Murder Under the Desert Moon

by Maria Grazia Swan

"The patriarch is dead," said Larry, "and the building burned to the ground. The place is now a parking garage. However, the son is alive. He was, what, forty when Hasan was killed? He had to know what was going on. He was the only male heir."

  "We're out of time," Dennis said. "We'd need to track him down and see if he would even consider talking to us about what went on behind the closed doors of that restaurant in the eighties and nineties." He shook his head.

  "He's here. I have his address." Larry pulled a folded note from his pocket, the one I'd watched him scribble down earlier. "Sun City. He's in Sun City. I have his phone number too. Inessa, his daughter, told him to expect my call. I'm driving there this afternoon to talk to him."

  Now he had all eyes on him.

  "You're going to talk to Boris Z.? Why you? Why now?" Dennis asked.

  "Bob, my colleague, said Boris's wife passed away last year, and he just doesn't care anymore. The daughter owns the deli in California. She's second generation American, on the straight and narrow. She claims her father never did a wrong thing. It was all the patriarch. But her dad kept his mouth shut to protect his family. Apparently, he outlived the adversaries. I don't know. I'm taking Lella with me."

  He is?

  "People from the old country, they like people with an accent—makes them feel like family."

  It does?

  "I'll let you know how it goes as soon as I leave his place."

  "Make sure you don't leave horizontal." Dennis chuckled.

  What does it mean? Oh my God! Dead?

  Larry shrugged it off and patted his right side. He used to carry his gun there. No…I kept a frozen smile throughout the whole exchange. Certainly he was joking. Larry would never put me in danger, not consciously. Right?

  Greta, who had not spoken or even looked at me, suddenly grabbed my hand and shook it. "Be safe," she said. She closed her computer and left.

  Seriously? Should I call Kyle? And say what? Now I understood how Christians must have felt before being fed to the lions at the Coliseum.

  When Larry started the engine of the Lincoln I was still running different scenarios through my mind. He'd never once asked me if I wanted to go with him. We pulled out of the parking space, the only sound in the car the AC blowing at full power.

  "Well?" He patted my knee.

  "Well what?"

  "Aren't you going to ask me if I've lost my mind?"

  "Why? Someone found it?"

  There was about a split second of awkward silence, and then he started to laugh so hard I was afraid he was going to crash the car. After he dried the tears from too much laughing he said, "Right now I would like to park the car in a dark underground parking and rip off your clothes and make love to you."

  "Hold that thought, but no underground garage, too much echo."

  "Lella," long pause, and a chuckle, "we need to travel to hot cities more often."

  I interlaced my fingers with his and waited. After a while reality reclaimed our senses.

  "About that Russian man, I don't want you to be concerned," he said. "Truth is, after his wife passed he had a stroke, and he's confined to a wheelchair. He's in an assisted-living facility waiting to transfer back to California, to be closer to his daughter, you know, the baker.

  "She asked me to stop by a Russian deli called Yasha from Russia and pick up some of her dad's favorite pastries. She said he'll be happy to have visitors, and he wouldn't mind telling me what he knows about Hasan and Valeri. According to her, he has no loyalty to any of the old gang from Europe. His loyalty ended when they torched the restaurant his father had built. The family blamed the patriarch's demise on the loss of the business that was also their home. Anyway, we're on our way to this Yasha from Russia. We need to get on the 51 freeway and get off on Shea Boulevard. Is that okay? "

  "Sure, what kind of pastries are we getting?"

  "We can get whatever you want, but I've written down what Boris likes. I didn't feel like going through all that with Dennis and Greta."

  "Do you think Greta would be a good match for Kyle?"

  "Hey? Are you serious? You think Kyle needs help finding women? I had the impression it was the other way around."

  "No, no, I didn't mean it that way. She looks so smart."

  "How does one look smart? If you ask me I think she needs to spend more time outside and get some sun. She looks like a candle, you know, made of wax. The only time she perks up a little is when Dennis's kid comes around, and then her cheeks turn pink because she blushes."

  "Logan and Greta?"

  "I don't know about Logan, but I know she likes him."

  A green directional sign pointed to the 51-North. Larry maneuvered the Lincoln in that direction. We zoomed past road signs. Bethany Home Road, what an interesting name. It had me wondering again how the names came to be. More roads.

  We passed Northern, and we must have left the city behind. Rocky hills with sharp edges and no vegetation stood to attention on both sides of the freeway, probably very spooky at night. Then the exit for Shea Boulevard appeared.

  What a change of scenery again! Yasha from Russia was a very large store with enough parking space to accommodate a small convention. Inside, the smell of cheeses and processed meats reminded me of salumerie back home. Pastries covered two large tables from which we could choose what we wanted.

  Larry pulled out his notes and handed them to the lady behind the counter. She read them and looked at us, back and forth.

  Finally Larry said, "It's for Boris Z.—his daughter Inessa sent me."

  The woman's face lit up. "Good, good, and how are they doing? Everything okay? We use the same recipe you know. Got mine from Boris's wife, Anya. Such a good woman, gone too soon."

  While talking, she'd picked up what looked like a cake and started to cut it into very small pieces, her hands moving fast, cutting with precision and confidence.

  Did she notice my state of awe? She handed me one of the morsels. It melted in my mouth, and it tasted of honey and summer.

  We left Yasha with Boris's Medovik Cake made from his deceased wife's recipe, an extra container of the same cake for us to take home, and enough sliced meats and cheeses and homemade bread to feed a family of hungry Italians.

  "Let's go charm a retired Russian Mafioso out of his secrets," Larry said, starting the engine.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  We drove on yet another freeway. This one was the 101. It wound around the Northern part of the valley. I couldn't get over the interesting shapes of the mountains. The changing shades of blues and grays made up for the lack of anything green. The fleeting tiled roofs and pink buildings gave me the impression of a city built yesterday, until we got off the freeway and arrived at Sun City. It could easily have been called Sunset City.

  "How is it possible? The houses look at least thirty years older than the rest of the town," I said to Larry.

  "That's because they are."

  "Thirty years older?"

  "Don't pin me down to a specific number, but yes, the Sun City and Leisure World trend in the Southwest part of the United States started around the early sixties, I believe. The retirement communities were built on the outskirts of large metropolitan areas. Eventually the rest of the city spread and at some point caught up, and they became neighbors out of necessity."

  "Like the one in Laguna Hills, that's now called Laguna Woods, but I remember when it was still Leisure World. Somehow, I never gave it much thought." The bags from Yasha from Russia reminded me why we were in Sun City. "So where is this man? And why is everyone calling him Boris Z.?" I felt a little anxious but mostly puzzled by all the background stories discussed at the meeting earlier with Dennis and Greta.

  And I had been sneaking pieces of our honey cake into my mouth. No doubt detective Larry knew, but always the gentleman, he pretended not to notice.

  The streets running through the residential section of Sun City were wider than the streets in Phoenix. There wasn't a soul in sight. All the houses were on
e-story, probably due to the age of the residents. Most homes were painted white, but the really peculiar things were the front yards: here too were rocks and gravel—the cat-litter—but with a twist, some of it had been spray-painted green.

  Oh, Mio Dio. I had to take a picture—I just had to. No one in California or Italy would believe me. "Larry, Larry, stop the car!"

  He slammed on the brakes, and the bags with the cake flew from my lap to my feet. Maledizione.

  "What's wrong? Sweetie, what happened?"

  "Shit happened." I unfastened my seat belt and bent down to assess the damage to the pastries. "I wanted to take a picture of the green cat-litter."

  He stared at me as if I had just grown a horn on my forehead. Then he leaned back, closed his eyes, and said, "Go ahead—go take your picture. No hurry."

  I felt like dirt. I opened the car door praying the cake bags wouldn't roll off onto the pavement. Then I managed to move my legs without causing an avalanche of crumbs. I finally stepped out of the car and took a good look at the mess.

  Luckily, Boris's container had landed properly and on top of some of the cake I'd been eating. I wasn't going to untie the fancy ribbon the owner of Yasha had wrapped around Boris's cake. Better to have some crumbling cake and pastries presented in style than crumbling cake and pastries in an unappealing container. First impressions count.

  The silence from the car was deafening. I couldn't really blame Larry. He'd invested time and energy to get here, and I'd messed it up because of some painted gravel. I'd straightened up and was brushing dust and cake from my dress when I heard the driver's door opening.

  Without a word Larry stepped out and took a picture of the green yard with his phone. "I'll send it to your phone," he said, and got back into his seat.

  It was my turn to want to take his clothes off and…focus Lella, focus.

  From the driveway, the assisted living place looked like a modern office building: large floor-to-ceiling windows, low privacy walls, plenty of cacti and yellow flowers, and Palo Verde trees. I'd learned to recognize them because they abounded in this city where they cast shadows and created the illusion of coolness in the sun.

  One little detail was unlike a modern office building: some of the windows had bird feeders hanging from the frames—the ever-present human touch. A wave of nostalgia found me. The thought of birds bringing back memories of my beloved grandfather, now long dead.

  The front door opened into a spacious lobby, and I couldn't detect any of the familiar and repelling smells usually found in neglected homes for old people. Not here. Sunlight and cheerfulness was in every corner. How was that possible?

  Larry gave his name to a young man behind the front desk, and we were shown to a couple of comfortable-looking chairs. We sat and waited. I held the bag with the goodies with as much care as possible.

  "His last name is Zyrov. It's hard to pronounce, so his father, the dreaded patriarch, was known as Mr. Z," Larry said.

  I nodded. It made sense.

  Some heavenly sounds came from somewhere. What was it? I looked at Larry—he shrugged. The music had me thinking of angels. How bizarre. My curiosity got the best of me, and I walked up to the desk and asked where the sound came from.

  "Isn't it exquisite?" the young man said. "It's one of our volunteers—she plays the harp."

  The harp, of course.

  "It has a very calming effect on our residents," he added.

  "Such a wonderful idea."

  I was headed back to my chair when a blonde woman wearing a white uniform walked toward us. "Mr. Devin?"

  Larry stood.

  "Mr. Z is waiting for you. Can you please follow me?"

  In spite of the apparent simplicity of the place I had the feeling that families paid big bucks for such a low-key luxurious environment. In other words, you had to spend money in order to look modest.

  Our guide walked fast. Larry had no problem keeping up the pace, but it wasn't so easy for me, holding the delicate bag of goodies in my hands, and with my short legs, my high heels resonating like a drummer's beat against the tile floors.

  Aye.

  When the helper stopped in front of a door that was partly open, she made a wide gesture as if to say, "Ta-da! Here it is." She pushed the door open and, without going into the room, announced, "Mr. Z, you have visitors." She smiled and left.

  I hesitated, but not Larry. He strode into the room as if he had been there a dozen times before—must be all that cop training. I slipped in behind him, almost as if waiting for a formal invitation. Larry offered his hand to the emaciated man in the wheelchair parked by the sunny window. But the eyes of our host were on me, or to be honest, on the package I carried.

  "Is that a Yasha from Russia bag you're holding there, young lady?"

  Young lady? I'd bet he wasn't more than fifteen years older than me.

  "Indeed it is." I played along, bypassing Larry and handing the goodies to Boris or Mr. Z., as the blonde had called him.

  He lifted the container with the fancy ribbon out of the plastic bag, and his whole face lit up. His hands trembled, from either excitement or weakness, when he untied it. He opened the top while I held my breath. The piece of Medovik Cake he pulled out and slipped into his mouth looked flawless to me. I turned to glance at Larry, and he winked back. Perfect.

  Boris chewed his cake slowly, closing his eyes and resting his head against the back of the wheelchair. He seemed to be having a spiritual experience from a simple morsel of cake. Larry quietly moved the two chairs in the room closer to the window where the relaxed man rested, and then he motioned for me to sit. I did.

  Notes from the harp player sneaked into the room and mingled with the chirping of the birds feasting at the colorful feeder outside the window. We waited. Was he sleeping? Maybe we'd interrupted his naptime? But he was fully clothed, even had loafers on his feet.

  I was still wondering when he opened his eyes and said, "A taste of honey, a taste of home." And again he turned his attention to me. "Do you know that this cake is made from my Anya's recipe? And she learned from my mother." His red-rimmed eyes filled with tears. "I miss them. Soon, very soon…"

  I didn't catch his last word but I fully understood the meaning and would have probably hugged the poor man had Larry not been looking at me with an expression that clearly said don't.

  "Let's have tea," Boris said. "Tea and honey cake." His voice was back to normal.

  What was it with these Russians and tea? I always associated Russians with vodka.

  He searched around the wheelchair, retrieved something, and clicked on it. "Do you know my Inessa?"

  I shook my head.

  "I met her briefly, years ago," Larry said.

  That got him Boris's undivided attention. "You did?" No more friendly voice.

  "I was part of the investigation team." Larry seemed to wait for some kind of acknowledgment. When none came he continued. "We were investigating Anton Hasan's murder. We spoke to you and your wife. Your young daughter happened to be in the room."

  Boris turned his face toward the window, seemingly fascinated by the birds' fight over the feeder. "That," he said.

  From where I sat I could see his Adam's apple bobbing. He used a finger to carefully stop a tear from rushing down his cheek, the fancy container with the cake still resting on his lap. "He was a good man. Well respected." His voice was a tad shaky. "And yet he brought death and misfortune to our home."

  "How so?" Larry asked.

  Just then the blonde woman who had brought us there appeared pushing a serving cart. "Tea time," she announced, and parked the cart as close to Mr. Z as possible.

  Was she his personal assistant? When she tried to take the cake from his lap, he resisted, then gave in. The blonde quickly arranged a dozen small pieces on a white plate, poured tea for all of us, offered cream and sugar, and, of course, cake.

  When she headed for the door with the cake box, Mr. Z. said, "Leave that here."

  She opened her mouth to
protest, changed her mind, and set the box on his night table. "Buzz me when you need me to come back to clear up." She left.

  I assumed the tea was very good, I didn't know. Everything felt so odd. No more harp music and even the birds had flown away.

  "Is that why you're here?" Boris spoke looking straight at Larry. "After all this time? What is it that you want?"

  "I'm going to be straight with you—I never believed that boy, Carillo, did it. He's now spent seventeen years in prison, and an outside group has brought in new evidence, and he's up for a retrial. I came to see you hoping you had something to add—now I know you do."

  "Don't bet on it. We never had any proof, only suspicions, and look at the price we paid. And for what? For doing nothing, nothing I tell you." His face flushed, and his breathing became labored.

  "Should I get that lady to help you?" I asked. As soon as I said it I felt foolish. He had a button he could push.

  He shook his head and gave me a half smile. Obviously he appreciated the thought.

  "I can't give you what cops call proof, facts. Do you think we would have left that boy rotting in prison if we could have proved his innocence? What kind of monsters do you think we are?"

  "Why don't you tell me?" Larry wasn't even pretending: no conciliatory speech, no understanding attitude.

  Maybe he'd ticked off Boris, or maybe the man had wanted to share what he knew for a very long time, but in my opinion, he knew his time was up, and he wanted to clear his conscience.

  "It all started around 1990, when the Soviet Union began to disintegrate. My father had immigrated to America twenty years earlier and settled in California where he built his Maxim's restaurant. Except, it was so much more than a restaurant—it was a beacon for all the souls arriving from the old country, legally and illegally.

  "The legal ones came for the food and the entertainment. The illegal ones entered through the back door. They came for papers, documents, a place to sleep, and help to move on. My father took care of both businesses, the legal and the illegal. Everyone respected and feared him. The powerful ones back home had his back, as long as he played straight with them.