“Claro que sí.” He winked and went back inside to guard his captives.
The cops arrived five minutes later. I watched their squad car speed by as I finished my third tamale against the wall of a vacant lot. My new friend had a gift for cooking, and I had meant what I said about returning soon.
In the meantime, I had a puzzle to solve that now included a new piece—Dmitry Romanko. And if Romanko was involved, so was the LA Ukrainian mob.
I dropped the tamale in the bag. This new revelation had stolen my appetite. Not only did the mob employ Romanko, I knew they had paid for him to come to California and attend law school. Where? Irvine University, College of Law, Cerritos, California.
I was starting to hate that city.
The Copper Line, Mayor Young, Dmitry Romanko—everything came back to Cerritos. And if I wasn’t mistaken, even Romanko’s law office sat on its border. It all fit except for Tran.
Why would the Ukrainians hire an outsider when they had enforcers of their own?
I thought of Mr. Disco, who had strung me up and beaten me with that knotted rope. He wouldn’t have had the skill or finesse to pressure high-profile officials without botching up the job. Could the same be true for the rest of the mob enforcers?
I tossed the bag in a Dumpster and hopped on my bike. Time to find out.
Chapter Forty-Five
The fifteen-mile bike ride from Paco’s Tacos to the law office of Dmitry Romanko took me through some serious ugly, misrepresented by charming names like Fruitland, Maywood, and the Mid San Gabriel River Trail. The “trail” part was especially deceptive.
A few years back, I had ridden the full twenty-eight-mile route from mountain to ocean through lush parks and wilderness. This three-mile stretch down the edge of Norwalk to Cerritos consisted of a cement aqueduct, mounds of dirt, transmission towers, and an asphalt bike path. And that wasn’t the worst of it. After leaving the southbound trail, I had to cut due east through Asian, Filipino, and Mexican gang territories, plus an underworld of transnational crime syndicates. It was a miracle I made it from one side of the U-shaped Cerritos to the other without getting caught in a drive-by shooting.
Of course, this part of LA County wasn’t all bad. Cerritos had much to praise: art, industry, beauty. And sprinkled into the crime and ugliness were homes, schools, and legitimate businesses of people from all cultures who raised kids and led good lives.
Typical Los Angeles.
Angelenos didn’t melt together into a pot; we sparkled with individuality—sometimes dangerously, sometimes ridiculously, but always proudly—as if that quality alone defined our collective identity. We weren’t an exotic stew; we were dot art. When you stood back and took in the whole, you could see a cohesive picture. But when you stepped in close, all you saw were millions of isolated bits. A tiny fraction of those bits belonged to the Ukrainian crime family, and one of those was Dmitry Romanko.
His office address led me to an industrial park with nondescript gray buildings set on a communal asphalt lot. I found his building in the back with ample parking and a loading dock for delivery trucks.
Why would a lawyer need a loading dock?
He wouldn’t. But the mob might.
I locked my bike and gear behind the wall of Romanko’s plumbing company neighbor, pocketed my phone, and clipped the karambit to my waistband. To my knowledge, Romanko had never seen me, so I could always claim I was lost and looking for the plumber. If that didn’t work, I’d do what ninja did best: I’d improvise.
The interior of Romanko’s building was stark and white, not what I expected from a law office. The entry hall went straight back about twenty-five feet and culminated in a heavy steel door with a small security window. Both were latched shut. Based on the modest square footage of the entry and the massive size of the building, I figured the real purpose of this business lay beyond the steel door. All they wanted me to see was Romanko’s opulent law office, showcased behind a wall of glass.
Instead of modern furniture that would have matched the sterile entry hall, Romanko’s office had been decorated like a gentleman’s den with heavy leather chairs, a brass-studded couch, plush rugs, and polished hardwood floors. His giant L-shaped desk, cabinets, and the coffee table in the sitting area were all made from rosewood with accent items in brass and ceramic. The office décor was so perfect it could have been a showroom display. Or perhaps it was simply for show.
With no one in sight, I decided to find out.
I proceeded into the office, using the Shinobi-Ashi method of walking to keep my steps quiet enough to hear any movement from the steel door in the back of the building or the glass door in the front. Touching first with my pinkie toe and rolling inward and down through the rest of my foot, I was able to lessen the creaks.
It also kept my mind alert.
Intense focus on movement and breath amplified all of my senses and allowed me to take in more information than I might not normally have noticed—like the way Romanko’s real estate license and law school diploma hung on the left wall, perfectly centered between a photo of him in a UC Irvine cap in gown and a business portrait of him in a suit and tie. The rest of the walls featured land and seascapes in perfectly coordinated colors. In fact, the only item out of alignment and of a discordant color was the yellow legal pad on his desk. Naturally, I went to look.
The front page was filled with addresses, phone numbers, and brief descriptions about properties in various communities. The five addresses at the top, in neighboring Bellflower and Artesia, had black check marks next to them. The dozen below had question marks. Each of those had addresses in South Gate and Paramount, communities between Huntington Park and Cerritos through which the proposed Copper Line would travel. None of them matched the addresses I had seen on the Magnum Realtors’ computer screen.
I paused and listened to my surroundings. A car door slammed, an engine turned over, but I didn’t hear anything from behind the steel door.
If Romanko had brokered those two Huntington Park properties, as Ed Baker had claimed, he would have legal documents and other information somewhere in this office. I found them in the file cabinet between metal dividers marked Copper Line. And they weren’t the only documents. The Copper Line section had over twenty other folders, each for a different property and each under a different LLC. Six of them had been stamped Contingency Waved.
Ma had told me that waving the contingency locked in the seller but put the buyer at risk of losing his escrow deposit if he couldn’t close the deal. The escrow deposits I saw in the files tallied to just over two million dollars.
I exhaled quietly. That much money at risk could easily have motivated disreputable people to perform lethal acts.
I reached for my phone, intending to snap some photos, but stopped when I heard the faint sound of voices and footsteps and the clank of the steel door.
I closed the drawer and considered my options. While I could stick with my original plan and wander into the entryway as if searching for assistance, the risk felt greater now that I had discovered the files. If Romanko was buying investments on behalf of the Ukrainian mob, he or they might not take kindly to an interloper. And what if the thug who had strung me up on that scaffold had snapped a few photos before I had regained consciousness? And what if he had shown those photos to Romanko? And what if Romanko had shown them to the mob? Were Eurasian sex slaves popular in Ukraine? I couldn’t take the chance.
I hurried around the desk and had just crawled underneath the side wing where Romanko kept his computer. I hugged my knees and prayed he wouldn’t get the urge to fire off some emails.
I listened to the voices and footsteps for clues. The prime talker had a heavy Ukrainian accent and the low raspy voice of a lifetime smoker. He was going on about a car or a jar, I couldn’t tell which. Whoever accompanied him remained silent except for occasional grunts of agreement. Mostly, I heard the sounds of three different types of shoes as they moved across the ent
ryway tile: heavy boots, hard heels, and rubber-soled loafers.
The wearer of the boots stopped near the entrance of the office and planted his feet so decisively I could feel the vibration in my sit bones. The man in the loafers padded toward my hiding spot with a softer step, then leaned against the front of the desk and made it tremble.
The third man—the one wearing the hard-heeled shoes—took his time. I listened to the click of his shoes on the hardwood floors and imagined him examining the certificates on the wall or perhaps stroking the bronze war horse on the bookcase. Then the clicking changed to padded thuds as he stepped onto the plush rug of the sitting area. Leather cushions exhaled beneath his weight and creaked as he shifted into a comfortable position. Then he spoke in the same low and raspy voice I had heard before. “Kostya, put the box on table. I want Dmitry to see what I bring him.”
“Yes, Mr. Zherdev.” Kostya’s voice came from the doorway where the heavy boots had landed. I heard rustling, as if he might have adjusted his hold on something cumbersome, followed by plodding steps and one decisive thud. Then he retreated back to his post.
The third man, who I assumed to be Romanko, tapped his soft-heeled shoe nervously against the desk. If I had been hiding under that portion, the sound might have kept me from hearing what Zherdev said next. However, since I had ducked under the side wing of the desk, not only could I hear his words, I could hear the danger in his tone.
“You will like it, I think. But not yet. First, we have things to discuss. Many things. Like our little problem. Did you solve it, Dmitry?”
The tapping stopped. “Yes. The man I hired is very good. Very discreet. And he’s from outside the family, so there’s no connection to your organization.”
It was Romanko. No doubt.
He shifted against the desk and continued. “The Santa Fe route will be approved next week. You have nothing to worry about. The property values will soar, and your investments will be secure.”
Zherdev grunted, but whether with doubt or approval, I couldn’t tell. “You spread?”
“Of course. Different LLCs for every purchase.”
Zherdev cleared his throat, and the sound reminded me of a lion I had seen on the Discovery Channel coughing up pieces of bone and fur from its latest kill. He continued this process for several seconds until I thought he might actually be choking. Then he inhaled a great raspy breath and snorted into what I hoped was a handkerchief. When he was done, he proceeded with his interrogation. “And the money?”
“Clean. Everything’s been refinanced two or three times. I took a second on this warehouse to raise funds to purchase the other properties. I’ll pay it off after the announcement is made and the appraisals double.”
“And what about you and me, Dmitry? You say you hire some good guy, better than my men, to get me what I want. You say you push my money here and there so I can afford to pay for it. But how does it go between you and me?”
Romanko shifted again, shaking the desk. “Soon. I promise. I’ll have your money with interest as we discussed.”
“What we discussed was a short-term loan. Six days, maximum, you said. Guaranteed, you said. What day is this, Kostya?”
“Friday, Mr. Zherdev.”
“See? This is Friday. You made these promises on Saturday. How many days is that, Kostya?”
There was a long pause as Kostya did the math. “Six days, Mr. Zherdev.”
“See? Six days. Guaranteed.”
“I know,” said Romanko. “And I’m sorry about that. I just ran into a slight obstacle. Koreans—never mind. It’s not important. What matters is that the obstacle has been removed, and that I will repay the loan. I just need one more day, until the end of banking tomorrow, then I’ll have your money in full. I promise.”
Zherdev sniffed and snorted, the sound alternating between clear and muffled the way it might if he were wiping his nose with a handkerchief. The leather creaked beneath his weight, and I imagined him stuffing a dirty rag into the pocket of his pants. All the while, Romanko’s heel tapped nervously against the desk.
Then it stopped. “The Mykola!”
“What about it?”
“The painting has increased in value since my wedding. It must be worth ten thousand dollars.”
“So?”
“It’s yours, Mr. Zherdev. A gift for being so patient.”
As Romanko hurried around the desk, I hugged my knees tighter and willed him not to look down. Instead, he rolled his chair out of the way, hit the speaker button on his phone, and planted his hands on the desktop to wait. A dial tone sounded followed by the eleven-note tune of a phone number. After five rings, a woman answered.
“Hello?”
It was Kateryna. She sounded mildly put out, the way she usually did when someone interrupted her from whatever she was doing. At two in the afternoon, she would probably have been fixing Ilya an after-school snack.
Romanko retrieved his chair and sat. “It’s me. I need you to do something. Right now.”
Kateryna sighed. “What do you want me to do?” She sounded resigned, as if she already knew she wouldn’t like whatever he had to say.
“I need you to take the Mykola off the wall, wrap it in a blanket, and put it in the rear entrance. Make sure the door is unlocked.”
“What? Why?”
“Just do as I tell you.”
“But it’s mine. You bought it for me for our wedding.”
“Yes. And now it’s time to sell it. We need that money for Ilya’s college fund. Don’t you think that’s more important than a pretty painting for you to look at?” He waited for her to agree. She didn’t. “Now, Kateryna. Someone is coming to pick it up.”
Romanko slammed his hand on the speakerphone and killed the connection.
“The painting is yours, Mr. Zherdev. You can send someone to pick it up right now if you like. I just need until five o’clock tomorrow to finalize my banking, and I will have your money.”
Zherdev took his time, making Romanko shift nervously beside me, heel quivering against the floor. “Okay, Dmitry. I take your gift. Now, you open mine.”
Romanko froze. He didn’t seem too eager about opening his present. I didn’t blame him. Zherdev’s tone sounded ominous.
Finally, he spoke. “Of course.”
He walked around the desk and I heard him tread from hardwood onto soft rug. The rip of tape. The thud of cardboard. The rustle of paper. And silence.
Zherdev chuckled. “It’s a good photo, I think. Don’t you agree? With a strong frame to match your impressive desk.” Zherdev’s voice dripped with disdain. “Not like your parents. They are not so strong. See how your mother droops? What would she do if your father was not there to support of her?” He let the implications hang. “Ukraine winters are harsh. But maybe you’ve been here so long you forget. Go ahead, Dmitry, put the photo on your desk where you can see your parents every day and remember the hardship they endure.”
Romanko did as he was told.
The cushion inhaled as Zherdev rose from the couch. “Come, Kostya. Let’s leave Dmitry to think of the sacrifices parents make for their sons.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Romanko waited until the steel door had opened and shut before coming back around the desk. Once again, he sat in his chair and rolled forward.
I hugged my legs and pinched the cramps from my hamstrings. The muscles were still tight from my adventures on the cliff. I’d give Romanko one minute to vacate his office and then I was coming out. But when I heard the dial tone on the speakerphone, I decided to give him a little longer.
Kateryna answered in a soft, defeated voice. “Hello.”
“It’s me.”
“What do you want now?”
“To explain.”
“What is there to explain? You want my painting, and so you take it.”
Romanko shifted in his seat. “You don’t understand. You don’t realize the risks I take so
we can live like we do.”
Kateryna waited. When he didn’t continue, she prompted him cautiously. “What have you done, Dmitry?”
“I got us a piece of our own,” he said, more to himself than to her. “It should have gone to Zherdev, of course, but he had so much I didn’t think he’d miss it. And that property…” He laughed. “It would have set us up for big things. So I took a second on our house and used the money to put it into escrow. But everything took so damn long. The bills piled up and still no Metro announcement. No jump in value to show the banks. No collateral to get a loan and close the deal. Just God shitting on me!”
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, muttering to himself, his wife forgotten.
“I had to let the escrow dissolve. I had to use the money to pay our bills. But that fucking shopkeeper wouldn’t let me back in the deal. Changed his mind. Wanted to leave his sorry strip mall to his good-for-nothing sons.”
He kicked his desk and sent his chair rolling.
“Fucking Tran. If he had offed those punk kids just one week earlier, the Korean would have gotten the message—dead nephew today, dead sons tomorrow—and let me back in the fucking deal!”
Kateryna’s whisper cut through the silence. “What did you do, Dmitry?”
“Huh?” He stared at the speakerphone as if just remembering it, then rolled his chair back to the desk. He leaned forward and rested his head on the box, his mouth inches from the speaker.
“I did what I had to do. I borrowed from Zherdev.”
She gasped. “No. You would not do that. Tell me you did not do that.”
When he didn’t answer, she sobbed. Each gulp of breath wrenched my heart and made me want to leap from my hiding spot and smack Romanko’s face.
Then the sounds coming from the speakerphone changed. I heard pounding in the background, a crack, and a slam.
Romanko stood. “Kateryna? What’s going on?”
The Ninja Daughter Page 21