“Are they gone?” she whispered, terrified.
I nodded. Now I was as paralyzed as she was. The heavy one was the Michelin Man.
Twenty
The Michelin Man’s name was Vitaly. His skinny friend was Marat and could have been the guy I saw smoking outside of Titans. In happier times Oksana had innocently asked them their last names and they had told her that anyone who needed their last names to find them could go screw themselves. Charming.
“Why are they following you and why in the world would the fat one have been following me?” I asked.
“We can’t talk here,” she whispered.
I thought she was being melodramatic but who knew? I told the salesclerk we were trying to avoid some creeps who weren’t taking no for an answer and asked her to look outside to see if the two men were still there. Once she was convinced that we weren’t plotting to rip her off, she did it. Then she pointed to a house phone, where I called the valet to get my car. Oksana took off her scarf, borrowed my quilted jacket, and bought a two-dollar bandanna with a dice and feathers pattern on it. She tied it around her head in a makeshift disguise and we walked out of the shop expecting to feel a hand on our shoulders at any moment.
By the time we got to the entrance we were breathing easier. My car was already there and we took off for the trailer park, where Oksana and her roommate lived. It wasn’t far but Oksana took me by the back roads and I tried to imprint the turns and landmarks so I’d be able to get back without her.
“Isn’t there a more direct way?” I asked, faintly irritated.
“This is the way Nadia comes. It’s the only way I know,” she said.
“All right, we’re out of there. Now why is Sergei having his men follow you and why would they have been following me? This can’t be about some petty thefts from last year.”
“Vitaly protects Sergei. Sergei is somehow involved with the Mishkins’ investors. I don’t know how, but the night Nick was killed, I overheard him tell someone on the phone he could make it uncomfortable for people if they didn’t find a way to cut him in. Vitaly was at the bar. He also heard what Nick said.” She looked down at her nail-bitten hands and tore off a piece of cuticle. I waited for the other shoe to drop.
“What else?”
“I might have told him Nick had mentioned an older woman. He might have thought I meant you.”
Older woman? When did I join the ranks of older women? I was in my thirties, for Pete’s sake. What was I supposed to do, flick my hair and inject the word like into every other sentence?
“Did you tell Vitaly about Lucy’s call?”
“I may have,” she said quietly.
And now Nick was dead, my house had been ransaked, and Lucy was missing. But why?
We were on a poorly lit road riddled with enough potholes to make it seem like an obstacle course. “Oksana, are we getting close?”
“The building up ahead on the left, that’s the manager’s office. He’s never there, and the gate is always open. Just make a left and turn into the park.” So much for a gated community.
Oksana used the word park loosely. In the near dark I could make out rows of similarly shaped trailers reminiscent of overseas shipping containers and vintage diners. Occasionally one would stand out because of its outlandish paint job, or the disemboweled vehicle on the rectangle of outdoor space each tenant had a right to—I tried to remember them as breadcrumbs to help me get out of there after I’d dropped her off.
The only sign of vegetation was a few rows down, an aluminum Christmas tree one of the occupants had placed outside of the trailer, bits of tinsel still attached and fluttering in the early-morning breeze despite the fact that it was mid-March.
“Turn right at that tree.”
I had a feeling if the tree was moved Oksana wouldn’t know how to get home any more than she knew how to get there from the casino. It was all done by rote. We pulled up to the double-wide and she got out.
“Look after yourself,” I said.
Twenty-one
I zigzagged out of the trailer park using the landmarks I’d remembered—a peace sign made of minilights, a kids’ jungle gym, and finally the aluminum Christmas tree close to the entrance. I used the same strategy when I left the pockmarked road that had led to Oksana’s, trying to make my way back to the casino.
It should have been easier as the sun was coming up, but it wasn’t. Buildings and things I hadn’t seen thirty minutes earlier materialized and made me doubt my route selection. A convenience store came up on the right, a small gray shack that looked like a prefab army building with a blue neon Miller sign I would have remembered. It confirmed that I’d missed my turn. I hung a U-turn to slowly retrace my steps.
Jeez, it was a huge hotel—I could faintly see it in the distance through the morning haze—I just couldn’t seem to find the road that led there. I crawled back and stopped two hundred yards ahead of a turn I didn’t make, just in time to see a silvery blue sedan take a left and pull onto the long stretch of road that led to the trailer park. I hadn’t seen another vehicle since Oksana and I had left the casino and I was startled by the appearance of another car.
I told myself it was probably another waitress or pit boss who’d just finished his shift at the casino. All the same, I killed the lights and rolled into a hidden driveway. If the driver of the other car looked in his rearview mirror all he’d see was a dark bump behind a hemlock tree, not a nervous woman wondering if the two men who’d just driven by were Ukrainian mobsters.
All I could see were shadows. The driver’s silhouette was the larger of the two. But that could have been anyone—a woman in a fur coat, a guy in a down jacket—it didn’t have to be the Michelin Man. And just because he was on the road to Oksana’s place didn’t mean he was headed there. But I felt sure it was the men we’d seen at the casino, and they were looking for Oksana, or the two of us.
With the engine turned off all the heat had left the car and I sat there, a chill setting in, wondering what to do next. Do I go back to Oksana’s to see if she is okay? What could I do if she wasn’t?
Stacy Winters’s card was still floating around in the bottom of my bag, but by the time I found it, I’d talked myself out of calling her. What would I say? Two people I didn’t see may be visiting a person I barely know?
I started the car slowly, with a KISS. Key, ignition, seatbelt, signal. An old boyfriend told me that when he taught me how to drive and I still thought of it—a lifelong habit started by a boyfriend of a hundred days. By the time I got to signal, I saw the headlights of a car racing toward me. The same car, with the same two passengers. The stocky driver made the turn that I had missed minutes before and luckily he didn’t notice the Jeep backing out of the hidden driveway.
Rather than get on the road behind them, I kept my lights off and slowly navigated the rutted dirt road they’d just left until I pulled into the trailer park and found my way back to Oksana’s.
When I got there, she was gone.
Twenty-two
“Someone you drove home isn’t there? Is that really why you’re calling me at this ungodly hour?”
Detective Stacy Winters was lucky I hung up the first time I called, almost two hours earlier.
No one had answered at Oksana’s place and repeatedly calling her name before six A.M. got me nothing but angry responses from her neighbors. The loudest was the guy with the peace sign. I drove to the casino, and from there back to Titans, checking the rearview mirror so often I nearly missed the exit for the hotel.
I should have been exhausted but too much information was coming at me all at once and I needed to talk to someone about what, if anything, all of this meant. When I finally broke down and called Winters, I spilled everything I knew about Lucy’s disappearance, Oksana’s story, the Crawford brothers, and the Ukrainians.
“Look, I know I told you to call me if you thought of anything else, but lots of times we just say that. We don’t really think you’re going to call us. If we t
hought you really knew anything about Vigoriti’s murder we’d still be questioning you.”
Stacy Winters was in no danger of being burdened with either a warm bedside manner or an insatiable curiosity. Even after I told her about Nick’s involvement with the Mishkins and the Crawford brothers.
“Nick was always claiming he knew more than he did,” she said, unimpressed. “He should have gone into politics. With his looks and shtick he could have been governor. You don’t have to be smart, you get all the dates you want, and you get to rub shoulders with big-time criminals—not the small fry Nick usually hung out with.” I could hear her slurp a drink and rustle a few papers in the background.
“Look, you’re what? A gardener? Go plant some tulips and leave the police work to the professionals.”
What was her obsession with tulips? Was that the only plant she knew? I was tempted to tell her you don’t plant tulips in the spring, but somehow I knew it wouldn’t be received as the scathing criticism I meant it to be, so I didn’t respond.
“What about my friend Lucy? I haven’t spoken to her in two days.”
“I’ve got friends I haven’t heard from in ten years,” she said. Big surprise.
“What was her last message? Two men . . . ? She could have been sending you a joke—Two men walk into a bar.”
“Why would she have called Nick twice?” I said.
“How should I know? Maybe she was asking him to bring the K-Y jelly. We don’t know that she did call him twice. Or even once. Oksana Smolova is what we in law enforcement refer to as an unreliable source.”
She told me Oksana had been picked up for soliciting three years ago when she was still a teenager, bailed out by a local dirt-bag who claimed to be her guardian.
“Sweet old Uncle Sergei, that nice man with the doggies.”
Apparently, Oksana and Sergei had had a falling out when she went to work at Titans. She failed to catch the eye of the newly widowed Bernie Mishkin, who they both assumed was rolling in dough; then she latched on to Nick Vigoriti.
“Never one to say no to the horizontal hora, Nick took her out a few times, then they cooled off. At least he did. She was still looking for that sugar daddy or meal ticket. You know you’re lucky she didn’t lead you into a trap where some of her Ukrainian buddies slapped you around. Or worse.”
Winters let the words hang in the air for effect. I couldn’t have been so wrong about Oksana. That girl was terrified. Still, she did admit to telling the Michelin Man about me. Was he the one who’d ransacked my place? And she’d told him about Lucy. I’d called all of Lucy’s numbers a dozen times since her first text message. Where the hell was she?
According to Winters, Lucy wasn’t considered one of the missing. If you’re over the age of eighteen in the state of Connecticut and there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of foul play, you’re just gone.
“So how long does she have to be gone before she’s missing?”
“You’re not listening. It’s not a time thing. No evidence of a crime, no missing person.”
“So, poof, someone’s gone, just like that?” I asked.
“Just like that.”
Twenty-three
I didn’t have so many friends that I could afford to have even one of them go poof. Since I’d moved to the ’burbs I’d discovered who my real friends were. The party crowd in New York, the business acquaintances I’d kept on speed dial because they owed me a favor—those guys were gone. Lucy was the only one from my past who was more than the occasional drinks, e-mail, or Christmas card friend.
I had a hard time believing what Detective Winters had told me about missing persons in Connecticut. I preferred to think she was just a bitch on wheels with some as-yet-unknown agenda so I grabbed a Diet Coke from the minibar, powered up my laptop, and went online to do my own research. I soon learned everything Winters had told me was true.
There were more than one hundred thousand missing persons in the United States, seven hundred in Connecticut alone. And if you weren’t a child under the age of eighteen, or a senior, you could very easily just go poof. One poor woman in Connecticut was still so heartsick over her son’s disappearance that she’d been paying for a billboard with his picture on it for eight years.
Without evidence of a crime there was no state or local law addressing missing adults, only children or at-risk adults with diminished mental capacity or health problems. I didn’t think I could sell Lucy as diminished capacity, and her only health issues were that she’d now missed three krav maga workouts and pretty soon her roots would start showing.
In this neck of the woods, you had a better chance of getting a stolen car found than a healthy thirty-four-year-old woman.
Wait a minute, that could work.
In New York City a stolen car wouldn’t get much of a rise out of the police, but in Connecticut it was tantamount to stealing someone’s horse in the Old West. If Lucy’s car was found at a ski resort in Vermont, I would simply drive there and brain her for making me go through all of this. If it wasn’t, well, I’d deal with that if it happened.
Lucy shared an assistant with another producer. The few times I’d spoken with the girl she sounded like any one of the overworked twenty somethings I remembered from my former career—in the office by eight A.M., at her desk until eight or nine P.M., and on call 24/7 waiting for her first credit, her first break. Smart, ambitious kids who would gleefully step over their boss’s broken and bleeding body if it meant they’d be included in a programming meeting or get sent to the Sundance festival. I called Lucy’s office again.
As she was taught, the assistant picked up after three rings. I chose my words carefully. Lucy had asked me to call, she’d misplaced the keys to her rental car. Did the assistant have an 800 number for the rental car company? All the best lies are short and sweet. Once you start explaining too much you get into trouble. There’d be no long-winded explanation of how that wacky Lucy had lost the keys juggling a champagne bottle and her BagBorroworSteal purse in the hot-air balloon she’d taken off in with a handsome Australian pilot. Keep the lie short and sweet.
“It’s 1-800-YO-DRIVE.” Click. That was easy. Since I could no longer further her career, the assistant didn’t feel the need to chat with me any longer than absolutely necessary.
YoDrive was a small private company near Lucy’s office that extended special long-term rates to KCPS staffers. I’d used them myself back in the day. The next lie might be harder since a diligent employee could justifiably be worried about the company’s property and ask questions I didn’t want to answer.
I needn’t have worried. Remembering what a tiny office it was I intentionally waited until lunchtime to call, in the hopes that whoever answered the phone would be distracted—either by his takeout order arriving or because he was shorthanded at the desk. I was right.
The lying was coming easier now; I guess some skill sets you never lose. This time I was calling from a sister station in Massachusetts. I needed Lucy’s vehicle info and license plate number to make sure that she didn’t get towed when she arrived tomorrow and parked in our small visitors lot. It was weak, but I delivered my lines with just the right touch of boredom to suggest that I really was who I said I was. Never underestimate the ability of a disinterested employee to give you information.
Lucy was driving a white 2007 Subaru standard SUV with Rhode Island plates, 475 LMP. I’d simply report the car stolen. That way the police would have to look for her. Or at least her car.
I called it in to the local police telling them the last time I saw it it was at the Titans Hotel. I gave them my cell phone as a contact number. It was all I could do at the moment. The moment being one where I’d had three hours of sleep and finally started to feel it.
After a shower and some zzz’s, I’d try to see Bernie Mishkin again. Some of what Oksana had told me made me think that his investment opportunity was at the heart of a number of mysteries at Titans, and maybe even Lucy’s unexplained absence.
&nb
sp; I went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and peeled off my clothes. Hands on sink, I stood there with the steam filling up the room, inspecting my face in the mirror. I looked worse than I thought I would.
After thirty they say sleep and sex are the best beauty secrets, and I wasn’t getting much of either. Having a seasonal business or job always sounds good to those people who don’t have one. They only think of the time off, not the time spent planning, the financial crunch, and the plain uncertainty of things you can’t control, like pests and the weather. I was getting a taste of what farmers must go through, and it was keeping me up at nights.
Lucy had been trying to nudge me back into the television business for the past year until, as she put it, I “got this thing out of my system.” But I had a five-year plan for Dirty Business. If I was still treading water in five years I’d give it up and go back to TV.
“Dream on,” Lucy had said. “I can hold your seat at the table for a while, but this next generation is carnivorous. I can’t stand still for a minute without half a dozen assistants breathing down my neck.”
That was the attitude that made me still cling to the possibility she was chasing down a story. But it was the likelier possibility that she wasn’t that was giving me the worried, haggard look I saw in the mirror. I splashed some water on my face and brushed my teeth. Mercifully the steam began to obscure my reflection. Just then I felt someone’s presence outside, in my room.
I covered up with a towel and quietly closed the bathroom door, pressing my ear against the door, straining to hear who it might be. With the shower on and the door closed I couldn’t hear a thing so I pushed the button on the doorknob and held the door with my left foot, against the intruder I was sure was just about to burst in. I reached out with my right arm and stretched to turn off the shower. Of course the towel fell. My reflection in the cloudy mirror showed a woman practicing yoga for spastics—sun salutation meets pratfall.
The Big Dirt Nap Page 11