by David Duffy
Mulholland came back down the long room and reclaimed his seat. He straightened his cuffs, then his tie, looked at Bernie, and turned toward me. He was trying to decide between more small talk and getting down to business. Once he started telling his story, he was vulnerable. By the time he finished, I’d own some piece of him. Men like Mulholland didn’t get where they got by exposing themselves. He was instinctively uneasy, trying to delay the inevitable. I waited patiently. Given the mindset I’d brought with me, I was somewhat enjoying the moment.
Bernie, however, was in a hurry, or just uncomfortable with the silence. “Right,” he said, “Rory, perhaps you’d like to tell Turbo—”
Mulholland held up a pudgy finger. It showed his age more accurately than his face. “I have a few questions for Mr. Vlost first.”
He wanted to run the meeting, maintain control for as long as he could. I turned and tried to look attentive—for Bernie’s sake.
“You were in the KGB,” he said. A statement, not a question.
I nodded.
“How did you come to choose that career?”
“Beat being a prisoner.”
That got a reaction. Usually does.
“I don’t understand.”
“Limited career choices. Could’ve been a criminal. Had most of the necessary training, but prison and I didn’t agree. KGB looked pretty good by comparison.”
“I still don’t follow.”
I wondered how much Bernie had told him and, not for the first time, how much he knew.
“Law, crime, and punishment were ill-defined concepts in the Soviet Union. The line moved around. A lot of people started out on one side and ended up on the other. I was lucky, I have some skills that were useful.”
This was the truth, as far as it went, which wasn’t very far. The rest of the story was something I, along with millions of other Russians, don’t discuss. Shame is the most insidious of human emotions—worse than death, as another of our proverbs puts it.
“It didn’t bother you to enforce the same law that victimized you?”
“Who said I was victimized?”
Bernie said, “Rory, I—”
Mulholland said, “You were a member of the Party.” Another statement.
“Had to be.”
“You believe all that Marxist-Leninist claptrap?”
“Marx was a pretty good historian but a poor student of human nature. Even in its pure form, before the Bolsheviks got hold of it, Communism is a flawed ideology. People don’t want to share. They want to keep everything they can get.”
I looked around the paneled room. Mulholland frowned, and Bernie winced.
“Why did the KGB want you?”
“Languages. I speak seven.”
“You were well trained. I don’t hear any accent.”
“Mes amis français me disent la même chose. I don’t hear any Boston brogue either.”
“That would be the nuns. Another kind of police.” He smiled at his joke. “What did you do in the KGB?”
“Started out in the Second Chief Directorate, counterintelligence. Spent most of my career in the First Department of the First Chief Directorate. That’s the part that spies on you.” I gave him a friendly grin to let him know it was nothing personal, which he did not return. “Retired with the rank of colonel. That’s about all I can say.”
“Can or want to?”
I shook my head. The look on his face said people didn’t do that to him very often. The look went away.
“How long have you been here?”
“Since ’93.”
“Why’d you leave?”
“Everything about Russia was changing. Except the KGB. When Primakov took over, he offered an early retirement program. I took him up on it.”
He looked as if I’d finally said something sensible.
“Married?”
“Used to be.”
“Divorced?”
I nodded.
“That’s unfortunate.”
“Not according to my ex-wife.”
“That’s not what I mean. Marriage is a sacrament. Divorce is something that shouldn’t … Children?”
“One son. Grown now.”
“No thoughts of marrying again?”
“I don’t see—”
“Not queer, are you?”
I considered whether that was any of his damned business, which was a waste of time because of course it wasn’t. Bernie stopped me before I could say so.
“Rory—”
Mulholland held up the fleshy hand again. “These questions may seem impertinent, Mr. Vlost, but I need to assure myself that I can trust you. The matter that brings you here involves my family, which is the most important thing in my life, after God. Bernie tells me you are smart, honest, and competent. That’s all to the good. But you are not an American. In fact, you were a sworn enemy of our country for your entire career. Your divorce indicates a certain lack of faith in one of the institutions that holds our society together. I’m wondering if there are other moral lapses.”
Moral lapses. From a guy who practiced legal loan-sharking. I turned to Bernie again, but he’d acquired a powerful interest in the carpet. I swung back to Mulholland, who was watching me intently. Might as well put an end to this now.
“I drink vodka. Beer, too. I play cards, for money. Tried dope, did inhale, didn’t like it, went back to vodka. My childhood friends were all what you’d call juvenile delinquents. Some went on to become full-fledged criminals. I chase tail from time to time, female, if that makes a difference to you. I’ve covered most of the seven deadly sins at one point or another—except maybe greed, but only because guys like you cornered the market. I don’t expect to change my ways. Perhaps I’m not your man, Mr. Mulholland. I’d certainly understand if you felt that way.” I stood and picked up my jacket.
“Sit down,” he barked. The hard, dark eyes got darker. “We’re not finished yet.”
That surprised me—I would have bet the dacha on being thrown out. I did as he asked, perhaps because my curiosity—an eighth mortal sin, if there ever was one—was kicking in. We sat silently for a good several minutes, which didn’t seem to bother Mulholland or me. Bernie bent forward and rubbed his hands between his knees. Eventually Mulholland got up, walked to the desk, announced the market was now down ninety and FTB two and a half, returned to his chair, and said, “Tell me about your company.”
“No company, just me. I get paid to find things. Sometimes people. Sometimes valuables. Sometimes information. I work for all kinds of clients—individuals, corporations, insurance companies. Even, when I have to, for lawyers like Bernie.”
Nobody laughed at my attempt at levity. I reached into my jacket and found a business card, which I handed across. He looked it over and scowled.
“‘Vlost and Found?’ What’s that—a joke?”
“A lot of Russian humor is based on wordplay.”
His expression indicated Russian humor was a waste of time. Dislike was winning the war with curiosity. I’d just about had enough of him.
“Tell me about some of your clients,” he said.
“I don’t talk about them.”
“Surely you have references.”
“Bernie here will vouch for me. At least, I think he will.”
I looked at Bernie, who clearly was not happy with the way things were going.
“I cannot proceed on this basis,” Mulholland said.
“Fine by me.” I picked up my jacket again.
“Wait,” Bernie said. “Rory, be reasonable. You wouldn’t want Turbo to talk about you. He’s done work for a number of clients of the firm. They all speak highly. No one has ever complained.”
I suspected few people got away with telling Rory Mulholland to “be reasonable,” but there were plenty of reasons Bernie had a successful second career as one of the top lawyers in New York, not least among them was he knew how to play his clients.
Mulholland made a show of thinking it over. Th
e whole morning so far had been for show—I wouldn’t have been there if he hadn’t already decided to talk about his problem—but the playacting had gone on long enough.
“Please sit, Mr. Vlost,” Mulholland said. “Tell me this. Turbo doesn’t sound Russian—is it really your given name?”
“Some of it,” I said. Mulholland waited for me to continue, but I’d said all I planned to. I saw irritation in his eyes and exasperation in Bernie’s—with me this time. I got ready again to leave.
“All right, Mr. Vlost, have it your way,” Mulholland said. “I take it that what we discuss here will remain between us.”
“That’s right.” I still didn’t like him. I was now ninety-eight percent sure I didn’t want to work for him, but he’d still get the same deal I gave everybody.
He made one more show of thinking it over, rose and walked to the desk again. “Dow’s down two fifty. We’re off four. Screen’s solid red.” He reached in a drawer and returned holding a photograph and a piece of paper. He handed both to me.
“Our daughter. Eva.”
The photo showed a blue-eyed, auburn-haired young woman. A crude snapshot, printed on a home printer, but her beauty was hard to obscure. She was seated on a chair, against a dark brown wall, chest forward, hands behind her back, as if tied there. A New York Times covered her lap. The front page was from a few days before. She stared straight at the camera. A man’s hand held a gun to the girl’s left temple. Glock 9 mm. She didn’t look scared or worried or in pain, but there’s always a surreal quality to hostage photos that makes them hard to judge. The picture did capture a funny look in her eyes that took me a minute to place. The look kids in the orphanage got, the orphanage I spent my childhood in, on the rare day when another child’s parents miraculously appeared. A look of longing mixed with hopelessness. A look that said, Why can’t that be me? and knew it never would. Not a look you’d expect on a beautiful young woman, daughter of Rory Mulholland, even if she did have a gun to her head.
The note read,
DAUGHTER VERY PRETTY. I VERY HORNY. FRIENDS TOO. WE ALL FUCK HER SOON.
$100,000. USED MONEY—$10 AND $20. WE CALL, BE READY.
NO POLICE. NO TRICKS.
OR WE ALL FUCK HER, THEN KILL HER.
ASSHOLE.
The “asshole” didn’t ring right somehow, but I often have thoughts like that. I ignored this one.
“When did you get this?” I asked.
“Yesterday.”
“You haven’t heard from them since?”
“No.”
“You will soon. They won’t give you much time to think about options. When was the last time you saw your daughter?”
“I … I’m not sure. A few weeks ago. She has her own apartment.”
“How old?”
“Nineteen.”
“Student?”
“Marymount Manhattan. She’s in their theater program.”
The way he said “theater program” indicated he thought it a waste of time and money. He was fidgeting now.
“Any idea why they’d pick on her—or you?”
“None. Eva … she’s my wife’s daughter, from her first marriage. Her husband died.” He had to add that, I suppose, to protect his moral purity. “I adopted her, and … I feel about her as if she were my own.”
That sounded sincere, as much as I didn’t like to admit it. I didn’t doubt his concern—Even so, nothing about this felt right. “What exactly do you want me to do?”
“I thought that was obvious. Find the kidnappers. Bring Eva home. How do you work? Hourly like Bernie? Lower rate, I hope.” He laughed at his second attempt at a joke.
I shook my head. “I charge a percentage—thirty-three percent of what I recover. Plus expenses.” Bernie winced. He knew “plus expenses” meant I didn’t want the job.
The financier came to the fore. “Thirty-three percent—that’s aggressive.”
“Same as a headhunter.”
“But how … In a case like this … How do you put a value on … Eva?”
“I don’t. You do.”
He looked at me squarely for the first time since we’d started talking. I had a mental image of an old-fashioned adding machine in his brain, the kind with rows of buttons and a big arm on the side, toting up sums, calculating how much he could get away with.
“They want a hundred thousand,” he said after a while.
“They’re testing the waters.”
He nodded, as though he hadn’t expected that gambit to work. “I like round numbers. Let’s say a million.”
“If she was my daughter, I’d say two.”
He was halfway out of his chair, sputtering. “That’s six hundred sixty—”
“Plus expenses.”
“That’s…” He searched for the word he wanted as he eased back into his chair. “Usurious.”
I shrugged. Bernie looked pained. “The eighteen percent your bank charges on credit card debt is usurious—especially when the money costs you three—but people pay it.”
“That’s completely different. That’s…”
“The market economy?”
He was scowling again. Bernie was pretending to look out the window—through the drawn curtains.
“I may have been raised on Marxist-Leninist claptrap, as you call it, but I understand the market economy as well as the next guy, including the law of supply and demand. There’s only one of me. I don’t have partners or associates or employees. What you see is what you get, but that by definition limits the supply. I also have one-of-a-kind technology that’s not cheap. On the other hand, people lose things all the time. You’re the first one today. Could be a half-dozen more by sundown. I choose the cases I take on. Usually because they interest me or they pay well.”
“I gather I’m in the second category,” he said.
“You’re not in either category yet.”
A new look came over Mulholland’s face, one that said I’d finally hit home. “All right, Mr. Vlost, have it your way. Good day.”
He stood and walked to his desk. He had the same look on his face when I left, but I didn’t know if it was for me or the sea of red on his computer screen.
CHAPTER 3
Bernie caught up as I was waiting for the elevator, his round face several shades of red and purple.
“God damn it, Turbo, what the hell’s got into you?”
“I told you I didn’t want to work for him.”
“You did a hell of a job telling him, too.”
“He doesn’t want to pay the freight.”
“Can you blame him? Six hundred sixty-six thousand dollars?”
“Plus expenses.”
“Yes, I know. Plus the goddamned expenses.”
“I don’t work cheap.”
“Unless you choose to.”
I’d done a job once for a friend of Bernie’s wife, an artist with a small trust fund whose husband had taken her money and decamped to Las Vegas. I found him before he lost it all, but there wasn’t much left, and it was pretty clear that was what she’d have to live on. I refused payment. She gave me a painting that I like a lot. It hangs in my office. Barbara Kordlite never misses an opportunity to remind her husband what a great guy I am. One reason he puts up with me.
“I’m not working cheap for a man like Mulholland.”
The elevator door slid open. Bernie put out a hand. “Sorry, we’re not leaving just yet.” The door closed again.
“Look, Turbo, Rory’s a proud man, like you. You ought to recognize that. Stubborn, too, just like you. Yes, he’s got people around him all day telling him how brilliant he is, a problem you don’t have, but that goes along with being the kind of guy he is. Cut him some slack. His bank’s on the ropes. His daughter’s been kidnapped. He’s worried. Since he’s the largest client of Hayes & Franklin, when he has worries, I get ulcers. And you, my friend, are supposed to be the solution to his problem and the tonic for my gut, but you have to decide you’re not going to like the guy
and then you have to prove to yourself that he really is an asshole so you can tell yourself how you were right all along. You’re the one who’s acting like a stubborn ass.”
I laughed. That’s the thing I love about Bernie. He gets right to the heart of the matter, and he isn’t afraid to tell you exactly what he thinks.
“Stubborn Russian asses turned the course of the Great Patriotic War.”
“So you’ve told me—a dozen times. It’s still World War II to me, and D-day the turning point. Come on, Turbo. If I can fix it with Rory, will you at least finish hearing him out?”
I made a small show of thinking it over. Moscow was tugging hard, but those ghosts could wait another few days. I wasn’t going to turn Bernie down. “Okay.”
“Good. Be right back.”
I waited in the small vestibule, half hoping Mulholland proved as stubborn as Bernie said he was and half wondering what about the man made me dislike him. The sanctimonious questioning made it easy to find him objectionable. Half a lifetime under Soviet rule led me to distrust anyone who takes overt pride in his or her beliefs, be they religious, political, or whatever. Then there were those eyes. I was thinking about them and getting ready to call the elevator again when Bernie returned, smiling.
“All set,” he said, leading the way back inside. “Watch your step, though. I think he kind of likes you.”
* * *
Mulholland came across the carpet this time, hand extended. I took it, and we all went back to the same chairs we were sitting in before.
“This may sound like impertinence,” he said. “I don’t mean it that way. Your son—how do you get on with him?”
That wasn’t any of his damned business, but I sensed he was either sincerely curious or looking for some common ground between us. Anyway, I was on my good behavior now.
“I haven’t seen him since he was two.”
I expected a look of exasperation, even hostility, but I swear the black eyes softened, then dampened, in sympathy, perhaps even sorrow. Maybe Bernie was right and I was being stubborn.