking her out to eat. She looks so bony, so breakable. He stops and glances back at Svetlana. She is smoking a cigarette. Their eyes meet, and Svetlana smiles at Rubachin. He waves at her and watches her turn, looking down the alley where the beggar departed a few minutes ago. Rubachin starts walking again. He decides to stop by the Red Star tonight and walk Svetlana home.
Again, a familiar unpleasant chill rises in his spine. The beggar’s hands looked too young, too clean. His voice was not a voice of a decrepit man. Rubachin remembers the beggar’s vacant lifeless eyes. He never looked at Svetlana, not even once.
Rubachin turns around and starts running towards Svetlana who is still sitting on the bench. She is not smoking anymore but she is still looking away from Rubachin.
“Svetlana!” Rubachin yells out, and, out of the corner of his eye, catches an abrupt movement across the alley, in the bushes. Something bright and vivid rapidly moves away.
Svetlana doesn’t turn towards his voice. Her hair moves lightly in the wind.
“You must come with me. It is not safe…” Rubachin runs up to the girl and freezes.
A smoldering cigarette is laying on the ground by Svetlana's feet. Her big eyes are glassy, unseeing. A huge butcher’s knife is stuck deep in the girl’s left breast, pinning her body to the bench.

Chapter 7 Part II

2010-03-03T19:40:00.003-07:00

“How many people come with Alex?”
“Four of them: Alex, two women and a young guy who acts drunk but his eyes are focused, sober. They order a lot of food and drink a lot of vodka. The women dance with Alex, taking turns. They are beautiful - tall, slim with long brown hair. They look like they are sisters. Always dress nicely. Never wear the same dress twice.”
Svetlana is jealous. She lives with her mother, scraping rubles, barely making it from one day to another. It is hard to watch other people have unattainable things.
“They are the Black Cat, aren’t they,” Rubachin asks softly, sensing the answer that follows.
Svetlana shivers in the cold November wind and gets up from the bench, facing Rubachin.
“Everyone thinks so, but no one will say it out loud. We are all too scared of them. Our cook, Aleksey, is involved with these people. He does something for them. A few times I have seen Aleksey talking to these people in the restaurant hallway in a subdued voice. When Alex showed interest in Olga, Aleksey warned her. He told her not to get involved because it was unsafe. It was nice of him to show that he cared for once. He is usually not that considerate,” Svetlana says grimly, wrapping her hands around herself, trying to chase cold away. “Olga did not care. She was in love. Look where that love took her. Right to the grave…”
“She was like a sister to me,” Svetlana whispers. Her mouth feels dry and tender. “Alex was giving Olga a lot of stuff - shoes, coats, food. And a week before …,“ Svetlana swallows hard and sits down back on a bench.
“One week before Olga died, he gave her gold earrings,” Svetlana turns her face to Rubachin, her eyes are wide open. “These earrings are cursed,” she whispers into Rubachin’s astonished face.

***

Olga wore her gold earrings every day. One night one of the Alex’s women stopped her in a dimly lit restaurant hallway.
“Let me see your earrings, gorgeous,” the woman stood in front of the waitress, blocking her way. She was holding a long brown cigarette in one hand. Her other hand grabbed Olga forcefully, pulling the girl closer. Olga gasped in pain, almost dropping the empty tray she was holding. In shock, she stared down at a thin, aristocratic hand with long pale fingers tearing at her dry and weathered hand.
“I saw those earrings somewhere,” the woman said, slowly inhaling smoke, her dark eyes studying Olga. “Where did you get them, gorgeous?” The long brown cigarette looked as an extension of her thin fingers.
“It’s a gift,” Olga shrugged, trying to twist her hand out of the woman’s strong clutch. Up close the woman’s skin looked saggy and tired. Dark circles around her eyes were covered by thick layers of powder. Surprised, Olga noticed how eaten up, almost destroyed the woman’s nostrils were. Did she have some horrible disease? Syphilis, perhaps?
“Someone really likes you, gorgeous. It is a very expansive gift. Treasure it,” the woman said, releasing her hold of Olga’s hand. “While you can,” she laughed loudly, her head snapping back.
“What do you mean?” Olga could feel a cold shiver rising in her spine. Out of two women Olga despised this one the most. She always was closest to Alex, whispering something in his ears, laughing loudly, shaking her long brown hair. Something sinister lingered around her. Something wicked.
The woman abruptly stopped laughing and crushed her cigarette into Olga’s tray. Olga looked at the woman’s pale hand, putting out a cigarette, and froze. A small tattoo of a black cat on the woman’s wrist was staring right at Olga. Stunned, she stared at the tattoo for a long minute.
“The earrings belonged to someone else. They won’t bring you luck, gorgeous. They are cursed.” The woman’s eyes were lit up with a flicker of malice, but her lower lip trembled like she was suppressing a scowl.
She passed Olga, pushing her down the hall, away from the main room, out of her way.
Olga tripped, tried to maintain her balance, and failed. Her body crushed into the dirty wall behind her. The tray with cigarette ashes fell to the floor.

Chapter 7 Part I

2010-02-28T12:22:00.004-07:00

“Describe him to me,” Rubachin asks Svetlana.
Both of them are sitting on a bench in the public park, Sokolniki, where Svetlana took Rubachin to talk. “We have ears everywhere,” she told him, pulling him away from her communal apartment.
They walked all the way to Sokolniki. The park is not far from the center of Moscow and about three blocks away from Svetlana’s apartment building. In 1931 Sokolniki was given an official name of “park of culture and leisure.” The park is located on the vast, 6 square kilometers area, surrounded by pines, spruces, birches and oaks. On the weekends, despite of cold November weather, Sokolniki is packed with people. Today, in the middle of the week, Sokolniki is almost empty.
“Tall, handsome, always polite, always smiling,” Svetlana says.
Rubachin lets out a deep, disappointing sigh, takes out his note pad and starts writing. Voronova’s brother and neighbors, almost everyone they interviewed, saw this mysterious Alex guy. But no one could give the investigators a description worthy of a sketch. Alex became Vasiliev team’s an intent obsession.
“What hair color, height, build, facial features,” Rubachin inquires already knowing that Svetlana won’t give him anything in addition to what he already knows.
“Athletic, brown hair and as I told you, handsome. Very handsome. He always wears his military uniform. Olga mentioned once that he is a hero of the war,” Svetlana looks at Rubachin, waiting for him to acknowledge her useful information.
“Do you know at what front did he serve?”
Svetlana shakes her head.
“No, I don’t think anyone knows. I don’t think even his friends know. Olga said that Alex doesn‘t like to talk about his past.”
“Friends,” Rubachin gets alert. No one ever before mentioned anything about any friends. “Tell me more about his friends.”
Svetlana takes out a wrinkled pack of cigarettes and offers it to Rubachin. He draws a cigarette from Svetlana’s pack, lights it up, and takes a deep drag. He holds the blue smoke in his lungs, then slowly exhales. They smoke in silence, blowing smoke away from each other faces, dropping ashes on the ground.
Svetlana studies Rubachin’s face with a curious, appraising look.
“Are you married,” she asks Rubachin.
Rubachin takes a long look at her, and she blushes under his stare.
“No,” Rubachin says. He always thought about himself as a loner. A loner who enjoys the solitude. He is a loner by choice because he tried to blend into the world before, and people continued to disappoint him. Especially women.
“I thought so,” Svetlana looks away from Rubachin. “You look lonely.”
“Tell me about that guy’s friends,” Rubachin says, disturbed by her remark. He never thought about himself as being lonely.
“Alex always comes to the restaurant with a group of people. They all look civilian. No one else wears military uniform. Two beautiful women always come with Alex, hanging on his arms. Always holding him, dancing with him. Olia hated them…” Svetlana’s voice drifts away.

Excerpt from Pike’s Diary

2010-02-13T12:39:00.002-07:00

November 15, 1946

They know something but they don’t share it with me. They got something on the Black Cat and they talk about it all the time in the hallways, in Vasiliev’s office, anywhere where I am not present. Do they think I don’t notice?

They had a meeting this morning behind closed doors. I think they have a break in their case. I wish I could be there, with them.

Ivan is so busy with the investigation that he, finally, left me alone. He doesn’t talk to me, doesn’t snap at me, and doesn’t try to humiliate me anymore. I am grateful for that but I still don’t trust him. Something conniving and dangerous lays veiled behind his eyes. Yesterday, when no one was in the room, I searched his desk. I did not find anything implicating him in any unsavory deeds. But one drawer was locked. Locking desk’s drawers is against the rules. I remember Vasiliev explicitly telling me on my first day not to lock any drawers as everything we own in this place is considered the property of the Soviet government.

I attend some of their meetings to take notes. So far I gathered that allegedly the Red Star restaurant is a meeting place for the Black Cat members. But no one is sure yet. Somehow the team made a connection between the Black Cat and the killed waitress. It is something about her gold earrings and some Alex guy that connected her to the Black Cat.

The Red Star is an intriguing and menacing place. I walked by it last night after work. Loud music was playing and I heard people laughing. I peered through the windows and saw a lot of men wearing military uniforms dancing with beautiful women in colorful dresses. Who are these people? How can they afford all this food and drinks?

I tried to see if I could recognize anyone, if a familiar face was among those casual, carefree faces. A huge man, wearing an apron, chased me away from the windows. He took me for a beggar in my old coat and half rotten shoes.

When I think about the murdered waitress, the morgue comes to my mind. I can see her laying in that dreadful room with cockroaches hiding in its corners. She is there all alone, on a cold metal table, decomposing. Her name was Olga. Like my grandmother’s. My heart goes out to her family. I’ve heard that she is survived by her mother and a little brother. How are they going to live without her? When in the winter of 1943 I lost my mother, it was almost impossible for me to get out of the bed and go on with my daily business of trying to figure out where to get bread, where to find wood for the stove so that we could boil water. If it would not be for Sasha, I would have stayed in the apartment and died either from slow starvation or excruciating cold.

Now Sasha is gone too. Something continues to be terribly amiss in my life.

Chapter 6 Part II

2010-02-08T19:08:00.002-07:00

In the hallway Vasiliev lets the boy go in front of him. They slowly walk through the crowd of neighbors who are afraid to be a part of what is happening and afraid to miss it too. The boy’s shoulders are hunched, his head is hanging down. He is dragging his feet. The same old man who pointed Vasiliev towards Voronova’s door steps in front of the boy.
“Sergey, if you need anything, stop by and see me,” he puts his old and furrowed hand on the boy’s shoulder.
The boy looks up at the old man, a sob escapes him and he nods weakly.
“Let us get through,” Vasiliev pulls the boy to his side and leads him outside, to the street, to the fresh air, away from prying looks and hushed whispers.
“I understand that it is difficult to talk about what happened to your family,” Vasiliev brushes the snow from the bench in front of the apartment building. He sits down on the cold bench and pats at the spot beside him, inviting the boy to sit down. “Just try to answer my questions the best you can.”
The boy apathetically sits by Vasiliev.
“Tell me about the last time you saw your sister,” Vasiliev notices that the boy shudders from the cold. He is wearing a thin sweater with big crudely patched holes. “Here, take my coat,” Vasiliev gets up and pulls off his military coat. He drapes the coat around the boy.
The boy stops trembling and wraps himself tightly in Vasiliev’s coat.
“I talked about everything already. To the militia. This morning.”
The boy talks in short, incomplete sentences interrupted by light sniffles.
“I know. Tell me again,” Vasiliev says softly.
“I saw Olga last night, right before she went to work. She said she will be back this morning. She never came back,” the boy stares blankly at the apartment building. He thinks about his sister and his throat closes up on him.
“Was it unusual for Olga to come back from work in the morning?”
It takes a few seconds for the boy to get hold of his voice.
“No, she usually was home around three in the morning if she did not have a date.”
“Did she have a boyfriend?”
“She did. Alex. They met at the Red Star. He is an officer. She said he is a war hero.”
Vasiliev tenses as he listens. It might be the lead he is looking for.
“Do you know his full name?”
The boy shakes his head.
“Have you ever seen him? Tell me what you know about this Alex guy ,” Vasiliev presses.
“Not much. I have seen him just once. Last month I went to the Red Star to meet Olga after work. We usually would walk home together. But she told me that she didn’t need me and that I should go home. She said she had an escort already. She pointed this Alex guy to me. He looked cool in his military uniform with a red star on the chest. So, I went home by myself. Since then she said not to come and get her anymore.”
“Do you think they saw each other often?”
“I guess so. She started coming home very late,” the boy shrugs and looks at Vasiliev sideways. “She would bring food for us. She said Alex gave it to her. He also gave winter shoes for me and for my mom,” the boy stretches out his legs and shows Vasiliev the shoes.
“Good shoes.”
In the past the shoes obviously belonged to an adult. Vasiliev notes that the shoes are made of good leather and look at least two sizes bigger than the boy’s feet. Not a lot of people can afford good leather shoes. Most likely stolen, Vasiliev thinks.
“Did Olga get any other gifts from Alex?”
“Gold earrings,” the boy clears his throat and nods. “My mom wanted to sell them for cash but Olga didn’t let her.”
XB4DJK29Y4N6

Chapter 6 Part I

2010-02-01T19:18:00.006-07:00

Voronova’s family lives in an old grey building with eight communal apartments (communalka in Russian). The building was built at the beginning of the 19th century and hosted the families of two doctors, one lawyer and a family of a professor of mineralogy of the Moscow University. During the revolution of 1917, most of the building’s residents were executed or murdered. Some were lucky enough to move away during the famine years at the very beginning of the revolution. In a new era a young Bolshevik government determined that the living quarter per person should be 9 square meters. The fundamental idea of filling bourgeois apartments with extra tenants was born.
Now, in 1946, Voronova’s apartment hosts twenty six people. Seven families share one bathroom and one kitchen.
Vasiliev walks by the small bathroom and notices a piece of paper pinned by its door. It is a usage schedule assigning days and time when people are allowed to do their business in the bathroom. Vasiliev counts twenty six different names. Voronova’s name is fifteenth on the list. Her time is four thirty in the morning and she is allowed six minutes in the bathroom. Her family’s laundry day is every other Thursday.
Vasiliev passes by the curious neighbors crowding the narrow hallway with dirty cracked walls. Everyone already knows what happened to civilian Olga Voronova. He can hear people whisper to each other, their eyes follow him. A middle-aged man with flabby cheeks and blue veins showing through the skin on his hands points Vasiliev towards Voronova’s room.
A few seconds later, Vasiliev concludes that he won’t be able to get anything coherent out of Voronova’s mother. She lays on a bed, turned away from the door, her shoulders are shaking. She is unable to talk. Olga’s brother, a sixteen year old boy, sits on a chair in the corner of the dark room, chewing on his fingernails. He is shaking uncontrollably, eyes unfocused.
Vasiliev looks around the room. It is very small, clean and very green. Surprised, he counts five big plants. There is not a lot of furniture in the room but what is there looks very functional: a small round table with dirty dishes piled on it, a book shelve with a collection of patriotic poetry and black and white family pictures.
Suddenly, a sob breaks from the bed, and a moan full of pain and grief fills the silence of the room. The boy jumps up eager to go to his mother but stops abruptly. A second later he falls back into the chair. The boy’s face is beat red, wet from tears and full of unbearable pain.
“I need to ask you a few questions about Olga,” Vasiliev says softly. He hates being in the room full of human pain and tragedy.
At the mentioning of Olga’s name, the mother cries out in big, muffled sobs. No more tears are left in her voice, just animal like sounds.
“Let’s go outside,” Vasiliev comes up to the boy and firmly takes his hand, pulling him off the chair.
The boy gets up unwillingly, peers at his mother and stumbles after Vasiliev.

Chapter 5 Part II

2010-01-29T19:55:00.002-07:00

“Your name please,” Rubachin pulls his notebook back out from his pocket.
“Aleksey Petrov,” the man answers grimly. “What happened to her?”
“To whom?” Rubachin is writing down the man’s name and pretends not to understand him.
“Olga. What happened to her?” the man says. His small eyes focus on Rubachin, trying to read his face.
“She was killed. The body was found this morning. When was the last time your saw her?”
“Last night.”
Rubachin notes that Aleksey Petrov doesn’t look shocked by the news.
“What is your relationship to Olga Voronova?”
“What relationship,” the man chuckles distastefully. “She worked here as a waitress. I am a cook here. So, what relationship?”
“How long has she worked here?”
“About three months, maybe longer,” the man says slowly as he tries to remember when Olga Voronova came to work at the Red Star.
“Can we go in?” Rubachin nods towards the door of the restaurant.
“No, we are cleaning the restaurant, preparing it for the night,” the man says and his lips stretch in the unpleasant smirk. “Come back after we open.”
Rubachin contemplates for a moment if he should force his way into the restaurant but decides against it.
“Tell me about last night,’ he asks the cook.
“Not much to tell. We closed about two. Olga left about that time,” the cook sounds like he rehearsed this statement few times.
“Alone?”
“Yes,” the cook lies and something slightly changes in his voice.
“I hardly can believe that a young girl would walk home alone in the middle of the night.”
“Her brother usually waits for her after work.”
Rubachin looks at the cook and cannot catch his eyes.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” the man nods reassuringly.
So many lies have been told that the air is thick with them.
“What type of people frequnt this place when most of us need to go the black market to buy food?” Rubachin asks.
“Look, I don’t have anything to say anymore,” the cook looks at his watch with the look of a man pressed for time. The anger is rising in his voice, he is barely controlling it.
“Do the Black Cat members visit this establishment?” Rubachin smiles strangely.
“Are you kidding? What are you implying?” The cook seems to be controlling some difficult emotion.
“I am not implying anything. So, do they come here and how often?”
“I have no idea if they do. They don’t announce themselves. We have military personnel eating in the restaurant, members of the Communist party, officers, heroes of the war… Are we done here?”
The cook is fiercely unwilling to talk about it further. His face is dark, closed.
“What did you do after closing last night?” Rubachin gives him a steady and long look.
“I washed the kitchen and went home. Three people helped me to clean up. Do you need their names,” he hisses at Rubachin through his teeth. The look on the cook’s face is that of a reasonable patience tried to the breaking point.
Rubachin writes down the names of people who helped to clean the kitchen and tells the cook that he will be back after the restaurant opens for the night.
He leaves with an odd flickering throb in his head. He thinks about the girl who knows something and who is scared to death.
“Wait!” he hears a loud stomp of feet behind him. He turns around and sees Svetlana Morozova waiving at him.
She runs up to Rubachin. Her face is flushed, she can barely catch her breath.
“Will you really keep my name off the record?” She is gasping for air.
“Yes, I promise,” Rubachin says firmly and he really means it.
“I will talk to you tomorrow morning. Come to this address. I live there,” she puts a crumbled note in Rubachin’s palm. “I need to get back before Aleksey suspects anything,” she looks down the street, checking for something or someone. Before Rubachin can say anything, she runs away as fast as she came.

Chapter 5 Part I

2010-01-25T18:45:00.005-07:00

***
He shivers in his thin jacket and thinks that maybe next year he will find time and money to get something warmer. November weather is unkind in Moscow. Rubachin walks through Arbat (a pedestrain street in the historical center of Moscow), waves away few teenagers, street traders and beggars, and ponders about his conversation with Ivan.
The door to the Red Star restaurant is wide open and Rubachin peers inside. His eyes catch a Soviet poster on the wall calling for reconstruction of the economy ruined by the war. A young girl is crouching on her hands and knees, washing the floor of the restaurant.
“We are closed till seven,” she tells Rubachin without looking at him.
“I am from the Moscow Criminal Police. My name is Mikhail Rubachin,” Rubachin introduces himself to the girl.
She ineptly gets up from the floor, straightens up, looking astonished by Rubachin’s introduction.
“From MUR? Why?” She tries to swallow but her throat feels dry and scratchy. Her arms flap and fall.
“I need to talk to someone who knew civilian Olga Voronova,” Rubachin says.
“Olia? What happened?” her voice sounds small and lost. She is terribly thin and her collar bone is long and narrow beneath her skin.
“Did you know civilian Olga Voronova?” Rubachin cannot keep his eyes off her collar bone that seems to be moving with every breath she takes.
“Yes, we work together. Is she… is she in a some kind of trouble,” the girl stumbles. Her hands are shaking, her knees buckle and she leans on the wall by the door.
Rubachin studies her closely and almost tells her that Olga Voronova is dead when the expression on the girls face stops him. She looks ten years older by some trick of the deeming November afternoon light. She knows something and that something scares the hell out of her.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I… we… last night, just before we closed. In fact, we walked out together,” the girl looks at Rubachin. “What happened? Please tell me what happened to Olia,” she begs, her eyes are getting wider with every word she says.
“Did you walk home together?” Rubachin deliberately ignores her questions.
“No, we walked together one block. I live not far away from here, on Arbat. Olia lives farther, on the other side of the river,” the girl pauses for a second. “Please tell me what happened to her,” her voice croaks.
“She was killed last night. Strangled and left in the bushes in the courtyard of the apartment building she used to live,” Rubachin says, looking narrowly at the girl. “Your name, please,” he pulls out a notebook out of the front pocket of his jacket.
“Svetlana Morozova,” the girl whispers and, suddenly, slides down to the ground. The color rapidly drains from her face. A disproportionate amount of shock and terror reflects on her face.
Rubachin catches her, pulls her back up and leans closer to her. Their faces almost touch.
“Tell me what you know and I leave your name off the official report,” he whispers. “No one will ever know about you.” He puts his notebook back in the pocket.
“I don’t know anything. I… I … can’t…” she begins flippantly, but finishes slowly.
“I give you my word. No one will ever know about you,” Rubachin says softly. “Help me to find who killed Olia.”
“What is going on in here,” a huge, greasy looking man comes out of the restaurant and approaches Rubachin. He is wearing an enormous apron with dark dirty spots. His small beady eyes look over the girl who is helplessly leaning on Rubachin. The man’s suspicious gaze switches back and forth between their faces.
“I am detective Rubachin from Moscow Criminal Police,” Rubachin assesses the man who is hanging over them, tall and powerful, and shows the stranger his ID. “I understand that civilian Olga Voronova used to work here as a waitress.”
The man nods. He looks gray, unshaven with dark small hollows of the eyes.
“Go inside,” he says to the girl. “I will handle it,” he looks down at Rubachin.
The girl quickly disappears into the restaurant.
TO BE CONTINUED

Chapter 4

2010-01-20T06:10:00.004-07:00

***
“Misha, have you heard that Stalin is going to revise his original declaration about casualties of the war?” Ivan whispers to Rubachin. He stands in front of Rubachin’s desk, his back turned to Anna who is forcefully typing Vasiliev’s report at her desk.
Ivan is thrilled beyond his control, barely hiding it. He steps from one foot to another, his hands are twitching. He notices it and sticks them into the pockets of his jacket.
Rubachin looks at Ivan over the top of his round glasses, surprised by Ivan’s question and agitation.
“I haven’t heard it,” Rubachin raises his voice to overcome the loud banging of typewriter. “Why would he modify the numbers?”
Stalin never admitted to any mistakes or misjudgments of his administration. He was always right, kind and fair.
“I heard it this morning,” Ivan mutters, considering if he should reveal his source of the information to Rubachin. He glances quickly over his shoulder at Anna, making sure she is not listening.
Anna’s eyes are focused on the typewriter. Her face is serious and distant, her lips are moving as she reads to herself what she typed a minute ago.
“Why are we talking about it, Ivan,” Rubachin asks. They should not be talking about this. This is not a conversation to have at work or anywhere else. The dangers of talk like this are too great and far more real than Stalin changing number of fatalities of the war.
Ivan hesitates before replying, softening his voice to make sure Anna cannot hear him:
“Because if he admits that the numbers are wrong, it would be huge. Do you realize it?”
“He just declared in March that there were seven million dead in the war. Why would he say differently now, in November? What has changed?”
“Because people do not believe in his numbers. Everyone knows that many more died than just seven million. And he knows that people are talking about it.”
Rubachin looks quickly at Ivan as if assessing him and slowly removes his glasses. His sunken eyes are rimmed with dark shadows.
“He should declare the number of people he killed over the years,” Rubachin states and freezes in fear of what he just said. His face turns red. For a moment he is unable to speak, terrified by what just came out of his mouth.
Ivan steps back from Rubachin’s desk, his mouth open, startled. He points in the back of the room where Anna is typing.
“Are you crazy? What are you saying?” Ivan’s upset whisper is louder than needed. Fear strikes him, almost knocking him down to the floor.
Rubachin puts his glasses back on with the trembling hands, trying to come up with a sensible explanation of his outburst and fails. His mind is a blank page with no words and no thoughts.
“Don’t talk to me about his numbers, his declarations. Don’t talk to me about him,” Rubachin whispers weakly, afraid to meet Ivan’s eyes. He is dying for a cigarette to calm his nerves. “I don’t want to know anything. I am buried in work. I am busy, Ivan. And so should you,” he waves Ivan away from his desk.
Ivan walks over to his desk, sits silently and stares at Stalin’s painting over Anna’s head. He can hear Rubachin’s words replaying in his mind “He should declare the number of people he killed over the years.”
It’s eerie quiet in the room. Anna looks over her typewriter and notices Ivan’s stare. She tries to produce a smile and it comes out crooked, forced. She sees that Ivan is looking at Stalin above her head, reads something in Ivan’s face, her smile slowly fades away.
Suddenly, the door is flung open into the room and loud Vasiliev‘s voice yells out:
“We got a lead on the Black Cat. All in my office! Ivan, where is Sasha? Get him from wherever he is and meet me in my office. Now!”
Ivan immediately jumps out from his desk eager to run out of the room and forget his precarious conversation with Rubachin. Rubachin follows Ivan but yields in the door, looks over his shoulder at Anna. Their eyes meet and her body tenses in response to Rubachin’s stern gaze.
***
“Twenty-three year old civilian Olga Voronova was found dead this morning, not far away from her home. Cause of death - strangulation. Time of death - between two o’clock and six in the morning. She left the “Red Star” restaurant where she worked as a waitress untill two o‘clock in the morning,” Vasiliev looks at his team to make sure they are following him.
“Voronova’s body was found in the bushes by the apartment building where she used to live. Her neighbor, Alina Trepko, was on her way to work when she noticed a foot sticking out of the bushes. She looked in and saw the body of civilian Voronova. Motive - unknown. Seems like it was not a robbery. Voronova was still wearing her gold earrings when her neighbor found her. Now,” Vasiliev picked up a piece of paper from his desk. “This piece of paper was pinned to Voronova’s coat collar.”
He passes a piece of paper to Rubachin, closest to him. Rubachin takes a look at it, his eyebrow rise and he passes it to Ivan. Ivan studies it for a long minute, says nothing and gives it to Sasha. He glances at it quickly, hands it back to Vasiliev, ignoring Anna’s extended hand.
Vasilev takes a piece of paper from Sasha and looks at it again. A cat, colored black, is drawn with a pencil on the wrinkled piece of paper.
“Any thoughts?” Vasilev impatiently lights his cigarette and blows the smoke in everyone’s faces.
“It is the Black Cat’s signature,” Ivan says, weighing every word. “We need to find a connection between Olga Voronova and the Black Cat. Could she possibly know a member of the gang? Was she involved with them? Was she one of them?”
“If it was not a robbery why did they kill her?” Anna’s soft voice comes from the back of the room.
Vasiliev fixes his deep dark eyes on Anna. All men in the room turn to face her, surprised she had the courage to speak up.
“You said she was wearing gold earrings when she was found. People cannot afford food nowadays. Everything that has value is exchanged for food. How could a waitress afford to have gold earrings?” Anna takes deep painful breath, realizing that she has been holding it for a while.
“Brilliant observation,” Ivan chuckles, but his jaw tightens. He shakes his head. “Aren’t you supposed to be taking notes of the meeting? Silently?’ he emphasizes the word “silently“.
No one says a word but all eyes are on Anna.
“Indeed, a very good question, Shiukina,“ Vasiliev tries to smooth the tension that is draped around Ivan. “The answer to this question might be our lucky break.”
Anna smiles faintly. This is the only good thing she heard Vasiliev or anyone say to her since she started working in the Moscow Criminal Police.
Vasiliev turns to his team.
“Rubachin will interview people at the “Red Star” where Voronova worked. Establish her daily routine, her connections if she had any. I will go to the family …,” Vasiliev pauses for a second, thinking about how he doesn’t want to question parents who will have to put their murdered child in the ground. “Ivan and Sasha, you will interview Voronova’s neighbors. All, report back to me by seven tonight.”

Chapter 3

2010-01-15T06:06:00.005-07:00

Excerpt From Pike’s Diary

Sunday, November 10, 1946

In the morning I went to the Moscow’s biggest black market to try out my luck. The trip was a complete disaster! A scruffy looking woman sold me one cabbage and two beets for twenty rubles. After this, I could afford neither meat, bread nor milk. For supper I cooked a feast of watered down cabbage and beet soup. I am seriously considering selling my father’s old military watch and getting meat, bread, milk and eggs. Some potatoes, perhaps… I haven’t had potatoes in years. After the supper I checked my food supplies and noticed that I still have two eggs left. I will have them tomorrow morning before work.

Work… Typing and reading their reports is all I do. I spend ten, sometimes twelve hours a day in the room with them. I read their reports, type, give the typed pages back to them. My fast typing bothers them. When Ivan thinks I am not around, he calls my typing “perverted typing of the rat.” I have not ratted out anyone. Sometimes I wonder if they take me for someone else.

Should I talk to them, tell them who I am? Will they believe me if I do?

A concrete wall has formed around me. I am afraid to look up from my typewriter, afraid to meet their spiteful eyes. I feel trapped.

The minute I walk in the room, backs turn. They are always short and to the point with me when asking me to type their reports. Sometimes they silently throw their handwritten notes at me. They don’t like me and they treat me like I am a threat to them. I feel their eyes on me everywhere I go. They follow me, watch me, wait for me to do something that would substantiate their thoughts about me. I feel like I am slowly slipping under water.

Ivan is the one who loathes me the most. He is carefully choosing his words but his eyes tell me everything I need to know. He is wrapped in a cold anger that is directed at me. I can see Ivan forcefully holding it down, trying to control it. It scares me to think what will happen when his anger finally bursts.

Ivan has played a cruel joke on me. He sent me looking for Marusia, the janitor. I went downstairs, following his directions. Beads of cold sweat were stuck on my upper lip but I was determined to see where he has sent me. The hallway was murky, narrow and smelled like a fish market. I swear something was rotting in its walls. I found the door, supposedly to Marusia’s closet, turned the knob, cracked it open and peered inside. The pitch black darkness of the room blinded me and I flipped the light switch on.

A scream almost escaped me. I had to muffle it with my hand pressed over my mouth.

A horde of cockroaches ran sightlessly into every corner of the room, getting away from the bright light. Five tall steel beds stood in the middle of the room. Naked human bodies were covered just up to their heads with dirty white sheets. There were five of them: three men, a woman and a boy. The men’s ashen bodies looked abnormally stiff and stretched out. The boy looked very young, barely ten or eleven years old. The men and the boy were shot in their heads. The woman’s throat had been savaged by a series of deep, ragged cuts.

Ivan sent me to the morgue. I stepped back into the hallway, closed the door and walked towards the stairs, the images of the dead bodies imprinted in my mind. A door opened somewhere, and a tiny old woman came into the hallway with a bucket of water and a dirty rag floating in it. It was Marusia. Her closet was on the right side of the stairs, not the left side where Ivan directed me.

Marusia gave me a rag and I returned back to the room. My bag and my coat were on the floor. I remembered leaving them on the chair by the desk. An odd thought came to my mind that Ivan searched my things. What would he be looking for?

Everyone in the room was intensely watching me, smoking non-stop, and waiting for me to say something. The smoke gathered and curled around the ceiling making me feel sick.

I never said a word about the basement.

Sometimes at night I think about the dead people I saw in the dark room downstairs. I close my eyes and I see a dead woman, beautiful and drained of color. She is indifferent and prim in her death. I see a young boy with a peculiar peaceful face. Were they a family? What have these people done that they were slaughtered like animals with no mercy and no consideration? Were they killed by members of the Black Cat?

When I think about the gang, my brother’s face emerges from the corners of my mind. Not a day passes since he left that I would not be thinking about him, wondering where he spends his nights, hoping that he has enough food, believing that he is still alive.

Every night I promise myself that I will find him.

Chapter 2

2010-01-11T20:22:00.009-07:00

She wears the same grey dress she wore yesterday for the interview.
“Sit down, Comrade Shiukina,” Vasiliev nods at the chair in front of his desk.
She stands in Vasiliev’s room, patiently waiting for him to say something. Her winter coat hangs helplessly in her hands. Her nauseatingly brown handbag is on the floor, by her feet.
Vasiliev, captain of Moscow Criminal Police Homicide Division, rubs his heavy and broad forehead, trying to remember what he is supposed to say to his new stenographer.
Anna pushes her brown handbag in front of the chair and carefully sits down. Her coat lays on her lap, neatly folded. She glances above Vasiliev’s head at a big portrait of Stalin with a quote underneath it: Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
Vasiliev watches her read the quote. Anna studies Stalin, no emotions reflect on her pale face but her posture stiffens under Vasiliev‘s vigilant stare.
“Few things worth mentioning about your job,” Vasiliev puts a cigarette in his mouth, bites it butt and spits it out in the garbage can by his desk. “Smoke,” he grins at Anna like he is offering her a candy. His dark eyebrows are thick and wiry. They wiggle when he smiles.
Anna shakes her head.
“Good,” he nods approvingly and lights his cigarette. “As you already know, I am in charge of the homicide section of Moscow Criminal Police. We are investigating gang related cases. Particularly, one gang. The Black Cat. Have you heard of it?”
Anna nods. She sits bolt upright and looks at Vasiliev with her big grey eyes.
She would be really pretty if she’d get some meat on her bones, Vasiliev thinks.
“What have you heard about it,” he inquires. She should know something about the Black Cat. Everyone knows something. But if she is from the MGB, they have instructed her how to answer his questions.
“I heard about the Black Cat, their armed robberies. Mostly from the newspapers. The gang is ruthless. They kill women, seniors and even children,” she takes a deep breath. “I believe they’ve been around for a few years. No one has been able to catch any member of the gang. No one even knows exactly how many members of the gang are out there.”
“Correct,” Vasiliev says. “The Black Cat is holding Moscow hostage. People are afraid to go out after dark in they will be robbed and killed. Do you know why they call themselves the Black Cat?”
“No,” her eyes are wide open. She hungrily catches Vasiliev’s every word.
Maybe she doesn’t know a lot about the gang, Vasiliev wonders, surprised by her obvious and genuine curiosity.
“No one knows exactly. Some think that the gang leader, Malicious, had to do something with it. There are some theories, but all of them mean nothing,” Vasiliev tilted his head, not sure if he should continue or not.
Anna looks disappointed when she realizes that Vasiliev is not going to share with her any theories.
“We will catch them. All of them. No doubt,” Vasiliev gets up from the table. “Follow me, Comrade Shiukina.”
He leads her into a big room full of thick smoke and loud voices.
She chokes on the smoke, awkwardly follows Vasiliev inside, stumbling over the threshold.
Silence falls in the room as they enter.
“This is our new junior stenographer, civilian Anna Shiukina,” Vasiliev nods towards the girl. “She starts today,” he looks over the three men in the room. “This is Ivan Leprov,” he points at a young guy standing by the window. “He is our detective.”
Anna looks at Ivan, their eyes meet and Ivan cheerfully winks at her.
“Don’t look so frightened, Shiukina,” he says, coming up to Anna, his right hand extended. “We won’t bite,” he smiles. His eyes, blue like cold water, say differently. His hand shake is unexpectedly feeble and rushed.
“This is Michail Rubachin,” Vasiliev ignores Ivan, and points at the older man with a black-rimmed glasses, standing by the old, corroded kettle in the corner of the windowsill. “He is our lead detective.”
Rubachin takes off his glasses, wipes his eyes, and turns back to the kettle where he is boiling water for his tea without saying a word.
The tendons in Anna’s neck lock up. Her hands start to tremble. She glances quickly at Vasiliev. Can he see that she is not welcome in this room? The men in the room don’t know her but they already don’t like her.
“This is Alexander Nikitin, we call him Sasha,” Vasiliev points at the third man. “He is our newest and youngest detective. He was hired three months ago, right after demobilization.” He encouragingly nods at Nikitin, a bull-chested young guy with black coarse hair, sitting at his desk covered with papers.
Nikitin nods at Anna, takes her in with a blank stare and dives back into the papers.
“And here is your desk, Comrade Shiukina,” Vasiliev waves towards the empty desk in the dark corner of the room. “You will be typing our reports,” he turns to Anna. “Everything that happens in this building is confidential. Remember it.”
The remark is pointless. If Shiukina is from the MGB all of the information she types will be reported back to the Secret Police. Confidential or not. Vasiliev warned his team yesterday about a possibility of a new stenographer being an undercover agent.
Vasiliev looks at Anna and meets her gaze for hardly a second. Then he jerks his eyes away and steps out of the room, closing the door behind him.
The room goes unbearably quite again.
Anna slowly approaches her desk and stands in front of it, her back turned from everyone. She is not sure what to do, so she takes her time studying another Stalin’s painting that hangs on the wall behind her desk. This time a quote underneath Stalin’s figure says: I believe in one thing only, the power of human will. She turns to her desk. A huge typewriter covered in dust is the centerpiece of her new working space. Anna slides her fingers over the top cover and looks at the dark dust covering her skin.
“You need to wipe it off,” Ivan says from behind her.
She turns to face him. Ivan stands dangerously close, hovering over her. Instinctively she makes a step back, her legs hitting the desk behind her. She blinks at Ivan, cringes from pain in her hips.
“We have a janitor, Marusia, she is in her closet now. Probably hangover and napping. She will help you with cleaning. Go to the basement floor, turn left at the staircase, go to the end of the hallway. You will find her there,” Ivan continues, his eyes are fixed on Anna’s pale face.
The unexplained rage around his mouth has turned flat and cold.
“The desk needs cleaning,” Anna says, her voice croaks from tension. With shaking hands she puts her brown handbag and her coat on a chair by the desk.
“Do it now. Rubachin has a stack of reports to type up,” Ivan adds. His front teeth are slightly crooked and jutted, making him look like a rabbit.
She nods and leaves the room. Outside of the room she exhales, relieved that the attention is off her. She leans on the wall by the door, trying to collect her thoughts.
Muffled chuckles come out from behind the closed door.
“That’s very nice, Ivan,” someone says. “She might not come back. And I will have to type the reports myself.”
Rubachin, Anna guesses. The one who needs his reports typed up.
“The rat should learn her lesson,” Ivan’s voice responds.

Chapter 1

2010-01-05T21:09:00.002-07:00

Moscow, November 1946
***
“Comrade Shiukina, I am impressed with your test results. Not many stenographers I know ever had typing results like these,” he pauses for a second. “Not even very experienced stenographers,” he adds, cautiously choosing every word.
His is old and tired-looking. He feels like he has not slept in days. His weary dark eyes study a girl in front of him with a growing suspicion.
***
She typed forty three pages of Stalin’s speech in almost two hours. The speech was delivered by Stalin at a meeting of voters of Stalin Electoral District on February 9, 1946. It took 43 pages, three hours and 5 stenographers to type it up. Larisa Borisova, the lead stenographer, informed Vasiliev that the girl typed the speech in one hour and fifty minutes.
“She was just sitting there, staring through the window. I looked at her work and … there was not a single mistake,” Larisa handed papers to Vasiliev, frowning her perfectly shaped brows. “I never saw anything like this. She typed non-stop for two hours and she barely looked at the papers she was typing from. It was … amazing in a creepy way… It was like she knew what she was typing by heart.”
“By heart?” Vasiliev chuckled. “Impossible, no one knows what will be given during the test.” Unless someone leaked it, he thought but did not say it to Borisova.
Vasiliev glanced over the pages of Stalin’s speech. The girl had typed neatly, putting punctuation marks in all right places, perfectly spacing the words and paragraphs.
“All I am saying… it was weird. The way she typed it all so fast is not normal,” Larisa shrugged, looking at the papers over Vasiliev’s shoulder.
An odd thought crossed Vasiliev’s mind. MGB ( Russian Ministry of State Security), Russian Secret police, could sent an agent to infiltrate MUR (Moscow Criminal Police). If they did - what were they after? Why would MGB be interested in his gang squad?
Vasiliev pondered it for some time and decided that it was a waste of time. Anna Shiukina typed up 43 pages in two hours and did not make a single mistake. So what? Surely, there should be a simple and mundane explanation.
***
Vasiliev leans forward to get a closer look at the girl in front of him. She is tall, and leggy and mosquito-thin. She is so skinny that he can see her chest plate protruding through the skin. The war had ended not so long ago and everyone he knows is thin. Her grey dress matches the color of her eyes.
The girl stirs in the chair uncomfortably under Vasiliev’s stare, not sure what to say.
“Where did you learn to type so fast and so … flawlessly?”
She blushes, unsettled by Vasiliev’s interrogative tone. She is not a criminal. She should not be intimidated by him.
“I used to type my father’s articles for him. He was a newspaper editor,” she explains.
“What newspaper?” Vasiliev glances at the papers in front of him. He knows all the answers from her personal file but he needs to hear her say it.
“Evening News,” to her great satisfaction her voice sounds firmer by a notch.
“How old are you,” Vasiliev asks.
Eye to eye, he sees her nervousness and it bothers him. He is already paranoid about her being from the Secret Police.
“Twenty,” she lies. She knows that skinniness makes her look much younger than she is. He should believe her.
“You live alone?”
“Yes.” She doesn’t give any additional details.
“Where is your family?”
“All dead. My father died on the Belarus front in 1942. A year later…,” her voice trembles. “My mother died from pneumonia.” Her heart is suddenly a soft sponge at the base of her throat. She swallows hard and the feeling is gone.
“Your work requires confidentiality. You never will be able to discuss your job with anyone outside these walls,” Vasiliev says dryly. He decides to hire her.
“I understand,” she nods. Her voice is clear now. Sadness that was so obvious a moment ago is gone.
“My team fights gangs and bandits. I cannot put my people’s life on the line because some stenographer blurted something out. Do you understand, Anna?”
Her new name sounds strange to her.
“Yes, I understand,” she answers softly.
“There will be people who will become interested in being your friend. They will want information that can jeopardize years of work. Information that can kill my team. You should be very careful whom you let into your life.”
“I understand,” she repeats with a faint smile.
“All right, then,” Vasiliev gets up from the desk and walks to the window, his attention suddenly is snatched away.
He looks out at November snow, slowly pulls out a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, takes out a cigarette, sticks it into his mouth and forgets to light it. The girl’s smile reminds him of his dead wife. Lena had the same fragile and moving smile. Last time he saw Lena smile like this was right before she got into his automobile and his driver drove her away, towards her death.
“You can start tomorrow. Come to my office at eight and I will introduce you to my team,” Vasiliev says.
He does not look at the girl when he hears her get up from the chair.
“Thank you, Comrade Vasiliev. It means a lot to me,” the girl says into his back.
She really means it.
The girl walks out of the room and softly closes the door behind her.
Whatever happened back in there, she wonders. Vasiliev, an experienced detective, studied her, questioned her, suspected her and, in the end, believed her lies.
“Congratulations, Anna Shiukina,” she says under her breath, relieved.

Introduction

2010-01-04T18:17:00.001-07:00

Three weeks ago an idea for a novel was born, and I decided to act on it. Someone once said: "Don't wait for things to happen… make them happen." So, here I am, making things happen - posting chapters of my novel and looking to my reader (whoever you are) for feedback. I am not a professional writer, nor do I have a degree in English. In fact, English is my third language. Forgive me for any mistakes you may find. They are not intentional. Hopefully, whoever reads my blog, will ignore any grammatical errors or obscure usage of English words. Please enjoy my story and feel free to share your thoughts with me.

Let me give you a little background for the novel Black Cat and the Adventures of Pike. The story takes place in post WWII Moscow. It’s 1946, and Moscow is recovering from the disasters of the war. A young girl gets a job as a secretary in what was called Moscow Criminal Police (MUR in Russian). She is assigned to a team that is trying to bring down an infamous gang, Black Cat, which terrorized Moscow in the 1940s.

Enjoy!