by Alan Annand
“I don’t know any Marielle either.”
“Where do you live? I need to see you.”
“I’m busy.”
“Talk to me or talk to the police.”
She thought about it. “Can I call you back?”
I didn’t want to give her my number in case it came back to bite my ass. “I’ll give you ten minutes.” I pulled out my vaporizer and sucked on it while I killed some time. I was good at that, practically a serial killer.
I used my goggles to catch up on the latest local news. Apparently the incident at the Media Center yesterday hadn’t blunted the Department of Sanitation’s enthusiasm for robotic garbage operations. Three EDGARs were scheduled to start running tonight in designated neighborhoods. Residents were reminded to ensure their small pets were indoors between midnight and four AM. Posters warned homeless people who camped out on the street. Cavete metalli bestiam noctu. Beware of the night robot.
I called Tatiana back and she picked up right away. Her tone had changed. She sounded like someone who’d been chased down an alley but, now cornered, had stopped to negotiate. She gave me her address. It was a risk going there, but worth the gamble if I could get a lead on Marielle.
I called Finder and asked if he could look up a property ownership pronto. Time’s money, he reminded me, and I agreed to pay the price.
Champlain Place was on Madison, Upper East Side, a twenty-story in white granite spanning half a block. I descended the ramp of the underground garage to a security booth with a camera and a crossbar. The rent-a-cop emerged from his cell and we negotiated a price to cover an hour or so. He raised the crossbar and pointed to the visitors’ area.
The lobby desk was manned by a doorman who looked like he’d retired from an unsuccessful career of extreme fighting. I showed my ID and he called upstairs to check with Tatiana. I passed through a metal detector and, when the scan revealed my pistol, he relieved me of it, put it in a lock-box and gave me a receipt.
Finder called back with the information I wanted. The condo was owned by Harris Jordan.
I took the elevator to the 30th floor and rang the bell at Tatiana’s apartment. I tapped my iFocals to start recording. She took her time coming to the door but it was worth the wait.
“Savage?” She regarded me coolly.
“Only when aroused. Usually I’m quite gentle.”
“Whatever,” she shrugged. I guess she’d heard it all.
She was one of those platinum blondes whose hair alone could have woven a man trap. She wore a pants-and-blouse outfit of black diaphanous material that must have come from Victoria’s Secret. Her body was something of which dreams are made, and the transparent outfit made it a lucid dream. The pants were held up by a single drawstring, and it didn’t take a Boy Scout to see the whole thing would unfurl with the gentlest of tugs. There are beautiful women and there are sexy women, but this one would have given the Pope a boner.
I passed through the pleasant fog of her perfume and she closed the door behind me. She went behind a granite counter that separated the kitchen from the living room.
“Drink?”
“Whenever I get the chance.”
“I make a mean martini.”
“Bring it on.”
She picked up a remote and pointed it into the living room. Michael Bublé began crooning from everywhere. She got some olives, ice and a chilled bottle of Grey Goose from the fridge. Vermouth and two martini glasses stood waiting on the counter.
I wandered into the living room, where a white leather sectional faced a gas fireplace. A flat screen TV occupied the wall above it. Windows spanned the west wall, covered only by a gauze curtain. I parted it to see a balcony facing the lake and the boathouse. Across the park, the lights of apartment towers on the Upper West Side made Central Park seem like a dark pit across which only a few ropes of light had been strung.
Tatiana came to me with a martini in each hand. I accepted a glass and held it up in a salute. My glass held two olives, neither much bigger than the nipples I saw through the micron of black gauze she called a blouse.
“In vino veritas,” I said
“What’s that mean?”
“Drink up and tell the truth.” I was about to take a sip when I hesitated and sniffed my drink. “What’s in this?”
“Just the usual. Why?”
“It just occurred to me, this might be doped.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Why would I do a thing like that?”
“Because you’d been told to?”
“Nobody tells me what to do.”
She said it with such a straight face I wanted to believe her, but my healthy sense of paranoia was too strong to ignore. Her martini might contain a secret ingredient that wouldn’t agree with me. If I weren’t careful, I could wake up in the morning with less than my usual complement of kidneys.
I dumped the martini down the sink and poured myself straight vodka on the rocks.
I returned to the living room, where flames had appeared in the gas fireplace. She was now sitting on the sectional, an arm stretched along the back. She took a pack of cigarettes from the coffee table and offered me one. I used her lighter to get us both going.
“So what’s this about a missing girl?”
“Please don’t insult my intelligence by playing dumb. You know Jack, so you know some of what’s going on.”
Tatiana shrugged. “Girls run away from home all the time.”
“She’s a paraplegic.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” She kicked off her heels and tucked her feet beneath her. A warm invigorating scent wafted off her. Full credits to her parfumier, the scent would have induced a lesser man to take her in his arms, but I kept a grip on my zipper.
“I don’t know. What’s the deal between you and Jack?”
“We’re just friends.”
“Friends with benefits, you mean?”
She shrugged.
“But you’re running some kind of scam on Jordan...?”
“That’s ridiculous.” She shook her head too slowly to be convincing.
But she didn’t deny she knew Jordan, so I knew my chip shot had landed on the green.
“Jack used to be a bouncer at the Hustler Club on Twelfth Avenue. It’s popular with Russians. Isn’t it ironic that one of Jordan’s campaign promises is to drive the Russian mafia out of the five boroughs. Whose side are you on?”
“I’m not really interested in politics.”
“Were you introduced to Jordan by a Russian friend? Do you gather pillow talk and feed it back to the brotherhood so they know what Jordan’s doing?”
“Nobody needs me for that. The media covers his campaign.”
“Or have I got it backwards? Maybe you’re a mole, feeding Jordan false information about the Russian mafia? Set him up to make accusations he can’t substantiate? Pull the rug out from under him the week before the election?”
“All these crazy ideas, you should have been a journalist.”
“Speaking of journalists, why were you at Ron LeVeen’s place this afternoon?”
Her jaw dropped so far I could see her tonsils. I’d suspected it was her the moment I’d walked in. She’d been wearing a black wig at LeVeen’s, and a pair of black slacks with a high-collared white blouse, so conservatively-attired she wouldn’t have attracted anyone’s eye.
But here, as soon as she’d opened her mouth, I’d recognized her voice. No matter how much diction coaching she’d had, that subtle trace of an accent was still there. I suppose she told people it was French.
Little wonder she hadn’t recognized me, considering I’d been wearing the eMask at the time, and had only revealed half of my face to reassure her. But now that she knew who I was, she didn’t react very well.
She reached under a pillow and pulled a gun on me. It was a .25 Beretta Bobcat, a small gun that fit in the palm of her hand. A mouse gun, but it’d been known to kill people. Especially at a range of three feet.
Cha
pter 35
Tatiana squinted at me, making sense of it now. “That was you at the apartment? You said you were a cop.”
“And you said you’d give me a grand to keep your name out of it. But as soon as I turned my back, you took the fire escape.”
She shrugged. “I can’t get mixed up in some murder investigation.”
“Especially not if you killed him.”
“I didn’t.”
She said it with conviction but I doubted it. LeVeen had been popped with a small-caliber weapon like her Bobcat. A ballistics test would confirm my suspicions.
“Why were you there?”
“I was working. I’m not supposed to freelance but Ron and I go way back.”
“How far back?”
“Before the Blast.”
“Jesus, what were you – a teenager?”
She shrugged. “Ron liked them young.”
“What’d you mean, no freelancing?”
“Look around.” She gestured at the apartment. “You think I can afford this place?”
“I know it belongs to Harris Jordan. Where’s Jack fit in?”
“He’s Jordan’s gofer. He was here one day to install the sound system, and he made a play for me. I didn’t fight him off. It was just a kick for us.”
“Except it got bigger than that?”
She shrugged. “We get together now and again.”
“Why was Jack here today?”
“The usual. Jordan’s out of town this week. We can’t always be so sure he won’t show up unannounced.”
“You’re a beautiful young woman. I’m sure you don’t suffer from loneliness.”
“Just because Jordan pays the rent, you think he spends real time with me? I’m just stress relief. He doesn’t take me out in public. And I’m not allowed to see anyone else.”
I heard the bitterness in her voice. Maybe she just resented her role as a sex toy. Or maybe there was more to it.
“Tell me about Jack,” I said. “He’s in trouble, isn’t he?”
She shrugged. “He’s been under a lot of pressure.”
“Because of...?”
“Loan sharks.”
“What’s he got, a drug habit?”
“A system for the horses.”
“Did he have anything to do with Marielle’s ransom demand?”
“Are you crazy?”
“Probably.” But if Jack owed money to loan sharks, he’d probably seen Marielle’s disappearance as a unique opportunity. Even if he did believe she’d run away, he could still have got some mileage out of it. Since he probably couldn’t admit his gambling problem to Vivien, or borrow money from Jordan, he’d resolved it on his own. What better way than to fake a ransom demand with the help of friends?
That ransom payment had probably gone straight to the loan shark. But with Vivien out of the house, it had also given someone opportunity to steal Marielle’s paintings. Maybe Jack’s time with Tatiana this afternoon had been to establish his alibi.
I told her my theory.
“Brilliant deduction, Sherlock,” she said. “But if you’re so smart, how come I’m holding the gun?”
“Did you pull a gun on LeVeen too? Was he investigating the Russian mafia’s influence on City Hall? Did you go to his place to kill the story? Or feed him false information?”
“You know what they say. Two people can keep a secret so long as one of them is dead.”
“You can trust me.”
“No, I have to shoot you. Even if that means spending the rest of the night cleaning the rug.”
“Don’t shoot me too hard and maybe I won’t bleed.”
She laughed, but it had a tinny ring to it, like a spent slug rattling in a coroner’s stainless steel dish. “Why couldn’t you have just drunk your martini and saved me the trouble?” Her voice was steady but edged with irritation.
“I’m just a natural troublemaker.” I took the pack from the coffee table and lit a cigarette. “Mind if I smoke a last one for the road?”
Her mouth was set hard and her hand was steady as she pointed the gun at my face. “Maybe you want to close your eyes.”
“Don’t forget to take off the safety.”
The gun angled slightly to the right as her thumb felt for the safety. It was all I needed. I flicked the cigarette at her face, striking her in the eye. She yelped and I made a swipe for the gun. It popped once and I felt a bullet go through my jacket sleeve. I seized her wrist and twisted it hard. The gun fell to the carpet. I gave her a backhand that made her teeth rattle like castanets.
She collapsed on the sofa and cried awhile. She probably felt pretty stupid that I’d disarmed her. I imagined her jaw hurt too but her tears were probably more for the good life she saw spiraling down the drain.
I plucked my smoldering cigarette from the carpet and took a latex glove from my pocket to retrieve the Bobcat. It was a cute little girlie gun with a silver finish and mother-of-pearl inlay in the wooden handgrip. I made sure the safety was on and pocketed it.
I went to the door and made sure it was double-latched. I poured us each another vodka on the rocks. Under different circumstances, this might have been pleasant, but I still had some tough love to dole out.
“What will you do with me?” She drained her vodka, took an ice cube from her glass and held it against her cheek where my backhand had raised a welt.
I noted the time on the recorder so I could find this segment later. I stubbed my cigarette in the ashtray and came halfway across the sofa until I had her hemmed in the cushions. I took her glass away and set it on the coffee table.
“I won’t hurt you if you tell me the truth. What’s going on between you and Jack and your Russian friends? What was LeVeen’s role in all this?”
“You make it sound like some kind of conspiracy. But I don’t know…”
I had no time for this. She wouldn’t betray her employers unless she was scared. But she was Russian, she was tough, and she didn’t scare easily. So I grabbed her nose and gave it a violent quarter turn. She screamed like a banshee.
I found a box of tissue and gave it to her. “Why’d you kill LeVeen? Was he working for Jordan?”
She blew her nose and examined what was in the tissue. There was a smear of blood, but she’d live. I got the bottle and poured her another shot. She drained it and gave me a sullen look but said nothing.
“We can do this all night. By the time I’m finished, your nose will be upside-down. No one will ever look at you again.” I closed in, ready to make her scream again if it came to that.
She raised a hand, waving me off.
“LeVeen was sympathetic to Jordan,” she said. “He’d written positive coverage for his run-up campaign. But Jordan needed an exposé to drive it home. LeVeen was writing a major article that would have been pivotal to the election outcome.”
“What was he investigating?”
“Kickbacks. Half of city council is on the take. LeVeen’s story would have named dozens of city councilors. It would have provided the police evidence to bring influence-peddling charges against members of the Russian community. Jordan would have been portrayed as the best man to fight corruption in the five boroughs.”
“What evidence?”
“LeVeen had informants. One who worked for the DMV got his hands on the GPS data for a hundred vehicles of interest. The cars of city councilors and known members of the bratva.”
“Bratva. The Russian mafia?”
She nodded. “This computer nerd used electronic VIN-tags to track their movements going back two years. He came up with a history of meetings – dates, places, times, duration of proximity – that proves contact between city councilors and members of the bratva. It would have allowed the police to launch criminal investigations.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Jack told me.”
“And how’d he learn about it?”
“He installed spy software on Jordan’s phone. He’s been monitoring all his calls.
”
“Ironic that he was Jordan’s security manager.”
“Life is full of ironies,” she shrugged. “Shortly after Jack got back home from visiting me, he intercepted a call on his cloned phone. LeVeen had called Jordan to say his DMV mole had just delivered a flash drive with all the GPS data. LeVeen was going to work on it tomorrow. It was a big story, might take him a few days to pull it all together.”
“So Jack asked you to get the flash drive from LeVeen before he could use the data.”
“It would’ve taken him an hour to come in from Long Island. I was there in fifteen minutes.”
“Why’d Jack want it?”
“He’s in debt to the bratva. He wanted to earn some credit, get ahead of the curve.”
“Or maybe he wanted to destroy it. Was there anything in the DMV data that might incriminate him?”
“Jack chauffeured for Jordan, and often drove his Mercedes. He may have been a bagman both coming and going, if you know what I mean.”
“Both city councilors and members of the bratva on his route?”
“Maybe.”
“So a police investigation would implicate him too.”
“Probably. But since he’s not Russian, his silence wouldn’t be guaranteed. To make sure he didn’t talk, the bratva would probably whack him.”
“Maybe you too.”
She seemed not to have thought of that until now. “Can you protect me?”
“Why should I?”
She unbuttoned her blouse and shrugged it off her shoulders. I stared for a moment at her spectacular breasts, catching a whiff of the expensive perfume that radiated off them.
“Those are very attractive offers, but you’re not really my type.”
God knows she was beautiful, and if this were a movie, I could see another man there on the sofa with her, thrusting away as she drummed her heels on his back. But I was not that man.
I stood up. She gave me a look, something between seductive and sullen, I couldn’t tell which, as she pulled her blouse back on and fastened a couple of buttons.
“Between Jordan and the bratva, you can’t count on anyone’s protection. Buy a one-way plane ticket to a new life. Copy?”