by Otho Eskin
It looks like Vickie must have replied almost immediately.
“Valerie, please don’t do anything rash. I know this is horrible for you. I will take care of this situation. And I’ll take care of Garland. I plan to do something that will make theatrical history. Something so outrageous, that Garland will be ruined for life if he’s not charged with a capital crime. I plan to announce to the whole world what Garland did without mentioning your name, and I’m going to pick the most dramatic moment I can and I’m going to inform the most powerful people in Washington what kind of man Garland Taylor really is. During my curtain call speech, I will denounce him. Please keep my plans to yourself. This must come as a complete surprise and shock to Garland until the very last minute. If he suspects what I’m planning to do, he will try to stop me. He may even use force. He’s quite capable of it, I’m sure. Maybe I might give the bastard a sneak preview of what’s in store for him. Let him sweat a little. Maybe I will improvise some dialogue at the end of the play he’d understand as a warning, but nobody else would, and it would be too late for him to stop me. Please give no one a hint of what I’m planning. Vickie.”
There is no response from Valerie. But on the opening day, the day of Vickie’s murder, Miranda sends an email addressed to Ariel.
“I’ve just received horrible news. Valerie is dead. Her body was found in her apartment this morning. She’d hanged herself. I hate to give you this news on opening night, but I felt you needed to know.”
Vickie’s reply was almost immediate. “Justice will be done. Ariel.”
I close the laptop. That simple message to Miranda, I suspect, was Vickie’s death warrant.
Lieutenant Bonifacio drives me to my next appointment, also in a downtown hotel. Not a real appointment. I’m going to show up unannounced and very much unwelcome.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE OLD MAN wears a satin dressing gown and points a gun at my face. “Get out or I kill you,” he spits at me.
“That’s not exactly the warm welcome from an old friend I was expecting,” I say.
The last time I saw the Greek was in Venice when he was living in a palazzo on one of the less fashionable canals, surrounded by several armed guards, two mean-looking hounds, and several beautiful, slender women who lounged around an empty pool drinking Asti Spumante. I knew him then as Nikos.
He’s frail now, slightly stooped, and he wears round, rimless glasses, the lenses a dark opaque green. His hair is gray and thin and he needs a haircut and a shave and he’s wearing blue velvet slippers. The years have not been kind to Nikos.
His gun hand shakes. From old age or fear? Palsy? I can’t tell.
“Go away, Marko,” he croaks. “I don’t want to talk to you!” He tries to slam the door in my face but he partially loses his balance and his concentration, and I quickly relieve him of his gun, an old Luger that looks like a souvenir from World War II.
I slip the Luger into my pocket and step into his hotel suite. Nikos moves away, staying well out of my reach. As far as I can tell, he’s not carrying any other weapon but you never know. Nikos was once extraordinarily skilled with knives.
I step over the threshold and we’re in a sitting room of a large hotel suite furnished with a couch and several armchairs. To one side is a desk on which lies a violin with a bow and some sheet music.
“I wonder what the FBI would find if they looked into your presence here in the US,” I say. “What do you suppose they’d find?”
“I was in New York shopping.”
“Fashion week isn’t until next spring. And this isn’t New York. What were you shopping for?” I ask.
He gives me a disgusted look. “For a violin, if you must know. All I did was buy one violin. Go away.”
“Is that the instrument you bought?” I point to the desk where the violin lies.
Nikos sits in the armchair, silent. Next to the chair is a small side table. He’s angry and frightened.
“That violin looks expensive,” I say. “You must have paid a lot for it.”
I can’t see his eyes but sense they flick to the violin. “That’s not an ordinary instrument,” he says. “It’s an Amati.”
“Why did you buy it?”
“It once belonged to Constantine Buchholz. I heard him play it many times and I fell in love with its sound. I tried to buy it from him, but he refused to sell. Constantine died last year—of natural causes, I assure you. A month ago his instrument came on the market at a New York auction sale. I knew I had to have it.”
I remember when I saw him in Venice, he’d sometimes slip away to what he called his studio and play his violin for hours. Then I dismissed it as a harmless eccentricity. Now I know it’s his obsession.
“You’re no musician,” I say. “You’re a thief and a facilitator for murder. What’s your interest in expensive violins?”
“When I was a child, I wanted to become a professional musician. It turned out I had no talent, but I could never stop playing.” He rises and crosses to the desk, lifts the violin and caresses it gently. It’s dark wood has a beautiful veneer. “This gives my life meaning and purpose. Listen to its voice.”
He tucks the instrument under his chin, picks up the bow, closes his eyes, and plays a short passage from a Paganini’s 24 Capricci. The playing is barely adequate but the instrument’s sound is rapturous.
Nikos stops and stands silently, eyes closed, then carefully replaces the instrument on the desk and sits back in his armchair, his hand resting casually on the side table next to him. “Can you understand why I had to have it? Do you have soul great enough to understand?”
I sit in a chair next to the desk, the violin within easy reach.
“Why are you here?” he asks.
“Somebody’s been trying to kill me. I thought you might know who.”
“How would I know that? I’m retired.”
“Of course you are. Being a middleman for murder is a young man’s game. But I think you’ve come out of retirement. Probably for the biggest pay out you’ve ever gotten.”
“Why would I get involved in the business again? It’s dangerous and tiring.”
“You got back into the game because one day you read in the paper that an Amati violin you’ve been craving for years was going to be sold at auction in New York. I remember hearing of an Amati selling for six hundred thousand dollars recently. Where do you get that kind of money?”
“Who knows?”
“What resources does an old man like you have?”
He shrugs, but I sense his eyes darting to the small table next to him.
“I think you have one invaluable resource. You know the right people. So you let it be known in certain circles that you’re back in the game.”
Nikos is suddenly holding a Browning automatic pistol he’s snatched from the side table and pointed at me. “This conversation is over.” His voice croaks, but his hand seems steady.
“How many guns do you have?”
“As many as I need.”
“Put that thing down. Somebody might get hurt.” I reach across the desk and snatch the Amati violin and hold it in front of me.
“Don’t!” Nikos screams, jumping to his feet; his hands shaking in panic, his face white.
“Don’t hurt my violin,” he pleads. “Please.”
“This is awkward,” I say. “You, pointing a gun at me. Me, holding your precious violin. We could go on like this all day, I suppose, but that would be silly. Sit down and put that damned gun away and I’ll put your Amati down and we can talk sensibly.”
Cautiously, he sits again and puts the Browning automatic back on the side table but still within easy reach: I hold the Amati violin in my lap.
“I think you have a contract for a major assassination.”
Nikos shrugs. He’s not going to tell me what I need to know without additional encouragement. This is not what I want to do. Nikos is old and fragile. He can’t stand up to me, even if he has a Browning automatic next to h
is hand. I must be careful.
“The commission for the person who recruits an assassin must be substantial,” I say softly. “But not substantial enough to buy this violin. I think you did more than just recruit a hit man for a job.”
Nikos glares silently at me through his dark green glasses.
“Please. Don’t make any sudden moves,” I say. “I’ve been under a lot of stress lately and I might accidentally drop your Amati violin. That would be a shame.”
The old man shudders but stays quiet.
“Why are you still here in the States?” I ask. “Why aren’t you back home, playing your precious violin?”
He glares at me. At least I think he does. It’s hard to tell through his dark glasses.
“Because your job’s not yet done,” I say. “I expect you’re here as an on-site advance man, is that right?”
Nikos crosses his arms defiantly but says nothing.
“My guess is you’re here to handle special arrangements. Maybe to record the target’s movements, identify locations, recruit backup personnel, and plan escape routes. Is that right?”
Silence from Nikos.
“Is the local talent from the Brooklyn branch of the Russian Mafia?”
He twists in his seat. Body language like that usually indicates somebody is ready to talk. I go for it.
“Did you hire someone named Oleg Kamrof to do site surveys for you?”
“I won’t tell you anything.” He stares at me sullenly.
I grasp the violin by the neck. “Don’t make me do something we’d both regret. All these guns around here make me nervous and when I’m nervous I tend to drop things. I asked you, why are you still in Washington?”
The man winces. “There have been complications with the contract.”
Here we go. Most people find it almost impossible not to talk after a while. I guess it’s a human instinct.
“Meaning?”
“My contact who represents the principal demanded some last-minute changes to the work order and that’s created serious difficulties for me.”
“Who is your contact?”
Nikos looks longingly at his Browning. Can I get at it? he’s thinking. No, he realizes he’s too old, too feeble. Too slow. He must surrender.
“You once recruited for the mob in New York and Chicago.”
“If you say so.”
“I say so. Which of the Five Families in New York did you recruit for?”
“All of them. I wasn’t particular.”
“Who is your contact when you need to reach a hit man?”
Nikos sighs and shifts in his chair. “A man named Anton Briand.”
“Who is this Anton Briand?”
“A man I used to work with in the old days. He contacted me a few weeks ago and we met in Brussels. He had a big job for me.”
“Who was this Briand working for?”
“He never said. He probably didn’t know. There are always at least two cutouts between me and the principal, the one paying the bills.”
“So even if you’re caught, you could never reveal who’s behind this operation.”
“That’s right. That includes you.”
“Where’s this Anton Briand now?” I ask.
“The French police pulled his body from the Seine. One bullet in the head.”
“Who’d Briand want killed?”
“Briand and I initially agreed on the contract on Nina Voychek, the prime minister of Montenegro. It was originally to be carried out in Montenegro during some village festival. That’s when I first contacted the man to do the job.
“Two weeks later, Briand contacted me again. Urgently. He said his principal needed to amend our contract. We negotiated a substantial supplemental payment.”
“What was the amendment he wanted?”
“The original contract was for the assassination of the prime minister only. Very simple given that the man I recruited to do the job is the best in the business. Now Briand insisted on adding two additional names.”
“Two new names?”
“For this he was prepared to pay top dollar. And there were other requirements.”
“What requirements?”
“The hit had to be to done in Washington, not in Montenegro. And it had to be done while the prime minister was in Washington on a state visit.”
“And the two additional names?”
“I have no idea who they were. Briand said he’d arrange that directly with the man I recruited to do the job. Which was fine with me. But Briand indicated that one hit had to take place in a theater in Washington and had to be done on opening night. That tied it down to a specific date.”
I feel my heart beat fast.
“Briand also insisted the same hit man do all three jobs. He did not want to involve additional personnel. Less risky that way.”
“You had to arrange a murder in a theater on opening night? That must have been a problem.”
“I’ve managed worse. I asked around among my former contacts and found an ideal solution. Somebody—somebody with no connection to Montenegro or the prime minister, but with a connection to some Washington theater—was in the market for a professional hit man to kill the same actress.”
Oh, oh! I think I just went down a rabbit hole here.
“Are you saying you found someone else who was in the market for a hit man?”
“It happens more often than you’d think.”
“A hit man who was supposed to do a contract on the same person?”
“That is a bit unusual. I agree.”
“How did you manage that?”
“You’re asking for trade secrets.”
“I’m a cop and you’re an accessory to murder. You have no trade secrets from me.”
He looks longingly at the Browning. “About a month ago I was contacted by one of my old associates. Somebody wanted a contract on an actress. This was long before I knew anything about the Nina Voychek hit. The principal looking for this contract was an amateur.”
“What do you mean by ‘amateur’?”
“Not someone involved in organized crime. It was a civilian. You know. Some wife who wants to off her husband so she can marry the pool boy. A businessman wants to get rid of a partner over some business dispute. It was the bread and butter in my business when I was still active.”
“So you discovered some ‘amateur’ out to remove a professional actress.”
“I almost recruited some local thug to do the job when Briand contacted me about the Voychek job. For that I needed a true professional and figured: Why not combine the two contracts? Save a lot of trouble and money. Briand agreed.”
I’m having a little trouble here. This seems to be altogether too neat to be believable. Am I being drawn into a minefield of lies? Maybe, but I don’t see what Nikos has to gain by lying about that.
“How much was the principal paying for the two additional hits?” I ask.
“One million, three hundred thousand, plus expenses for the total package.”
“Who’s bankrolling this?”
“I don’t know. It would cost me my life if I ever heard the name.”
“Do you want to guess?”
“Considering that large amount of money involved, I’d say it would have to be some state actor.”
No surprise there. But now we come to the jackpot.
“What is the name of the assassin you hired?”
“I don’t know his name.”
“Is your hit man known as Domino?”
The old man jerks in a spasm of shock and takes a moment to answer. “The young ones can’t be relied on. They’re sloppy and they’re careless. It’s not like the old days.”
“Is he Domino?”
Nikos nods. “That’s one of the names he uses. For a job like Voychek I needed a top gun, like Domino. I used to employ him from time to time in the past. He’s very expensive but he’s totally reliable: I needed someone very special. You know, no loose ends. Domino never lea
ves loose ends.”
“What is Domino’s real name?”
Nikos laughs. “I have no idea what his real name is. Or what he looks like. Or where he comes from. I’ve never had direct contact with him. All arrangements are through intermediaries.”
“How can I find Domino?”
“Not to worry. He’ll find you.”
I cross the room and take the Browning from the side table and remove the clip. He looks anxious as I toss the rounds to the other end of the room, but he doesn’t try to stop me.
“What’s Domino got against you?” he asks as I walk to the door.
“I assume somebody’s paid him to do the job.”
“Want a word of advice? If you can’t get rid of Domino, let him know you’re on to his game. Get the word to him he’s now the prey. That’ll make him extra cautious and he’ll hide in the shadows where he lives. That won’t stop Domino, but it’ll slow him down.”
“I’ll leave your violin by the door,” I say.
“Can I have my Luger back?”
Using my handkerchief, I wipe the Browning and clip clean of my prints and toss them across the room. “I don’t think that’s going to help much,” I say. “Be careful who you open the door to.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
IT’S TEN FORTY-TWO at night and I’m listening to Dave Brubeck’ s Take Five when the phone rings
“Somebody’s trying to kill me.” A male voice on the phone is hoarse with terror.
“Who is this?”
“It’s me, Aubrey Sands. I’m at the theater,” the voice on the phone whispers. “Help me.”