They stopped for a moment outside Ruby’s new office. She could tell it was hers because there was a new brass plate on the door that read RUBY FLAGG. The ovalshaped secretarial station just outside the door contained creamed coffee gone cold in a Spode cup and saucer, a flickering desktop computer, a black leather appointments calendar, an impressive telephone console, and a vase filled with a dozen red roses. The secretarial chair held a cardigan sweater, but no secretary.
Voices could be heard from inside Hiram Foster’s—Ruby Flagg’s—private office. Off to the side of the closed door was a three-by-four-foot window that the doddering Hiram Foster had had cut into his office wall. Old Foster thought it was democratic to allow the help to peer at him through glass. To Ruby, it was beyond democratic; she used to say it looked like a window at a drive-up pizzeria. She looked now through the pizza window of her new office at the scene inside: two wide-backed men in wrinkled suits drinking coffee and being charmed by a tall young black woman.
Ruby turned back to Schuyler, and said, mockingly, “Poor Freddy?”
“He’s been having his troubles lately.”
“What a shame. Maybe he’ll go the way of Hiram Foster?”
“Not office troubles. Personal.”
“What would you know about that, Jay? I thought outside Mad Avenue the two of you had nothing to do with each other.”
“True. But you work with a man for years and like it or not you get to know his rhythms. This calling in sick, it’s all out of step. Freddy’s the first one here in the morning, and most days he’s the last to go at night. Like he’s got no life. I’ve seen him here when he’s had pneumonia.”
“You saw him yesterday?”
“Sure, and he was in the pink, all excited about the Russians. You know how he gets.”
“I remember him sleeping over here in the office every night before a big presentation. He’d keep on a team of creatives on overtime—at least one writer, an art director, a studio guy. Three or four secretaries, too. And he’d work them just about to death. The Dawn Patrol we used to call it.”
“Check. That’s what I mean about rhythms. Yesterday he’s all jazzed about this meeting we’re about to have. So what does he do? He goes home at five in the afternoon. From this and other little things lately, I can tell the guy’s having serious problems.”
“How serious?”
“Enough for me to wonder. Who likes to wonder when it comes to partners?”
“Hiram never did. Guess what he used to say about you, Jay.”
“I don’t like guessing.”
“The day you take on a partner is the last night you sleep.”
“Enough.” Schuyler waved a hand. “Hiram’s an idle rich man now. I should feel sorry? He should feel sorry for his two ex-partners.”
“The ones who muscled him out of the picture.”
“Persuaded.”
“Shouldn’t we be talking to the Russkis?”
“Check.”
Schuyler picked up the phone on the secretary’s desk and rang reception. “Arlene, see if you can raise Freddy at home,” he said. “Put him through to Ruby’s private line and I’ll pick up.”
Then Schuyler held open the door with Ruby’s name on it. He smiled like an alligator, and said, “Welcome to your web.”
Ruby strode into familiar space. On frazzled days, she sought refuge here. She and old Foster would have tea. Hiram would repeat a few of his stories about Madison Avenue in the days before “all these goddamn asskissing MBAs went and mucked everything up,” and Ruby would soothe herself by listening. On good days, she would enjoy the grand view. The majestic Chrysler Building out the downtown windows, and far beyond, clear south to the Brooklyn Bridge. The crosstown windows showed her Roosevelt Island in the mist of the barges and tugboats floating along the slate gray East River, and Beekman Place, and Sutton Place. And all the other places most colored girls from Louisiana would never see …
“Ms. Flagg?”
The tall young black woman flashed about thirty teeth and stepped away from the two Russians to greet Ruby, one hand outstretched, the other fingering a pearl button on her blouse. She was perhaps twenty-five years old and moved quickly and smoothly, like a dancer. She wore an African print skirt and her hair was sculpted in a high fade. Her skin was radiant and dark—the color of buffed mahogany, darker and redder than Ruby’s. The young woman trailed the cool scent of an expensive cologne. Schuyler had said it well at yesterday’s lunch: So beautiful she made you want to go bite something.
“Ms. Flagg, hello. I’ll be your assistant.”
The women shook hands as Schuyler formalized the introduction. “Sandy Malreaux, Ruby Flagg.” Then he moved to the Russians, and the men took their turns shaking hands. “Alexis, Vasily,” Schuyler said, grabbing each one in turn, giving them bear hugs. “How are you this wonderful morning?”
The brothers Likhanov crinkled identically tiny blue eyes, smiled, and said “Goot” in unison. Four Slavic lips curled to reveal gapped rows of yellow teeth. The brothers were dressed in off-the-rack navy blue suits that strained against their bread-and-cheese bulk, white shirts, and red neckties with fat Windsor knots. They looked like middle-aged cops in church, Ruby decided. They had twin fringes of close-cropped gray hair, pug noses, pink faces the shade of Canadian bacon, and fleshy moles under their eyes, one apiece. Ruby wondered how long it would take her to tell who was who.
“Alexis, say hello to our resident genius, Ruby Flagg,” Schuyler said, standing now between the brothers. He tapped the shoulder of the Likhanov with the mole under his right eye. The other one had the mole under his left. Grateful for this, Ruby made quick mental notes. Alexis, right mole. Vasily, left mole.
“I’m so pleased to meet you, Mr. Likhanov,” Ruby said, taking Alexis’s soft, furry-knuckled hand. “Welcome to the United States.” She said the same to his brother when Schuyler introduced Vasily. Both Likhanovs kissed the back of her hand, leaving it very moist.
Each of the brothers said “Goot” once again, remaining pleasantly mysterious men of few English words, or at least words that sounded English. Ruby looked at Schuyler with arched eyebrows, since she had not the slightest idea what to say next. Sandy Malreaux broke the awkward silence by saying, “Well now, Mr. Crosby should be along any moment.”
“No,” Schuyler told her. “Freddy’s called in sick.”
“Sick? Mr. Crosby?”
“So Arlene tells me.” Schuyler turned to the Likhanovs, and added, “Sorry about that.”
“No goot?” asked the brothers.
“Don’t worry. We’ll get Freddy on the speakerphone. It’ll be just like he’s here with us.”
“Only better since he’s not,” Ruby said, shooting a sorority glance at her secretary and fellow tail. Sandy did not return the knowing look. Maybe she had yet to be treated to Crosby’s piggery.
“Ms. Flagg, gentlemen, I’ve set out coffee and Danish over here,” said Sandy, in a distracted manner. She led the way to the corner bay of windows, where leather club chairs were circled around a glass-topped conference table that also held notepads with the SF&C logo and ballpoint pens and a telephone console. Sandy moved a bit clumsily now, as if her dancer’s arched feet had suddenly gone flat. When Ruby and Schuyler and the Russians were seated, Sandy left them with a toneless, “I’ll be just outside … whenever you need me.”
“Here’s the way I like to do it in the advertising business,” Schuyler said, directing himself to the Russians as Sandy closed the door behind her. The patented Schuyler smoothy talk, Ruby thought. He poured coffee for everyone from a silver pot that gleamed as brilliantly as his cuff links. “First impressions are important. That’s why Ruby is completely in the dark about what you gentlemen are up to. We want to get her absolutely unvarnished first reactions. Check?”
The Russians looked at each other. They seemed impressed by what Schuyler had said, although slightly confused. Czech?
“Ruby, I want you to just blurt out th
e first thing that comes to mind as you begin to learn this project,” Schuyler said. “Can I count on your being honest?”
“Brutally,” Ruby said.
“Now then,” Schuyler said, turning back to the Russians, “suppose we begin things with a simply stated overview.”
“A fine idea for the uninitiated,” Ruby said.
“Check. Vasily, how about bringing Ruby up to speed?”
After a nod to his brother, the left mole leaned toward Ruby and addressed her with a flourish of self-satisfaction, as if he had recently invented electricity: “In Russia, is ready to be making the goot times roll.” Vasily Likhanov now concentrated his most enthusiastic smile on Ruby. His teeth made Ruby think of yellow moons over Lake Pontchartrain in the late summertime.
“Get it, Ruby?” Schuyler asked. “When Vasily first said that to me, right away I thought of you for this job.”
“I don’t get it, Jay.”
“Laissez le bon temps rouler? Let the good times roll? Mardis Gras and all that? Get it?”
“You want to make Mardi Gras in Moscow?”
“Is genius Mardi Gras in Moscow!” Alexis Likhanov said. He walloped the conference table with a fist, spilling some coffee. Ruby thought of Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe at the UN back in the fifties.
“Well, all right, maybe not Mardi Gras exactly, but very spectacular,” Schuyler said. “Alexis and Vasily here, they’re sitting on something bigger than Disney World.”
Her voice dripping sarcasm, Ruby suggested, “Bigger than big?”
“Is goot big genius!” chimed the Brothers Likhanov.
Ruby sighed. “Jay, this is the new world order? Bright lights and shiny objects for weary old Mother Russia? Disney World? You want to turn Moscow into Orlando?”
“Not Orlando exactly. But I am talking bread and circus. And megabucks,” Schuyler said. The Likhanovs’ beady eyes danced at the mention of bucks. “Think Bolshevik revolution, okay?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Bankrupt farmers, jobless factory workers, resentment against the Japanese, frustrated intellectuals, persecuted minorities …”
“Like Yogi Berra said, déjà vu all over again.”
“Check.”
“Is genius!”
“I knew you’d get it, Ruby.”
“I don’t get it, Jay.”
“Picture the angry masses, picture Tsar Nicholas in the Winter Palace complaining about how the peasants are revolting … Never mind the Mel Brooks bit.”
“I’m picturing.”
“Okay. Now suppose you have a place where all these pictures, they actually come to life …” Schuyler paused. “Freddy really ought to be here to talk about this part. It’s his baby, what with the actors and all.”
“Jay, what are you saying? Political passion plays?”
“Not exactly—”
“But you are talking tourist trap.”
“Don’t be a snob. Tourists might have soft heads, but they carry hard currency. Get the idea?”
“Goot idea!”
Ruby smiled patiently at the Russians. She said to Schuyler, “I saw some of Freddy’s other ideas lounging around reception when I first came in.”
“Maybe you heard, cheesecake sells.”
“Russia you want to sell? With cheesecake? Who wants to go to godforsaken Russia?”
“That’s what they used to say about a godforsaken town in the Nevada desert. Bugsy Siegel, he saw things differently.”
“Now you’re talking gangsters? Vegas by the Volga?”
“Like I said, it’s ironic.”
“Is genius!” The Likhanovs clapped their hands together.
The telephone pulsed gently, Ruby’s private line. “Aha!” Schuyler said, picking up the receiver from the console. “Ready Freddy.”
“Mr. Schuyler?”
“Yes, Arlene?”
“I’ve got Mr. Crosby’s apartment,” Arlene said. “But something’s … Oh, my! Something’s terribly—”
A man cut her off with a raspy, “Who’s this?”
The interloping voice did not belong to Frederick Crosby, who had learned to speak at Dalton, Andover, and Yale. This voice had been forged in outer borough New York maybe fifty years ago, the voice of an elemental man accustomed to getting fast answers to blunt questions.
“Bradford J. Schuyler here. To whom am I speaking?”
“You’d be, what—Crosby’s boss?”
“His partner.”
“Yeah? What kind of freaking business you in?”
“Arlene,” Schuyler said, “are you still on the line?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Just who the devil is this?”
“Oh, my. A policeman, sir.”
The outer borough voice broke in again.
“This here’s Sergeant Kowalski, pally. Manhattan Sex Crimes.”
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About the Author
Thomas Adcock (b. 1947) is an Edgar Award–winning novelist and journalist from Detroit. Since 1985, Adcock has written over a dozen short stories and anthologies, in addition to his popular crime thrillers starring New York–based detective Neil Hockaday. Adcock was involved in PEN International, The Mystery Writers of America, and cofounded the North American chapter of the International Association of Crime Writers. He currently resides in New York.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 1994 © by Thomas Adcock
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5998-5
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