Red Square by Martin Cruz Smith

off a bunch carefully. When he ate, he rolled down the window to spit the seeds on the ground.
        'Diverticulitis. I'm not supposed to swallow them. It's a terrible thing to grow old.'

 
     
    Chapter Six
     
     
    Polina was dusting Rudy's bedroom for prints when Arkady arrived from the car market. He had ever seen her out of her raincoat before. Because of the heat, she wore shorts, had knotted her shirt into a halter and tied her hair up in a kerchief, and with her rubber gloves and little camel's-hair brush she looked like a child playing house.
        'We dusted before.' Arkady dropped his jacket on the bed. 'Aside from Rudy's prints, the technicians got nothing.'
        'Then you have nothing to lose,' Polina said cheerfully. 'The human mole is in the garage tapping for trapdoors.'
        Arkady opened the window over the courtyard and saw Minin in his hat and coat in the open door of the garage. 'You shouldn't call him that.'
        'He hates you.'
        'Why?'
        Polina rolled her eyes, then climbed a chair to dust the mirror on the chest of drawers. 'Where's Jaak?'
        'We've been promised another car. If he gets it, he'll go to the Lenin's Path Collective Farm.'
        'Well, it's potato time. They can use Jaak.'
        At a variety of odd locations - on hairbrush and headboard, inside the medicine-cabinet door and under the raised toilet lid - were the shadowy ovals of brushed prints. Others had already been lifted with tape and transferred to slides lying on the night table.
        Arkady pulled on rubber gloves. 'This isn't your job,' he said.
        'It isn't your job, either. Investigators are supposed to let detectives do the real work. I have the training for this and I'm better than the others, so why shouldn't I? Do you know why no one wants to deliver babies?'
        'Why?' Immediately he was sorry he asked.
        'Doctors don't want to deliver babies because they're afraid of AIDS, and because they don't trust Soviet rubber gloves. They wear three or four at a time. Imagine trying to deliver a baby wearing four pairs of gloves. They don't do abortions either, for the same reason. Soviet doctors would rather set women out about a hundred metres away and watch them explode. Of course, there wouldn't be so many babies if Soviet condoms didn't fit like rubber gloves.'
        'True.' Arkady sat on the bed and looked around. Though he had followed Rudy for weeks, he still knew too little about the man.
        'He didn't bring women here,' Polina said. 'There are no crackers, no wine, not even a condom. Women leave things - hairpins, make-up pads, face powder on a pillow. It's too neat.'
        How long was she going to be up on the chair? Her legs were whiter and more muscular than he would have expected. Perhaps she had wanted to be a ballerina at one time. Black curls escaped from the discipline of her kerchief and coiled at the nape of her neck.
        'You're working room by room?' Arkady asked.
        'Yes.'
        'Shouldn't you be out with your friends playing volleyball or something?'
        'It's a little late for volleyball.'
        'Did you lift prints from the videotapes?'
        'Yes.' She bounced a glare off the mirror.
        'I got you more morgue time,' Arkady said to mollify her. Isn't that the way to soothe a woman, he thought, by offering her more time in a morgue? 'Why do you want to go back inside Rudy?'
        'There was too much blood. I did get laboratory results on the blood from the car. It was his type, at least.'
        'Good.' If she was happy, he was happy. He turned on the television and VCR, inserted one of Rudy's tapes, pushed 'Play' and 'Fast Forward'. Accompanied by high-speed gibberish, images rushed across the screen: the golden city of Jerusalem, Wailing Wall, Mediterranean beach, synagogue, orange grove, high-rise hotels, casinos, El Al. He slowed the tape to catch the narration, which was more glottal than Russian.
        'Do you