by Unknown
But where was he now?
67
San Quirico D’Orcia, Tuscany
Dawn turned back the clock on San Quirico D’Orcia, making the village seem as unspoiled as the days its medieval founding fathers settled there.
Terry McLeod slipped unheard and unnoticed through the front door of La Casa Strada. None of the other guests was up and about and it would be a long time before Maria arrived, touched up her make-up and took her place behind the reception desk. McLeod had chosen rubber-soled shoes, so that his feet would not make a noise, even outside on the golden-coloured stone slabs that surrounded the hotel. He was dressed in loose green combat trousers, a brown T-shirt, a green jumper which he knew he would be removing as soon as the sun rose another foot in the sky and a brown cap to shield his eyes. On his back he carried a medium-sized green rucksack, packed with the ‘tools of his trade’ and some drinks and snacks that would sustain him while he patiently waited for the day’s events to unfold.
The streets were deserted but still told their stories of how history and contemporary life had agreed to get on. Against the brightly painted walls of centuries-old homes, lines of washing hung, heavy with white bedsheets, coloured shirts and greying underwear. Next to them, outside the glass-fronted cafés and restaurants, tables and chairs stood stacked, waiting for the pavements to be cleaned. The odd dropped ice-cream cone had left multi-coloured stains on the smooth stone flags. Bicycles stood propped next to doorways or down alleyways, never locked by townsfolk to whom theft was as unthinkable as bad local food or wine. A few streets away church bells chimed every half-hour – it was 7.00 a.m.
McLeod knew exactly where he was going. Over the past few days he’d located the precise spot for today’s event.
He headed south-east towards where Via Dante Alighieri meets the trunk of Via Cassia; then he came off the beaten tourist path and veered more southerly. Soon he was climbing a peak of scrubland that probably only a few of the town’s more adventurous kids were aware of. Here the grass was deep and had probably never been cut or even chewed on by local livestock. Big boulders of sandstone even darker than the colour of the town’s ancient walls formed a perfect shelter from the sun and any prying eyes.
McLeod looked around and checked any possible routes to where he stood. He examined the ground around him and then settled down, his carefully chosen green and brown attire allowing him to disappear chameleon-like into the rocky terrain.
He undid the flap of his rucksack, took out a pair of high-powered binoculars, wiped the lenses with a soft cloth and peered through them. He found La Casa Strada almost instantly. He refocused. A slight pan to his right gave him a perfect view of the private gardens which Nancy King had curtly asked him to leave. A fractional pan and tilt to his left showed him the bedroom window where he knew she slept, her shutters closed but the window behind them clearly open.
McLeod stood up and shifted behind one of the large sandstone rocks. With a little movement he could now see the roads around the hotel and the route she took to Pienza with her child. He was satisfied with the position. From this vantage point, he had the perfect shot.
The Tuscan sun lethargically trekked across the blue morning sky, seemingly buckling under the burden of carrying another blazing day on its back. Golden rays soon soaked the outside of La Casa Strada, turning the terracotta roof tiles the colour of a blood orange. Just after seven a.m. Nancy King opened her windows and took in the beauty of a newborn day.
Terry McLeod dropped the high-powered binoculars and slid over a Nikon D-80 fixed with a Nikkor 1200mm telescopic lens. He adjusted the small tripod and half-pressed the shutter button. The camera’s multi-area auto-focus kicked in and he could clearly follow Nancy as she moved around the bedroom. She was still in her nightclothes but they were nothing that McLeod would call real sexy. He pressed the shutter and the Nikon filed its first frame. For a second, he thought she was wearing the top of her husband’s PJs, but then he realized it was a striped nightshirt that no doubt cost a bomb. Nancy shook her hair at the window, breathing in the lavender-laced air.
Click, the Nikon struck again.
McLeod hoped she’d slip the top off and give him a shot of what he imagined was a great pair of tits, but instead she turned away from the window and bent down to pick something up.
She was now half in shadow and he couldn’t make out what she was doing. Nancy ended his doubts by returning to the window with a child in her arms. Click, click!
McLeod guessed this was Zack, the three-year-old that Paullina had told him about. Nancy ruffled his hair at the window, kissed his cheek and pointed out things across the garden and towards the hillside.
Click, the camera caught every gesture.
Seeing the kid in close-up was good. Whenever there was a child on the scene, McLeod always managed to use them to his advantage. Yep, getting close to the youngster would really up the stakes.
68
Holiday Inn, New York
Jack was still asleep, his suit creased to hell, when his cell phone rang at seven a.m. He peered at the display through sleep-fogged eyes and just about recognized Howie’s number.
‘Hello,’ he grunted.
‘Hi man, get showered and dressed; I’ll be outside your hotel in ten minutes,’ said Howie excitedly. ‘We’ve got a real lead. A guy from IAD has been putting the screws on some bent cop over in Brooklyn who’s in neck-deep with this Russian pimp who runs a hooker who’s friends with the girl in our video.’
The words whizzed past Jack so fast he was able to make out only the key phrases – a real lead – someone in Brooklyn – a hooker who’s friends with the girl in our video. ‘Okay. I’m up and about. See you in ten.’
Jack stripped and stumbled into the shower, still struggling to make sense of exactly what Howie had told him. It didn’t matter. Someone somewhere knew the girl and that meant they had a chance of finding out where she was.
Jack had brought only one suit with him, the one he’d foolishly slept in. The jacket now looked as though a tramp had borrowed it for an evening out at the Annual Meths Drinkers’ Ball. He left it on the bed and put on a shirt without a tie and a pair of plain black pants.
When he got outside, Howie was flicking the finger at some driver who’d tooted him. Jack climbed into the passenger seat. ‘Great to start the day with some good news. Where we going?’
‘Breakfast in Brooklyn. We’re hooking up with a guy called Pete McCaffrey.’ Howie spun the power steering, floored the accelerator and squealed his way into a gap in the traffic. ‘McCaffrey’s one of the few Internal Affairs people who understands the Job. He isn’t after cops who make mistakes and screw up from time to time, like we all do, he’s got his arrows levelled on the real bad apples.’
‘So help me here,’ said Jack. ‘What’s the exact connection with our girl?’
‘Pete and his partner, Gerry Thomas, got on the tail of a bent cop called George Deaver. Deaver had been getting laid for free by hookers over in the Beach area. He pulled the old scam of having his fun then flashing his badge and saying he wasn’t going to pay.’
‘Hardly major news,’ said Jack.
‘Sure, but it turns out that our friend Deaver has pissed off a Russian gangster called Oleg Smirtin. Now he is major news. Smirtin is one of the big boys in Little Odessa and it seems Deaver has been using Smirtin’s girls for freebies.’
‘Not a bright move,’ Jack said. ‘I suppose your pal McCaffrey got interested all of a sudden because of Smirtin’s involvement?’
‘Exactly. They think the Russki has a few cops on his payroll and they’ve pressured Deaver to be their wire man. Anyway, Deaver comes back to them and says the chick he was balling claims to be a friend of the girl in the video.’
‘Give up a name?’ asked Jack.
‘Didn’t get that far. Fernandez is already over in Brooklyn rounding everyone up. We should be able to see McCaffrey and Deaver together, and then the hooker. If needs be, we can then go visit S
mirtin too.’
‘Where’s the meet? We still got the office in Cumberland Street?’
‘Sure have,’ said Howie. ‘That’s where we’re heading and the deli round the corner still does the best breakfasts this side of my mom’s kitchen.’
69
San Quirico D’Orcia, Tuscany
Terry McLeod had been sitting patiently in his ‘hide’ for an hour.
He understood that even at the best of times things never happened quickly in Italy, and in Tuscany on a Sunday, well, events were likely to move slower than an injured snail.
The longer the wait, the sweeter the shot, he told himself.
He sipped bottled water from his rucksack and used the military-issue binoculars to keep a watch on events at the hotel. The King woman looked so happy as she moved around inside the sanctuary of her home.
Make the most of it, he told himself, I’m about to turn your happy little life right upside down.
He sat back and waited for his chance.
Patience was a virtue of McLeod’s; he’d wait all day if he had to.
70
Brooklyn, New York
The six-mile journey from Jack’s hotel to Brooklyn should have taken fifteen to twenty minutes but traffic along Flatbush Avenue was snarled up and didn’t improve much as they headed down Veronica and Erasmus.
Howie called in as they parked up and Fernandez sent out for their breakfast order – juice, coffee, muffins, pancakes and a mix of fruit. The fruit was an afterthought of Jack’s; Howie was solely interested in the pancakes and muffins.
Fernandez was already holed up in a small room with Pete McCaffrey and Gerry Thomas, the two cops from Internal Affairs, and their new best friend, George Deaver. Jack knew who was who without even being introduced. McCaffrey sat on the edge of a big square wooden desk, wearing big square wooden clothes. He was craggy-faced, black tie pulled tight to the top of his plain white shirt, sipping water from a plastic cooler cup and trying to impress Fernandez in a way that only senior IA guys think they can do, which is with over-macho body language and stories of what they did before they got sucked into the hated world of IA. Thomas, a younger clone of his boss, with a slightly cheaper black suit and a much looser and cheaper tie, was hanging on McCaffrey’s every word. George Deaver was the odd man out. He sat away from the others, glum-faced, arms folded like a guy with all the worries of the world on his shoulders, which was kind of appropriate considering he was a bent cop who’d been busted and was heading to court and maybe jail.
Howie introduced Jack and everyone shook hands, then McCaffrey introduced Deaver and the best he got was a nod of acknowledgement. The line had already been drawn and they couldn’t help but let Deaver know it.
‘Where’s the girl?’ asked Howie.
‘Next office,’ answered Fernandez. ‘We’ve got her a soda, but should have probably got her a doctor. She looks as though she was totally tanked last night. There’s someone watching the door, so she won’t be doing any running.’
McCaffrey went over the background again and Jack listened politely, as though it was something he was hearing for the first time. Then Deaver filled them in on how he’d visited Smirtin and told him he was looking for his missing hooker.
‘The kid on the tape is called Ludmila Zagalsky, though apparently everyone calls her Lu,’ said Deaver, trying to sound like a helpful cop, rather than a bent one. ‘She’s twenty-five, a Russian, from Moscow we think. Smirtin said very little about her during our face-to-face in his kebab joint, even though I’d gone round there specifically to talk about her. He was more interested in whether I knew anyone over at the Department of Justice who could advise on some tobacco problems he had.’
‘Smoking kills,’ said Fernandez, ‘least that’s what the Surgeon General says, and that’s the only advice that assholes like Smirtin should get.’
Deaver ignored her. ‘Anyways, next day, that’s the sixth, he rings me and says he knows where Lu is; says he’s just seen her on frigging TV. Well, it turns out these A-rabs –’
‘Yeah, we know that bit,’ interrupted McCaffrey. ‘Cut to the chat you had with her friend. These boys here are going to draw their pensions’fore you get to the point.’
Deaver bit back his resentment and picked up the story. ‘That evening I went round to see her friend Grazyna Macowicz –’
McCaffrey interrupted again. ‘This is the whore we’ve got next door, the one he was screwing for a freebie.’
‘Grazyna was shaking like a leaf,’ said Deaver. ‘She’d bottomed a bottle of vodka by the time I found her, and it was only five p.m. She said the kidnapped woman all the news channels were showing was her girlfriend.’
‘She’s a hundred per cent sure on that?’ asked Howie, adding, ‘This isn’t some attention-grabbing time-wasting stunt by some lying little crackhead, is it?’
Fernandez took a deep breath. ‘That’s a bit steep, boss. I’ve spoken to her and I think she’s a straight-up kid.’
Howie ignored her and carried on staringat Deaver, waiting for a reply.
The bent cop drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair and thought it over. ‘I think she’s genuine,’ he said.‘The face-shot inthat videois pretty clear. I’ve got one small photograph of Ludmila already; Grazyna’s found a couple more to show us.’ Deaver handed over the photo-booth picture of the two girls together. Howie looked at it first and then passed it to Jack.
The phone on the desk rang and someone asked Fernandez if it was okay to bring in breakfast. As the others cleared space on the desktop for the food, Jack and Howie peeled off into a corner.
Jack passed the photograph back. ‘It certainly looks like the girl in the video,’ he said.
‘Yeah, I think so too,’ Howie concurred. ‘You reckon she’s still in the neighbourhood?’
‘No way of even guessing,’ said Jack. ‘More importantly, is there a chance she’s still alive?’
The food came and Jack piled up two plates with muffins and pancakes, grabbed some fruit and two cardboard cups of coffee.
‘Glad to see that all those years in the restaurant business taught you how to be a waiter,’ joked Howie as they made their way into the other room to see Grazyna. Howie opened the door and the young woman sitting opposite them looked up; her shoulders hunched, her face white and gaunt.
‘I’m Howie Baumguard, Miss. This human food trolley here is Jack King. He’s brought you some breakfast.’
‘Morning, Grazyna,’ said Jack, gently. ‘We’re here to try to help find your friend.’ Jack didn’t ask if she wanted food, he just put it down on the table in front of herand uncappedher coffee. Experience had shown him that many people didn’t want to be seen to have to accept anything from a cop, so it was better to give without even asking.
Howie sat down next to her. ‘We’re told that you’re in no doubt that the girl in the video reports on the TV, the girl being held hostage somewhere, is your friend Ludmila Zagalsky. Is that right?’
Grazyna picked up the coffee. Her hand shook so badly that she had to put it down again, so she didn’t scald herself. ‘That’s right,’ she answered in a tiny voice. ‘We’re like sisters, I recognized her straight away.’
‘When did you last see her, Grazyna? Can you remember?’ asked Jack.
It was something Grazyna had thought a lot about. ‘It was six nights ago, about one a.m., outside Primorski’s restaurant down Beach Avenue.’
Howie and Jack exchanged quizzical looks. ‘How come you’re so sure?’ asked Howie.
This time Grazyna hesitated. Shechewed her lip and looked away from them. ‘I’ve been seeing this waiter at Prim’s, a guy called Ramzan. Lu was keen on him too, but I made amove on him when she wasn’t around and I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her about it. I’d arranged to meet him at the end of his shift and as I was coming up the street Is a wLuat the window, waving to him. I kind of stepped back into a doorway across the road and hid for a while.’
‘Why did you do that?�
�� asked Howie.
‘Dunno,’ said Grazyna. ‘Guess I thought he might be cheating on me. So I hung around to see if he’d come out and kiss her or anything.’
‘And did he?’ asked Jack.
‘No, he didn’t. After a bit, she sort of waved at him again and thenseemedtoloseinterest. Some guydrove up a few minutes later and used the ATM machine near the restaurant and she clocked him.’
Jack and Howie’s instincts bristled like porcupines.
‘I guess the machine wasn’t working’cos I saw Lu pointing down the street. Then she started working him, you know, flirting with him. Well, Ithought, good for you, sister, you go get yourself some extra Benjamins. Sure enough, seconds later she rides off in this guy’s car.’
‘Which direction?’ asked Howie.
Grazyna frowned for a moment. ‘I’m not good at directions. Let me think.’ She pointed her hands out from her body. ‘He turned east. Yep, I’m sure of that. They headed off eastwards.’
Howie held his breath. ‘You got the registration?’
Grazyna frowned. ‘No. It was a yellow Hyundai; I saw the badge on the back.’
‘Two doors or four?’ asked Howie.
She looked up at the ceiling for inspiration. ‘Four.’
Howie left the room and instructed Fernandez to start the search for a four-door Hyundai. He suggested that they look for white as well as yellow; the sodium street lights might have affected her colour judgement.
Jack’s head was buzzing with excitement.
At last, some critical questions were getting answered. They now had a name for the victim – Ludmila Zagalsky; the place where she had been taken from – Beach Avenue; and perhaps a time of the possible abduction – one a.m. on 2 July.
The one crucial question that they couldn’t answer was whether she was still alive.