The paved walkway bisecting the greenhouse was bordered by gravel. On each side a double row of low redwood benches, drilled with drainage holes, extended the length of the building. Floor space was at a premium, and he sometimes had trouble navigating to the farther benches. Really, he should clear out some of his plants, but he loved them too dearly. The orchids were his special favorites, but he would not part with any of his lovelies. Truth be told, he found it hard to restrain himself from buying more.
He replaced the pot on the bench and directed his attention to the next Phalaenopsis that was losing its leaves. He faced at least another hour of such work, but time meant nothing to him in the greenhouse. There was only the drip of percolating water through the drainage holes in the display benches, the burr of the fans, the occasional whine of the roof vents as they opened to release hot air trapped at the ridge. It was peaceful here.
In his youth there had been no orchids, no greenhouses, and precious little beauty. The city of Donetsk, where he was raised in a family of six by a gruff, overworked father and an anemic, hysterical mother, was an ugly place, a warren of factories, mines, and prisons, and smoke everywhere, and rough tattooed men cursing floridly and drinking dark Slavutich beer. One of the prisons dated to the days of the czars. On its grounds had stood a scaffold where criminals had been hanged. Ancient and rotting, it was torn down, the lumber tossed in the street. His mother had taken some of it to make a crib for him. As a baby he had slept in the wood of the gallows.
His first clear memory dated from when he was five or six years old. He found himself outside a nightclub after dark; he no longer remembered why. As he stood there, perhaps cadging kopeks from passersby, he saw a sleek black Mercedes sedan pull up to the curb. A man and two women got out, the man in a tailored suit, the women in frilly Parisian fashions. Tall women, lithe and willowy, with long legs and great manes of black hair.
Anton never forgot his sight of that sedan and the women who emerged from it. Though only a child, he knew at that moment what his life must be. He did not want to be a nobody like his father. He wanted a car like that and women like that. And to get those things, he must become a man like that.
Well, he had become that kind of man. But fate was cruel, or perhaps it merely had a sense of humor. He could have all the women he wanted now, but he had lost the desire. Long legs and black manes meant nothing to him.
“What does it profit a man,” he whispered, smiling, “if he gains the whole world and loses his balls?”
The intercom buzzed, announcing the doctor’s arrival. Streinikov had forgotten the appointment.
“Send him in,” he said indifferently.
This was a new doctor, one he had never seen before. A replacement for old Abrutski, who had served Streinikov for several years until the two had a falling out, an argument in which Abrutski made the mistake of insulting his patient. The insult was no doubt unintentional and was quickly withdrawn, but the damage was already done. To offend a man like Streinikov, a man of power, a vor, was never a good idea. Abrutski had died just two days later, a victim of a home invasion in which, curiously, no valuables were taken. Newspaper reports said he had suffered greatly. His neighbors had heard no screams, most likely because the good doctor’s lips had been sutured shut, a most creative touch.
This tragedy had necessitated the employment of a new doctor to administer Streinikov’s weekly injections. A certain Richard Vasnev had been selected on the basis of his reputation for loyalty and discretion. It was unlikely Vasnev relished the appointment, but refusal was not an option.
He watched the doctor’s progress through the main house. A monitor near the potting bench displayed a constantly changing mosaic of images from inside the residence, where a camera was installed in every room. There were, however, no cameras in the greenhouse. Nothing intruded on his privacy here.
Finally the doctor disappeared from the screen, having left the house via the sunroom. He would be coming down the path now, past the garage, escorted by Avram Lysenko, Streinikov’s bodyguard, who lived on the property and controlled the front gate.
While waiting, Streinikov pruned another plant. He hummed a little tune, something from Tchaikovsky, he believed. After a few moments there was a rap on the greenhouse door.
“Vkhodi,” he said. Come in.
The door opened, and a little man, prematurely bald and unnaturally pale, entered in Lysenko’s charge.
Streinikov offered the usual pleasantries as he rolled up his sleeve. He was accustomed to this treatment, which he had received for most of his adult life. Castration would normally lead to loss of muscle tone and physical strength; the regular administration of testosterone could counteract these effects. It could also restore some degree of sexual function, but Streinikov cared nothing about that.
Lysenko stood watching in the background as the doctor opened his little black bag—yes, he actually carried one, just like a doctor in a movie—and removed a vial and a syringe.
“Do you like my greenhouse, Doctor?” Streinikov asked as the syringe was filled.
“Lovely,” Vasnev said, though in truth he appeared to have noticed nothing around him except Streinikov and Lysenko and the pistol casually snugged in Lysenko’s belt.
“A flowering orchid is a thing of consummate beauty, don’t you think? I love very few things, but I do love my darlings.”
“Yes,” Vasnev said nervously, “they are very nice.”
“Very nice? Is this all you can say? The orchid is a magical blossom, the flower of the gods. From time immemorial it has been linked in mythic imaginings with lust, murder, madness—and castration.”
“Has it? I didn’t know.” He tapped the needle, not meeting Streinikov’s eyes.
“Da. The very word orchid is derived from the Greek word for testicle. I have sometimes thought it was this archetypal connection that prompted a suffragette mob to destroy dozens of rare orchid blooms at the Kew Gardens in 1913—man-hating harridans performing symbolic emasculation—a monstrous orchidectomy.”
Vasnev slipped the needle into Streinikov’s arm. The pain was inconsequential. Streinikov had known much worse.
“And then there is my own peculiar situation,” he went on. “The eunuch symbolically cultivating his replacement parts. Surely the irony had occurred to you?”
“Not at all.” The doctor licked his lips, and the hand holding the syringe trembled.
“Nyet? To me, neither, when I began. I knew nothing of the word’s etymology at first, nor of the legend of Orkhis. Do you know this tale?”
Vasnev shook his head and withdrew the needle.
“Orkhis was a young man who made the mistake of forcing himself on one of the Maenads, the female acolytes of Dionysus, god of wine and revelry. For all his merriment, our Dionysus had no sense of humor about such things. As punishment, poor Orkhis was metamorphosed into an orchid, his offending scrotum forever on display.”
“Mmm.” Vasnev pressed a wad of sterile cotton against the wound. A seam of sweat wound its way down his cheek.
“I knew nothing of this, yet I chose these particular plants to cultivate. Now look at me—the eunuch guardian of an orchid harem. An unmanned man whose missing genitalia burst forth around him in a thousand blooms.”
There was nothing Vasnev could say to this. He removed the cotton and affixed a small bandage to the injection site.
“Does this line of conversation unsettle you?” Streinikov asked.
“Not at all,” Vasnev said. “Not at all.” The phrase was his mantra.
“It pleases me to indulge in such flights of fancy. Always my mind has tended toward the poetical and, I suppose, the grotesque. I might have been a great artist, had I not been ... what I am.”
“Yes, of course.” Vasnev was packing up his supplies with undue haste.
“I am sure we will get along famously, Doctor. We shall have a long and happy partnership, you and I.”
Vasnev tried to smile and managed only a twist of t
he mouth that looked like a nervous tic.
“At least as long and happy as that which I enjoyed with your predecessor,” Streinikov added.
He watched with amusement as Lysenko led the man out. He did enjoy putting fear in people. One of his less attractive qualities, no doubt.
He had not always been feared. In his teenage years he might have thought of himself as a gangster, a dangerous customer, but the men who rode in black Mercedes sedans and escorted overpriced hookers on their arms were unimpressed. So little had they feared him that when his amorous diversions with Smolin’s woman were discovered—a pretty blonde whore, Katya by name, a girl of no importance except as Smolin’s personal property—they had not hesitated to exact the most humiliating revenge. They had taken his manhood with the blade of a knife, cauterized the wound with a hot iron, and sent him weeping into the streets with his trousers still down around his knees.
At first, of course, he had raged and wept, thinking of suicide. But that mood had passed, and he had discovered an unsuspected advantage to his new condition. Previously, he had been forever distracted by the desire for sex, the chronic quest for relief, the embarrassing neediness that felt like weakness. Now he was rid of all that. He could devote himself single-mindedly and unemotionally to the pursuit of what really mattered, with no diversions and no need to satisfy mere animal urges.
Had that barbaric surgery never been performed, Streinikov would never have risen to his present station in life. What had been intended as the crudest revenge had revealed itself, in the process of time, to be his greatest gift. Not that Smolin and his thugs could have understood such a thing. And because they did not understand, because they had meant only to humiliate and wound, they had incurred a debt that must be paid.
It took five years for Streinikov to rise to a position of power in Donetsk. Then he sent Gura and a few others of his most trusted men to hunt down Smolin and his crew—and even Katya, by now traded to another paymaster. The prisoners were brought to him, and Streinikov himself oversaw a series of surgical procedures that deprived Smolin and his men of their balls—and their pricks also, just as he had prophesied on the night of his mutilation. He watched the men bleed out, letting Smolin linger the longest as he dangled upside down from a hook in the ceiling to keep the blood flowing to his brain.
Then he took care of Katya. Though she swore her innocence, he knew she must have betrayed him to Smolin. Under duress, probably, but that was no excuse. She had given him up and cost him his manhood, and he took his revenge personally, by his own hand. By the time he consented to let her die, she was a thing without fingers, ears, or eyes, a thing that was all screams and blood. After she was dead, he scalped her and tacked her blonde hair to the wall, a pennant raised in victory.
The story got around. People feared him after that. They had never stopped fearing him.
He would see to it that they never did.
16
It was shortly after three o’clock when Bonnie climbed the stairs to Brad’s apartment. He ought to be done with his shift by now; she expected him to be home.
He was. She found him in a terrycloth bathrobe, his hair still wet from a shower.
“Bad news,” she said. “Gotta work tonight.”
“On a Saturday?”
“What can I say? Duty calls. Which unfortunately takes precedence over booty calls.” She wandered into the tiny kitchen and liberated a Coors Light from the fridge. “Your shift go okay?”
“Same old. Dan was going on about you again.”
She cracked open the bottle. “Yeah? About what?”
“Something to do with Maritime. He wouldn’t give any details.”
“He’s a man of mystery, is Danny boy.” She took a long swig.
“Don’t call him that. He’s my superior.”
“Dan Maguire isn’t anybody’s superior.”
“I need to treat him with respect.”
“Maybe.” She chugged more of the bottle. “But I don’t.”
He looked away, frowning.
It was at times like this that she wondered about the future of their relationship. Brad was a good guy, but he had no rough edges. Since she was pretty much all rough edges, she couldn’t quite figure out what he saw in her. He wore a uniform and respected authority, and he’d seen only a certain side of life. Nobody was going to come gunning for him. He had never drawn his firearm in the field. He gave out traffic tickets and showed up to help old people who’d called 911 because they were feeling short of breath. She didn’t know if he’d ever gotten a kitten down from a tree, but one time he had assisted in the rescue of a family of baby ducks from a storm drain.
Her world was a different place, a place of tight corners and no exits and sudden, savage struggles that meant life or death. Bradley Walsh wasn’t meant to be part of that world. And it might not be possible to keep her life safely walled off from his. She was trying, though. Trying her damnedest.
She sighed. “Okay, okay. Don’t get all miffed. Him and me just don’t get along.”
“He and I,” he corrected automatically.
“Oh, great. I’m dating a grammar Nazi.”
He smiled at that, and the stiffness of his posture relaxed a little. “Whatever he’s after, he was talking about getting a search warrant.”
Her stomach tightened. She put the bottle down. “A warrant? For my office?”
“And your home.”
“Why? What’s he looking for?”
“Told you, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ve got nothing to hide.”
He said it with just the faintest lilt of a question mark. Or maybe she only imagined that.
“I don’t like the idea of a bunch of jackbooted storm troopers pawing through my personal stuff,” she said slowly.
“As one of the jackbooted storm troopers, I should take offense at that.” He was grinning. “It’s a wild goose chase. He’s always after you for something. The Long Fong Boyz, or that shooting on the boardwalk. You know what I saw on his desk last fall? Your PI application. You know, the SP one-seven-one you submitted to get your license.”
“He looked into that, did he?”
“I guess he was running his own background check. Can you believe it? The state police already cleared you. What’d he think he was going to find?”
Bonnie had some ideas about that. As the poet said, oh what a tangled fucking web we weave.
Thing was, when she’d applied for her license eight years ago, she’d fallen just a hair short of the state’s requirements as immortalized in the Security Officer Registration Act of 1939. And by a hair, she meant a country mile. The main obstacle was that the state expected her to have at least five years’ professional experience as an investigator. She had precisely zilch.
That was where a fellow by the name of Frank Kershaw came in. He created a paper trail establishing her five years of employment at a Pennsylvania insurance firm. It was impressive stuff, backed up by a list of references that would all check out, because the people Frank used knew what to say when the phone rang. Hell, she would’ve hired herself after reading the résumé.
Bottom line: she wasn’t worried about any investigation Dan might have initiated. Frank’s labors on her behalf had been a work of sheer artistry. He was like that mathematician guy—he had a beautiful mind. Only instead of solving quadratic equations or whatever, his noggin was dedicated to conning people like Dan Maguire into believing a bunch of bullshit, or at least being unable to disprove it.
“I would’ve told you,” Brad added, “but I guess I thought it was too stupid to even mention.”
She picked up the beer and tipped it to her mouth again. “Good call.”
“What can I say? The guy’s obsessed with you. He knows it, too. You know what he calls you? His white whale.”
“Hey, I may have put on a few pounds ...”
“I think at some level he knows it’s unhealthy to be, you know, so fixated. But he can’t help himself
. He’s like a dog with a bone. This search warrant thing is just another waste of time.”
“There are judges who’ll okay a warrant with no questions asked.”
“Not exactly no questions. He’s got to have something. Probable cause.”
The bottle was mostly empty now. She twirled it between her palms. “He could make it up.”
“Dan wouldn’t do that. He may be a little crazy when it comes to you, but he’s not corrupt. He doesn’t take payoffs. He’s clean.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Seriously. He’s not perfect, but he’s an honest cop.”
“I believe you.” She polished off the bottle and flipped it into the recycle bin. “If he was dirty, he could’ve planted evidence on me a long time ago.”
“He doesn’t work that way. So you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Everything’s copacetic.” She caught him yawning. “Look, you need your beauty rest, and there’s some stuff I gotta do. Thanks for the beer. I hate to drink alone.”
“You were the only one drinking, so you did drink alone.”
“Spare me the technicalities.” She headed to the door, still thinking about that search warrant.
“You think you’ll drop by after work?” Brad asked.
“I will if I can. Could be pretty late, though.”
“I don’t mind. And be careful, okay?”
“Always am.”
Yeah, that was a lie. But what the hell. Their whole relationship was built on lies. One more couldn’t hurt.
She was at the door when his voice stopped her. “You know, you never said it back.”
“Huh?”
“Last night I said I loved you. Didn’t get an answer.”
She looked at him, feeling guilty and, for once, at a loss for words. “Oh ...”
He smiled, coming toward her. “Don’t sweat it. I know that kind of thing’s not easy for you.”
She found she was hugging herself, classic defensive body language. “It really isn’t. I’m not real touchy-feely.”
Bad to the Bone (Bonnie Parker, PI Book 3) Page 10