by E. R. FALLON
“This might be easier than I thought,” Dino muttered as he squeezed the car into a parking spot, one of the few available. As he put the car in park, he gestured to the red building at their right. “That one looks condemned.”
“I hope that’s not the one they were talking about,” Rebecca said.
“Me too,” said Dino, pulling the keys out of the ignition.
They approached another building on the other side of the street first, one that had a few lights turned on inside. Rebecca pointed them out to Dino.
“It looks like someone’s home. I hope this is the one,” she said.
There were many cars parked on the street, but they were the only people on the narrow, cracked sidewalk. Rebecca crossed the quiet, poorly lit street with Dino and went up the large steps of the building.
The front door leading into the building was ajar, and Rebecca stepped right in ahead of Dino. The floorboards creaked. She looked at the mailboxes first. Most of the names were Russian. Rebecca studied them carefully. She sniffed the air and sneezed.
“Do you smell that?” she said.
“What?”
“Somebody’s smoking something, and it isn’t cigarettes. Want to call it in?”
“Let’s finish this first.”
Rebecca looked back at the mailboxes. “No Ilyin.”
“That must mean it’s the condemned building across the street? How can anyone be living in there?”
“Maybe it’s not condemned, just in need of a few repairs,” she said. “Come on, we’ll check it out.”
Rebecca led Dino across the street. He seemed to be walking faster.
“Are you cold, Cooper? You’re walking very fast.”
“No,” he said.
As she neared the sidewalk on the other side, a car without lights approached at speed, coming out of nowhere. The driver slammed the brakes and the tires squealed. Rebecca jumped back and braced herself against the side of a parked car.
“Shit. That was close,” she said.
Dino went over to the driver’s window and shouted, “What the hell are you driving so fast for, buddy, and where’re your damn lights?”
The driver, a young man dressed entirely in black, wearing a pair of sunglasses even though it was nighttime, muttered, “Sorry,” and then sped off.
“Hey, we’re the police,” Dino shouted after the car. He walked over to Rebecca and touched her arm. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine. What an asshole.” Her face burned with anger, but it was too late to chase after the guy in the car.
“I know, right? What’s with this place?”
Rebecca glanced at Dino’s hand on her arm and he removed it. She walked in front of him and looked twice each way before she attempted to cross the street again.
Up close this building seemed even more dilapidated. The third story windows were boarded up, and the front steps felt uneven beneath Rebecca’s already shaking legs.
“Jesus. This looks like the Addams family’s place,” Dino said.
Believing the place to be abandoned, Rebecca opened the front door, which, like the door across the street, was unlocked.
“Watch out for ghosts,” she kidded as she drew her gun.
Dino drew his gun as well, but they lowered them once they had entered. The building, which had been so unprepossessing from the outside, was bright and well-heated inside.
“Never judge a book by its cover,” Dino said.
There were no mailboxes in the hallway so Rebecca suggested they go door to door.
The first door she tried was the landlord’s apartment. He was a stout man with curly, dark hair and a neat beard. He retreated slightly back into the apartment. Did he think they were the mafia? In this neighborhood one never could be quite sure. Rebecca held up her badge and spoke to him in Russian. He relaxed a little and spoke freely with her.
“Does he understand what we want?” Dino asked her.
“Yes. His name is Orlov. He says we can come inside and he’ll talk to us. His wife is away visiting her friend and he’s the only one home.”
Dino followed her into the apartment.
Mr. Orlov insisted that they sit down on his fading blue settee and hummed to himself as he stepped into the kitchen. Rebecca could hear water running into a tea kettle and a match being lit.
“Is he making tea?” Dino asked.
“Yes, but I don’t know if it’s for us or for himself.”
The landlord put his head in the doorway and said with a heavy accent, “Cream and sugar?”
“You speak English,” Dino commented, and the landlord merely smiled. “We don’t really need tea—”
Rebecca cut him off, speaking directly to Orlov. “We’ll have both, thank you.” When Orlov had his back turned to them again, she said to Dino, “In this culture it’s considered rude if you don’t accept the hospitality that is being offered to you.”
“Interesting,” Dino said.
Orlov reappeared, carrying a tray with delicate cups and saucers. He set the tray down on the coffee table in front of them. When the detectives remained seated with their hands folded in their laps, he eagerly gestured for them each to take a cup of tea.
Rebecca said, “thank you,” and reached for a cup, balancing the saucer carefully in one hand as she took a sip. She nodded and smiled at Orlov afterward to demonstrate that she was pleased by the robust taste of the tea.
The landlord smiled and waited for Dino to take a cup. Dino stayed where he was and crossed his arms. Rebecca nudged him with her elbow. He gave her an annoyed look then leaned over and grabbed a cup of tea, without taking the saucer.
“Thanks,” he said to Orlov.
Satisfied that his guests had been served first, Orlov picked up the remaining cup and leaned back in his wooden rocking chair.
“We need to talk with you about some of your tenants. Past and present,” Rebecca said.
The man looked puzzled. “They are good people,” he assured her.
“Yes, I’m sure they are,” she said. “But we still need for you to answer our questions.”
Orlov frowned and then spoke to her in Russian.
Rebecca translated for Dino. “He wants to know if we’re going to arrest anyone. I think he’s afraid because he doesn’t have citizenship.”
“Not unless we need to.”
Rebecca assured him that, as far as she knew, nobody in the building was in trouble. She mentioned the name ‘Ilyin,’ and the man’s face lost its color. His once cheery disposition changed to a guarded one, and he spoke to Rebecca in a hushed tone.
Rebecca glanced at Dino. “He says he’ll talk, but he’s more comfortable speaking in his native tongue. So if you don’t mind, he’ll talk to me and then I’ll tell you what he says.”
“Okay with me as long as you get him to talk.”
Rebecca got up and sat in the chair next to Orlov. She listened as he told her a kind of saga in Russian. Every few sentences she translated for Dino.
“There was a family here by the name of Ilyin, but they left recently,” she said. “Mr. Orlov says the old man and woman who run the community center forget everything. But the family that lived here, on the second floor, their last name was indeed Ilyin. Ania and Danil Ilyin. They had many children. He doesn’t remember most of their children’s names, but he remembers they had a little boy named Lev. Two years ago Lev just disappeared.”
Rebecca conversed with the landlord again briefly, then told Dino, “He says that before the boy disappeared he had an operation. He was struck by a car while walking home with his mother from the market. No one called the police, so that’s why there’s no incident report. He didn’t die, obviously. But he didn’t go to the hospital. A local doctor, here in the community, performed the operation. And then not long after that the boy wasn’t seen again, and his parents never spoke of him.”
“No one called the police after he disappeared?”
Rebecca spoke to Orlov.
&n
bsp; “He says no. He didn’t know them well,” she told Dino. “They aren’t citizens. Maybe they were afraid to call.”
“What’s the doctor’s name?” Dino asked the landlord in English.
“Alexei Fedotov,” the man replied. Then he talked to Rebecca in Russian.
Dino shot her a look.
“He’s telling us that the doctor practiced out of the community center,” she explained.
“What? In that little building we were just in? That has to be illegal,” Dino said in disbelief. “How could parents let someone operate on their child in that place?”
Rebecca shook her head. “You don’t understand, Cooper. For these people, most of them come from remote rural villages, it’s not uncommon.”
Orlov wasn’t able to give them much else. The Ilyin family had left no forwarding address and was possibly as far away as Norilsk. Alexei Fedotov was no longer practicing in the neighborhood, which Rebecca found rather suspicious.
Another family was living in the Ilyins’ old apartment and, despite the landlord’s objections, Rebecca insisted that she and Dino take a look.
All the cramped apartment contained was a frightened young couple, who didn’t look old enough to have a nine-year-old son, about to sit down to a simple dinner. Then Rebecca noticed bottles of what looked like pills cluttering a large shelf by the window.
She looked closely. Painkillers. There were too many bottles to have belonged to the couple. Was that why the couple was scared?
Rebecca became more on guard. She got Dino’s attention, and he blocked the doorway so the man and woman couldn’t bolt. Rebecca touched her gun and kept an eye on the window to make sure they wouldn’t try to escape that way.
She gestured to the shelf. “Do you have a prescription for those pills?”
“Is everything okay?” Orlov asked.
“Stay where you are, Mr. Orlov,” Dino said.
The woman stood motionless and struggled to speak in English. The man reached to a cabinet behind him.
“Put your hands where I can see them—”
The man yelled and pointed a gun at her before she could remove and aim hers. She stood frozen with her hand over her gun. Orlov gasped.
Rebecca could hear Dino draw his gun behind her. “Drop it!”
The man let his gun fall on the floor and Rebecca kicked it aside and handcuffed him. Dino handcuffed the woman. Then he called it in to the station. Rebecca heard him mentioning the drug smell in the building across the street.
“Did you know about this?” Rebecca asked Orlov.
“No, I didn’t.”
Rebecca actually believed him but Dino glared at him.
“Someone will need to speak with you regardless,” she told Orlov. “Don’t touch anything in this apartment.”
Before Rebecca and Dino left the building, Rebecca handed Orlov her card. She mentioned that the narcotics team would be arriving any minute and that she might be back in the near future to speak with him again. The landlord didn’t seem pleased with either of those prospects, and frowned rather than replying.
Rebecca and Dino put the couple in the back seat. She gazed up at the building before she stepped into the driver’s seat of the Crown Victoria. On the first floor she saw Orlov staring back at her through the window. She wondered if she shouldn’t have trusted him.
In the car Rebecca breathed with ease. That had been a close call. She spoke to Dino. “Think narcotics will be angry we took their collar?”
“I’m sure, but I wasn’t going to wait around there for them to show up. We have our own work to do.”
“Thanks for the back up in there.”
He smiled. “You’re welcome.”
Dino talked to the couple in the back on the drive to the station. “How long have you been dealing?”
The woman, who had remained silent until then, said, “My sister is ill. We need money to send her.”
“She lives in Russia?” Rebecca glanced at the rearview mirror and saw the woman nod.
“We are sorry,” the woman said.
“I’m afraid that’s not enough.”
“Do you mostly sell in your neighborhood?” Dino had directed the question at the man.
When the man didn’t speak, the woman answered. “My husband sells all over the city. Mr. Orlov doesn’t know. Please, I don’t want to see him hurt. He is kind to me.”
Why was the woman being so forthcoming? Did she think she wouldn’t go to jail if she befriended them, or did she simply not know any better? Maybe she was looking to cut a deal with the police and turn against her husband.
“You had a lot of pills in your apartment,” Dino said. “You must have made a lot of money to send back to your sister.”
Her husband said to her, “Shut up, you stupid bitch.”
What a creep, Rebecca thought.
But the woman didn’t shut up. She seemed to enjoy defying her husband. “Most around here have no money to buy unlike some places in the city. There’s this one man, my husband said he buys a lot.”
“A Russian man?” Dino asked.
The husband laughed faintly in the back seat. “You can’t blame us for everything,” he suddenly spoke. “He’s like you. He’s an American.”
“What’s his name?” Rebecca asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Where does he live?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been to his home. He buys off me in the street. I haven’t seen him around lately.”
“What’s the name of the street?” Dino asked.
“Can’t remember. It’s the name of a saint or something.”
“A saint? There are many streets like that in Newark.”
The woman murmured something to her husband.
“I didn’t know,” the man said to Dino. “You’re going to let us go because I told you information, right? I can give you money.”
Now it was Dino’s turn to laugh. “This isn’t Russia, buddy. You didn’t tell us nearly enough information to make a deal with us, and you can’t bribe us. But we can make sure that bribing an officer gets added to the charges against you.”
The guy told Dino to “go fuck yourself” and the wife lost her innocent act and spat at Rebecca’s seat.
At the station they escorted the couple to central booking, handed them over to a narcotics detective and explained what had been said to them in the car.
Chapter Six
By the time Terry came home, Tulia had started dinner and Jimmy was upstairs in his room. Terry undid his tie and sat on the couch in the living room to watch the evening news. Tulia hadn’t kissed him when he’d got home. Terry heard his son’s footsteps and turned around.
“Hey, big man, how’s it going?” he asked Jimmy.
Jimmy gestured to the television set. “Dad, it’s too loud. I’m trying to do my homework upstairs, and I can hear the TV.”
“Sorry about that.” Terry lowered the volume. “It’s good you’re doing your homework. What are you working on?”
“My history paper.”
“How’s it going with the tutor the school got you for algebra?”
“It’s going all right,” Jimmy said.
“Why don’t you take a break and sit with me for a minute?” Terry patted the empty seat next to him. “I miss seeing you.”
Jimmy hesitated, but then stepped over and sat as far away from his father as was possible.
“What, do I have fleas or something?”
Jimmy rolled his eyes.
“How was your day?”
“All right, I guess.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me how mine was?”
Jimmy just shrugged. Terry dropped the subject, and the two sat in silence for some time and watched the local news. The reporters said there were no updates on the boy found in a box.
“Is that the case you’re working on?” Jimmy asked.
“Yeah. How did you know that?”
“Mom mentioned it to me.”
Jimmy nodded. “It’s pretty sad.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“I hope you and Dino catch the guy.”
“We will.”
Jimmy seemed to admire Dino, he’d told Terry he was the ‘real deal.’ From where Terry sat he could see Tulia moving around in their cozy kitchen. He wondered what had made Tulia so happy that she’d felt like cooking, and he had a strong feeling that her upbeat mood didn’t have anything to do with him.
“Why’s your mom in such a good mood?” he said to Jimmy.
“I don’t know,” Jimmy said. “She was sleeping when I came home.”
“Sleeping?”
“Yeah, on the couch.”
“Really?” Terry narrowed his eyes. Tulia had never napped that early in the day before. “Has she been acting okay when I’m not around?”
“Do you mean, is she acting crazy?”
“No. Has her routine here at home changed?”
Jimmy looked at his father. “I don’t know, Dad. Aren’t you supposed to know those things? I think she’s still the same. I mean she stills yells at you, right?”
Terry was so taken aback by his son’s statement that he didn’t reply. “You’re very observant for a kid, do you know that?” he said after a while.
“You used to be observant, too, Dad.”
“Dinner,” Tulia called from the kitchen.
Jimmy rose from the couch and hurried into the dining room. Terry continued watching the news for a couple of minutes and then turned off the set and went into the dining room.
“It’s about time. I almost thought you were going to ignore us and watch TV,” Tulia said.
Terry ignored her comment. He didn’t want to argue in front of Jimmy.
“Smells great,” he said, and sat next to her. He hadn’t had a decent meal in days, and when he set eyes on the herb-roasted chicken, small potatoes sliced into halves and sautéed with olive oil and a sprinkle of rosemary, and broccoli florets drizzled with butter, his stomach let out a lengthy growl.
Tulia laughed. “When’s the last time you ate?” she said, much to Terry’s surprise, and with a smile.
“I haven’t eaten this good in a long time,” he said.
He didn’t want to remind her how many times he’d missed dinner lately. He knew he was losing her, but he’d worked long hours before, and he didn’t know why this time was different.