by E. R. FALLON
Tulia nodded and continued cutting her chicken into small pieces.
“Jimmy, you never told me how practice was,” Terry said piling food onto his plate.
Jimmy took a gulp from his glass of milk. “It was okay.”
“The coach’s new to the school, isn’t he? How do you like him?”
“It’s my first year there, too. Why would I have anyone else to compare him to?” Jimmy replied, rather sarcastically.
Terry didn’t appreciate Jimmy’s attitude, but he remembered what he had been like at that age and ignored his son’s cheekiness. But he was quietly annoyed that he rarely got any back up from Tulia anymore. It wasn’t that she spoiled Jimmy, neither of them did, it was that she seemed less and less interested in co-parenting with him. Because his work took him away from his family so often, Tulia had stopped asking him for his opinions about raising Jimmy. Sometimes he felt she viewed herself as a single parent even though she was married to him. Terry knew something had to change before it got even worse, but he didn’t know how.
He waited for Tulia set down her fork and asked her, “How was work?”
“Not bad,” she said.
He expected her to ask him how his day had been, and when she didn’t, he reached for another helping of chicken instead of telling her how being negative about his job, which he loved, only made things worse for their marriage. He wanted to bring up how he had supported the three of them on a rookie cop’s salary while she went back to finish her degree, but he didn’t. He didn’t want Tulia to ever feel that he resented her. He smiled at his son, who was gazing down at his food, and he wondered if it was usually this quiet at the dinner table, or if it was because his presence was interrupting whatever routine his wife and son had established while he was absent.
After they were done eating, Jimmy ventured back upstairs to work on his history paper. Terry washed the dishes and Tulia sponged the counters and put the few leftovers into the refrigerator.
After Terry had washed the last plate, he dried his hands with the dish towel and put his arm around Tulia’s waist.
“What’s going on with you?” he whispered into her ear.
“Nothing.” She pulled herself from his grasp.
Terry stepped back. “What’s that about?”
“It’s nothing, Terence. Look, please, just . . .”
She rarely called him by his full name and it stunned him.
“Please what?” he said.
“Just leave me alone tonight, all right? I’m tired.” She turned her back toward him and furiously wiped around the edges of the stove.
Terry retreated into the hallway and grabbed his coat and car keys.
“If anybody cares, I’m going out!” he shouted to no one in particular and slammed the front door.
Terry walked the few blocks to Dermot’s Tavern. He peered in the front windows. Finding the bar more crowded than usual, he decided against going inside, and continued walking. It was warmer outside than it had been earlier.
He stopped when he came near to his childhood home. Terry’s mother had died a year ago from pneumonia and his father now lived in the house alone. Terry rang the bell. After one ring, his father appeared at the door, as Terry knew he would.
His father seemed smaller and grayer as he stood, silently, in front of Terry in the doorway.
Terry was the first to speak. “Hello, Dad. I was in the neighborhood so I thought I’d drop by to see how you are.”
“Terence. Come in,” his father said.
His father was wearing slippers, carrying his reading glasses in one hand, and Terry figured he had probably been doing a crossword or reading one of his medical journals.
Terry lingered in the doorway. “If now is not a good time . . .” He spoke to his father’s back.
“No, it’s fine. Please, come inside.”
Terry wondered if his father was lonely, although Terry had no definite way of knowing that, since he and his father had never shared much emotionally.
His mother had been the lively one in the family, always humming some song from her girlhood days as she moved around the house. What was it like for his father now that she was gone? Quiet, Terry assumed.
His father gestured for him to sit in one of the overstuffed chairs. Right away, Terry noticed the absence of the couch that his mother had purchased shortly before she was admitted to the hospital. Terry hadn’t been to visit his father in about two months, but the missing couch startled him.
“What happened to Mom’s couch?” Terry asked.
“I donated it to the Salvation Army,” his father said quietly as he settled in his chair.
“What? Dad, that was Mom’s couch, how could you just . . .”
“Because I couldn’t stand looking at it, if you must ask,” his father said loudly. He returned to his crossword puzzle.
His father’s booming tone startled Terry. His old man’s voice had always had the same effect on him, ever since he was a little kid. It made him shut up and listen.
“All of these things,” his father said after a while. He stopped talking. He peered around the room and stared at Terry’s mother’s collection of ceramics on the mantelpiece. “They remind me of her.”
Terry felt the escalating emotion in the room. “It’s okay. You don’t have to get into it. I get it,” he said.
His father nodded and went back to his puzzle, seemingly never once crossing out anything or making a mistake. They sat in silence for around twenty minutes. Once in a while his father glanced up at him, as if to check his son was still there.
Finally, Terry rose from the chair and headed for the door. “Goodbye, Dad.”
“Goodbye,” his father said quietly. “It was good to see you.”
“Yeah,” Terry said.
Terry closed the door softly as he left. The night had finally settled in. Terry went down the front steps. His cell phone rang. It was 7 p.m. He gazed at the number on the screen and saw that it was Dino.
“Hello?”
“How’s it going?” Dino said.
“Not bad. What’s up?”
“Rebecca and I got a lot of stuff. I didn’t want to interrupt the time with your family, but I couldn’t resist.”
“That’s all right. I’m out for a walk anyway, alone.”
“They kick you out already?” Dino joked.
Terry laughed a little. “Yeah, something like that. See you in fifteen?”
“We’ll be here.”
Terry wondered when Dino had started calling Rebecca and himself “we”?
* * *
Rebecca was sitting at Terry’s desk. They were drinking coffee, and had dozens of files spread out across their desks. Dino would feel her looking at him every so often, and he knew that meant she wanted to discuss something in the files. They had briefed Captain Peters earlier, who had mentioned he would be speaking with the DA.
Dino saw Terry come in. He came over and tapped Rebecca on the shoulder.
“They need to get you a desk,” Terry said, not aggressively.
She turned around. “Hey. Sorry, I didn’t mean to invade.”
“No problem,” Terry replied. He looked at Dino and then back to Rebecca “So, what did I miss?”
“A lot,” Dino said, and took a gulp of coffee from his paper cup. “Including going to Starbucks.”
“You actually went into that place?”
Dino shrugged. “Everhart made me.”
Terry smiled. “Making a man go in against his will. I think I’m going to like you, Everhart.”
Rebecca laughed, and said, “He never had a latte before, can you believe it?”
“I sure can, he’s archaic.”
“Hey, I’ve been in there before,” Dino insisted.
“Yeah, once,” Terry said. He looked over at Everhart. “Did he ever tell you this story?”
“I don’t think he has,” she said.
Dino knew he hadn’t told Rebecca the story so he let Terry tell it.
“When they first opened a shop in Newark about four years ago, we went there one afternoon. Lulu’s was doing repairs and was closed for the week, and we’re sick of the deli coffee, which tastes like mud, by the way. Not that I know what mud tastes like, but I’m sure it does taste like that coffee. Anyway, we go into the place, and the line’s long, I mean practically out the door. But when we’re finally halfway there to the counter Dino looks around, says to me, ‘it’s too crowded in here,’ and gets off the line. I stayed, which was lucky because the guy in front of me decided to try to hold up the place. Just as I was about to tackle him and his gun to the ground, he bolts outside. Well, what can I say, Dino caught him, and afterward he never went inside a Starbucks again.” Terry laughed to himself.
Dino added, “I took it as a sign that I was more useful outside of one than in. What can I say, I’m superstitious?”
Rebecca laughed. “This place is a lot more interesting than I would have thought.”
“You’re right,” Terry said. “The surprises never end. So what did you guys get?”
Rebecca stood up from Terry’s desk. “Cooper and I went to Stygian Town earlier this evening. We talked to the locals and got the name of a family of Russian immigrants, the Ilyin family, who had a son, who according to their former landlord had an operation after an accident and then disappeared. We also made an arrest, but not in our case.”
Dino listened as she told Terry about the painkiller dealers.
“Was narcotics annoyed you took their collar?” Terry asked with a smile.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Let me guess, this family with the son, they’re no longer in the area?”
Rebecca nodded. “And the child doesn’t appear to have attended any of the public or private schools, since we can’t find his name in the registration records we just picked up.”
“How about the surgeon?”
“Alexei Fedotov. That’s his name,” Dino said. “I put a call in to the AMA, and they don’t have any record of him. Also, the DMV doesn’t have a driver’s license or identification card for him.”
“So he doesn’t exist?” Terry asked.
“Basically.”
“Or he doesn’t have a license to practice in the US,” Rebecca said. “And he’s using a fake name. The Ilyins’ landlord said he practiced out of a community center.”
“He was performing operations in a community center?” Terry seemed astonished. “No police report was filed about the kid?”
Dino nodded.
“I don’t like the sound of this . . .” Terry stopped talking.
Dino noticed him looking at a stout, older man hovering near the entranceway leading into the homicide bureau.
“Can I help you?” said Terry.
The man seemed familiar to Dino and muttered something in a heavy accent.
“That’s the landlord we spoke to,” said Rebecca.
“What’s he doing here?”
Dino started to rise from his desk and the man turned to leave. Dino chased after him. “Wait, Mr. Orlov,” he shouted.
Dino caught up with Orlov just before he escaped out of the station door. He managed to get him to agree to follow him back into the station and talk with them. On the way back to their desks, Orlov insisted in heavily accented English that he didn’t want to go into “one of those small rooms like they have on the American police television shows.”
Dino settled the guy’s nerves.
“Please, I don’t know anything about what those people had in the apartment. I only rented to them. This isn’t about that.”
Dino pulled up a chair next to his desk and asked Orlov to sit down. Mr. Orlov glanced around at Rebecca and Terry, who both greeted him. Then he stared at his hands.
“Everhart speaks Russian. She’ll translate,” Dino said to Terry.
Terry smiled at Rebecca. “Aren’t we glad you came here?”
Rebecca turned toward Orlov and spoke in English at first. “Mr. Orlov, is there something else you want to tell us? Is that why you’re here?”
“I have your card,” Orlov explained. “That’s why I came here. The woman who was one of the police at my building—”
“From narcotics?” Rebecca asked.
Orlov nodded. “I showed her your card and told her I had something else to say to you. She told me to call you. But I have no telephone so I come here.”
“What would you like to tell us?”
Orlov looked at his hands again and shook his head. Rebecca spoke to him in Russian. Rebecca had tried to teach Dino a little Russian on the drive back to the station, and he could understand Orlov saying da and nyet.
Orlov gradually opened up to Rebecca, and Terry raised his eyebrows at Dino.
After ten minutes or so, Rebecca explained Orlov’s sudden appearance at the station.
“He says he didn’t tell us everything earlier, but he felt terrible so he came here because he needed to confess,” she said.
“To the painkillers or to the murder?” Dino said.
“No to either of those. He says that Alexei Fedotov never left the city. He moved, but he’s still right here in Newark.”
“No shit.”
“What’s his address?” Terry asked.
“Mr. Orlov says he was afraid to mention this before because Alexei Fedotov is his sister’s former husband,” Rebecca told them. “Fedotov is not a good man, according to Mr. Orlov. He is a con and a cheat who’s had many patients in the community die at his hands. Back in Russia, Fedotov’s father is a business oligarch, and so the people in the community were afraid to retaliate against him, but their hostility made him move out of the area. He now lives in the Regal Tower.”
“That new high-end building uptown?” Dino said.
“If that’s what it’s called.” Rebecca turned her attention back to Orlov. “Thank you. You can go now, but I’ll be in touch if we have any more questions. Let me jot down a number where we can reach you.”
Orlov smiled sheepishly. “I don’t have a telephone.”
“Oh, that’s right. We’ll just stop by your apartment if we need to speak with you again.”
Orlov nodded as he rose. He shook hands with the three of them in turn. Then he asked Dino about his young tenants.
“They’ve been processed, but I don’t think anyone bailed them out yet.”
“Maybe I’ll help her.”
“Not him?”
Orlov shook his head. “He’s on his own. Your friends tore my building apart. I am not happy with him.”
“You might want to be careful with her. She spat at my partner.” Dino pointed at Rebecca.
“Really?” Orlov seemed surprised.
“Yes, she did,” Rebecca said.
* * *
On the drive over to the Regal Tower, Dino and Terry explained the building’s history to Rebecca. The tower was built during the most recent US housing bubble with the intention of marketing the two-to-four bedroom units to those who worked in neighboring Manhattan. Then the crisis of 2008 happened and now the building was pretty much vacant except for a few unlucky residents who had bought units before the economy tanked. The tower itself stood nearly fifty stories high, and was considered the gaudiest building in the city of Newark.
When Rebecca arrived at the tower with Dino and Terry she marveled that the glass windows outside had to have been cleaned at least twice a day.
Through the automatic front doors they entered a brilliantly lit lobby with smooth white marble floors that appeared to have just been polished. A majestic red carpet led to three elevators with gold doors. Behind a black reception desk sat a man in a double-breasted navy jacket with the letters RT stitched on the front in silver cursive.
“What is this, some sort of palace?” Rebecca murmured to Terry.
“What, you’ve never heard of the royalty of New Jersey?” he joked as they approached the desk.
All three displayed their badges.
Rebecca gave the concierg
e a firm look. “Good evening. We’re looking for Alexei Fedotov. We know he lives here.”
The concierge eyed her carefully. “You’re the police?”
Rebecca pushed her badge closer to him. “What floor is Mr. Fedotov on?” she asked.
The concierge stared at her badge and then raised his eyebrows at her. “Do you have a search warrant?”
Dino cleared his throat. “Come on, man, is he home or not?”
The concierge shrugged.
“Listen, if you know he’s here, and you’re lying, you can be charged with harboring a criminal. Understand?” Rebecca shouted. “Now, what floor is he on?”
“He has the penthouse, but he’s . . .”
“What?” Terry said.
“Nothing,” the concierge said. “I just don’t think you’ll get much out of talking to him.”
“Let us decide that,” Dino said.
“Don’t do anything stupid like warning him,” Rebecca said. “Thanks for your help,” she added as an afterthought.
They rode one of the gold elevators to the top floor, and stepped out into a hallway that was decorated similarly to the lobby downstairs.
Rebecca looked at Dino and Terry to make sure they were ready. When they nodded at her, she knocked on the penthouse’s white door. After a while no one had answered so Rebecca knocked again, with more force.
“Police. Open up!” she said.
A woman’s voice shouted from inside, “Just a minute, please.”
“She’s definitely Russian,” Rebecca said.
“I guess Fedotov’s shacking up,” said Terry.
The door was opened by an attractive middle-aged woman with her blonde hair in a high ponytail. She wore a white uniform like a nurse would at a hospital. She seemed nervous as she stood in the threshold. Rebecca could see into the large apartment behind the woman.
“Yes?” the woman said in a husky voice.
“Good evening, ma’am. We’re homicide detectives from the Newark police department, and we need to speak with Alexei Fedotov,” Dino stated.
“Mr. Fedotov?” the woman said in amazement. “No, it cannot be possible.”
“Is he home?” Rebecca said.
The woman nodded.