Nobody's Child (Georgia Davis Series)

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  Chapter 76

  Savannah

  Vanna gulped air. She didn’t want to go back to the filth, the whores, the heroin. She didn’t know what was going on, but this man was now clearly in charge of her, and at least for now, she had to play along. She let out her breath and pretended to think. Then she planted one hand on her hip, angled it out, and smiled seductively. “I guess I’ll stay.” She paused. “So? Did I pass?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “What’s your name?” she called out.

  More silence. “C’mon. Make one up if you want to. I need to call you something.”

  Then, “I am Vlad.”

  Vlad? What kind of a name was that? She shaded her eyes again and tried to make out his features. She couldn’t. “Well, Vlad. What happens now?”

  A throaty chuckle came from the shadows.

  Vanna was suddenly tired of the bullshit. “Okay. Tell it to me straight. What do I have to do to get out of here? How much do you want?”

  He sidestepped the answer. “Where is home?”

  “Colorado.”

  “Why you leave?”

  A sharp memory of her mother bit into her. Why hadn’t they been able to make it work after her father died? Maybe Vanna should have been more caring. Her mother was as broken as she was. Maybe they could have patched each other up instead of ripping each other to shreds. Vanna needed someone who cared whether she lived or died. Maybe, over time, she could have broken through her mother’s problems and found that love. Her father would have wanted that.

  “Tell me,” Vlad said.

  She shook her head.

  “Okay. What is your name?”

  “Vanna.”

  “Vanna? What name Vanna? For TV show?”

  “It’s short for Savannah. Hey, do you think we could turn down the lights? I’d really like—”

  Ignoring her request, he cut her off. “Why you come Chicago?”

  She pressed her lips together. He didn’t have to know.

  “I waiting, Vanna.” He emphasized the word “Vanna.”

  She kept her mouth shut.

  “Is big secret?”

  She shook her head.

  “You tell me. Now.” He sounded irritated.

  Vanna considered it. Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal. He’d probably heard the story before. “My mother and I weren’t getting along. So I came to see my sister.”

  There was a sudden pause. Then, “You have sister here?”

  “Well, a half sister,” she replied. “Look, if it’s money you want, I can borrow some to pay you off,” she lied. “Really. Just give me a chance.”

  “Where is sister?” His voice grew cool. The throaty laugh was gone.

  “I—I don’t know. Things happened so fast…” Her voice trailed off. Maybe she shouldn’t have brought up Georgia.

  “You want I call?”

  Vanna looked at the floor. “She doesn’t know I’m here,” she said softly.

  She heard him shift. Had she made a mistake? Maybe she should never have mentioned Georgia.

  “What is sister name?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Even though she couldn’t see Vlad, she had a sense he was leaning forward. Waiting. “Tell me her name.”

  Again, she shook her head.

  “Vanna, you want make you talk?”

  Vanna ran her tongue around her lips. She had fucked up. But there was no way to unring this bell. She had to tell him. “Her name is Georgia.”

  “Georgia? Georgia what?”

  “Georgia Davis.”

  Once again, a silence so long and deep that it seemed to suck all the air out of the room. What had she done? She wrapped her arms around herself protectively. Finally, Vlad cleared his throat. What came out of his mouth next shocked her. In fact, it scared the shit out of her.

  “Your sister…she is police?”

  She went rigid. How could he know that? Who was this man? Why would he think Georgia was a cop? A mental alarm blasted her brain. She had to fix things. Fast.

  “There’s no fucking way my sister is a cop,” she blustered. But even as she said it, she recalled her mother telling her how she’d married a cop in Chicago all those years ago. That man had been Georgia’s father. It was possible. But how did this man know?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the rustle of movement. Vlad stood up and came toward her. She lifted her chin, like an animal sniffing the air.

  When he came into view, she took a step back. She recognized him. He was the man in the leather jacket who’d come to the hooker apartment a month earlier. Who’d chosen her and Jenny and brought them here. Whose orders had been obeyed without his saying a word.

  She looked him over. Muscled and well built, he was the type she wouldn’t mind fucking. Skin so pale it was milky, eyes so icy blue they could probably cut glass. High cheekbones, a nose that looked like it had been broken once or twice—but who cared about that?—and a mass of thick hair, black and silver, particularly at the temples. Still, there was something wild and dangerous in his face, something that made her feel there were no boundaries he wouldn’t cross. His expression was cold and detached. He stared at her as if she were nothing more than a lump of clay.

  “A sister. Police. Georgia Davis.” His gaze turned calculating, as if he was putting things together. Finally he smiled, as if he had just figured it out. But it was an odd, crooked smile, a smile that highlighted his sharp features but did nothing to warm his face. “Well, well. How you say? It is small world.”

  She recoiled.

  He called out something in Russian. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw, or maybe felt, Zoya, who was lurking at the entrance to the room, stiffen. He talked to Zoya, whose eyebrows rose sky-high. Then he switched back to English. “How you say? This is my lucky day.”

  Vanna took a step back, but he closed in, invading her space, moving so close she could smell his aftershave. She didn’t recognize it. An icicle of fear slid up her spine.

  He cupped her chin in his hand, still with that strange, crooked smile. “I think we have fun now. How you say? Kill birds with stone?”

  “Kill two birds with one stone,” Vanna murmured.

  “Yes.” Vlad paused. “We see how good a cop sister is.” He grinned as if he was very pleased with himself. ”Zoya. Go into kitchen. Get paper. Pencil. We plan.”

  Vanna shivered. Her bravado vanished. Something was off. Really off.

  Vlad turned back to her with a cold smile, one that, curiously, reminded her of her mother in one of her moods. Then the smile vanished, and he gazed at her with barely disguised contempt. “You now gonna be my favorite girl.”

  Zoya came back into the room with paper and pen.

  Vlad motioned to Vanna. “Bring her to me in an hour.”

  Chapter 77

  When Georgia was still a cop, her boyfriend, Matt, a detective on the force, had come home with one of the strangest stories she’d ever heard. He and his partner, Mike Green, now happily retired and fishing in Wisconsin, were running down a burglary ring at Northbrook Court, an upscale mall on the North Shore. The targets included jewelry and high-end apparel stores as well as a wildly successful electronics store. They were sure it was an inside job—apparently the thieves had keys to the stores—but they didn’t have enough evidence. They’d been brainstorming how to proceed when Green had an idea.

  A few hours later Matt found himself with Green in front of a modest ranch house tucked away on a nondescript residential Northbrook street.

  “Why are we here?” Matt had asked.

  “You’ll see,” Green replied.

  Green rang the doorbell. The woman who opened the door was middle-aged and plump and wore enough jewelry on her wrists, fingers, and ears that she jangled when she moved. Her eyes narrowed when she saw them. Matt had the feeling she knew they were police.

  “You have appointment?” she said in a thick Slavic accent.

  Mike Green nodded. “Tell him it’s Mikhail.�
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  The woman turned toward a door on one side of the hall and opened it. Matt could see a flight of stairs. He heard her jangle as she took the steps down.

  “What’s going on?” Matt said quietly.

  Green put his finger to his lips.

  The woman returned, beckoned them inside, and closed the front door. Then she threw an imperious wave toward the open door. “You go down.”

  They did. She closed that door too. Matt, halfway down the steps, promptly let his hand stray toward his holster, but Mike shook his head. “You’re not gonna need it.”

  Georgia interrupted Matt at that point. “What the hell was going on? Where were you?”

  “We had entered the throne room of one of the most powerful Mafiya leaders in Chicago.”

  “The what?”

  “The throne room,” Matt said. “You remember in the Godfather, how on the day of his daughter’s wedding, Marlon Brando received people who wanted favors in his office?”

  Georgia nodded. “Right. He wasn’t supposed to say no because it was his daughter’s wedding. I always thought that was just Hollywood bullshit.”

  “Not really,” Matt said. “This guy saw people in his basement. They called it the throne room. And it kind of looked like one. He sat at one end in a La-Z-Boy recliner, and there were chairs and things set up theater-style in front of him, like he was the pope granting an audience. That’s where he did business.”

  “And you were there because…”

  “We needed a favor.”

  “Huh?”

  “We told him we knew he wasn’t behind the burglaries, and—”

  “Wait a minute. How did you know that?”

  Matt grinned. “We didn’t. But Mike played to his ego.”

  Georgia raised her eyebrows.

  “He said he was sure the guy wouldn’t have been involved in such an amateur job. That the people who ripped off the stores didn’t even have the brains to fence the stuff in Milwaukee or Minneapolis. That we’d already found a lot of the goods in Chicago. And that it was just a matter of time before we got to the source.”

  “Was any of that true?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But he believed you?”

  “Not a word,” Matt went on.

  Georgia scowled. “I don’t get it.”

  “He knew what we were saying and why we were there. It was a kind of code.”

  “In what way?”

  “He knew we were getting heat from the village and the mall developers and the chain stores inside the mall. We needed an arrest,” Matt said.

  “You told him that?”

  “We didn’t have to. He reads the papers. Or someone read them to him. He knew.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He gave up the guys who did the job.”

  “So it was him who did the job?”

  “Probably.”

  “And you let him skate?”

  “He was clearly in charge. The boss. Maybe the boss of bosses. The burglaries were penny ante stuff. He knew we needed him to scratch our back, and we all knew we’d have to scratch his somewhere down the road.”

  Georgia felt a chill. She knew there was a thin line between lawmakers and lawbreakers, but she’d never thought that applied to the people she worked with every day.

  “But…,” she’d stammered, searching for something to say, “I thought the Russians weren’t that well organized, you know, not like the Outfit.”

  “They’ve had twenty years to learn,” Matt said. “Anyway, the guy told us he’d done his good deed for the decade…and not to come back.”

  “Did you?”

  “Nope. And of course, his lead was good. We cracked the case.”

  Now Georgia ran her hand up and down her arm. She got up from her desk and went to the window. Another frigid night, the moonless sky threatening to close in and swallow everything on the ground.

  After telling her the story, Matt had sworn her to secrecy, and she’d respected that. She hadn’t thought about it at all.

  Until this morning.

  Chapter 78

  She knew the man in the Beemer last night. Knew him well, in fact—he’d been her last case as a cop. She was investigating the murder of a woman captured on a video surveillance tape. The tape had been brought to her by Ellie Foreman. It wasn’t a snuff film, but it might as well have been. They learned that the victim had been in the clutches of a former lieutenant in the Soviet military. After the USSR collapsed, he sold weapons off a base in Soviet Georgia. When that dried up, he emigrated to the States and ran hookers, drugs, and small arms deals. Eventually he partnered with a prominent Chicago developer, Max Gordon.

  His name was Vlad. No last name. Just Vlad. Now, ten years later, he apparently had resurfaced. Running a hooker ring, a baby farm, and an organ transplant business.

  Georgia threw off the blankets, got out of bed, and brewed a pot of coffee. She couldn’t take Vlad by herself. He and his men would be well armed and itching for combat. She might be able to get inside, deal with one or two of them, but she would need reinforcements on the way out.

  She didn’t want to go to the police—it still wasn’t a solid case for them—too many maybes and what-ifs and too little evidence. If they did decide to get involved, they’d screw it up. Cops were not known for their delicacy. They’d storm the farm with massive firepower; if she was there, Savannah would be caught in the crossfire. She didn’t want to get Jimmy involved, either. Whatever happened would complicate their relationship, assuming they still had a chance for one. She needed outside help. Powerful help.

  The coffeepot beeped. She poured a mug, drank half, then showered and dressed. While she was blow-drying her hair, the notion took shape. It was crazy. Even subversive. But it was a way to fight fire with fire.

  She stared at the phone. Matt was trying to put his life back together, and she’d promised herself she wouldn’t exploit their relationship. Then she thought of the times he’d exploited her for one thing or another. Of course, she’d let him. She’d hoped that would make him love her more.

  She took in a breath. She wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, but her options were limited, and she couldn’t waste time. She punched in Matt’s number.

  Chapter 79

  It was noon when she pulled up to the house in Northbrook. A modest redbrick ranch house with a couple of pin oaks in front, their branches now skeletal and scrawny, the place wasn’t showy, and it seemed to fit in with the other homes on the block. Matt was already there, his engine idling. She slid out of the Toyota and walked over.

  A dirty leaden overcast hung low, and the February day was bitter. Matt rolled down the window.

  “Thanks, Matt. I appreciate this.”

  He nodded. They hadn’t seen each other in months, but neither offered the normal pleasantries. “Unless you tell him the whole truth, you know, it’s gonna blow up in your face,” he said.

  Matt wasn’t a big man, but he was powerfully built. And wiry. With curly dark hair and almond-shaped eyes that were almost feminine, he still made her catch her breath. He wasn’t wearing his glasses today. Georgia felt a pang. Glasses gentled him, even gave him a sensitive air, unusual for a former cop.

  He seemed to know she was appraising him and smiled. That broke the spell. She’d been outed. The case of nerves that had been roiling her gut since she called him returned. “You’re coming in with me, aren’t you?”

  “I have to. He won’t see you otherwise. Actually, to be fair, he might not see us at all. We’ll have to get past his bodyguards.”

  She nodded.

  “One more thing,” he added. “If we do get in, don’t laugh.”

  She frowned.

  “As I recall, some of—I guess—what you’d call his furnishings are pretty strange. But for God’s sake, when you see them, don’t crack a smile. You’re in the throne room.”

  Puzzled, Georgia frowned. Together, they walked up three concrete steps to a small porch.
Matt pressed the bell.

  A woman who was probably in her sixties but trying for forty opened the door. Wearing an expensive-looking warm-up suit, with perfectly coiffed hair and manicured nails, she had a face on which work had definitely been done. The woman stared at Matt, and a moment later recognition lit her face. This woman was sharp.

  “You remember me.” Matt sounded surprised.

  The woman dipped her head from side to side: maybe yes, maybe no. Georgia fidgeted. She hated the way some people made that casual gesture in response to a question or comment, as if the answer was ultimately unknowable or not that important to begin with.

  Without saying a word the woman stepped back from the door. Behind her were two brawny men, not even bothering to hide their pistols. She nodded to the men and pointed her index finger. She turned away, opened a door, and thumped downstairs.

  One of the men growled. “Hands up.”

  Matt raised his arms. Georgia followed suit. Each of the men frisked them thoroughly. Then the second man grunted. Georgia lowered her arms.

  “It’s the same woman,” Matt said quietly. “It’s got to have been ten years since I saw her.”

  “I got it.”

  “I guess it doesn’t hurt to be married to a woman with a photographic memory.”

  Georgia wondered if that was somehow directed at her. She didn’t have a photographic memory. Then she stopped. She was falling into the same pattern she used to when she was with Matt. Wanting to measure up. Wondering if everything he said was an indirect allusion to her. She shifted again.

  The woman came back up and nodded to the guards. One of them opened the door wider. Georgia walked into a stifling house, the heat way too high for February. A few feet away was the open door. The woman gestured toward it.

  “You go down.”

  Georgia tried to flash the small group a polite smile, but the woman had already turned away.

  As soon she descended the steps, Georgia realized she was in a foreign place. The staircase itself was ordinary, its walls paneled in a dark woody color. But the floor of the main room, which stretched the length of the house, was covered with thick shag carpeting. No one had shag carpeting now. It was a cocoa brown, not that different from the paneling covering the walls. The dark, bearish color screamed “man cave.”