by K. K. Beck
“She’s at the mall, shopping with her friends,” said Roger. “She’s on her way. They’re dropping her off.”
“Hah!” said Gus. “The only reason she should go to the mall is to get a job at the mall.”
Roger ignored him and said to his wife, “I told you this was a bad idea. I feel like a deckhand on his fishing boat.”
Gus Iversen laughed. Tyler thought it was because his dad would have made a terrible deckhand.
Now Gus turned to Tyler. “Tyler, your parents are broke,” he said. “Flat broke. They want me to bail them out. You should know about it and so should your sister. You’re both old enough.”
Now Grandpa turned back to Dad. “If you hadn’t blown all your money, you could be retired by now.” Tyler had the feeling his grandfather had been waiting to say this for some time. “How much money did you get from that DuckSoft outfit, anyway? When they canned you?”
“Quite a bit,” said Ingrid Benson.
Gus said, “I gotta have the whole picture if you want me to help you. How much money did you get?”
“Two point eight million,” said Ingrid, shooting her husband a venomous look.
When Tyler had been in middle school, Dad had cashed in at DuckSoft and taken the whole family to Europe for a year. Mom had thought it would be culturally broadening. Then Dad had fallen in love with Italian food and decided that he would train as a master chef, and they stayed another year.
“Thank God I didn’t invest in that business of yours,” continued Gus. He turned to his daughter and said, “Why didn’t you stop him?”
“Do you expect her to have tried to squelch my dream?” said his father indignantly. “I had a dream! A vision!”
Gus made a snorting noise. “You had a vision, all right. You’re allowed to have those kind of dreams when you’re young,” he said. “That way, if they don’t work out there’s time to do something else. But not when you’re middle-aged with a family. You should have invested that money in rental property, like I told you.”
Ingrid said, “Look, Dad, I know we made some real mistakes. I admit that. But we need some help, just to get over this patch. We’re behind on our house payments. We’ve been living on credit cards. And Samantha’s tuition is coming up.”
“Well, send her to public school,” said Gus Iversen, sipping his coffee. “You went to public school, didn’t you?”
“That’s one area that’s not negotiable,” said Roger.
Tyler wondered if his dad had become completely delusional. He was hardly in a negotiating position of any kind.
“And if you can’t afford to live there, then sell the house,” said Gus.
“Well, I was thinking maybe if Tyler moved back in, he could pay some rent and maybe help us make the payments,” said Roger.
“What!” said Tyler. “Are you out of your mind? I’m too busy paying off that hundred grand you stuck me with!”
“A hundred grand?” said Gus.
Tyler sighed. “When I went away to college, Dad gave me a bunch of paperwork to sign. It turned out I was borrowing every dime of my tuition and expenses for my first couple of years back in that expensive school. And then he got me to hand it over to him in cash. He said he wanted to pay my tuition on a credit card that gave him air miles.
“But in the end, he poured it into Ricotteria, before he paid the tuition. It was a mess. And I was stupid.”
“Yeah, you were,” said Gus. “But I guess you didn’t realize your own father would screw you over.”
“It was just a bridge loan,” said Dad, biting his cuticle. “I wanted to add an open hearth to the concept.”
“Geez,” said Gus, shaking his head sadly.
“And I had trouble getting work visas for some of the peasant subject-matter experts,” snapped Roger in a defensive tone. “That immigration lawyer didn’t come cheap.”
Ricotteria was the name of Roger’s business—a place where people could come after work, make fabulous Italian meals from scratch under the supervision of real Italian cooks, and take it home to their families. It cost more than eating out, but the idea was it was better food because it was authentic.
“Look, Dad,” said Tyler’s mother, “if you don’t want to help us with a loan—”
“You have to sell your place and cut your expenses so you can live on what Ingrid earns as an event planner,” he said. “I can get you into one of my rentals cheap.”
“But our house—” began Roger, “it’s who we are.”
“Well it’s a lot nicer than mine, but mine is paid for,” said Gus. “You can’t afford it, so it isn’t who you are at all.”
Mom started crying, and Tyler thought he should go to her side and comfort her, but Roger was already heading toward her.
Just then, Samantha burst into the front hall, carrying some shopping bags. “Hi, everybody,” she said, coming into the room, only to see her mother in tears, pushing her dad away. “Oh my God, what’s the matter?” she said.
“Nothing serious,” said Gus Iversen. “It’s only money.”
“That’s right,” said Veronica, looking completely unrattled by having sat in on the Bensons’ tough-love therapy session. “I thought we were here to address criminal issues. Tyler and Roger, if the police want to talk to you again, don’t talk to them. Call me. I think they could do some real harm with what they’ve got on the two of you. Squirrelly stuff like that, they’re likely to get you in there and just chew on you until they think they have enough for an indictment.”
“But we can’t possibly be indicted for something we didn’t do,” said Roger.
Veronica rolled her eyes.
———
“GOD, it’s good to be in the sun again,” said Sergei Lagunov. “That weather in Seattle is so depressing. Wet, but worse, dark.” He shuddered. He was sitting poolside with a sixty-seven-year-old man known as Yalta Yuri, who wore a tiny black Speedo bathing suit and had a fat torso covered in gray hair. Besides the Speedo, Yalta Yuri sported ominous-looking sunglasses and about ten thousand dollars’ worth of white gold jewelry. He was splayed out on a lounger, while Sergei sat respectfully in a straight-backed cast iron lawn chair, wearing a dark suit.
“Yes, it is as lovely here in California as it is on the sun-kissed shores of the Crimea,” said Yuri pleasantly. “But you are a Muscovite. You should be used to cold, dark places. Is there much snow there in Seattle?”
“No, just rain and darkness,” said Sergei. “It’s better now that it is springtime.”
“I noticed you lost your tan. It makes your scar less noticeable,” Yuri said kindly. “So tell me more about the situation there.”
Sergei snapped his fingers. “It should be very easy. They are really pathetic. First of all, they act like hard-core professionals, but they’re not. I think they picked up all their moves from the movies. The Zelenkos came to Seattle from Ukraine in 1989. They got here as asylum-seekers.”
“Jews?”
“No. Some kind of crazy Protestants. They jump up and down and scream in church. They think everyone is going to hell. Very religious people.”
Yuri nodded. “So the Zelenkos managed to convince the authorities they were Baptists?”
“That’s what I thought at first. But then I met Dmytro’s old mother, who’s also Volodya’s aunt. An old babushka with a big fat Bible under her arm on her way to some kind of a prayer meeting. So I figured they were real asylum-seekers. I asked around. Back in ’89 a bunch of churches around Seattle sponsored them and got them out of Ukraine. Said the Communists were persecuting them because they wouldn’t do their army service, weren’t allowed to pray and all that.
“The Zelenko boys were just kids when they came here—in their teens. So I guess after they got here they decided they didn’t care if they went to hell, and they got into the spare parts business. Breaking down stolen cars and selling the parts. Small-time stuff. But then they got into stealing the cars. Dmytro’s the smarter one. He calls the shots.”
“They’re in some other businesses, too.”
“Such as?”
“They control a crummy little casino. Some old lady named Donna owns it and her son runs it for her. Cokehead named Hughie. A nice cash business, easy way to launder money. The son doesn’t care, as long as he gets a little more money every month than his mother Donna would give him. He has an expensive habit.”
“Sounds good,” said Yuri.
“And then, through the valet company at the casino, they got into a nice restaurant. Very classy place. It started out as just a way to get high-end cars. One of the valets is a Russian and Volodya and I got him on the job. He scouts the merchandise, cuts some spare keys if he can, and he plants transmitters on the cars so the Zelenkos’ team of car thieves can use GPS to find out where they are and go pick them up.
“The Italian restaurant was in financial trouble, so Dmytro gave them a loan. They’re having trouble making the payments. He thinks he’ll own the whole place soon. But he’ll keep the owners on paper. Dmytro can’t get a liquor license in Washington State because he has a record. Something to do with auto theft. He actually did a little time.”
Yuri nodded. “Those guys shouldn’t be running it without me. What do we have to do to make that happen?”
“Get something to squeeze them with.” Sergei permitted himself a little smile. “Which I’ve done. I’ve got a gun Volodya used to kill some old guy in his chop-shop when he was drunk. He asked me to get rid of the body and the gun.”
“Okay. You got the gun. What did you do with the body?”
“Volodya screwed that up,” he said. “The cops have it.”
“What a stupid son of a bitch,” said Yuri. He was thoughtful for a moment. “Maybe that’s okay. Now that the cops have the body, with the bullets in it, it makes the gun we have more valuable.” Yuri rose, walked over to the side of the pool, and stuck in a foot. “By the way, who did this Volodya idiot kill?”
“Some old guy who worked in his shop named Pasha. Volodya said he was stealing parts from him.”
“Pasha?” Yalta Yuri turned around, and made his hands into fists. “That’s the guy that sent the Zelenkos to me in the first place! I knew him back in the day in the old country. We were together in prison in the seventies! Those sons of bitches killed that poor old man? They knew he was an old prison-mate of mine and they killed him! That kind of disrespect cannot go unpunished!”
He paused for a moment, and said in a quieter tone, “See that Pavel Ivanovich gets a proper funeral,” he said. “In a real church, with a real priest. None of this Baptist shit. Make the Zelenkos do it. Tell them what will happen if they don’t. That will be the very first message they get from me. They need to do what I want.”
Sergei nodded.
“And then get them working too hard and rough for their taste so they get scared. Get them in even deeper than they are with Old Pasha getting killed.”
“A couple of those valets have been stealing some of their own cars,” said Sergei. “Volodya is pissed about it but Dmytro won’t do anything.”
“Okay. I’ll send some guys up to deal with them. We take Dmytro along for the ride. Show him how we roll. And how to run a business properly. Teach those valets a lesson.”
“One of them is in the hospital and the other one the Zelenkos think is a well-connected vor from back in the old country. That’s why Dmytro doesn’t want to mess with him.”
“Is he?” said Yuri.
“I don’t know,” said Sergei. “Maybe.”
Yuri waved a fat hand in the air, the sun glinting off a diamond ring. “Whatever. We just want to scare Dmytro. Really scare him. He’ll be ready to pay us to take all this business off his hands.”
Chapter Fifteen
AT AROUND TEN P.M. THE NEXT NIGHT, after the dinner rush at Alba was over, Tyler delivered a car to the front of the restaurant and noticed that Brian, who had been sent down from Donna’s to deal with the post-shooting valet shortage at Alba, had vanished. Great, thought Tyler. He’d probably found a quiet car to sit in and work on his horrible screenplay. But instead, Brian bounded out of the restaurant. “Hey, Tyler. When you get a chance, grab an employee meal. They got some awesome food in there,” he said. “Way better than Donna’s, that’s for sure.”
Tyler had been looking forward to trying some of the food at Alba, but until now, he’d never been around when employee meals were served. Traditionally, employee meals were a casual affair. During slow periods, servers would be scrunched in odd corners of the kitchen scarfing up whatever hadn’t moved briskly enough that night. If there was enough to go around, valets also got invited by the hostess. Tyler was actually kind of surprised that the standoffish Flavia even let the valets into her husband’s kitchen.
She had her back to him when he came in, but even without her turning around, Tyler realized that the vulnerable, weepy college girl he’d met two days ago had been left back on campus. The heels were back on, the hair was pinned back up, and she had her hands on her hips in an aggressive stance and was yelling at her husband, the chef. Tyler knew that most Italians spoke some kind of regional dialect and that the one from Piedmont had a lot of French in it, just like the cuisine. But he could get the gist of it. She was telling him there was no point serving veal in America because the veal was too old and it wasn’t milk-fed, and besides, Americans didn’t like to eat baby animals.
Now the chef responded. “You cannot have cucina Piemontese without veal,” he said. “Next time we just order less. What’s the big deal?”
She clicked her tongue. “Can’t you redo the recipe with pork? The pork around here tastes more like veal than pork anyway.”
The chef threw a skillet into the sink. “I hear a lot of those fake Italian places use nothing but pork in what they call veal scaloppini. Is that the kind of place you want me to run?”
“I hate my life,” she said. “I need more time to study and I hate restaurants. I want to do field work. Be out on a boat. I’m sorry Paolo, I want to help you, but I’m not even working for you, am I? Mafiosi. Shootings. Bodies. If I wanted this kind of life I would have gone to Calabria or Sicily. Not Seattle.”
“Well, if you can get your boyfriend to bankroll this place, then you can be working for me again,” said Paolo, frowning. “Or him, I guess.”
“For God’s sake, he’s not my boyfriend! He’s just awkward. I feel sorry for him.”
“Sorry! Ha! He’s one of the richest men in the whole world. You should feel sorry for me! For us! Anyway, stop yelling in front of the staff. It makes for brutta figura.”
Chef Paolo, clearly wanting to exhibit bella figura instead, immediately turned to Tyler and said with a dazzling smile, “What do you think? How do you like it?”
Before he had a chance to answer, Flavia, speaking Italian, started back in. “Stop worrying about them. They don’t understand a thing!” she said.
Tyler smiled at the chef, and said in his careful schoolboy Italian but with a decent Florentine accent, “Your wife is absolutely right. The veal here isn’t anywhere near as good as the veal there. But it’s still fabulous.”
Both Torcellis looked at him in horror. The chef, stating the obvious, said, “You speak Italian,” and Tyler had a horrible sinking feeling.
Now Flavia turned to Tyler and spoke up in English. “I’m not his wife!” she said. “I’m his sister. My family made me come here and work the front end if I wanted to go to university!” And then she stamped her foot, pivoted 180 degrees on one impossibly high heel, and marched out of the kitchen.
———
DMYTRO Zelenko approached the receptionist’s desk in the lobby of the King County Medical Examiner’s office, a bland-looking lobby that could have been any county office, excep
t this was the county morgue. His mother stood about a foot behind him, gazing passively at the young woman there. Dmytro said hello, and watched the receptionist take in his mother’s steely bun, her mid-calf-length print housedress, nappy cardigan, thick cotton stockings, and black oxfords, and he knew no one would be surprised when he said, “This lady speaks no English. I would like to translate for her.”
“Okay,” said the cheerful young woman. “How can I help you guys?”
He turned to his mother and said in Ukrainian, “After we have finished here we can go out and get a coffee. Maybe some pastries. What kind would you like?”
“I’m not hungry,” she replied. “I had a big lunch.” Dmytro turned back to the receptionist.
“It’s about the body they found. It was in the newspaper. There was a picture with it. The newspaper said they thought this person might be Russian. She thinks it might be a man who came to her church.”
He turned back to his mother, and asked her what she had for lunch. After a length of time, during which his mother described some soup, he turned back to the receptionist. “He came to her church. And he spoke to her. He said he was ready to accept Jesus Christ as his Savior. So my mother wants to know if after the police have done all their investigation, she can arrange to have the body sent to a funeral home of her choice so the body can be prepared for a proper funeral. Her church would like to bury him properly.”
The young woman rummaged on her desk and came up with a couple of sheets of copier paper stapled together. Dmytro saw that the top page was the artist’s sketch of Old Pasha that had appeared in the newspaper. “Is this the deceased person? Can she identify the body?” She handed it to Dmytro’s mother.
The old lady looked at the drawing in a puzzled way, then flipped to the second stapled page. Over her shoulder Dmytro saw that the second page was a blurry copy of a photograph. It was clearly the picture of Old Pasha as a slack-jawed, open-eyed corpse.