"Tuesdays are my day off," Zoya began slowly, "I work for the Hebridean bottling plant, the one on Walnut. Do you know it?"
Judy shook her head as Nick nodded. Judy thought it somewhat strange that a mammal who supposedly worked as a gang enforcer needed a day job, but before she could pursue the thought any further, the polar bear continued. "I drive a truck. Deliveries. Many deliveries, and Mondays are the worst because I have to go to Sahara Square. I unload the truck as well as drive it, and Sahara Square is always too hot."
Judy could understand why the polar bear would dislike Sahara Square; it had been uncomfortably warm for her, and she didn't have a thick layer of fat under her skin or a coat of fur nearly so long or dense. She nodded sympathetically and asked, "When did your shift end?"
"Around five," Zoya replied.
"And what did you do between leaving work and getting arrested?" Judy asked.
Zoya shrugged. "I went home. I have a place, a little one, here in Tundra Town where I live alone. I took an ice bath and I ate supper. I caught up on my reading—nothing revolutionary, of course."
She added that last part hastily, and Nick leaned in. "So what were you reading?"
Zoya's massive paws fidgeted nervously. "The Big Four," she said.
"Ah," Nick said, "Agatha Christapir. Is it any good?"
Zoya nodded, apparently relieved that he wasn't prying any further into what that might imply. "Absolutely, yes. I didn't want to put it down, so I took it with me to the Blue Glacier. That was around ten. I go there every Monday, you see."
That was a period of five hours, then, that Zoya didn't have an alibi for. That was certainly enough time for her to have murdered Carajou prior to passing out and being arrested, and the polar bear must have seen that realization in Judy's eyes. "I have no one to back it up, but it is the truth. This I swear."
"The Blue Glacier?" Nick asked, and then he turned to Judy.
"I didn't hear that," he said, and Judy supposed that foxes must have pretty good hearing.
She wondered if he had heard the entire conversation she had with Keeshan; he hadn't said anything while they were being escorted to the interrogation room, but he may have not wanted the pig to overhear them. "Does Monarch still run it?" he asked.
Zoya's smile was warm and unguarded, somehow, which seemed at odds with the police report that the owner had called for help kicking her out. "You know Roger?" she asked.
"Oh, we made a deal or two," Nick said, waving one paw in a vague gesture.
Judy cut in. "What happened at the Blue Glacier?" she asked.
"I have a table I always sit at. Every Monday, Roger has my order ready when I walk in at ten. A glass of orange juice and a lemon Neighi."
Judy blinked. "Orange juice and lemon Neighi?" she repeated before she was even aware she was speaking.
Zoya looked positively amused by her response, and the polar bear nodded. "Yes, juice and a soft drink. Roger is a respectable businessmammal, of course, who would not sell anything with so much as a drop of alcohol in it. It is not worth the trouble, he says."
"Of course," Judy said, somewhat skeptically; considering that Zoya had been drunk when she had been pulled out of the Blue Glacier, she must have done some serious drinking.
The polar bear had to weigh at least three hundred and fifty pounds, and while there was a certain softness to her body that spoke of her insulating layer of fat, the vast majority of it seemed to be pure muscle. If Zoya was telling the truth, she must have downed quite a bit of alcohol before hitting the Blue Glacier or—the logical alternative came to Judy in a flash. "Does Mr. Monarch mind if mammals bring drinks into the bar?" Judy asked.
Zoya laughed. "It is a free country, is it not? Roger is not so much a busybody as to worry about all that."
Judy thought that it was as good as a confirmation that she had been right. Zoya must have brought her own alcohol into the bar with her, something that she had planned on having along with the drinks she had purchased. "I brought a... little water with me, myself, to mix in. Juice and Neighi are too sweet on their own and I prefer the taste of what I bring," Zoya continued.
Judy thought that whatever Zoya had brought likely only contained water by virtue of it being impossible to make pure alcohol, but it didn't seem worth it to push the point. Zoya had paused, apparently expecting an interruption, but when it didn't come she continued. "This Monday, my table and my drinks were ready as always. I remember saying hello to Roger, but..."
The polar bear shrugged her massive shoulders. "That is all I remember, until Tuesday."
"You don't remember anything that happened?" Judy pressed.
Zoya shook her head slowly. "I woke up Tuesday with a terrific headache. Roger was standing next to my table, arguing with a police officer. He said..."
Zoya trailed off, and her massive brow furrowed in concentration. "He said I needed a doctor, that I wasn't a rummy. The officer said Roger had a soft heart and that he had to arrest me. I tried to stand up and say I was alright, but I was very dizzy."
Zoya looked down, abashed. "I fell on the cop."
Judy leaned in closer. It was the first part of Zoya's story that didn't match up with what had been recorded in the police report, which had claimed that Zoya had deliberately tried attacking the responding officer. "What happened then?" Judy asked.
"The officer was screaming bloody murder, is what happened next," Zoya said, "His partner came in and arrested me, and I've been in a little cell or this room ever since."
"Do you know how the blood got on your clothes or beneath your claws?" Judy asked.
Zoya shook her head firmly. "It was not there when I entered the Blue Glacier, I swear it."
"Have you ever passed out in the Blue Glacier before?" Nick asked suddenly.
Zoya turned to look at the fox. "On occasion, yes," she admitted, "Sometimes I am very tired, on Mondays. Summer is the worst, you know. It makes me very thirsty."
"And Monarch lets you sleep it off?" Nick asked.
Zoya nodded. "Until he goes to close the bar, yes."
Nick leaned back into his chair, stroking his muzzle thoughtfully. Zoya turned back to Judy. "Was that all, Agent Hopps?"
"Have you ever worked for the Black Paw, or any other gang?" Judy asked.
Judy had no idea why someone employed as an enforcer for a gang would also work what seemed like an unpleasant and menial job, but perhaps the rumors weren't true. Zoya didn't give any apparent reaction to the question, and simply looked down at Judy for a moment before answering. "My only job is making deliveries," Zoya replied blandly.
That was neither an admission nor a denial and Judy repressed a sigh. "Of course. Thank you for your time, Ms. Medvedeva," she said, and reached across the table to shake the bear's paw.
Her fingers could barely wrap around one of Zoya's, but the polar bear seemed amazed at the contact, and accepted the gesture by giving her own paw a delicate pump. "Time is all I have now," Zoya said, "I have not missed a single day's work in almost three years, not until now. I suppose they'll have fired me, don't you think?"
Judy met Zoya's stare unflinchingly. "It's not over yet," she said firmly.
Nick and Judy had left the interrogation room, and as requested had allowed the door to swing shut after them. "You heard everything Captain Keeshan and I said, didn't you?" Judy asked.
Nick nodded casually, and then ran a paw up to the sharp tip of one of his triangular ears. "Yours might be better, but these aren't for show."
Nick was silent a moment as they walked down the halls of the police station, trying to find their way back to the main entrance, and then he spoke again. "You probably shouldn't have gotten on Keeshan's bad side, you know."
Judy's response was instantaneous. "She's a bigot and a bully. Someone has to stand up to her."
"And that someone has to be you?" Nick asked, "And it had to be right then?"
Judy paused a moment, looking down the nearest intersection. The Precinct Five station was like a maze, all long corridors with cinder block walls and scuffed linoleum floors, low pipes wrapped in insulation with cryptic acronyms painted on them running along the ceiling. The hallway was poorly lit by only a few bare incandescent bulbs that were dim with age, but Judy looked up into Nick's face anyway, wanting to look him in the eye. "I was there," she said firmly, and then she had to look away.
She had stood up to Keeshan, but it felt as though it hadn't been enough, that she had been too willing to play along with the kangaroo's prejudice. "I could have done more."
Nick brushed one paw against hers until she turned and looked back at him. "I think you did enough," he said quietly.
They lapsed into silence again, walking towards the next intersection, when Judy decided to break the silence. "Zoya wasn't anything like what I expected."
"From a convicted murderer, you mean?" Nick asked.
"Well... Yes," Judy said.
"You can't always tell," Nick said.
Whether or not the polar bear had killed Carajou, she had undeniably killed her husband. Judy had thought that Zoya might be frighteningly cold and emotionless, someone who was capable of killing without regret, or else superficially charming, the way that Lionheart had been, with something dangerous barely hidden away underneath. But Zoya's normalcy had been surprising, the way that she seemed like a regular mammal working a difficult job and taking the few pleasures that she could. Nick simply shrugged in response, and Judy wondered how many mammals he had encountered, in the military and in the mafia, who were like that.
"Do you think she was telling the truth?" Nick asked, changing the subject.
"It wouldn't be a very good lie, would it?" Judy said.
Nick nodded; it really wasn't much of a story. Zoya had no verifiable alibi for the time frame the murder must have occurred in, and her excuse was weak. "I don't think she was lying about the cop, though."
It might not make too much of a difference whether Zoya had deliberately attacked an officer or if she had stumbled and fallen on one, but from what Judy had seen of Precinct Five it wouldn't surprise her if the officer had exaggerated the encounter to make the arrest cleaner. Judy nodded. "I think you're right about that," she said, "We can ask Mr. Monarch, though."
"He might not be the most reliable witness," Nick said, and Judy looked up at him in surprise.
"Why's that?" Judy asked.
Nick had said that he had dealt with the owner of the Blue Glacier before, and she wondered what their encounters had been like in order to get that response.
"Couldn't you tell?" Nick asked, shaking his head in exaggerated dismay before clasping his paws up under his muzzle, "She's sweet on him. He's probably sweet on her, too."
"Oh," Judy said.
She had to admit that it certainly seemed like a possibility if Mr. Monarch was also a polar bear, which seemed likely from the name of his bar and its location in Tundra Town. If Zoya was being honest, she was a loyal customer and Mr. Monarch had been more concerned that she might be sick than that she was keeping him from closing his bar. Judy couldn't be sure, though, so she asked. "And Mr. Monarch is a polar bear?"
"Bear: yes. Polar: no. He's a grizzly bear," Nick said, "Biggest one you'll ever see."
"Oh!" Judy said, more loudly than before.
Relationships between different species were extremely rare, after all, but she supposed that Monarch and Medvedeva were both predators, and bears at that. They probably wouldn't be able to have cubs if they were in a relationship, but maybe neither one of them wanted children in the first place. There were some mammals like that, after all; Judy herself had no interest in starting her own brood of kits and maybe the same was true of Zoya. A polar bear and a grizzly bear would certainly raise a few eyebrows, though, and maybe one or both of them didn't have the courage to stand up to that kind of public scrutiny. Of course, their relationship (if either of them wanted one) wasn't anywhere near as publicly questionable as some others might be. It wasn't as though, say, only one of them was a predator and the other was—"Agent Carrots?" Nick asked, interrupting her train of thought, "You still there?"
Judy could feel herself flushing with embarrassment at having been caught not paying attention, and hoped that it wasn't obvious in the dimly lit corridor. From the amused half-smile that Nick wore, she got the feeling that he had noticed the color flooding into the delicate inner surfaces of her ears. Judy cleared her throat. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"I asked if you want to go to the Blue Glacier next," Nick said, "See if we can check out Zoya's story for ourselves."
"After we go back to the Thief of the Night," Judy replied.
She supposed that talking to Mr. Monarch might reveal something that indicated how Zoya had been framed, but it seemed unlikely to tell them anything about how the murder had been conducted. If Zoya had been slipped a mickey, Monarch or one of his employees might have seen something. Unless, of course, they had been the ones to do it or if Zoya had been lying. The polar bear hadn't corrected Nick when he had suggested that she had something to sleep off on the previous occasions she had fallen asleep at her table, so it might not be out of the question that the bear had simply gotten incredibly drunk either before arriving at the Blue Glacier or while she was there.
If either was the case, the bear might be lying to protect whoever had sold her the alcohol, or she was simply being cautious around a member of the Bureau of Prohibition. It was also possible that she really did murder Carajou, and she really had just been sloppy and hadn't had the time to think up a better excuse.
Judy shook her head as they came to the intersection that finally led back to the lobby. She was hoping that revisiting the crime scene might make things more clear, but thinking about it in endless circles wasn't going to accomplish anything. "To the Thief of the Night," Nick said as they walked back out into the artificial chill of Tundra Town.
Author's Notes:
The title of this chapter, "Russian Lullaby," comes from a 1927 Irving Berlin song, which Ella Fitzgerald did an amazing version of. Considering that this chapter consisted of Zoya telling a story that involved passing out, it seemed appropriate.
The Hebridean bottling plant is named in reference to the real W.H. Hutchinson bottling plant that was located in Chicago during the 1920s, and it was indeed on Walnut. Hutchinson is a Scottish surname, and Hebridean is one of the other names of the now-extinct grice, a species of pig that was native to Scotland until going extinct in the late 19th century. Zoya's day job as a truck driver to deliver soft drinks is something of a reference to those Coca-Cola commercials they air every winter, using polar bears to shill their drinks.
As addressed in the notes from the last chapter, as well as the choice of title for this chapter, Zoya is pretty clearly Russian. Based on the dates provided, it can be assumed that her family left the country prior to WWI, likely as a result of the Russian Revolution of 1905 when she would have been a preteen. While that revolution failed, the two Russian Revolutions of 1917 led to the end of the Russian Empire and the birth of the Soviet Union in 1922. Zoya's comment about not reading anything revolutionary therefore suggests that her family was loyal to the tsar, or that she simply doesn't want to be accused of being an anarchist. Although the Red Scare is typically associated with the McCarthyism of the post-WWII time period when American fears of communist plots and infiltrators led to many people being blacklisted on suspicion of being communist sympathizers, there was an earlier Red Scare in the WWI time period. Fears of anarchists and Bolsheviks abounded in the period leading up to WWI, when many union organizers strongly opposed the US's entry into the war, and those fears only built after the war following a series of major strikes. By 1920, though, when grim predictors of mass assassinations, bombings, and attempts to overthrow the US government didn't come to pass, things started winding down. Still, it wouldn't exactly help your case to be seen as an anarchist when you've already been accused of murder, something Zoya may have learned first-hand after being arrested for murdering her husband.
The Big Four is an Agatha Christie novel that was first published in January of 1927; in this universe Christie is apparently a tapir. The Big Four received somewhat mixed reviews, being a significant departure from Christie's usual work. As the plot involves an international conspiracy by a shadowy cabal, Zoya's embarrassment at having to name the story after denying reading anything revolutionary makes sense. Personally, although I'm more of a fan of Sherlock Holmes than Hercule Poirot, I think it's worth a read.
Neighi was previously mentioned in chapter 3 as a pun on Nehi, a popular brand of soft drink in the 1920s. One of the interesting outcomes of Prohibition was the increased popularity of mixed drinks. While the wealthy could still get their hands on professionally made alcohol from other countries, it could be out of the price range of most people. Homemade distilled alcohol, which could vary wildly in quality, tended to be harsh and not particularly good tasting, and cocktails helped both cover the taste and make the alcohol last longer. Gin was particularly popular prior to Prohibition, and while the gin and tonic cocktail significantly predates Prohibition (and was actually created the reverse way; gin was added to tonic water containing quinine to make the bitter anti-malarial medicine taken by British soldiers in India more enjoyable), some other gin cocktails came from this time period, including the Bee's Knees, the Damn the Weather, and the Last Word.
Particularly due to the stereotype of Russians and vodka, Zoya's order of orange juice and lemon soda may suggest her intent to drink Screwdrivers. The first known reference to the Screwdriver cocktail is from the late 1930s, although the drink may have existed earlier as it's not exactly a unique idea to mix vodka into juice. Additionally, referring to what she brought with her as a "little water" pretty much confirms it, since that's what "vodka" literally means in Russian; "vodka" is the diminutive form of "voda" which means "water."
It is indeed impossible to make pure alcohol by distillation; without adding an entraining agent it can't get beyond 95.6% alcohol by weight. Benzene is a common entraining agent for uses requiring exceptional purity, but you really don't want to drink something with benzene in it.
A "rummy" in 1920s slang was someone who was habitually drunk and homeless.
Roger Monarch's name is in reference to Monarch, a taxidermied California grizzly bear that the California Academy of Sciences has on display. Interestingly, Judy is wrong about Monarch and Zoya, assuming that Nick is right about the two of them having an interest in the other. Polar bears and grizzly bears are capable of producing hybrids, and there is one known instance of such a hybrid being capable of reproducing; in 2010 a bear was found that had a hybrid mother and a grizzly bear father.
Referring to Zoya's normalcy brings to mind an interesting facet of the word. US President Warren G. Harding made a speech in 1920 urging a return to normalcy, but normalcy was not a word in common usage at the time. Normality was the word that he really should have used, and normalcy was unusual enough that some people at the time claimed he invented the word by misspeaking. However, normalcy could be found in some dictionaries at least as far back as 1857, and Harding's use of the word led to it becoming largely interchangeable with normality.
Slipping someone a mickey means to give them a drink with something to incapacitate them in it; supposedly the name comes from a Chicago bartender named Mickey Finn who was notorious for doing so in order to rob his patrons. Considering that alcohol was illegal to sell during Prohibition, it certainly wasn't uncommon for patrons to be robbed, as the criminals knew the victims would have to admit to breaking the law themselves in order to seek justice.
As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined, I'd love to know what you thought!