Spare Parts: A Ted Mitchell Detective Novel (Ted Mitchell Detective Novels Book 4)

by Jeffrey Kinghorn

  Adrienne rarely brought up my disgrace that occurred in front of her mentor, Grand Master Jim Yu, in his martial arts studio, in front of a huge class, where she found her path, continued to teach, and where I found shame and public humiliation. “Ouch,” I said.

  “You are western through and through,” she said.

  “I thought it was because I had refused to teach,” I said. “And then when I did, it was a fiasco.”

  “The spirit of the dojang is very much about quiet,” she said, “stillness. The perfection of nothing happening. It’s eastern.”

  “Square peg,” I said, “round hole?”

  “Forget it,” she said. “We’ll just let it be my insight.”

  The van had just executed another pick-up of a man who got out of a parked car to jump up into the van as it almost stopped for him. The car was a silver Cadillac. I slowed to a near crawl, eased to the curb behind the Caddy, and slid the gear selector into park.

  “What are you doing?” said Adrienne. It was clear she wanted to stay with the van.

  “I’m going to bank on the fact,” I said, “that we’ve already uncovered a predictable maneuver.”

  “We found the van by luck,” said Adrienne. “And there it goes. You’re going to bank on luck?”

  With a calming tone I said, “It’ll be back to drop the guy off at his car.”

  In a moment she closed on that and we were on the same page again. She said, “What do you want me to do?”

  “I get out here,” I said. “You take the car and conceal yourself somewhere close-by, where you can keep an eye on this corner.” We were at Travis and Texas. “I am not going to bank on luck,” I continued. “I am going to push it. If I can get inside the van, follow it and stay way back, but stay on it.”

  She nodded. I hopped out and walked around the Cadillac, but noted nothing distinctive about it beyond it’s being a nice car. Classy not garish, no telltale pimped-out detailing. There was a dark colored thermos cup in the center console and what looked to be a black zippered portfolio on the passenger-side floor. It was the size of a three ringed binder. The car’s interior was gray with rosewood trim on the dash. The seats I figured for Italian leather―that because whenever I encountered leather on anything that seemed a cut above, it tended to be Italian, which likely meant it was tooled in Brazil or Argentina.

  You have to have gumption to lean on such a car parked on a downtown street if it is not yours, when in pursuit of a man not without intrigue, who up to and including the present moment, was known to most simply as The Russian. I leaned against the front quarter panel, crossed my arms against my chest and waited with an eye directed toward approaching traffic.

  Adrienne had vacated the scene and had plenty of time to select an advantageous wait-position. As the wait was a half-hour long, it, of course, felt interminable. I had begun to think I was going to have to suffer her pointedly not saying anything when she would eventually show up and I would be her contrite passenger, having lost the van to the night and to my dead-ended idea. But then it rounded a corner two blocks down and sailed its flagship position up the center lane in my direction.

  When I would have expected it to start moving toward the curb to off-load the Caddy’s driver, it did not. It was going to drive right by me, perhaps let the guy off some blocks away, so he could walk back to his car and to me. I threw it all over the fence, walked out into oncoming traffic, and stood in the middle of their lane. Dangerous? Stupid? It was a toss-up. But it was so unexpected that once again I owned the day.

  The van stopped short at my toes. Horns were sounded. The Caddy’s driver hopped down out of the van and barely missed being struck by a vehicle in the next lane as he lunged to get out of harm’s way. I resisted diving for the door before it closed which would have cleared the way for the driver to accelerate away. I stood my ground. More horns sounded. The driver’s window powered down. The driver leaned out. He was an uber white guy verging on albino, with shiny black hair combed straight back from his forehead. “Please to get in,” he said.

  I walked around to the side where the door remained open and stepped up into the van. The Russian, Stefan Reznikov if Adrienne was correct, barely filled a Captain’s chair in the corner at a small pedestal table on which was a 10-inch laptop. He had a cellphone clipped to his ear. I had barely taken a seat across from him when I was garroted from behind.

  Another man asked, “You have weapon?” The van had started to move again, so it wasn’t the driver. The voice was low and measured in my left ear. The omission of an article and the separated enunciation of each word was middle European or Balkan, okay, probably Russian. The garrote, a fine wire, was enough to render me motionless but was not meant to be any more serious than that. Yet. I held up one finger. “To be surrendered,” he said, “please.”

  The garrote was loosened enough to allow me to reach around to the small of my back where I un-holstered a Sig Sauer, brought it out front, and held it up clamped between my thumb and palm. It was taken from over my head after which the garrote was also removed.

  The Russian, Reznikov, was busy using the keyboard on the computer. He stopped, leaned back in his chair, and gave me his full attention. Thin to the point of being boney, he was also uncommonly fair, as I had noted about the driver, with shards of dark hair falling from a part just off top-center on his scalp. A prominent nose, the first I ever encountered that could accurately be likened to a hatchet blade. He had a small mole matching the color of his hair underneath his right eye. In a strange way, it improved his looks.

  The seats were blue leather. I would not characterize them as Italian. The header and wall panels were densely carpeted with a short, tight, industrial grade pile. The controlled air was deodorized. Had I been forced to come up with a scent, I’d go with something like antiseptic.

  Stefan Reznikov said, “Tomorrow was day we would have gotten to you.” His manner was not unfriendly. His eyes opened an added millimeter to convey surprise at our unscheduled or, it would seem, earlier-than-scheduled encounter. You could hear the Russian in him, thickly, though he spoke with more resonant ease than the fellow who had put me in the garrote. I remained still and said nothing. His opener had been a surprise. “If you get out of vehicle alive,” he continued, “it will be because I am generous man.”

  My plan had been to get inside the van. Mission accomplished. Now I needed to obtain another plan. Quickly.

  He turned to look out a side window, whereupon his nose in profile gave him the silhouette of a personified eagle. His eyes were both irised and pupil-ed large which, against the white of the orb itself, made them look round beyond the roundness of eyes in other people. It added to the aquiline ferocity of his gaze. “I am patient,” he said, “and will accommodate interruption in schedule up to a point. You will show consideration in stating purpose of your foolish and ineffectual attempt to establish upper hand.”

  It did in fact feel like I had lost the initiative as I said, “You know me?”

  He said, “Theodore Mitchell, Private Investigations, Kiam Building, third floor front. Live two blocks west of office, in Hogg Palace. I like this name…Hogg Palace.”

  “I only know you as The Russian,” I said, probing for confirmation of Adrienne’s information.

  “Stefan Reznikov,” he said. “Whatever part of me you need to be Russian is meaningless. I am man of no country. Also man who occupies no space in any moment. Like life, I am in constant state of adjustment.”

  “Stefan Reznikov,” I said, again impressed with Adrienne’s having known his name.

  “Correct,” he said. “Many other names between Stefan and Reznikov, but why go all Tolstoy on you. Or Pushkin even.”

  “How is it that you know who I am?” I said.

  He cut his eyes toward me and took a moment before saying, “You have been talking to my people.”

  “And who are your people?” I said.

  He offered an upturned hand, as if it went without saying. “Thos
e in my care,” he said.

  I said, “Was Allison Thomas in your care?”

  His aquiline eyes became more aquiline. “I do not recognize this name,” he said.

  “Juice,” I said.

  “Juice,” he said. “Yes, she is associate.”

  “You are not going to demonstrate that you know me the way you do,” I said, “and then insult me by assuming ignorance of her death.”

  Reznikov eased into a smile and said, “Not at all.”

  “Her death,” I said, “has actually become a homicide.”

  “My condolences,” he said.

  “She worked for you,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I said, “As a prostitute.”

  A slight shrug and then, “I helped her,” he said.

  “By appropriating one of her kidneys?” I said.

  Stefan Reznikov again took his time in saying, “When did you first suspect man such as myself would tolerate unlimited stupidity from man such as yourself?”

  “Some men play Russian roulette,” I said. “Others run with bulls. I tend to refrain from beating around the bush.”

  “Amusing,” he said,” insofar as living as long as you have?”

  I said, “I’ll go with luck.”

  “Am myself,” said Reznikov, “familiar with luck.”

  “You interest me,” I said.

  “Flattery,” he said. “I like this. Am getting all weak in knees.”

  I said, “You’re going to cause me to become better at what I do.”

  He said, “I suggest you get started.”

  I looked about the van. Antiseptic air. Hushed with carpet. No pencil, pen, paper. It was spare. More than spare. Austere. “I could make a stab at characterizing the surface of your operation,” I said. “I have no idea yet how deep it goes. Or how wide. But whatever the extent of your business, I am sitting in its headquarters, aren’t I?”

  That liquid smile again. “If I said no, you would believe me?” he said.

  “I’m wondering where you sleep at night?” I said. “When do you eat? I don’t see a restroom.”

  “Think of me as shark, said Reznikov.

  I said “Predator?”

  He considered that, but then came back with, “Dangerous,” he said.

  “A shark,” I said, “will eat its own viscera if it can get to it quickly enough.”

  “Was referring” he said, “to shark’s destiny, not its diet. Constantly in movement. Stop swimming, they die. I reside in constant movement. Appetite is under control. We will leave bathroom talk for school yard.”

  “I’d like to go for broke,” I said.

  “I do not know this expression,” he said, “go for broke.”

  “Cut to the chase,” I said.

  “Ah,” he said, “but of course, please get to point.”

  I canted my head to project ease, and said, “Tell me the story of your life.”

  Stefan Reznikov first looked surprised. Then he laughed. Initiative, like tables, can turn. “You are more than little bit entertaining,” he said. “This surprises me. But you saw that.” He faded out the side window again.

  “I did,” I said. “But where are my manners? Please.”

  His eyes came back to me on yet another easy smile. I heard him exhale. Funny how often people laugh through their noses. “Perhaps I have underestimated you,” he said.

  “It happens,” I said.

  “I am now going to surprise you,” he said.

  “You already have,” I said.

  A silent, slower, more liquidy smile this time. The mole under his eye made it glint. Peggy Lee, Ginger Rogers, sorry, ladies, you penciled them on in the wrong places. He said, “I have just this moment made decision.”

  “I think I saw that as well,” I said.

  Stefan Reznikov said, “I am not going to kill you.”

  “Works for me,” I said, expansively.

  He added, “Today.”

  “Then I’ll worry about that,” I said, “starting tomorrow.”

  He raised his voice enough to get the driver’s attention. “Find place in shade,” he said, “near where you can go for refreshment. You will listen for my call.” The way he said call rhymed with haul, from deep down in his throat.

  As the van glided toward the curb and slowed, Stefan Reznikov, formerly feared when referred to simply as The Russian, used the keyboard on his computer to input what I assumed was a message announcing an unanticipated interruption to his schedule, which he then sent to someone. The driver executed a right turn, and we were on Elgin again, headed west.

  Seven

  We ended up underground beneath a square block of retail shops topped by condominiums midtown. After we’d been there for twenty minutes, I saw Adrienne pull my car into a spot two rows over, obscured by a concrete pillar. If Reznikov noted it, he did not let on, nor did he rush to call his front-seat men back from their refreshment, though I wouldn’t have been surprised if their refreshment was taken while covering entrances and exits. For someone constantly on the move, allowing himself to be parked and left alone underground with a stranger was an informative choice. I did not take Stefan Reznikov as one who made stunt-like decisions, unless the effect he was after made it feasible.

  So much for predators requiring ceaseless movement. Parked against an undertow, a shark can allow the current to move through its gills, and get the same life-sustaining result as when it propels itself through water. Meanwhile, I listened, and concluded that Reznikov’s willingness to reveal himself was due to my having tapped a motherload of hidden vanity. He was a man without a sense of place, and perhaps a sense of value as well, who had been unable to decline a chance to locate himself in some way, even if it meant stopping to let life’s current move through him.

  His early years in an orphanage in Mother Russia would have moved anyone with a soft heart. I did my best to lift the facts out of the telling. Too his credit, he was not a sentimental person, so it was a fairly unembellished rendering, which became compelling as he described his decision to join the military after he’d been released to the street as a sixteen-year-old. A ready alternative would have been for him to hustle. It was an irony, given his present profession that he had chosen against such a life at the time.

  That he had been part of the early Soviet invasion of Afghanistan grew rich, and that he had deserted and had given up his ties to the Motherland grew richer. He became part of the heroin industry, which remains Afghanistan’s chief export, and the cornerstone of its ravaged war torn economy. It was also interesting that he willingly became a part of a tribal society. I chose to believe his account of having been strung out on crank at the time of his desertion, as well his detailing the manner in which he had kicked it in a farmer’s barn in which he had tried to take his own life. This after having been critically wounded in battle. “What made you want to kick it,” I said, “and to decide you could?”

  “Was not opposed to dying,” said Reznikov. “Already I was living in hell.”

  “Some might say you are paving your way there,” I said, “with the work in which you are presently engaged.”

  “They know nothing, then, about hell,” he said, “or true nature of work I do.”

  “What’s to understand?” I said.

  “Is my calling,” he said.

  That he said this in earnest could have produced prolonged laughter in me had I not been on guard against it. “So,” I continued, “you came in through Mexico.”

  “This should not surprise you,” he said.

  “It doesn’t,” I said.

  “Your Vietnam,” he said, “was our Afghanistan.”

  “Understood,” I said.

  “And your Afghanistan,” he said, “became another Vietnam.”

  “Insightful,” I said.

  “The international gateway that is Mexico-U.S. Border,” he said, “is not understood by anyone outside the governing elite of your country.

  “That is
consistent with popular thought,” I said,” and customary wisdom.”

  “It is advantageous for people like me,” he said. He had me there. “Your Vietnam, your Afghanistan on heels of ours, your border with Mexico, these things alone instruct world as to U.S. vulnerability.” I continued silent. He paused in thought and added, “Is beyond absurd.” I may have nodded at that point. Or cringed. “You will not find record of me anywhere,” Reznikov went on. “I have made of myself invisibility.” There arrived a hint of tarnish in the antiseptic air; a metallic taste blossomed in my throat. I sensed that pride had caught up with us, perhaps the very thing he stayed on the move to avoid. “I have reduced my needs,” he said, with inflated satisfaction, “my appetites.”

  I said, “The lighter the load, the higher you fly?”

  “Have to tell you,” he said, “you make little sense.”

  “Your needs,” I said, “your appetites, they don’t hold you down. I admire that.”

  “Admiration,” he said. “Am not used to this.”

  “The practice of personal efficiency as a concept,” I said. “I didn’t mean to offer any more idle flattery.”

  “Most interesting individual,” he said. “This is humor?”

  “I’m kind of rusty on that score,” I said. “Please continue the Stefan Reznikov story. I’m all ears.”

  He gave me a look as if I were speaking Martian. He then shook it off. “Myopia,” he said.

  My eyes must have register Tilt. I said, “Excuse me?”

  “World is near-sighted,” he said. “What is taken out from under nose of plain sight is barely noticed after is gone.”

  It grated to think he meant those who were deemed expendable, like Allison. A flash of anger raced through me. I knew enough to breathe and to keep my mouth shut until it had passed. He looked as if he enjoyed the jolt that must have altered the appearance of calm I thought sure I’d been able to regain after the Tilt-moment. We tried to run each other through with the way we looked at each other. No yield.

  “Yes,” he said. “My calling.”

  “Champion for humanity, are you?” I said.