by Thomas Perry
She climbed the second tree and placed another camera on its first big limb, and then climbed down again. Then she took a cross-country shortcut to Big Tree Road, where Attila Varga’s house was.
The building was even bigger than Denes’s house. Attila’s had a rustic look, with a faux–log cabin facade on the front and a large door that looked like it was made of thick, solid planks with black iron braces and studs so that it could probably resist a battering ram. When Leah moved closer, she realized that the facade wasn’t a surface layer of half logs, but real ones about ten inches thick, fitted so tightly that the mortar between them was nearly invisible.
Instantly Leah promoted Attila to the most likely Varga to be doing something illegal. The house looked like a place a rival could not fire a weapon through except at the few windows, and one that the police would take at least fifteen minutes to break their way into. Fifteen minutes was a lot of time to shred and burn evidence of forgery.
Leah placed four cameras in the area around the house, attempting to take advantage of every window and record any vehicle that came up the long driveway. When she had finished installing the cameras, she walked to the parking lot of the diner and drove back to her hotel. She used her laptop to check the images from the cameras and verified that they worked, but she had no idea if her efforts had put her any closer to Viktor.
14
Leah kept patrolling, searching for Viktor Panko or for anyone who recognized his picture. In her experience as a homicide detective, she had seen many times when simply talking to people in the neighborhood of a case and asking questions had brought unexpected benefits. But here she had to be careful, and do more observing than talking. Tonight she decided to try the theater district. The theater district in Buffalo was small and manageable. It seemed to consist of Main Street from Chippewa Street to Tupper, with a few satellite businesses on the parallel streets—Pearl, Franklin, and Delaware. About five big hotels were downtown within a few blocks, including the Hyatt where she’d stayed the first few nights and the Westin, where she had moved to keep from getting too familiar, along with several good restaurants.
Shea’s Performing Arts Center was a landmark theater and seemed to be where the main attractions appeared, and there were four or five smaller theaters that presented plays and shows. The concentration of these places would be helpful. If she made the rounds, she would have a pretty good chance of seeing anybody who frequented the bars and restaurants and clubs. If Viktor Panko came here, she would have a much better chance of spotting him than she would in a larger district.
She went for lunch at a restaurant on Main Street that had been a big bank around 1910, when Buffalo was thriving. There was a modern hotel next door, and the opening between the two buildings was a monumental arch that had been one of the bank’s original entrances. It was impressive, and that kind of amused her. The old bank must have looked like a temple for the worship of money.
Leah never thought much about money. Part of her indifference had come from being raised in a family supported by her father’s pay as a police officer, and then living on her own pay as a police officer. A cop would never starve to death, but she wouldn’t get rich either, so it had seemed best not to think about it much.
In her personal experience, the people who had money to share were nearly all men. She’d heard it pointed out many times that this was unfair and was changing. To Leah this process was simply one of the features of the planet Earth as she had found it. Unfairness was like the Rocky Mountains, west of where she grew up. She never doubted that the mountains were being eroded away, but in the meantime, when she’d climbed there, she’d reached about the same altitude as she would have if she’d arrived with the first Indians tens of thousands of years ago.
Lots of other problems were built into the planet, and she was always striving decisively to mitigate them instead of devoting much time to resenting them. Leah Hawkins was a woman who met freezing weather with warm clothes instead of complaints.
Leah had taken on a dangerous and difficult job, but for the first time in her life, she had what amounted to an unlimited budget—the million dollars the council had diverted from the government grant. She knew that if she was going to search the theater area where the expensive and fancy bars were, she was going to have to spend some money on clothes. She had the debit cards with her today, so when she finished lunch, she was going to search for the right outfit.
She liked the dress that the restaurant hostess was wearing, so she asked her where she bought her clothes. The hostess gave her a quick recitation of the boutiques in the area—Brassard, Adrianna Marsh, Montrose, Enfer—and the blocks where they could be found. Leah thanked her, but the implied compliment seemed to be a sufficient reward. Leah spent the next hour picking out a couple of outfits that would get her noticed favorably in expensive restaurants, and some flat shoes that wouldn’t exaggerate her height or incapacitate her if she needed to run or fight.
There was a dark blue dress that looked elegant on her. It was short, but it flowed, and it emphasized her blond hair and long legs. The style made her feel like somebody important—maybe a diplomat. The other outfit was a pair of tight black pants, a black jacket that was cut like a sport coat, and a dark gray silk blouse. She looked at herself in the two outfits and then hung the elegant blue dress on the dressing room hook. The woman at the store said, “I hate to see you put this back. It’s perfect for you. If it’s the money, we have very flexible credit terms.”
Leah said, “It’s not the money. It’s the time. If I take them both, then tonight I’ll waste time putting on that one first. But what I’ll wear is this one.”
15
She was out for the evening and she was glad now that she had not been tempted to get the blue dress too. It was interesting, she thought, how having an unlimited supply of other people’s money made self-indulgence seem like a real option. As she walked, she let her mind settle into its police mode, and her eyes began to scan. This section of Buffalo looked promising to her. It was full of people just out of a revival of Sunday in the Park with George that was playing at Shea’s Performing Arts Center, and a lot of people were heading for bars and restaurants.
She followed a promising-looking group to Le Saucier on Delaware. The online restaurant reviews listed it as one of the best restaurants in the city. Leah was not convinced that Viktor Panko would be interested in that kind of restaurant, but she knew that most women would, and he probably knew it too.
Leah got to the door after a stream of couples and waited her turn for the maître d’ to seat her. She could see that a table for one would require a wait, so she headed to the bar. The bartender was tall, so he seemed to think they were both part of a secret society of tall people, and he took her order for a gin and tonic right away.
While she waited, she studied the room in the big mirror over the bar. She approved Le Saucier as a good place to start the evening. The food was expensive, and people were dressed well enough to assure her that the evening wouldn’t end in a bar fight.
If Panko was back in Buffalo and he was still in the illicit businesses that had sent him to prison, this was an environment where he would feel at ease. He wouldn’t be likely to meet any of his business associates or the purchasers of his false identities in a place like this. It was too quiet and tasteful. It was also too expensive for an honest cop to visit very often.
While Leah watched for the return of the bartender or the approach of Panko, she also devised a plan to glance at the reservation book for the names of any of the Varga cousins. They would be even more likely than Panko to haunt nice restaurants, because during the years he was in prison, they were still here making money, and they still had no reason to think anyone might be searching for them.
Her eyes passed over a very young couple as they came in the door and then returned to them. They were both well dressed, and the girl was pretty. The maître d’ listened to the boy’s name, looked at the reservation list, and th
en told the hostess which table; she led them there and gave them menus. Leah tried to guess. It was too late for graduation, and there weren’t any holidays in the summer after the Fourth of July. It might be the girl’s birthday. Or it might be one of the many anniversaries that young girls feel should be marked, even if the boy didn’t seem like anything to celebrate.
Leah saw the bartender coming and accepted her gin and tonic. Then she glanced up at the mirror again and watched a waiter come to the table where the new couple was seated. They looked up from their menus to order drinks. The waiter smiled apologetically at the girl and asked what Leah knew was “Can I see some ID?”
The girl opened her purse and handed him what appeared to be a driver’s license. He looked at the picture on it, looked at her again, turned the license over, and then said, “I’ll be right back.”
The girl looked alarmed, and that interested Leah. After she had scanned the room for Panko again, she let her eyes return to the young couple. The waiter was back with an older man, who was holding the driver’s license. He handed it back to the girl and said something.
Leah slipped off her bar stool and stepped away from the bar. She was carrying her drink, and as she walked, her eyes passed over the girl, but she kept walking toward the ladies’ room.
Leah and the young girl stood in front of the big wall mirror, freshening their makeup. Leah moved her eyes slightly to her left to look at the girl’s face in the reflection. “Fake ID, huh?” She smiled. “I got caught at that.”
The girl winced and then met Leah’s eyes in the mirror. “I know—I’m stupid. I feel so idiotic. I was trying to look mature and stuff. Now I feel, like, so embarrassed.”
Leah said, “It happens all the time. In a few years you’ll be hurt if they don’t ask you for proof. Can I see the fake one?”
The girl took it out of her purse and handed it to Leah.
Leah glanced at it. “No, the fake.”
“That is the fake.”
Leah looked harder at it. “It is? Oh my gosh. It’s so good. It’s perfect.” She turned to look at the girl directly. “Except the picture. That’s not you, is it?”
“It’s my sister. She bought it and loaned it to me.”
“Then it is real, right?”
“No, fake. She’s got her real one with her.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh my God. All I wanted was to have a glass of wine with my date. It’s not like I even like the taste. But it relaxes me—takes the nervousness away.”
Leah handed the license back to her. Then she picked up the short glass she had brought in and set on the marble counter. She had been planning to pour it out to remain sober. “This is a gin and tonic. I never leave a drink anywhere because of Rohypnol and GHB. I haven’t touched it yet. Take a good, healthy sip of it. You’ll take the edge off, and your teeth won’t turn purple like they do with red wine.”
The girl looked at it, then at Leah. She accepted the glass and sipped from it, then held it out.
“That’s okay. Finish it if you like,” said Leah. “I can get as many as I want.”
“Oh God. Thank you,” she said and took another sip.
“That sure is a good fake license. Much better than the one I used to use. Where did your sister get it?”
“There’s a woman. I guess she works at a mailing and print business in Kenmore.”
“Do you remember the address or the name of the store or anything?”
“I wasn’t with her. She’s the only one who talked to the woman. Her name is Reggie.”
“Do you have to know her or something?” Leah laughed. “Know a secret password?”
“No. But you have to pay a lot. My sister said it was three hundred, and that was almost two years ago. Now she’s over twenty-one, so she gave it to me. We look kind of alike, and I was thinking it would be darker in here than it is.”
“If it had been, you might have gotten away with it.” She went back to her makeup while the girl watched her. “You’re both very pretty.”
“You’re beautiful.”
Leah laughed again. “Maybe the drink was too strong.” She looked at the glass. “Done with it?”
The girl looked at it. “Oh. Yes,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
Leah took the glass. “You’re welcome. But it wouldn’t look good if you went out there carrying this.”
They both left the ladies’ room and walked back toward their respective places. Leah could see the waiter had left a glass of wine for the date and a glass of ginger ale for the girl.
Hours later, after Leah had been to three different bars and returned to her hotel, she thought back on the conversation with the girl. Fake licenses for underage drinkers didn’t seem to be the kind of business a professional would take. Three hundred dollars wasn’t what pros got paid. It was tip money. Still, the work was too good for anybody but a pro. It had magnetic tape on the back, perfect printing and sizing.
And she had seen odder things in her career. Sometimes dishonesty had no limits, either on the high end or the low. Crookedness wasn’t just a bad quality. It was a disease that acted like a philosophy. And there was also a name, and the name had been Reggie. What did Regina Varga call herself?
16
Leah went online that night to find the business that had produced the girl’s driver’s license. She had said the place was in Kenmore, a small suburb pressed up against Buffalo that called itself a village. Leah found no businesses called Varga’s This or That, or Regina’s This or That. There were a few printing shops and a couple of stationery stores that advertised printed wedding invitations and business cards and advertising mailers. There were photography shops that offered specialty printing of the sort that might extend beyond passport photos into the rest of the passport, but the girl had said a print shop, not a photographer.
Leah knew she was going to have to go from one to another asking questions and hoping for answers that she couldn’t quite ask for. She knew that when she had been to all of them she probably still wouldn’t know if any of them were making fake identification, because all she would see was a counter and a cash register and a woman who would not volunteer any information. There were no photographs of Regina Varga in the material the FBI had shared with her department.
Leah made some of these visits the next day, and they went just about the way she’d expected. Nobody appeared to know what she was talking about when she asked about getting licenses or other identification, and the only Reggie who turned up when she asked for one was a Canadian man.
When she was back in her hotel room, she tried Facebook. She typed “Regina Varga,” but got no result. Then she began the process of eliminating variations. There was no Reggie, no Reggie V, no Regina V, no R Varga, no Buffalo Reggie, and the initials RV brought thousands of possibilities, most of which were vehicles. Just the name Regina stimulated another avalanche. She spent hours trying to look at every one, but found none that could be the right woman. Before she gave up for the night, she spent a last hour on the variations of Kenmore and printing.
The tension was rising. After several nights of not hearing from Stella, Leah had begun to check her phone frequently to see if she had failed to hear a ring.
Her next two nights were spent in Black Rock, another older area, this time on the northwest side of the city, much closer to Kenmore, where Reggie’s print shop was supposed to be. There were a few Eastern European enclaves, but she got nothing out of her explorations except to taste some unfamiliar savory dishes with reddish sauce. As she was on her way to her third restaurant of the evening, she felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. She took it out and saw she had an email. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you. Don’t call or text. Come see me. Stella.”
Leah typed in an email, “I’m heading for your house now.”
She drove quickly to Stella’s neighborhood. She had a feeling she hadn’t quite identified as she drove along the old residential street. The trees were big along Stella’s block,
and the houses were small. They were all about the same—two-story houses that were so narrow they looked as though they were shrugging their shoulders. There was always a wooden porch up about six feet, and a door that opened from there into a small entry area. Beyond it in the hall were stairs to the second floor on one side and the entrance to the parlor on the other, with a straight hallway between them that led past the dining room to the kitchen. The second floor was always a landing with three very small bedrooms around it.
Stella’s house was easy to pick out, because Leah had noticed Stella had installed a rattan shade over the left side of the porch to keep the afternoon sun off her favorite sitting spot. Leah slowed some distance before she reached the house. She couldn’t say there was something wrong. She could only feel that Stella’s email didn’t seem right. She hadn’t said the right things. It didn’t seem like a retired cop to include the complaint that she’d been trying to reach her. By training and experience, an old sergeant would have no use for complaints like that. The worst days of a cop weren’t about not getting a prompt return call.
Leah looked at the street intently, paying close attention to anything that looked like a hiding place or a firing position. The moment brought back the sense of menace she had felt on certain nights looking for homicide suspects. Each doorway, each wall, had to be noticed and evaluated. If she knocked on the next door, would a puzzled and cautious householder open it, or was there somebody on the other side who would hear the knock and fire through the door?
As Leah stared along the row of houses, she noticed the way the roots of the big old trees had lifted the concrete sidewalk squares and tilted them, so what had started as a perfectly straight walkway had become like a path in a forest.