by Tom Straw
They tasted each other hungrily, and, as they kissed, every shared breath became fuel to devour the next one. Macie felt the vast store of suppressed emotions that ushered her to this moment bloom into need. As his hands caressed her, she pressed them to her skin, welcoming every touch. When he found her, and she fell upon him, swept into a frenzy matching his, they hurtled to a place where there were no words, no debates, only fire. And for a shining moment, carefree timelessness with no secrets.
♢ ♢ ♢
Her cell phone vibrated in her bag across the room and woke them in a stream of morning sun an hour later. “You need to get that?” His breath tickled the soft well of her neck as he spoke.
“Eventually,” she said, not wanting to move, but to hold onto him—and all this—as long as she could.
“Just so you know? We’re not even.”
“Explain, please.”
Gunnar angled his head so he could see her profile on the pillow. “Last night, when you dragged me out of the line of fire and then stayed?”
“You mean when I saved your life?”
“Yes. That’s one.” He paused. “Against my two.”
“You’re welcome.”
When Macie and Gunnar finished laughing they made love again.
The phone message was from Jonathan Monheit, sounding very high strung, inserting two call me’s in the same voice mail. “What have you got, Jonathan?”
“News about The Ajax.”
She reached for a pen. “Let’s hear it.”
Gunnar limped out of the bedroom, shaved and changed, and read her expression as she ended the call. “Tell me.”
“That was Jonathan. He kept digging into Trifonov’s LLC, doing a search of public records to see what shook loose. Ready for this? He uncovered a construction company lien for unpaid renovations that names the prior owner of The Ajax penthouse.”
“Interesting, but that’s the old owner. Unless it names Trifonov, how does it help?”
“You tell me. The document was later redacted but Monheit drilled down and found the name in the original filing. The lien was against a Jerónimo Teixeira.”
Gunnar clapped his hands once. “Jonny Midnight, sticking the landing!” For once, he wasn’t being snide. They both felt the impact of this information. It was concussive.
“So follow along, kids.” Wild stepped to him and traced the points of a triangle in the air with each name. “Your bad-boy prince, whose bodyguard was Luka Fyodor Borodin, sold The Ajax condo to Pyotr Trifonov. Coincidence?”
“Hate that word.”
The connection had finally been established, but the meaning still eluded them. Like with any puzzle they both knew there was a solution, but without more information, they had to resort to imagination to try to bring it all together. “Damn,” she said. “It feels this close. The one thing that absolutely links up now is the Russian connection, Borodin to Trifonov.”
“I think we both know there’s another thread here.”
Without speaking it, Wild said. “Yes, but we don’t do circumstantial, do we.”
♢ ♢ ♢
Luka Borodin’s death was by no means the end of this. They had severed an arm of the beast but not the head. One thing Wild did know for sure was that she still needed to unwind the mystery of Pyotr Trifonov if she had any hope of clearing Jackson Hall. Macie and Gunnar continued their conjecture, replete with dead ends, half-finished sentences, and whack conspiracy theories. Macie studied the JPEG she’d made of the Case Board, looking for loose ends or unexplored threads concerning Trifonov. A nugget from Monheit’s lecture on the oligarch struck a chord and she called Monheit back and told him to enlist Tiger and Chip to help him gather everything they could find on Pyotr Arkady Trifonov during the time of his African mining stint. Then she rolled the call to Soledad, asking her to get back in touch with Jackson Hall’s girlfriend. “Tell him to make contact with me ASAP. Have Pilar tell him exactly this. Say that Borodin is no longer a factor.”
“Cryptic,” said the social worker. “Do you know how cryptic you’ve been lately?”
“All the better to help you keep your license.” Wild knew her friend would leave it there.
Gunnar put in a call to CyberG to ask his black hat how he was coming with Orem Diner’s server. He covered the phone and turned to Macie. “The Gauchito got inside it last night.” He instructed his hacker to focus all attention on financial records. “Especially related to The Ajax purchase, Jerónimo Teixeira, or any other transactions linking to Exurb Partners LLC. Bank accounts, lines of credit, you get the idea.”
The callback came an hour later. “This could move the needle,” said CyberG. “I was running scans for the financials, like you asked, and found an active credit card that is billed to one of Pyotr Trifonov’s smaller companies. Most of the purchases are day-to-day. Liquor, restaurants, florist.”
“Sounds like a personal card.”
“Here’s the BFD. There’s a line of credit currently open at the Hotel Cornwell. Premium movies, dry cleaning, and lots of room service charges, morning, noon, and night. If that’s your boy Trifonov—”
“Shit, he could be there right now.” In his excitement, Gunnar bolted to his feet, then cringed in pain.
C H A P T E R • 37
* * *
The Hotel Cornwell is one of those unabashedly old-line landmarks you find in every great city of the world where traveling diplomats, publishing titans, and Fortune 500 big shots over fifty cheerfully part with their USDs for quiet luxury, first-rate service, and, above all, privacy. Macie Wild and Gunnar Cody knew it would be near impossible to bluff their way past the layers of hospitality staff and career security to locate, let alone access, their Russian, so when they arrived, they came with a plan. Actually it was a credit card. “We called about reserving a standard king for one night,” said Gunnar, snapping his runandgunn.com business Amex down on the black marble counter. Some of the best plans are simple. And expensive.
The host took his card and ID then dipped his chin to acknowledge the wolf’s head cane Gunnar was leaning on, the walking stick Macie had just bought from the second-hand boutique on his NoLIta street. “Mr. Cody, if you’d be more comfortable with a seat in our library, I can bring you your keys after I check you in.” He indicated the clubby alcove in the corner of the lobby, an oasis of soft lighting, burgundy wing chairs, and complimentary Fiji Water.
“That would be lovely,” said Wild, answering for him.
“I’m fine, really,” he said to her when they sat.
“It’s not about being fine. It’s about acting like we belong by accepting the service. Are you bleeding?”
“No, but later I may need a naughty nurse. Just planting the thought.”
Upstairs in their room, while Gunnar fished small electronics and fresh batteries out of his weekender, she opened her iPad and studied the research she had requested from Monheit on Pyotr Trifonov’s mining activities. The top of the attachment included some Internet photos taken of the oligarch over the years. When Macie had glimpsed him two weeks before, Trifonov still sported his Fab-Four-meets-Dudley-Moore haircut, but it was salt and pepper, not jet black like the 1994 shot of him with the other nomenklatura smiling behind Putin. A more recent image was from a Financial Times clipping about Canada denying the kleptocrat’s immigration request due to laundering plundered money through crony banks. But the picture that she lingered on was a 2010 shot of Trifonov in a khaki bush jacket outside his copper mine in West Africa. It was pure PR optics: a benevolent Russian patrician, posed with a black teen, pointing to the young African’s own country, as if to say, “Someday this will all be yours.” When she had finished, Wild slid her tablet back in her bag. Gunnar hoisted himself by the arms of his easy chair and picked up his bag. “Ready?”
“Soon as I make the call,” she said. Macie tapped in the number from the business card and waited. While it rang, a knot formed in her diaphragm. Borodin may be dead, same as Pipe Wrench and his partne
r, but even with the immediate threat of those men gone, Wild’s common sense told her there were plenty more where they came from—hired killers enlisted by some larger operation she had not yet fathomed. She and Gunnar were hoping to find some answers to that in minutes, four floors above them, and it gnawed at her that she had no idea what they’d be walking into.
“It’ll go fine,” said Gunnar, reading her.
She smiled. “You think so?”
Instead of answering, he chambered a round in his Sig Sauer then limped to the door.
♢ ♢ ♢
The qualms Macie had expressed to Gunnar still nipped little bites off her insides. Mainly, shouldn’t they just let the police take it from here? All he needed was the short elevator ride up to rationalize his no: that they would then expose their credit card hack that led them to this hotel; that they would get cut out of their own case, same as the DA had refused to share evidence; that they had no idea who else was involved in this crime and, if that sounded paranoid, all she needed to ask herself was if she ever knew anyone to walk out of the Bellevue jail ward without insider help. “You sure you’re not a lawyer?” she asked.
“Don’t insult me,” he said as the doors parted on seven.
Wild and Cody took their places on opposite sides of Room 716 and leaned against the jamb to listen. They had the hallway to themselves and the only sound was the comforting hum of a housekeeper’s vacuum far up the corridor and around the bend. Gunnar leaned his cane quietly against the wall, knocked twice, then cued her. “Minibar service,” she called in a pleasant sing-song. He had suggested during their planning that a female voice would raise less suspicion. They pressed their ears to the wood. No reply. No sound at all. Not a footfall, a shower, nor a TV. This time she knocked and sang the same greeting. Still nothing.
Macie watched him get out his cell phone, tap his Voice Memo app, then slip a Dry Erase from his bag. Gunnar, the self-professed gear head, had learned to modify these markers for his TARU squad by removing the innards of the Expo, popping in a barrel jack where the felt tip had once protruded, then stuffing a mini Arduino circuit board into the hollow pen body. Gunnar felt underneath the hotel door’s lock hardware for the power receptacle, which doubled as a one-wire communications port, and inserted the barrel tip into the jack. It fit perfectly. In a quarter of a second there came a soft chirp and the whir of a servo motor as the tumblers of the lock disarmed. He turned the handle and opened the door a few inches, cueing her again. “Good morning, minibar service.” Gunnar entered ahead of her, quickly, in spite of his limp.
He angled himself to present the narrowest target. She grabbed his cane before following and made out the soft glint of stainless steel from the P220 pressed against Gunnar’s thigh before he drew it up in a shooting stance as he cleared the foyer. “Freeze,” he said, and her heart thudded.
Wild hung back in the safety of the entryway but made out the man Gunnar was aiming at in the reflection from a wall mirror. He was on the bed, lying back on a stack of pillows against the headboard with his right hand on a revolver hovering an inch over the comforter beside him. The man’s arm quaked. His breathing sounded labored. With heavy lids raised slightly, his gaze tracked sadly from the gun to Gunnar before he let the weapon fall onto the bed. Gunnar darted forward and removed the revolver. “Keep them where I can see them,” he said softly. With one eye on the man on the bed, he checked the closet and the bathroom and gave her the all clear.
Advancing into the mini suite, her first thought was, where’s Trifonov? Then it struck her. This was Trifonov. Or his ghost. Never mind the Beatle cut, he was entirely bald. A man in his early sixties, Pyotr Trifonov now wore twenty more years than a week ago when he fell ill inside that revolving door. Emaciated and feeble, the front of his white undershirt bore peach-colored stains from watery vomit that had dribbled and dried. The heat was on high in the room, yet he had long flannel bottoms which bore the unmistakable scent of intestinal distress. A room service tray of untouched food sat on a rolling cart done up with a white tablecloth, silver service, and a single peony in a vase. A bottle of Saratoga water lay on its side where he had knocked it over and its contents spilled.
She handed Gunnar his cane, and he asked her to check under the bed. She got on her knees for a peek and shook no. “Any other weapons?” he asked.
Pyotr Trifonov swallowed, then spoke for the first time. In a Russian accent that was more continental than Volga boatman, he said, “My gun, it was . . .”—he hitched in a breath so he could finish the sentence—“it was too heavy.”
“Any other weapons?” repeated Gunnar.
The Russian wagged no on his mountain of pillows. “You. You are not from Baltik-Eskort, no?”
Feigning ignorance, Gunnar asked, “What is Baltik-Eskort?”
“Not sent from siloviki? FSB?” he asked, referring to the rebranded KGB.
“We’re not from them,” said Wild.
“I thought as much. You are police? Homeland Security? No, not you,” he said of her. Then he appraised Gunnar. “You, perhaps.”
“I’m a journalist.”
“Journalist. With a gun.”
“Oligarch. With a gun,” replied Cody.
Trifonov’s mouth narrowed in amusement at his pushback. “Is for protection.”
“From what?” Macie asked. When he didn’t answer, she pressed. “Mr. Trifonov, Mr. Cody is indeed a journalist, and I am an attorney.” When Trifonov turned away from her, she positioned herself back in his view. “My client is accused of a murder he didn’t commit, but somehow got mixed up in whatever it is that—well, you seem to be part of. I personally have experienced three attempts on my life since I got involved, plus one on my friend’s here. We went to a lot of trouble to track you down, and now I demand that you tell me what the hell you know about this.”
The man let his eyes close a moment then he opened them in a squint of sly deliberation. Whatever illness had leveled Pyotr Trifonov, it appeared the shrewd opportunist in him would be last to wither. At last, he spoke, as much to himself as to them. “All right, very well. Maybe . . . maybe this is for the best, after all.” He elbowed himself higher on his pillows, showing a surge of strength and resolve. “I will tell you. I especially wish to tell this journalist. But sit, please, so I don’t have to look up so much.” Gunnar holstered his Sig then unloaded Trifonov’s piece, dropping the bullets in his coat pocket before placing it in the dresser under the flat screen. When they sat, the Russian strained to reach for a composition book on his nightstand. “You are not taking notes?” he asked of Gunnar.
“Already am.” He slid his iPhone out of the breast pocket of his sport coat and set it on the corner of the bed. The Voice Memo app had been rolling and recording everything since their entrance.
“Sneaky journalist.”
You have no idea, thought Macie.
Trifonov’s body shuddered with a barking cough. When he finished, he drew long breaths to settle himself then said in broken English, “I am dying. I am dying man because I have been murdered, poisoned by fucking cowards, and I have no choice but to be waiting for my death sentence to come.” He let the words sink in and drew more oxygen while they did. “You ever hear of Alexander Litvinenko?”
They both nodded, but Gunnar answered. “Sure, the Russian agent who blew the whistle on Putin. Back in ’06 or ’07 it was all over the news when he . . .” Awkward. Gunnar let it drop there, but Trifonov finished for him.
“When he got poisoned in London. And it was 2006. I know the date because I Googled it up. Poisoned by polonium-210 on 1 November. Dead from acute radiation syndrome, 23 November. Three weeks, and gone. The fucking bastards got him, and now they got me.”
“And there’s no cure?”
“Fuck no, lady. And I do not apologize for my language!” He pointed two fingers at his forehead. “They could have shot me, bang dead, but no. Same as Litvinenko, they want to make me example. So I get invited to meeting with two traveling friends from
home. You know, in Kremlin we were the nomenklatura, Volodya’s elites,” he said, using one of Putin’s nicknames. “I had this problem, an incident, here in New York City, and they said they wanted to hear my side and to say no worrying, Petya, will all be fine. We had nice tea in one of their hotel rooms. I had tea. They had Coca Cola. From bottle. I leave, and they say, ‘Pyotr Arkady, komarik, don’t you worry, your worries are over.’ That night, all night long, I vomit and shit the bathroom floor like crazy. I will not bother to tell you the tests and tests, and finally, the lab says I have radiation poisoning from the polonium. Do you know how little it takes for lethal dose?” He held up his fingers in a pinch. “The size of one grain of pepper will kill.” He must have read their reactions. “Relax, it must be ingested. It is alpha waves, and can’t pass through skin. I am expert now. It was in my fucking tea, I believe this.”
He struggled higher on the pillows. “So I do the chelation therapy. No good, I get worse. The doctor, he gives me the Dimercaprol. My lymphocyte count continues to fall and he says, ‘Pyotr, come to hospice and get affairs in order.’ I do not go to hospice. I come here to get my affairs in order.” He brandished the orange composition book. “My affairs. All in here. I come here to this hotel to hide and write diary of all the bad shit. I record in here all the secret bank numbers with the dark money I helped loot under Putin’s bespredel from state treasuries and industry ventures. In here are the fake banks I set up in Moldova, the hidden Irish accounts, the money laundered through my mining in Africa, the millions scooped out of PetroMed that built Vladimir’s palace in Sochi . . .” He was riding a wave of energy and fanned the pages, the entire Rhodia, densely filled with his notations and numbers. “Is smoking gun, yes? Ha. Yes. I sent a fuck-you e-mail to those bastards before I disappear. I say to them, ‘You want to take little komarik down? You go down with me.”