Brighton Beach

by Robert I. Katz

  “No,” Barent said.

  Kurtz blinked. “No, what?”

  “Just no. You are going to stay far, far away from Alexei Rugov and everything to do with him. Is that understood?”

  “Hey,” Kurtz protested. “It was just a question.”

  Barent sat back and stared at Kurtz’ face. “With you, there’s always a sub-text.”

  “Yeah, well…so what’s the story?”

  “Oh, boy.” Barent let his breath out, gave his tuna salad on whole wheat toast a jaundiced eye and sipped his coke. Kurtz picked up his own pastrami on a Kaiser roll, took a bite and stolidly chewed, giving Barent a little time to deal with it. Finally, Barent shook his head. “Alexei Rugov is a member in good standing of the Russian mafia.”

  Kurtz nodded.

  “Nothing to say?”

  “I already knew that,” Kurtz said.

  “I’ll just bet you did.” Barent shook his head. “There are three of them: Alexei Rugov, Iosif Kozlof and Sergei Ostrovsky. They’re like the five families. They each control a branch of the Russian mob in New York.”

  “Okay. Do they ever cooperate?”

  “Sometimes, sure,” Barent said. “And sometimes they’re at each other’s throats.”

  “I met a guy at a party a couple of days ago: Arkady Lukin. He said he worked for the Rugov Corporation.”

  “Each of the three has a corporation. They’re actual corporations that do a fair amount of legitimate business.”

  “And what else do they do?”

  “What else is there? Prostitution, gambling, loan-sharking, guns, drugs. You name it, they’re into it…though gambling isn’t what it used to be. What with Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun and Atlantic City, there are plenty of legal places to throw away your money. Not much profit anymore in illicit gambling.”

  “Arkady Lukin said that the Rugov Corporation is a holding company. He said that they own bits and pieces of other businesses. I don’t understand this. Why do the criminal stuff if you can make money legally?”

  “Legal. Illegal.” Barent shrugged. “It’s all the same to these guys. It’s just another way to make money. And don’t kid yourself; the ‘legitimate business’ baloney is largely a front. If they’re putting money into other businesses, it’s mostly a way for them to stash it. Private corporations don’t have to file quarterly reports to the SEC. They aren’t required to disclose their shareholders, their officers or their directors. That’s why they’re private.”

  “Money laundering,” Kurtz said.

  Barent nodded. “Yeah. The money goes in and whatever comes out is entirely up to the two parties involved.”

  “But they have to pay taxes.”

  “Sure. They pay taxes on declared income, but is the income that they’re declaring the actual income? Hard to tell.

  “There are five different entry programs into the FBI,” Barent said. “One of the five is accounting. About fifteen percent of FBI agents are accountants.”

  Kurtz ate his sandwich while he considered this. “I didn’t know that. Doesn’t exactly jibe with the image.”

  Barent shrugged. “That’s how they got Al Capone: income tax evasion.”

  “So how do these guys get away with it, if everybody knows what they’re doing?”

  “Everybody doesn’t know what they’re doing. Everybody thinks they know what they’re doing. I’m sure that the Feds have sniffed around the Russian mob. They probably have a whole division devoted just to them, but they can investigate all they want. They can’t look at the books without a warrant and they can’t get a warrant without at least some confirmatory evidence. Also, these guys have very good lawyers.”

  “Hmm…” Kurtz sat back and thought about it.

  “What brought this on?” Barent asked.

  “Steve Ryan,” Kurtz said.

  “The plastic surgeon. He committed suicide.”

  “Yeah. It turns out that his wife, Donna, is Russian. Her cousin is Arkady Lukin, the one who works for Rugov.”

  Barent frowned. “So?”

  “Lenore knows them. She went to High School with Donna. They’re friends. We used to socialize.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “So, nothing. I was just curious.”

  “God, help us,” Barent said.

  Kurtz gave a tepid grin. “Arnie Figueroa was following some Russians when he got shot.”

  “There are a lot of Russians in New York and we already know that some of them are criminals. We have no reason to link Arnie Figueroa’s shooting with the Rugov organization and certainly not with Steve Ryan’s suicide.”

  “If it was suicide…”

  Barent paused with his sandwich half-way to his mouth. “Let’s not invent problems that don’t exist. The guy left a note declaring his intentions to end it all, and aside from a little alcohol, there weren’t any drugs in his system other than the ones he had prescriptions for.”

  Kurtz grudgingly nodded. “And then, of course, there’s the guy who tried to inject potassium chloride into Arnie’s IV line.”

  Barent sighed. “Shall I give you the usual advice?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Mind my own business. Don’t get involved. Stay away from these guys and don’t get in over my head. I’ve heard it all before.”

  “It’s good advice,” Barent said. “You should take it.”

  “Right,” Kurtz said. “Understood.”

  Barent gave Kurtz’ mulishly smiling face a searching look and shook his head. They finished their lunch in silence.

  Chapter 16

  Arnaldo Figueroa knew that his brain was not working as well as it used to, but still, an undercover cop is trained to observe things. When you’re in the lion’s den, you’d better pay attention and be ready to move fast if you don’t want to get eaten.

  He had been home for a day. It was nice. Cynthia made his favorite dishes. The kids fussed over him. It was a little boring, he had to admit, with nothing to do but sit around and watch TV but the happy feeling of simply being alive and home had not yet faded. He squeezed a rubber ball with his left hand, willing the strength and dexterity to come back. He walked up and down the stairs, trying to regain his former balance.

  He sat in his favorite chair in front of the TV, stared out the front window and suppressed a wolfish grin. The guy wandering down the street had passed this way twice already in the past hour. He looked familiar. He was paying just a bit more than casual attention to the house. Not that there was anything blatant about it, but still, he had walked by three times now.

  Where had he seen this guy before? Big, beefy, broad shoulders, barrel chest. The guy looked strong. He was dressed in casual clothes, nothing that would stand out. He was white. It was possible that the Department was providing him with a little surreptitious protection, but if so, he should have been informed. Arnaldo Figueroa was still a cop, after all, and cops had guns. An unfortunate misunderstanding could very easily result in somebody getting killed. He clutched his service pistol in his right hand and considered his options.

  The kids were in school. Cynthia, after spending the past day hovering over him, had finally begun to relax and had resumed her regular schedule. Right now, she was over at her sister’s for cookies and tea. Arnaldo Figueroa was all alone. All alone, a poor, unfortunate cripple, all alone and vulnerable…so sad.

  Arnie grinned.

  The guy did look familiar, though. Something about the gait, the way he looked over his shoulder. Hard to say, really, but Arnie was pretty certain that he had seen this guy before, and he thought he knew where. A vision of waking up in the night flashed through his memory, seeing a vague figure hovering over his bed, reaching for his IV line.

  Come on, you bastard, Arnie thought. Stop beating around the bush. Grow a pair.

  Sitting calmly in the darkened room, he clutched his pistol in his right hand and waited.

  The two men stood in front of Iosif Kozlov, their posture erect, their eyes fixed straight ahead. “Whose idea was this?” Ios
if Kozlov said.

  One of them, the taller one, cleared his throat. “Yevgeny’s,” he said.

  “Yevgeny’s,” Iosif Kozlov repeated. “Yevgeny was an idiot.” He considered the two men. “And what did you know of this?”

  “Nothing,” the smaller one said.

  “He was acting on his own.” The taller one frowned.

  Their words had the ring of truth, unless they were much better actors than they seemed to be, which was unlikely. These two were young and perhaps not too bright but they knew how to follow orders. “Yevgeny has paid the price for his stupidity,” Iosif Kozlov said. “This is the way of the world and I am not unhappy with such an outcome. The authorities in this country would love an excuse to move against us. We cannot afford to give them such an excuse and we cannot afford stupidity.” He shrugged. The three men, now two, were foot soldiers. There were thousands just like them, all eager to come to America, eager for a chance to prove their worth. Pawns, Iosif Kozlov thought. Easily replaced.

  “You are dismissed,” Iosif Kozlov said.

  Without a word, the two men turned on their heels and marched from the room.

  “Who is he?” Barent said.

  “No idea,” Arnie said.

  The dead man had brought with him an excellent set of lock picks, which he apparently knew how to use. It had taken him less than five minutes to jimmy the lock and enter through the front door.

  “Stop,” Arnie said. “Put your hands up and make no sudden moves.”

  The guy wasn’t too good at following orders. He hesitated for a brief instant, then went for his gun. Arnie shot him, three times in the chest.

  “Oh, boy,” Arnie muttered. Cynthia was not going to be pleased. He sadly contemplated the dead body lying on the floor and the rivulet of blood slowly trickling into the carpet, then picked up the phone and dialed 911.

  Not much for the crime scene boys to do. Cause of death was obvious. The guy had no ID and no obvious identifying features except for the absence of the little finger on his left hand.

  “He didn’t say anything?” Harry Moran asked.

  “Not a word. I told him to raise his hands, he went for his gun and I shot him.”

  “Hopefully, his prints are on record,” Barent said. “We’ll see.”

  They weren’t, as it turned out, but the dead body did reveal some additional clues. A tattoo of a snarling tiger peered out at the world from the left side of his chest. Another, smaller tattoo, of the Madonna and child sat on his right pectoral. Both tattoos were a uniform, grayish color.

  Barent peered down at the photographs and sighed. “These mean anything to you?” he asked Moran.

  Moran frowned. “Sure,” he said. “You don’t see these very often, not in this country.”

  “Not too surprising, though,” Barent said.

  A number of books had been published on Russian criminal tattoos, a weird and previously clandestine art form. Each tattoo had a unique meaning. They were almost a language of their own. Almost all the prisoners in Russia’s maximum security facilities had them, but there weren’t a lot of supplies in prison. The ink was most commonly made from scorched rubber mixed with the subject’s own urine. Infections, ranging from tetanus to gangrene, were common. Risking such infections was only one small way for a Russian mobster to demonstrate his courage.

  The snarling tiger meant defiance for the Soviet authorities. The Madonna and child meant loyalty to the criminal organization.

  The gun was a cheap piece of crap and the little finger…that was a typical Russian punishment for some sort of fuck-up. The Chinese triads did something similar. Barent shuddered. Most likely, the guy had been required to cut off the finger himself.

  “These people are not known for their restraint, and certainly not for their subtlety,” Moran said. “One guy with a syringe of potassium chloride. Another guy, or maybe the same guy, barging in with a gun.” Moran shook his head. “If the Russian mafia had wanted to kill Arnie, they would have sent more than one, and they wouldn’t have bungled the job.”

  “Seems right. Presumably, the guy was acting on his own. Not too bright of him.”

  The obvious next step was to run off a few thousand photos of the dead man’s face. Somebody out there must know who he was and who he worked for. The odds of finding that somebody, however, were slim. Russian mobsters were not a forgiving bunch, and anybody with loose lips would be likely to die a slow, painful death and never be seen again.

  Still, no reason not to try. Sometimes you got lucky.

  A holding company, even a holding company that was less than legitimate, owned bits and pieces of other companies. Sometimes they owned those companies outright. Arkady Lukin worked for the Rugov Corporation, a holding company, and Donna Ryan worked for Hotchkiss and Phelps, an investment bank.

  A lot of similarities, Kurtz thought, between a holding company and an investment bank. A search through the internet revealed very little of interest, however. Alexei Rugov was mentioned in a few articles, mostly supposition and speculative bullshit. Basically, nobody knew anything about him except that he had a military background and had emigrated to the United States shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union.

  Arkady Lukin had been born in this country. He had an older brother and two sisters. There was nothing about him on the web except for a few college photos. He had gone to Fordham and graduated with a degree in finance. He had a profile on neither MySpace nor the newer one, Facebook.

  Donna Ryan, née Petrovich, had just a bit more of a presence on-line. As Lenore had said, Donna Ryan was smart. She had majored in economics at Wellesley, graduating Summa cum Laude, and then gone on for an MBA. She had been hired by Hotchkiss and Phelps immediately after graduation and had become a Certified Financial Analyst a few years later. She and Steve Ryan had married less than a year after she finished college, while Steve was in Medical School at Columbia. They had three kids, the oldest only ten.

  Hotchkiss and Phelps was a medium sized, privately held investment firm. In the past five years, they had brokered some prominent deals regarding software startups, biotech firms, small defense contractors and real estate development. Donna had made partner only the year before.

  Kurtz sat back and considered. Nothing leaped out at him. Nothing rang a bell. What he had was an inchoate mass of random information. There were nearly three quarters of a million Russians in New York and neither Kurtz, Barent nor Moran knew of anything whatsoever to tie Arnaldo Figueroa and his assailant to Alexei Rugov or Arkady Lukin.

  Kurtz didn’t like Arkady Lukin, though. There was just something about him, and he felt sorry for Donna Ryan. He hadn’t known Steve Ryan all that well, despite the fact that they had socialized a few times, but he had been a nice guy who tried his best, despite being a piss poor surgeon.

  What next? By now, Kurtz was well acquainted with the basics of police work. When you hit an impasse in a case, seek more information…

  “I’m not too thrilled about this,” Lenore said.

  Neither was Kurtz, truth to tell. Donna Petrovich and Lenore Brinkman had gone to High School together. They had taken many of the same classes. They had been friends. This visit seemed a little underhanded. “Yeah. I understand,” Kurtz said.

  Lenore sniffed.

  The door opened. Donna’s pale, wanly smiling face greeted them. “Come in,” she said. They followed her down a hallway into a den that overlooked a small backyard with a neatly laid out garden that featured a trickling waterfall, a small pond and a couple of lily pads. “Please sit down.”

  Kurtz and Lenore sat together on a couch. Donna sat on a hassock on the other side of a glass coffee table. A plate of assorted cookies and a pot of tea sat on the table. “Help yourselves,” she said.

  Kurtz selected a couple of cookies and poured himself a cup of tea. Earl Gray, not his favorite. “Thanks for seeing us,” he said.

  “No problem,” Donna said. “What’s it all about?”

  Nothing much, Kurtz
thought. Only murder and attempted murder. Maybe.

  Lenore raised a brow and gave him an arch look.

  “What can you tell me about the Rugov Corporation?” Kurtz said.

  Donna seemed momentarily taken aback. “Very little. Why do you want to know that?”

  Yeah, genius. Why do you want to know that?

  “Curiosity,” he said. It was the truth, though truthfully, none of this was his business.

  “Curiosity…”

  Kurtz nodded.

  “Strange thing to be curious about,” Donna said.

  “I won’t argue,” Kurtz said. “Nevertheless, I’m curious.”

  Donna sighed. “As I said, I know very little about the Rugov Corporation. It’s a privately held firm. Their business doesn’t intersect with ours.”

  “No? Rugov is a holding company. Hotchkiss and Phelps is an investment bank. I was under the impression that what you do is similar.”

  She shrugged. “They buy established corporations, usually corporations that have previously been successful but have fallen on hard times. We supply venture capital. We finance the growth of new corporations and then help them grow. Our focus is different. The firms that interest us are different.”

  “I see,” Kurtz said, though truthfully, the two business models sounded pretty much the same.

  “Rugov is primarily owned by a man named Alexei Rugov. He’s a somewhat shadowy figure in the Russian community. He’s said to be a gangster.”

  “I knew that,” Kurtz said.

  Donna Ryan grinned. “Somehow, I suspected that you did.”

  “And yet your cousin, Arkady Lukin, works for the Rugov Corporation.”

  “As I’ve said, I don’t really know anything about Alexei Rugov or his corporation except for the rumors. I do worry about Arkady, though.” Donna stared out at the garden and took a small bite out of a cookie. “Arkady and I have always been close. We played together as children. It’s a large family. A lot of get-togethers, a lot of holiday dinners.”

  “Tell me about your family,” Kurtz said.