The Black Marble (43 page)

“Huh?”

“In the dream? Is Charlie Lightfoot there when the … rabbit is skinned?”

“No, Charlie was dead. Charlie had been dead for a month.”

“Did you attack the hunter in the dream?”

“I wanted to,” Valnikov said. “I wanted to. I wanted to kill him with his own knife with the bone handle. There were granules under the tongue. He said maybe it's some toxic substance. He had a swab right there. He could swab out the granules for the lab. But he just … just took the bone-handled knife and sliced off the little tongue! I wanted to kill him then,” Valnikov said. Then he started crying again.

“What happened?” Natalie said. She was crying too.

“He said, ‘Are you crazy? What's wrong with you?' I said, ‘You could use the swab! You don't have to treat it so brutally. You don't have to. Hasn't it had enough? Isn't the torture, isn't a gaping anus enough! Look at him! You've turned his face inside out like a surgical glove! Isn't that enough! His face is like a doctor's glove hanging inside out!'”

The little rabbit took with him to eternity a face like a rubber glove
.

“He said, ‘I
thought
you looked drunk! I smell the booze on your breath!' I said, ‘I'd like to punch your face in.' He said, ‘You're drunk, I'm going to report you to your commander.' And I … I looked around. I'd been there hundreds of times. Hundreds. I saw an orderly helping an Asian pathologist on another one. They weren't paying any attention. They were cutting through yellow fat with a bone-handled knife. They were cutting a skull off with a power saw. The orderly was pulling out the intestines in a big heap and piling them on the knees. There was an enormous brain tied with a blue string. You'd never believe it could fit inside a skull it was so big. The orderly was putting a piece of meat in a jar. He was eating a jelly roll.”

“Did you hit the doctor?”

“No.” Valnikov sighed again and again. “I just realized at last that … that Charlie Lightfoot was right. I stopped going to church. It's nothing more than a Big Sewer and it's nothing more than gutted fish in the end. Or a …”

“A rabbit,” Natalie said.

“Yes. Or a …”

“A schnauzer,” Natalie said.

“I just realized that there's nothing more than the Big Sewer. Anything else is …”

“Is what you make of it,” Natalie said: “What
we
make of it” She held him in her arms. He was wet and cold and shivering.

“I don't want to be like Charlie Lightfoot,” Valnikov said, burying his face in her naked breasts.

Natalie rocked him and said, “You're
not
like Charlie Lightfoot. You're not
anything
like Charlie Lightfoot.”

“I'm afraid,” he said.

“Hush,” she whispered, kissing his head. “You're not anything at all like Charlie Lightfoot. Hush, Andrushka,” she whispered. “Go to sleep and dream of … of those Russian nightingales singing in the raspberry bushes.”

She rocked him and was covered by his sweat. She threw off the clammy sheet and drew up the warm blankets. He was so devastated by the vodka and the tears that he fell unconscious almost at once, his face pressed against her. Natalie Zimmerman still rocked him and caressed his burning body until she fell asleep.

13

Suicide Bridge

Valnikov didn't dream of nightingales singing in the raspberry bushes. And he didn't dream about a rabbit. He dreamed he was waltzing with Natalie Zimmerman. In the squad room of Hollywood Detectives. Hipless Hooker yelled about a tummyache and Clarence Cromwell said they were crazy but he didn't care. They danced to the “Starinye Vals.”

And while Valnikov dreamed his fantasy, Philo Skinner
lived
his. He was sitting in his El Dorado, west of Suicide Bridge, in the darkness. He was terrified that a cop would come by, but in a Cadillac El Dorado he hoped he could reassure a cop. Waiting for a girlfriend, Officer. Please don't pry. She's a married lady and you know how it is. Only in the middle of the night, Officer. Gotta take it when we can. When the old boy's asleep. Hah-hah!

He saw her Fleetwood right on schedule. His heart was banging in his ears. She drove past his El Dorado without looking. She started across Suicide Bridge. He saw headlights in the distance, but the headlights turned toward the freeway. Madeline began crossing the bridge, toward the ghostly looming old hotel. Her brake lights went on when she reached the east end of the bridge. Philo started his engine but kept his lights out. Madeline's brake lights went out and her Fleetwood continued to Orange Grove Avenue, which two weeks ago was jammed with Rose Parade flower floats. Then she was gone.

Philo Skinner drove drunkenly, dangerously, recklessly, east over the bridge. He panicked when he reached the end of the bridge. It wasn't there. No, it
was
there! It was in the gutter! He slammed on the brakes and leaped out of the Cadillac. He twisted his ankle and fell, tearing the knee out of the polyester trousers. He picked the bundle up. It was small. Could twenty thousand dollars be contained in such a small package? He ran back to the car. He jammed it in low gear and sped toward Orange Grove Avenue.

Philo broke into a coughing spasm on the freeway. His eyes filled and clouded and he was gagging on an enormous wad of phlegm. He desperately groped for the electric window buttons until he had every window in the car open. He didn't realize for a moment he was hyperventilating. When he realized it he hacked the phlegm from his ragged lungs and spit out the window. It blew back with a smack on the side of his El Dorado. He deliberately exhaled until he was able to breathe again. He was wheezing and creaking, but he was able to breathe at last. He tore open the plastic as he drove. He switched on the map light. He looked at the thrilling pictures of Ulysses S. Grant and Benjamin Franklin. Hundreds of pictures. He spent the night in the kennel office caressing them, fondling them, caressing them again and again. Philo Skinner made noises that were half laugh, half cry. He was sick and exhausted but now he wanted to live. He hid the money in the supply closet and slept curled up on the grooming table. He dreamed of a white sand beach and a puppy frolicking in the surf. The puppy, of course, looked like Tutu.

14

The Assassin

Natalie was awakened at dawn by Misha expressing his opinion of it all: “
Gavno
” the bird cried. “
Gavno. Gavno
.”

Then she heard the shower turning off, and Valnikov, wearing an old flannel bathrobe, tried to tiptoe quietly to the kitchen. She sat up in bed.

“Oh, sorry. Did I wake you?” He was drying his hair. “I wanted to get your breakfast before you had to get up.”

“What time is it?” she asked, pulling back a taped window shade to peer out at the street lights.

“Five thirty.”

“Five thirty!”

“We'll have to get an early start. I've already called Clarence Cromwell at home. He'll meet us in the office at seven so we can get started. He's going to arrange for the helicopter and the surveillance cars. I hope we don't have to use our own guys, but if we do, I think Fuzzy Spinks might be a good man on point. What do you think?”

Think? Think? Who could think anything about the past days. My God, she'd lost her ability to think or she wouldn't be lying here! With a pathetic tormented crazy man and a bird that yelled shit in a foreign language and a goddamn Russian rat that kept trying to keep the bird off his head. What a night! What a week!
She'd
be the one they retired. Give old Natalie Zimmerman a medical pension and a party and six months in Camarillo State Hospital with a live-in psychiatrist.

“How do you like your eggs?” Valnikov smiled. “I'm a pretty good cook.”

“Please, Valnikov,” she said, sitting up and wrapping the sheet around her. “Please don't.”

“Don't what, Natasha?”

“Don't cook for me. Don't do anything for me. And
don't
call me Natasha.”

“Sorry,” he said.

“And don't say you're sorry. I'm sorry for
you
.”

“For me?”

“Never mind. Let me shower and get dressed. We'll have some coffee.”

“You wouldn't like tea?” he said. “In a glass?”

“I'll have coffee. In a cup.”

“Coffee, sure,” Valnikov said, losing his buoyancy, shuffling into the kitchen to look for the coffee pot. He hoped he had some coffee. He hoped he could come to understand Natalie Zimmerman.

Twenty minutes later they were both dressed and sitting at the tiny kitchen table. He drank tea from a glass. She drank coffee from a cup. East and West.

His hair was carefully parted and combed, but still a cinnamon cowlick popped up at the crown. She watched him sip his tea. Noiselessly, just as his mother had taught him.

“Do you have a hangover?” she asked, breaking the silence.

“A little.” His sad blue eyes were watery and bloodshot. His necktie was off center. Another cowlick popped up as he sipped the tea. He looked ridiculous.

“Valnikov.”

“Yes, Natash … Natalie?”

“Do you ever think of retiring? After all, you have twenty-two years' service. You could retire now with almost half your pay. You're still young. You could find an … easier job to make up the difference. Do you ever think about retiring?”

“I think about it sometimes,” he said. “I think about it, but I'm forty-four years old and I don't know anything but police work.”

“I'll bet your brother'd take you in business with him. He's crazy about you, your brother.”

“I don't want to work for Alex,” Valnikov smiled. “He's too much like a father. Besides I'd just get in his way. I don't know his business. But I d
^;
d think about something.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I know something about music. Not so much about pop or rock, but do you know there aren't many good record stores with imported records? Not in a good location. I think that if someone opened a foreign music store in a good location, like here in Hollywood …”

“Holly-weird. Ugh!”

“Yes, it's not the greatest place to live anymore, but to do business with Russians, and Greeks, Armenians, Persians, Arabs, and so forth, well, they
like
Hollywood. It still represents the magic of America. The Good Life.”

“Do you have any money for a business?”

“I have a few thousand saved,” he said, pouring some more coffee for Natalie. He was pleased that she didn't seem angry anymore. Maybe it's when she just wakes up, he thought. “And I could go to my brother for a loan. And I guess I could borrow some from a bank. I could start on a shoestring. After all, I'd have my police pension to live on.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“Well, I never had any reason to make a move before now.”

“Before now.”

“Yes,” he said, blinking his sad eyes, wiping them with a napkin. “Sorry. Too much vodka always does this to me.”

“I noticed,” she said. Then, “Tell me, Valnikov, did you ever feel like you always pick the black marble?”

“The black marble?”

“Yeah, remember Itchy Mitch?” she said, scratching under her bra strap. “The black marble.”

“No, I don't think I ever felt like that,” he said.

“You don't expect much, do you?”

“I don't know, Natash … Natalie,” he said.

“Why did your wife leave you?”

“Oh, she said I bored her stiff. She said I was … well, you said it too. Out of date.”

“I didn't mean it like that, Valnikov.”

“It's all right. I am.”

“Not like that. Not like she meant it.”

“Well, she liked to go out a lot. And I thought we should stay home with our son more. And besides, I couldn't afford to take her to the Polo Lounge for lunch and Chasen's for dinner and …”

“You don't see the kid?”

“No,” he sighed, standing up, getting more hot water for his tea. “I don't know, maybe I bored him too. He got in lots of trouble. Three arrests for smoking pot before he was fourteen. And twice they let him go because his dad was a cop. He finally said he hated cops.
All
cops. Well, I don't know.”

“How old is he now?”

“He's twenty. Just twenty.”

“He's young,” Natalie said. “Kids change when they grow up.”

“Yes,” he sighed. “They change.”

“Tell me,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “When your wife and boy left, when Charlie died, when you were working those homicide cases, when the drinking was very bad and you were having those bad dreams, tell me, did you ever say to yourself, why do I
always
pick the black marble? Haven't you
ever
said that?”

“I don't think so,” he said.

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes, I wanna know why.”

“I don't know,” he shrugged. “My mother always said … you see, my mother and father, the people from the first immigration, they didn't come to America
for
the Good Life. America was the
end
of the Good Life for them. Until the day she died she never stopped talking about her home in Petrograd. That's why I guess I seem so … old-fashioned, maybe. Even though I was born and raised in Los Angeles, I heard so much about the suffering of Mother Russia, and the sorrow of life, and … well, I never expected much, I guess. I don't know.” Valnikov sipped his tea and dabbed at imagined moisture on his lip and said, “Maybe my father … I didn't know him well, of course, but maybe before he died, maybe when he was here in Los Angeles during the Depression trying for jobs he couldn't get, never speaking this foreign tongue, maybe my father wondered about the black marble. I'll bet he did. I'll bet that when his entire world had been destroyed he said to himself: Mikhail Ivanovich, why do you always have to pick the black marble?”