Definitely Maybe (6 page)

“What was that?” Zykov asked, tensely. There was no more trace of human quality in his voice.

“There’s someone there,” Malianov said, still not understanding what had happened to Zykov. A new thought came to him. “Listen!” he shouted, jumping up. “Come with me! My wife’s girlfriend is in there! She can vouch that I slept all night and didn’t go anywhere.”

Shoulders bumping, they jostled their way into the foyer.

“Interesting, very interesting,” Zykov was saying. “Your wife’s girlfriend. We’ll see.”

“She’ll vouch for me. You’ll see. She’s a witness.”

They rushed into Bobchik’s room without knocking and stopped. The room was cleaned up and empty. There was no Lidochka in there, no sheets on the bed, no suitcase. And sitting on the floor next to the pieces of the clay pitcher (Khorezm, eleventh century) sat Kaliam with an unbelievably innocent air.

“This?” Zykov asked, pointing at Kaliam.

“No,” Malianov answered stupidly. “This is our cat, we’ve had him a long time. But wait, where’s Lidochka?” He looked in the closet. Her white jacket was gone. “She must have left?”

Zykov shrugged.

“Probably. She’s not here now.”

Stepping heavily, Malianov went over to the broken pitcher.

“B-bastard!” he said and cuffed Kaliam’s ear.

Kaliam beat a hasty retreat. Malianov crouched. Shattered. What a beautiful pitcher it had been.

“Did she sleep here?” Zykov asked.

“Yes.”

“When did you see her last? Today?”

Malianov shook his head.

“Yesterday. Well, actually today. In the night. I gave her sheets and a blanket.” He looked into Bobchik’s linen trunk. “There. It’s all there.”

“Has she been living here long?”

“She arrived yesterday.”

“Are her things here?”

“I don’t see any. And her coat is gone.”

“Strange, isn’t it?” Zykov said.

Malianov just waved his hand in silence.

“The hell with her. Women are nothing but trouble. Let’s have another shot.”

Suddenly the front door swung open, and in walked …

Excerpt 6.…
elevator door, and the motor hummed. Malianov was alone.

He stood in the doorway to Bobchik’s room leaning on the frame and thinking about nothing. Kaliam appeared out of nowhere, walking past him, tail twitching, and went out onto the landing, where he set about licking the cement floor.

“Well, all right,” Malianov said finally, then tore himself away from the door frame and went into his room. It was smoke-filled and three blue glasses stood abandoned on the table—two empty and one half full. The sun was up to the bookshelves.

“He took the cognac with him! That’s all I need!”

He sat in the armchair for a while, finished his glass. Noises from the street came in through the window, and the open door let in children’s voices and elevator grumblings from the stairs. He got up, dragged himself through the foyer, bumping into the doorjamb, plodded out onto the landing, and stopped in front of Snegovoi’s apartment door. There was a big wax seal on the lock. He touched it gingerly with a fingertip and pulled his hand away. It was all true. Everything that had happened had really happened. Citizen of the Soviet Union Arnold Snegovoi, colonel and man of mystery, was no more.

Excerpt 7.…
washed the glasses and put them away, cleaned up the pieces in Bobchik’s room, and gave Kaliam some fish. Then he took down Bobchik’s milk glass, put three raw eggs into it, added pieces of bread, heavily salted and peppered the mixture, and stirred. He wasn’t hungry; he was functioning on automatic pilot. And he ate the glop, standing by the balcony window watching the sun-flooded empty courtyard. Couldn’t they plant some trees? Even one?

His thoughts moved on in a feeble trickle, not really thoughts, just bits and pieces. Maybe these are the new investigative methods, he thought. The scientific and technological revolution and all that. Free and easy behavior and psychological attack. But the cognac, that was completely unclear. Igor Petrovich Zykov. Or was it Zykin? Well, anyway, that was what he said his name was, but what did it say in his documents? Those con men! he thought suddenly. They pulled that whole prank just for a lousy half bottle of cognac?

No, Snegovoi had died. That was clear. I’ll never see Snegovoi again. He was a good man, but disorganized. He always seemed out of sorts, particularly yesterday. And yet he was calling somebody; he wanted to say something, explain, warn about something. Malianov shuddered. He put the dirty glass in the sink. The embryo of the future pile of dirty dishes. Lidochka sure did a good job on the kitchen, everything
sparkled. He warned me about Lidochka. Really, it was very strange about Lidochka.

Malianov rushed to the foyer and looked for Irina’s note. No, it was just his imagination. Everything was in order. It was obviously Irina’s handwriting and her style—and anyway, why would a killer stay around to do the dishes?

Excerpt 8.…
Val’s phone was busy. Malianov hung up and stretched out on the sofa, his nose in the itchy blanket. Something was wrong at Val’s house, too. Some kind of hysteria. It’s happened before. A fight with Svetlana, or with his mother-in-law. What was that he asked me, something strange? Ah, Val, I should have your troubles! No, let him come over. He’s hysterical; I’m hysterical—maybe the two of us can come up with a solution. Malianov dialed again, and it was still busy. Damn, what a waste of time! I should be working, but there’s all this mess.

Suddenly he heard someone cough behind him in the foyer. Malianov flew off the sofa. For nothing, of course. There was no one in the foyer. Or in the bathroom. He checked the lock and came back to the sofa, whereupon he realized that his knees were wobbly. Hell, my nerves are shot. And that creep kept telling me that he was like the Invisible Man. You look like a tapeworm with glasses, you creep, not the Invisible Man! Bastard. He dialed Val’s number again, hung up, and began pulling on his socks with determination. I’ll call from Vecherovsky’s. It’s my own fault that I’m wasting time. He put on a fresh shirt, checked that his keys were in his pocket, locked the door, and ran up the stairs.

On the sixth floor a couple was making out by the incinerator chute. The guy was wearing sunglasses, but Malianov knew the punk—he was an aspiring do-nothing from Apartment 17. He was in his second year of unemployment and steadily not
looking for work. He didn’t run into anyone else on his way to the eighth floor. But all the while he had the feeling that he would bump into someone. They would grab his arm and say softly: “Just a second, citizen.”

Thank God, Phil was home. And as usual he was dressed as if ready to leave for the Dutch Embassy for a reception for her Royal Highness, the car would be picking him up in five minutes. He was wearing a phenomenally gorgeous cream-colored suit, loafers beyond mere mortal dreams, and a tie. That tie always depressed Malianov. He just couldn’t understand how anyone could work at home in a tie.

“Are you working?” Malianov asked.

“As usual.”

“I won’t stay long.”

“Of course. Some coffee?”

“Wait. No, why not. Please.”

They went to the kitchen. Malianov took a chair, and Vecherovsky began the ritual with the coffee-making equipment.

“I’ll make Viennese coffee,” he said without turning.

“Fine,” Malianov said. “Do you have whipped cream?”

Vecherovsky did not reply. Malianov watched his protruding shoulder blades work under the creamy fabric.

“Did the criminal investigator come to see you?” Malianov asked.

The shoulder blades stopped for a second, and then the long, freckled face with the droopy nose and red eyebrows, raised high over the tortoiseshell eyeglasses, appeared slowly over his round, stooped shoulder.

“Sorry. What did you say?”

“I said: Did the criminal investigator come to see you today?”

“Why a criminal investigator?”

“Because Snegovoi shot himself. They’ve already talked to me.”

“Who’s Snegovoi?”

“You know, the guy who lives across the hall from me. The rocketry guy.”

“Oh.”

Vecherovsky turned away and his shoulder blades started up again.

“Didn’t you know him? I thought I had introduced you.”

“No,” said Vecherovsky. “Not as far as I can remember.”

A marvelous coffee aroma filled the kitchen. Malianov settled comfortably into the chair. Should he tell him or not? In that aromatic kitchen, cool despite the blinding sun, where everything was in its place and everything was of top quality—the best in the world or even better—the events of the last day seemed particularly crazy and improbable, even unhealthy, somehow.

“Do you know the joke about the two roosters?” Malianov asked.

“Two roosters? I know one about three roosters. A terrible joke.”

“No, no. It’s about two roosters,” Malianov said. “You don’t know it?”

And he told the joke about the two roosters. Vecherovsky did not react at all. One would have thought that he was faced with a serious problem instead of a joke—he was so serious and thoughtful when he set the cup of coffee and the creamer in front of Malianov. Then he poured himself a cup and sat down across the table, holding the cup in the air, taking a sip, and finally pronouncing:

“Excellent. Not your joke. I mean the coffee.”

“I got it,” Malianov said glumly.

They silently enjoyed the Viennese coffee. Then Vecherovsky broke the silence.

“I thought about your problem some yesterday. Have you tried Hartwig’s function?”

“I know, I know. I figured that out for myself.”

Malianov pushed away the empty cup.

“Listen, Phil. I can’t think about the damn function! My brain is in a muddle, and you …”

Excerpt 9.…
nothing for a minute, rubbing his smooth-shaved cheek with two fingers, and then declaimed:

“We could not look death in the face, they bound our eyes and brought us to her.” Then he added, “Poor guy.”

It wasn’t clear who he had in mind.

“I mean, I can understand everything,” Malianov said. “But that investigator …”

“Want some more coffee?” Vecherovsky interrupted.

Malianov shook his head, and Vecherovsky stood up.

“Then let’s go into my room,” he said.

They moved to his studio. Vecherovsky sat down at his desk, completely bare except for one single piece of paper right in the middle, took a mechanical phone directory from the drawer, pushed a button, read down the page, and dialed the phone number.

“Senior Investigator Zykin, please,” he said in a dry, businesslike voice. “I mean, Zykov, Igor Petrovich. Out on operations? Thank you.” He hung up. “Senior Investigator Zykov is out on operations,” he told Malianov.

“He’s out drinking my cognac with some girls, that’s what he’s out doing,” grumbled Malianov.

Vecherovsky bit his lip.

“That doesn’t matter. The point is he exists!”

“Of course he exists! He showed me his papers. Why, did you think they were crooks?”

“I doubt it.”

“That’s what I thought. To do that whole story just for a bottle of cognac, and right next door to a sealed apartment.”

Vecherovsky nodded.

“And you say—Hartwig’s function! How can I work at a time like this? There’s enough going on.”

Vecherovsky looked at him intently.

“Dmitri,” he said. “Didn’t it surprise you that Snegovoi took an interest in your work?”

“And how! We’d never talked about work before.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“Well, in very general terms—in fact, he didn’t insist on details.”

“And what did he say?”

“Nothing. I think he was disappointed. He said, ‘There’s the estate, and there’s the water.’ ”

“What?”

“ ‘There’s the estate, and there’s the water.’ ”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a literary reference. You know, that you ask about the rope, and you get an answer about the sky.”

“Aha.” Vecherovsky blinked with his bovine lashes, then took a pristine, sparkling ashtray from the windowsill and a pipe and tobacco pouch and began filling the pipe. “Aha … ‘there’s the estate, and there’s the water.’ … I like that. I’ll have to remember it.”

Malianov waited impatiently. He had great faith in him. Vecherovsky had a totally inhuman brain. Malianov knew no one else who could come up with such completely unexpected conclusions.

“Well?” he finally demanded.

Vecherovsky had filled his pipe and was now slowly smoking and savoring it. The pipe made little wheezing sounds. Inhaling, Vecherovsky said:

“Dmitri … pf-pf-pf … how much have you moved along since Thursday? I think Thursday … pf-pf … was the last time we talked.”

“What difference does it make?” Malianov asked, annoyed. “I don’t have time for that now.”

Vecherovsky let those words go right by him. He kept looking at Malianov with his reddish eyes and puffed on his pipe. That was Vecherovsky. He had asked a question, and now he was waiting for an answer. Malianov gave up. He believed that Vecherovsky knew better than he what was important and what wasn’t.

“I’ve moved along considerably,” he said, and began describing how he reformulated the problem and reduced it to an equation in vector form and then to an integral-differential equation, how he began getting a physical picture of it, how he figured out the M cavities, and how last night he finally figured out that he should use Hartwig’s transformation.

Vecherovsky listened attentively, without interrupting or asking questions, and only once, when Malianov got carried away, grabbed the solitary piece of paper, and tried to write on the back of it, he stopped him and said, “In words, in words.”

“But I didn’t have time to act on any of it,” Malianov wound up sadly. “Because first the crazy phone calls began, and then the guy from the store came over.”

“You didn’t tell me about any of this,” Vecherovsky interrupted.

“Well, it has nothing to do with it,” Malianov replied. “I could still get some work done with all the telephone calls, but then that Lidochka showed up, and it all went to hell …”

Vecherovsky was completely enveloped in puffs and plumes of honeyed smoke.