The birthday girl

by Stephen Leather

  'You're not a psychiatrist.'

  Freeman turned to look at Brown. 'I can get her to talk to me.

  I'll get to the bottom of whatever it is that's troubling her.'

  'You could do more harm than good.'

  'You think dropping her mid-treatment is good for her, do you?' Freeman asked, raising his voice. 'You don't think that'll harm her?'

  'You need a qualified psychiatrist, Tony. A specialist.'

  'No. She needs someone to talk to. Someone she can trust.'

  Brown sighed and rested his head on the back of the sofa. He closed his eyes as if fighting off a migraine. 'It's not as simple as that. Mersiha has highly developed defence mechanisms. You don't get through them by just talking to her. You have to know what you're doing.'

  'So, I'll read the file. That'll be my map.'

  Brown shook his head violently, his eyes still tightly closed.

  'The file isn't a map. It's a diary. It only records where I've been, not where I'm going.'

  Freeman stood looking down at the psychiatrist. He had a sudden urge to kick Brown's wounded leg. 'Give me the file, Art.'

  'You're not qualified.'

  'I'm more than qualified. I love her.'

  'That's the worst possible qualification.' Brown licked his lips, staring at Freeman's anxious face. He slowly shook his head.

  'No,' he said. 'It wouldn't work.'

  Freeman struggled to stay composed. 'I'll make a deal with you, Art,' he said.

  'A deal?'

  'Something's bothering you, and to be honest I don't give a shit what it is. All I care about is my daughter. Let me read her file, here and now. Once I've read it, I'll be out of your hair for good.

  I'll never tell anyone you showed it to me, and I'll never mention it again.'

  'And the stick?'

  'The stick?' queried Freeman.

  'I see the carrot. What's the stick?'* Freeman smiled without warmth. 'I'll make your life miserable.

  I'll hound you day and night. Something's worrying you and I'll keep digging until I find out what it is. I'll hire detectives, I'll ask questions, I'll keep on at you until I get some answers. I'll speak to whatever professional organisations you're a member of, I'll talk to the hospitals where you're employed as a consultant, I'll pester your patients and I'll speak to the press.'

  'I'm not hiding anything,' Brown said defensively.

  'I don't care,' Freeman said.

  Brown looked at him for several seconds, then inclined his head towards a filing cabinet by the side of the desk. 'Under F. Top drawer,' he said. 'You'll excuse me if I don't get up, won't you?'

  Lennie Nelson paced up and down. For the hundredth time he looked up at the announcements board. The train from New York was running ten minutes late and he had to be back in the office within the hour. The slats on the board flickered and whirred and when they stopped moving the delay had increased by another ten minutes. He cursed under his breath. Damn Amtrak and damn Ernie Derbyshire.

  The private detective had sounded nervous over the telephone and had insisted on a meeting. He'd wanted to see Nelson in New York but the banker had explained that it was totally out of the question. Derbyshire had reluctantly agreed to come to Baltimore, but had insisted that Nelson pay all expenses. And he'd said that he wanted an extra two thousand dollars. Nelson had protested but the detective had said that the information he had was more than worth it. He wouldn't say any more on the phone.

  Nelson decided to have his shoes shined while he waited for the New York train to arrive. It was just after eleven o'clock in the morning so the station was quiet and all three shoeshine chairs were free. Nelson sat in a high chair and opened the Washington Post as the balding middle-aged man worked on his shoes. His mind wasn't on the newspaper. Whatever Derbyshire had discovered, it had to be good for the detective to ask for a face-to-face meeting. They'd only ever met once before, several years earlier. Since then all their business had been done by phone or mail. Nelson could feel his hands sweating. Maybe Derbyshire had uncovered the evidence the bank needed to pull the plug on CRW.

  Time dragged interminably, but eventually the board whirred again and announced that the train from New York had arrived.

  The man gave the black Ballys a final polish and Nelson handed him a ten-dollar bill, telling him to keep the change. He climbed out of the chair as the train passengers began to walk through the station concourse. He spotted Derbyshire immediately: a tall, thin man with uncombed greying hair and a stoop. He was wearing a fawn raincoat that had seen better days, and scuffed brown loafers that had clearly never made the acquaintance of shoe polish. He nodded as he got closer to Nelson, but made no move to shake hands. 'How's it going, Lennie?' he said. He looked furtively to the left and right, as if fearing that he was being watched.

  'What's wrong?' Nelson asked. 'Is someone after you?'

  'Nah,' Derbyshire said. 'I need to visit the men's room.

  Where is it?'

  'Can't it wait?' Nelson asked impatiently. 'I've got to get back to the office, pronto.'

  'Jeez, just let me take a leak, will ya? My prostate ain't what it used to be.'

  Derbyshire spotted the men's room and headed for it, leaving Nelson standing by the information desk. He looked at his watch and pulled a face. Whatever Derbyshire had, it had better be good. A pretty black girl in a charcoal-grey suit walked by swinging a briefcase. She smiled at Nelson and he grinned back. As she walked outside she looked over her shoulder and gave him another smile. Nelson cursed Derbyshire again.

  The private detective came out of the men's room. His hands were still wet and he wiped them on his coat. 'Is there somewhere we can go?' he asked. There were wooden seats all around the waiting area but Nelson realised that the man wanted somewhere private. He took Derbyshire out of the station and down Charles Street to a small coffee bar. Nelson ordered coffee, Derbyshire a Nelson looked at his watch pointedly. 'What's this all about, Ernie?'

  'Have you got my money?' Derbyshire asked. Nelson sat back and folded his arms. He didn't say anything. Eventually j Derbyshire got the message. He reached inside his coat and took out a grubby envelope. He put it on the table in front of » Nelson, but when the banker reached for it, Derbyshire grabbed his hand and squeezed. 'I'm not happy with you, Lennie. Not happy at all.'

  Nelson frowned. 'What the hell is up with you?'

  Derbyshire nodded at the envelope. 'That's trouble. Big trouble. I should be asking you for more money. Two thousand dollars isn't gonna cover my hospital bills if anyone finds out what I've done.'

  Nelson leaned forward. Their waitress returned with a mug of coffee and a glass of milk. Nelson said nothing until she was on her way back to the kitchen. 'Okay, Ernie. Stop playing games. | Spill the beans.'

  '"' Derbyshire grimaced. He took a sip from his glass. When he put it back down on the table he had a white foamy moustache on his upper lip. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. 'The agent you gave me, the lawyer, wasn't one I'd worked on before so I didn't have any contacts. Nice office, though. Really prestigious, all the trimmings. It's a small firm. I tried approaching one of the secretaries but she wouldn't have " anything to do with me and I couldn't risk trying anything else.

  That meant I had to do a little breaking and entering…'

  Nelson held up a hand. 'I don't want to hear what you did, Ernie. That's nothing to do with me.' Nelson knew that the private detective had spent two years in prison after a security guard discovered him standing over a lawyer's desk with a flashlight in one hand and a miniature camera in the other.

  The banker didn't want to hear about any illegal activities. He just wanted the facts.

  'Yeah, yeah, I understand,' Derbyshire said. 'Okay, so I got the Ventura file, no problem.' He tapped the envelope. 'There's copies in there. There are two investors in the partnership.

  Russians.'

  'Russians?' Nelson repeated. It was the last thing he'd expected to hear.

  'Yeah, but not just
any old Russians,' Derbyshire said. He took a pack of Marlboro cigarettes from the pocket of his raincoat, tapped one out and stuck it between his lips. 'Russian gangsters.

  Mafioski, the newspapers call them. I've included a few of the choicer cuttings in the envelope.' He patted his pockets, looking for matches. 'They're brothers. Gilani and Bzuchar Utsyev. Bzuchar lives in Brighton Beach. He owns a couple of restaurants, a trucking company and a taxi firm. He's just opened a marina up in New York State. But the bulk of his income comes from drugs, extortion and prostitution. Have you got a light?' Nelson shook his head. Derbyshire waved at the waitress and mimed lighting his cigarette. She came over with a book of matches. Derbyshire winked and lit up, exhaling through clenched teeth as if reluctant to allow the smoke to escape.

  Nelson toyed with his mug of coffee. 'Gangsters?' he repeated.

  'You're telling me they're gangsters?'

  'Uh-huh. Damn right. The younger brother – Gilani changed his name – to Sabatino, of all things.'

  'Sabatino?'

  'Yeah, don't ask me why. Sal Sabatino. He lives here in Baltimore. Runs a nightclub, but I couldn't find too much on him. He keeps a lower profile than his brother. Everything I could get is in the envelope.' Derbyshire leant forward as if he was frightened of being overheard. 'They're worse than gangsters, Lennie. Bzuchar's a psychopath, by all accounts.

  Worse than Al Capone, worse than Dillinger, worse than any Mafia don you've ever heard of. They left Russia in the late eighties. God knows why, because they'd already made a fortune out of the black markets. They come from a place called Chechenya – it's close to the southern borders of the old Russia, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. It declared itself a republic when Gorbachev split the country up. The whole country is run by mobsters – it's the Russian equivalent of Sicily.'

  Nelson picked up the envelope and slowly turned it in his hands. 'The evidence is all in here?' he asked.

  'What you've got there is what I got from the lawyer's files, and from the New York Times cuttings library. But if you want the real dirt, it's gonna cost more.'

  'How come?'

  'Because all the good stuff, the stuff about their illegal operations, came from a friend of mine in the FBI. If you want paperwork to back it up, he's gonna want a payoff.'

  Nelson tapped a corner of the envelope on the table. 'How much will your friend want?'

  'It's gonna cost five.'

  'Five hundred?'

  Derbyshire sneered at the banker. 'We're not talking about running a licence plate through the MVA computer, Lennie.

  We're talking about FBI files.' He drained his glass noisily, then banged it down with a dull thud. 'Five thousand. And you're not gonna be dealing with me – I'll put him in touch with you.'.

  Nelson considered the detective's proposal. Five thousand dollars was a lot of money, but if it proved beyond a doubt that Ventura Investments was a money-laundering vehicle run by gangsters, it would be a major coup for him, and the death knell for Walter Carey's career. Put like that, it was an attractive proposition. 'Let me read this first,' he said. 'If I need more, I'll get back to you.'

  'Fine,' Derbyshire said, holding out his hand.

  Nelson took a cheque from his inside pocket and slipped it over the table to the private detective. Derbyshire took the cheque, scrutinised the figures and the signature, and pocketed it. He pointed a warning finger at the banker, and narrowed his eyes. 'Whatever you do, don't tell anyone that I was involved in this. These guys are killers. My life is on the line here.'

  'What do you think I am?' Nelson replied. 'You think I'm going to admit that I know what you've been doing? You're a professional consultant, nothing more. That's what you're shown as in our accounts, and that's all I know.'

  Derbyshire shook his head. 'No. That's not good enough. I don't want my name connected with this at all. I don't wanna be on any file, I don't wanna be on any computer.' The detective's face was flushed and he was sweating. 'You know what banks are like. They leak information like sieves. If I'd known that the Utsyev brothers were involved I wouldn't have touched this case.

  For any amount of money. They're fucking animals, Lennie.

  They make the Mafia look like Mormons.'

  Nelson flicked the edge of the envelope with his thumbnail.

  Derbyshire wasn't faking, trying to drive up the price. He was genuinely scared, and he didn't look like the sort of man who'd scare easily. 'Okay, Ernie. I'll be in touch.'

  'Yeah, well, when you do, don't mention their names, either on the phone or in writing. If you want the FBI guy to get the stuff for you, tell me you want the football statistics. I'll then get him to contact you direct. Remember, it'll be five grand.'

  Derbyshire stood up and leaned over the banker. His face was so close to Nelson's that Nelson could smell his milky breath.

  'Watch your back, Lennie. That envelope could be the death of you.' He raised his eyebrows and nodded, then turned on his heels and walked quickly out of the coffee bar, his coat flapping behind him like a loose sail in the wind.

  Freeman knew it was bad news even before he picked the fax up off his desk. He'd been in one of the development labs with Josh Bowers, discussing a potential modification to the MIDAS deployment system over chicken salad sandwiches and cans of 7-Up, and when he arrived back in his own office his secretary was missing and the fax was face down next to his in-tray. If it had been routine it would have been in the tray with the rest of his correspondence. If it had been good news then Jo would have rushed up to him, waving it like a victory flag, her cheeks flushed with excitement. No, it was bad news, and before he read the first words his stomach was churning with the realisation that CRW hadn't got the Middle East order.

  He read the brief letter with a heavy heart, though he was enough of a realist to know that it wasn't unexpected. Despite Anderson's unflagging confidence, Freeman had suspected that the Arabs wouldn't come through, that their trip to the States was nothing more than a holiday for the wives and that CRW's demonstration had been just a window-dressing sideshow. 'Shit, shit, shit,' he said, screwing the fax up into a tight ball and tossing it into a wastepaper bin. He flopped down into his chair and beat a tattoo on the desk with the palms of his hands. The day hadn't been a total loss. The Thai Army had just reordered another fifty of the MIDAS systems for use on their border with Laos, and a dealer in Hong Kong had been on the phone first thing that morning about a possible deal with Vietnam. The Vietnamese border with China was heavily mined, and they were still discovering minefields left by the Americans. Freeman tried to look on the bright side, but there was still a hard ache in the pit of his stomach, a feeling that no matter how hard he tried, no matter how hard he worked, the company was continuing its inexorable slide into oblivion. It was starting to look more and more as if Lennie Nelson was right. Drastic downsizing at home with manufacturing sub-contracted overseas might be CRW's only salvation. But he knew that Katherine would never stand for it. To her CRW was more than a business. It was a monument to her father.

  Jo appeared in the doorway, a nervous smile on her lips as she looked to see how he was taking it. Tm sorry,' she said.

  Freeman held his hands up, palms showing, and grimaced.

  'Gotta roll with the punches,' he said.

  'There'll be other orders,' she said, leaning against the doorjamb.

  'Sure,' he said. $?¦ 'Really. I can feel it. And my psychic said there was going to be a lot of activity at work.'

  'Your psychic?'

  'Sure. I see her every two weeks. She's never wrong. Well, hardly ever.'

  'Yeah? Next time you see her ask her where I left my gold pen, will you? It was a present from Katherine and she'll kill me if I've lost it.' Freeman grinned to show that he really wasn't upset about not getting the order.

  Jo laughed, relieved, and went back to her desk. Freeman swivelled in his chair and stared out of the window, a faraway look in his eyes. Anderson drove into the parking lot and into his reserved s
pace. Freeman watched him sit for a while before he opened the door of the Corvette. He wondered if Anderson had already heard the news. The financial director was sitting with both hands on the steering wheel, his head slightly forward as if at any moment he'd rest his forehead between them. When he finally got out of the car and pulled his briefcase off the back seat he'd regained his composure. He seemed light on his feet, as if a puppeteer's strings were attached to his shoulders, lifting him with subtle jerks as he walked.

  Ernie Derbyshire sucked on his cigarette as the escalator whisked him up from the platform and into the bedlam that was Penn Station. Rush hour was in full swing and the waiting area was packed with commuters scanning the overhead monitors for their trains home, briefcases tightly gripped, hands hovering over hidden wallets, feet ready for the dash down to the train so that they could be sure of a seat. Penn Station at rush hour. Hell on earth.

  Short-skirted hookers prowled through the crowds, cruising for after-work action like sharks looking for food, hips swaying, lips parted and breasts pointing like anti-aircraft guns at any likely target willing to pay fifty bucks for half an hour of illicit sexual contact. Pimps in jeans and bomber jackets watched from the sidelines like trainers waiting for their horses to perform, one eye looking for possible Johns, the other on the lookout for the transport police. Pickpockets were out in force, singly and in groups, watching for the tourists and out-oftowners who lacked the street smarts of native New Yorkers. The less subtle practitioners of theft, the muggers and handbag snatchers, loitered by the toilets with the patience of spiders.

  No one gave Derbyshire a second look. Not the hookers, not the pickpockets, not the muggers. He blended into the crowd like a chameleon: too tired to want sex, too down-at-heel to have a wallet full of cash, too nondescript to be remembered. He passed through the main concourse like a shadow, his hands deep in his pockets, his eyes shifting from right to left, his cigarette held tightly between his lips.

  Commuters burst into action as the announcer gave details of the next Metroliner to Washington, DC. They poured down the stairs to the platform, eager to get home. Derbyshire hunched his shoulders in anticipation of the chill wind that he knew would be waiting to greet him outside the station. Unlike the fleeing commuters, he had no wish to escape the city. It was his home, and despite the daily murders, rapes and muggings, he felt safer in New York than he did anywhere else in the world. He turned to look at a station clock and licked his lips. Time for a drink, he thought, and then maybe a cheeseburger and a night in front of the TV. He remembered the cheque that Nelson had given him.