The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

by Orest Stelmach

  “Don’t tell them that.”

  “No worries, Miss Nadia. God created every herb and called them all good. You want to try a sample downstairs before we talk?”

  “Never on a weekday for me, thanks.”

  A group of eight college-aged tourists entered the Museum. I motioned to the far corner of the room. Sasha nodded right away, understanding I wanted privacy. We huddled beside a poster from a 1936 movie titled “Marihuana: The Weed with Roots in Hell!”

  “I’m sorry about Iskra,” I said. “I know you were both close.”

  His reaction made it seem as though I’d pulled on his dreadlocks, opened a spout in his head, and all his joy had gushed out. He hung his head, and for a moment, I was afraid the weight of his Rasta hat might tip him over. His reaction to my question reminded me of George Romanov, who’d also fallen apart as soon as I asked about his daughter.

  “Mr. Romanov said you were awesome,” Sasha said. “That he’d never met a woman as tough as you. He said you were committed. That you were going to find out who killed her. He said you were Russian, too.”

  A bit of light shone in Sasha’s eyes when he accused me of having a similar ancestral heritage, and I was not inclined to dim it even though that’s exactly what I wanted to do.

  “That’s right,” I said, my ears in partial disbelief that I was willing to tell this lie. “My parents came from the former Soviet Union.” There was no need to mention Ukraine.

  “Cool, mon. Given you’re an American, you know … It’s not the easiest thing to trust an American these days . . . This makes it a lot easier. Tell me what you want to know? I’ll tell you anything if it helps you find the killer. Anything at all.”

  “Iskra’s father said you grew up together?”

  “We were both born in Russia. My father was a government official. He worked with sportsmen, national teams, that sort of thing. After capitalism came to Russia, my father and Iskra’s father went into the sporting goods business. They became the biggest distributors of sports equipment in all of Russia. Then they got bought out and we all moved here when we were kids. My parents died, first my father, then my mother, when I was still a kid. The Romanovs sort of adopted me. I was really lost back then. They saved me.”

  “So you and Iskra, you were like brother and sister?”

  He hesitated for a moment as though considering his answer, then nodded. “Exactly like that.” He followed up with some nervous laughter. “We used to fight in our teens, mon. Just like cat and dog, you know? But I never had nothing but love in my heart for that girl, and she knew that, yeah she did.”

  “Is that why you followed her to De Wallen, got drunk, ambushed her in her apartment, and called her a dyke and a whore?”

  That earned me a double take and a stern look, but Sasha quickly reverted to his laid-back self.

  “Not my finest moment,” he said, “but I apologized the next day.” His chin rose. He studied me with suspicious eyes. “How did you know … I didn’t tell anyone about that . . .”

  I wasn’t about to reveal Sarah Dumont as my source.

  “Were you shocked when you saw her in the window in a green bikini, selling herself to any man that came by?”

  Sasha started to clench his teeth, but then smiled as though suddenly realizing that I was provoking him to see if he would lose his cool and what else he might admit to.

  “Wouldn’t you have been?” he said.

  “Big time,” I said. “But not as shocked as I would have been when I realized that one of her clients was a woman. How did you figure that out? You must have followed that one client. Why did you do that?”

  “I didn’t need to follow her. I bumped into her on the sidewalk after she left Iskra’s room on purpose. Just to get a close look at her face.”

  I’d seen Sarah Dumont sans make-up and she’d fooled me.

  “And you could tell just by looking at her up close that she was a woman?” I didn’t believe him for a minute.

  “No, mon,” he said, sounding even-keeled, not overly solicitous or defensive, as though what he was about to say was the gospel truth. “When I bumped into her my hand accidentally touched her between the legs. And there was nothing there, you know? Nothing. That’s when I knew.”

  “So then you got drunk and went into Iskra’s apartment and waited for her. Meaning you had a key to her apartment and you could come and go as you pleased, right?”

  “No,” he said, without hesitation. “It wasn’t like that at all. I respected her. I never bothered her. Sometimes I’d call her up and she’d say come over for a beer. She used to drink Grolsch and then when she started drinking that Belgian stuff I knew something was wrong. She gave me the key because she trusted me. She lost her key all the time and always had to call her parents to let her in. And she hated when they came by because her mother would always nose around in all her personal stuff. So she gave the key to someone she could trust to be there for her if she locked herself out. She gave it to me.”

  I spied moisture in his eyes, not necessarily the kind that grew to tears, but still an honest indication that the topic was causing the speaker genuine distress.

  “Did you kill her, Sasha?”

  “Me?”

  “You were so hurt, so angry, maybe you lost your composure the way we’re all prone to do with the ones we love, the ones we care about so much when they’ve done something that hurts us so much.”

  Sasha looked dejected, as though I’d made the worst possible accusation. “No,” he said firmly.

  He brought his hand up to wipe his eyes. I noticed the watch around his wrist for the first time. Evidently my agenda and his Rasta-Russian looks had distracted me from spotting it before. It was a stainless steel Panerai chronograph, noteworthy for its elegance and exclusivity. I recognized it because I’d seen Simmy wearing one when he was dressed casually. I didn’t know the price tag, but what was a struggling entrepreneur doing with a watch suitable for an oligarch?

  “Nice watch,” I said.

  He glanced at and pulled his arm to his side, as though I’d discovered something he was supposed to hide.

  “Oh. Yeah, thanks. It was my father’s. He bought it as a gift to himself after he sold his business in Russia.

  “It’s nice that you wear it.” I cleared my throat. “Do you know anyone who would have wanted to harm Iskra? A jilted boyfriend? A jealous rival from school?” I almost said “other jilted boyfriends” but I caught myself just in time.

  “No one like that,” he said. “But there was that guy in De Wallen. He was obsessed with her. I told the cops about it. I don’t know if they checked him out or not. But then, I don’t even know if they want to solve the murder or not. I mean, Iskra was Russian, and this is the Netherlands, you know?”

  “Who was this man?”

  “Her bodyguard. At the window. He had a nickname of some kind.” Sasha scrunched his eyes as he tried to remember.

  “The Turk?”

  Sasha snapped his fingers. “That’s it.”

  “How do you know he was obsessed with Iskra?”

  “She told me.”

  “What? When?”

  “That night. When I was in her apartment waiting for her. She blurted out that she was already having problems with a guy at work and she didn’t need any more from me. Next day when I called to apologize I pressed her for details because I was worried about her, you know? That’s when she told me his name. She made me swear to keep it to myself and never go near him. She said he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt me if I upset him.”

  “She said that to you?”

  “She did.”

  “And you told the police this?”

  “I did.”

  I wrapped things up with Sasha. He gave me his mobile phone number and address without hesitation. I wanted to leave on the most congenial note possible, so I put my hand on his shoulder and thanked him for his help. Some light reappeared in his eyes when he felt my touch and heard my words, and he bid me fare
well with a smile.

  I’d arrived at the Hash, Marijuana and Hemp Museum mildly intoxicated about what Sasha might reveal about Iskra and its potential benefits to my investigation. I left as sober as the girl who was never asked to dance at the ball. I felt as though I was walking around in circles, literally and figuratively.

  On the surface, Sasha’s assertion that the Turk had been obsessed with Iskra presented a new suspect with a potentially powerful motive. If he’d fallen in love with her, he might have demanded that she quit the business. Alternatively, he might have been horrified to discover that one of her clients was a woman. That seemed less likely for a man who worked with prostitutes for a living. More likely was a scenario where Iskra admitted to the Turk that a woman had won her heart. Perhaps that had infuriated him past the point of self control.

  But was he the calculating type who would plan and stage a despicable act of cruelty? Did I picture the Turk as a meticulous planner who’d bring a stud finder to mount his victim on a wall with a carpenter’s precision? No, I did not. He was more likely to snap, which was to say he was more likely to snap her neck in a moment of fury. Still, I couldn’t be certain of this.

  The only firm conclusion I could come to after my meeting with Sasha was that all leads brought me back to De Wallen.

  The Turk worked in De Wallen. And that is where I would have to return if I wanted to speak with him.

  I made a U-turn, picked up my pace and headed back toward Iskra’s—and my—office. The red lights were on above the windows of the African girls’ offices on Ouderkerksplein. I could see their fleshy outlines in the windows closest to mine. It was still early by the red-light district’s standard, and there were only a few passersby when I arrived. My office was dark and empty as expected.

  I unlocked the door, stepped inside, turned on the interior light, and took a deep breath.

  Then I hit the panic button, stepped back outside, and waited.

  CHAPTER 13

  Footsteps pounded toward me. They came from inside the apartment building, just as they had when the Turk first appeared in my office after the landlady pressed the panic button as a demonstration. I turned from my doorway and saw someone entering my office through the inner door.

  He was the Turk’s young protégé.

  Someone slammed me from behind.

  I stumbled, teetered, took aim for the bed and landed face first on the mattress. The sheet smelled deliciously crisp and clean with a faint scent of a floral garden. The outside door closed behind me. I knew I’d just become a prisoner in my own office and yet here I was, marveling at the diligence of the window prostitutes’ cleaning service. The things I noticed at the most unlikely times never ceased to amaze me. I wondered if the wiring in my brain was off.

  As I rose to my feet, I heard a deep voice bark instructions from behind. The protégé scampered out of the room and closed the door behind him. I recognized the Turk’s voice. I knew it was he who’d given the orders even before I turned around.

  The sight of the Turk jarred me nonetheless. It wasn’t his rawboned structure or the gargantuan size of his head, but rather his constantly seething nature. Menace oozed from his pores and left one wondering how many miles his engine could log before it expired.

  He locked the door from the inside and stood with his back to it. In the event I needed to leave immediately, I would never get past him. The only escape was through the interior door, and that assumed it wasn’t locked.

  The Turk opened his hip-length leather jacket and started to undo his belt.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Preparing to get paid.”

  “What?”

  “Preparing to get paid,” he said. “You came back here. You’re not really a professional. You dressed up like the dead girl so you were probably working for her family, trying to find her killer. Am I right?”

  He was right, of course, but I didn’t admit that to him. I was too shocked by the realization that I’d underestimated him so badly.

  “Surprise, surprise, American woman. The Turk is not as stupid as he looks.”

  He dropped his pants, stepped out of them and tossed them onto the bed. I tried not to glance at his mostly bare lower body but my eyes went there of their own accord. Hair on top of hair on surprisingly spindly legs, black leather underwear in the finest Speedo tradition, and of course, the requisite bulge that he probably thought was a major turn-on. I suppressed a surge of bile, and finally, a surge of adrenaline told me I’d better do something fast.

  I made the time-out sign. “Whoa, my strong and handsome friend. Stop right there.” I picked up his pants and tossed them back at him. “Put those back on.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and let the pants fall to the floor. “I will answer your questions only if you pay me.”

  I tapped my bag, which miraculously still hung off my shoulder by a strap. “Of course I’ll pay you.”

  “Not that way.” He grabbed his crotch. “You must pay me the way a woman who rents this room should know how to pay.”

  “But I’m not that woman. You said so yourself.”

  “That’s not what I said. I said you’re not really a professional. But you did rent the office. So you should act like a professional. You should pay me like a professional.”

  “You want me to act like a professional?” I said. “Okay. I’ll act like a professional.”

  The Turk smiled and nodded.

  “I understand that Amsterdam is very protective of its prostitutes,” I said. “That the local government has instituted anti-discrimination laws for the protection of legal sex workers. For instance, if a sex worker were to be denied a loan at a bank, and that bank were found to have discriminated against her profession, it could be found guilty in a Netherlands court of law. At this moment, I’m a legally employed sex-worker. You understand that, right?”

  The Turk’s eyes narrowed, as though he agreed but didn’t like the direction in which I was headed, or the confidence with which I was navigating my path.

  “What if I filed a complaint? There must be a way I can file a formal complaint against a man who’s supposed to be protecting me, the legal sex worker, but instead has tried to force himself upon me twice?”

  “That is a lie.” The Turk raised his finger and pointed it at me. “I have never tried to force myself on you. I have never touched you.”

  “I beg to differ. I think it was you who just pushed me in here and locked the door behind him. It will be my word against yours. I can get a billionaire and a dozen CEOs to swear in court my word is bond. How about you?”

  He paused to process what I’d just said.

  “Put your pants on,” I said, “and let’s do some business.”

  He seethed for a moment, long enough for me to pray the interior door wasn’t locked if I needed to run.

  “What business?” he finally said.

  “You’re not as slow as I thought but you’re far from Formula One material. I ask, you answer, I pay cash. That kind of business. Good enough?”

  He gathered his pants around his waist. I took the sound of his zipper moving northward to be a response in the affirmative.

  “Tell me about your relationship with Iskra,” I said.

  “Relationship?” He shrugged. “What relationship? She worked. I protected. Sometimes I sampled the merchandise. At first I paid, but after a while, she got a taste for the Turk, and I didn’t have to pay.”

  I cast a skeptical look at him. “In case I didn’t state the obvious, you lie, you don’t get paid. So let’s start over. Sometimes you tasted the merchandise. Meaning you paid her for sex?”

  “No. I asked her to read the lines on my hand and tell me my future.”

  “Why did you stop paying her for sex? What do you mean she got a taste for the Turk?”

  “She got a taste for the Turk means she got a taste of this.” He tapped his heart.

  “What is that supposed to mean? That you didn’t fall
in love with her, but she fell in love with you? Are you kidding me?”

  He scoffed. “Love? Love is for the very rich and the very poor, for those who are bored because they have a lot of money, and those with no hope because they have no money.” He thumped his fist against his chest again, like a Catholic begging forgiveness for his sins. “Iskra got a taste of what it was like to be with a real man. Not in bed. In life. I protected her. I took care of her. And I didn’t judge her. I didn’t ask her for anything that she didn’t want to do for money. And so …” He nodded as though his implication were clear.

  I was starting to wonder if I was missing something obvious. “Yes? And so?”

  “And so she hired me.”

  His answer took my breath away. That was not a proposition I’d even contemplated.

  “Hired you to do what?” I said.

  “To protect her.”

  “From what?”

  “Not what,” he said. “Who.”

  “She was scared of someone?”

  “Not scared. Terrified.”

  “Did she tell you who?”

  “No.”

  “She didn’t mention a young man?” I said. “A young man named Sasha?”

  “She did not name names.”

  “And what kind of protection did you provide, exactly?”

  “I walked her home after work. She said she was no longer comfortable being out at night alone.”

  “And you did this for her in exchange for sex?”

  The Turk nodded. “Twelve times.” He shook his head, a longing etched in his face. “That girl was unbelievable. She didn’t have sex with you. She was sex. She had that gift. You touched her and she melted. There was no acting in her. The first time she put her mouth—”

  “Stop,” I said. “I’ve heard the soundtrack to a similar movie before. How do you know she was terrified?”

  The Turk bristled. “How did I know? She would walk beside me holding my hand like a scared little kitten. When we got to her apartment, she’d ask me to go in first and check every room to make sure no one was waiting for her.”