Way Off Plan

by Alexa Land

  “Patience, sweetheart. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  He didn’t argue with me. He was uncharacteristically subdued, obviously rattled by the events of the last hour. I hoped I was doing the right thing with where I was taking him.

  After just a few minutes we emerged in the Richmond, and pulled up across the street from a narrow yellow row house. I jumped out of the van and held Dmitri’s door for him, then took his arm and crossed the street and led him up the flight of stairs to the front door. As I pushed the doorbell, he asked, “What is this place, Jamie?”

  The door swung open, and a booming voice asked, “Why the hell are you ringing the bell, Jamie? Did you lose your key?”

  And I pulled Dmitri into the light spilling from the open doorway and said, “Hi, Dad. I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Dmitri Teplov.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dmitri and my father stared at each other for one very long, very tense minute. Ok, so maybe blindsiding both of them hadn’t been the best idea I’d ever had. It had seemed sound when I’d thought of it a few minutes ago – not giving them a chance to build their defenses up, and all that. But now, as I wondered if my dad was going to shove my boyfriend up against the wall and frisk him, I thought maybe calling ahead might have been a better way to go.

  My mother appeared behind my father and exclaimed, “For Pete’s sake Ray, what are you doing? Who’s out there?” She peered around her husband and said, “Jamie! Why are you out on the porch? Come in before your father lets in every fly in the city.”

  My father stepped back slowly and I stepped around him, clutching Dmitri’s arm and towing him in behind me. “Hi, Mom. This is my boyfriend, Dmitri.”

  Her social skills were a lot better than my father’s, so it only took her a few seconds to wipe the look of utter shock off her face. And then she smiled fairly convincingly and said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dmitri.”

  “You too, Mrs. Nolan,” he managed, his voice a notch above a strangled whisper.

  “Come on in, boys,” she said. “Are you hungry? We just finished eating, but there are plenty of leftovers.”

  “No thanks, Mom.”

  I led Dmitri into the small living room, where we found Brennan and Brody sitting in front of the TV watching a golf program that had to have been my father’s idea. Brennan exclaimed, “No more gawf! It’s so boring. We want cartoons!” He turned around to look at us and caught sight of Dmitri. “Uncle Meaty!” he shrieked, and launched himself off the rug and into Dmitri’s arms.

  “Hey, buddy,” Dmitri said softly, catching the little boy by his armpits and hauling him up onto his hip.

  Brody turned around too, and grinned hugely. “Meaty!” he exclaimed, and I bit back what would have been a slightly hysterical laugh as he flung himself at Dmitri’s leg and latched on like a tree sloth.

  “Now all we need is the – ” I started to say, when Tippy crawled out from under the sofa and shook himself. “Oh, there he is.” The dog jumped up on Dmitri too, panting and wagging his tail delightedly.

  “Oh,” my mother said with surprise. “So, they’ve all already met, then.”

  “Yeah, just recently. Erin and Maureen came by my apartment. Are they here, too?”

  “No, your sisters are on a girls’ night out, so we’re babysitting the kids.” Tippy fell under that category.

  “Ah.” I perched on the couch while Dmitri sat down cross-legged on the carpet, and the boys sat on his knees and demanded his phone game. He produced the cell phone for them and brought the screen to life before placing it in their grimy little mitts.

  I hazarded a glance at my father. He had seated himself in his La-Z-Boy recliner, white- knuckling the armrests as he ground his teeth together and stared at me, silently demanding an explanation as to why I’d blindsided him, and why a suspected felon now sat on his living room rug. I could practically see the black storm clouds gathering over his head. I was sure the only reason he wasn’t screaming at me right now was because the kids were over, and they always started crying hysterically whenever he yelled. That in turn drove my father completely crazy.

  My mother’s gaze hadn’t left my boyfriend. He’d propped himself up with his hands behind him, looking perfectly comfortable on the worn beige carpet in his two thousand dollar suit, her two grandsons on his lap. Dmitri was agreeing with the boys in a low voice that golf really was the most boring thing on the planet.

  After a minute, she seemed to decide that Dmitri didn’t pose an immediate threat to her grandbabies. Maybe the fact that there were two cops in the room helped her reach that conclusion. She said, “I’ll just go get us some coffee. I’ll be right back.” She was physically incapable of having guests in her home without supplying them with coffee and baked goods.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Nolan,” Dmitri said quietly, looking up at her and holding her gaze.

  She hesitated for a moment, watching him closely. His expression was open, sincere. I could see her warming to him, the rigid line of her shoulders relaxing ever-so-slightly. “You’re welcome, Dmitri,” my mother said. She shot a warning glance at my father and whispered, “Be nice, Ray,” before heading to the kitchen.

  I turned to my father then and blurted, “So Dad, we’re here because I need your advice.”

  I heard my mother drop something in the adjacent kitchen, and fought the urge to roll my eyes. Ok, so I’d never actually uttered those words before, but did it really warrant the dropping of pots and pans?

  My father was fairly shocked, too, which he conveyed with a single raised eyebrow. “You do? You’ve certainly never wanted my advice before,” he said, and cut a glance at my boyfriend. Last time I’d seen my father, he’d not so much offered me advice as offered to kill me if I kept going out with Dmitri.

  My usual response when dealing with my father was total defensiveness. It was hard to let that go now, but I made myself say calmly, “I really need your help, Dad.”

  That was another combination of words that had never actually passed from my lips. It had a curious effect on my father. He blinked at me, then tried to find a reason to get mad, then blinked at me again. Finally he seemed to concede that we were both in totally uncharted territory here, and leaned back in his chair as he said, “Ok. What do you need?”

  “Maybe we should talk in the kitchen,” I said, glancing at my nephews.

  My father nodded and hauled himself up from his recliner, and I got up and held a hand out to Dmitri.

  “Me too?” he asked softly. I nodded, and he deposited the kids on the carpet with that magic phone app and took my hand. The boys didn’t even look up as we went into the kitchen, and the dog curled up to go back to sleep beside them.

  My mother was pulling coffee mugs out of the cupboard when we came into the room. She glanced at Dmitri’s and my joined hands. And she dealt with it. Finding out I was gay hadn’t been the highlight of their year, but my parents were coping. Far better than I could have hoped for, actually.

  My father and I sat at the kitchen table, and my mother quickly ran a sponge over the flowered vinyl table cloth. Dmitri asked if he could help her (putting my dad and me to shame in the sexism department), and when at first she refused, he gently cajoled her until finally he was given the task of arranging the cookies on the platter while my mother rounded up sugar and creamer and coffee cups, placing them on her ‘special occasion’ silver tray. She might have her doubts about Dmitri, but she was treating him like an honored guest, and that was nice to see.

  When finally we were all seated around the table, I gave my parents a concise summary of Dmitri’s involvement in the Russian mafia, then told them in detail about Gregor Sokolov and the veiled threats he’d delivered this afternoon. When I got to the part about not being able to get a search warrant because Sokolov had a couple cops in his pocket, a vein bulged out in my father’s forehead and he said in a low growl, “I need names. That shit can’t go on in my department.”

  “I may have a way of finding
out which cops are working for my uncle,” Dmitri said quietly. It was the first time he’d spoken since we’d sat down at the table. I looked at him questioningly, and he told me, “Joe Rudin. He does the payroll, he’d have names. Maybe he’s bribable. Or maybe we have an in with him, now that Catherine’s dating him.”

  My father stared at Dmitri for a long moment. And then he nodded. He liked that. But he wasn’t ready to welcome Dmitri to the family with open arms just yet. Instead, he turned to me and said, “See? This is exactly what I was worried about when I found out you were dating someone in the mafia. All of a sudden, you’ve got lowlife criminals showing up at your door, making threats against you, against your family. I know Sokolov. He’s been on my radar for more than two decades. He’s a total sociopath and a slippery son of a bitch. We’ve never been able to pin anything on him.”

  “Including the murder of Vince Pasteretti,” I said.

  Dmitri and my father both looked at me in surprise. “That’s right,” my dad told me. “How do you remember that case? You were just a kid when he was murdered. It must have been ten, twelve years ago.”

  “It was headline news at the time,” I said. “But I had almost forgotten about it, until Catherine reminded me.”

  “Catherine?” my mother asked.

  “Catherine Sokolov, Dmitri’s cousin. Gregor’s daughter.”

  “Christ,” my father muttered, “you have gotten deeply involved with the family, if you and Sokolov’s daughter are chatting about unsolved murders.”

  “She went to her father’s office today, by the way,” I told Dmitri.

  “Yeah, I figured as much when you said she was going out with Joe.”

  “She told me to ask you something,” I said, struggling for a moment to remember what it was. “She said…she said ‘Ask Dmitri about the Packard.’ Do you have any idea what she was talking about?”

  He sat up a little straighter in his chair. “Yeah, I do. What about it, though?’

  “She said she saw something at her father’s office. A key. Does that make any sense?”

  Dmitri pushed his chair back from the table. “I’m not sure. Please excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Nolan. I need to call my cousin.” He patted his pockets, then said, “The boys have my cell phone.” I handed him mine, and he thanked me and went to the far side of the kitchen, looking out the patio door at my parents’ backyard as he dialed and waited for the call to connect.

  “What’s this about?” my mother asked.

  “I have no idea,” I told her. “Catherine was going to look around when she was at her father’s office, see if she could spot anything incriminating that would help Dmitri and me.”

  “You mean to tell me Sokolov’s daughter is working with you?” my father wanted to know.

  “Yeah. She’s good people, and totally on our side.”

  My father didn’t quite know what to make of that.

  Dmitri said softly into the phone, “Hey Cat, it’s Dmitri. Is Joe within earshot?” He was quiet for a moment, then said, again very softly, “In five minutes, make an excuse and go to the ladies’ room and call me at this number.” He listened for a beat, then disconnected the call.

  A couple minutes later my phone rang, and Dmitri answered it by saying, “That wasn’t five minutes.”

  As he and Catherine had a quick conversation, I reached for a couple chocolate chip cookies and ate them in two big bites each. I was reaching for a couple more as Dmitri crossed the room to me and handed me my phone. He saw what I was doing and said with concern, “Baby, you must be so hungry. You never had dinner.” And then, realizing he’d just called me baby in front of my dad, he looked mortified.

  That was like lighting a firecracker under my mother. “You haven’t eaten? Why didn’t you say something!” She bustled to the refrigerator and started pulling out plastic containers as she asked, “What about you, Dmitri? Have you had dinner?”

  “No, ma’am, but please don’t go through any trouble,” Dmitri told her.

  “This isn’t trouble,” she said with a big smile. She was in full Mom mode now.

  “At least let me help you,” he said.

  But I stood up and told him, “I’ll help while you tell us what Catherine said.” I crossed the kitchen and picked up a container of macaroni and cheese, cracking the lid and sticking it in the microwave.

  Dmitri leaned against the kitchen counter and said, “Well, it’s probably nothing. Catherine just told me that when she was at her father’s office, his key ring was sitting out. It’s a big huge thing, so he often takes it out of his pocket when he’s sitting at his desk. Anyway, she noticed that he still had a key on the ring that really shouldn’t be there anymore.”

  “I’m going to hazard a guess and say, a key to a Packard?”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “And why is this notable?” I asked, pulling the lid off a container, seeing it was full of green beans and putting the lid back on again. My mother sighed and took the container from my hands.

  “Because my uncle doesn’t have the Packard any more. Or at least he says he doesn’t. He told us it was stolen.” He looked at me and said, “Twelve years ago.”

  “Around the time Vince Pasteretti was killed?” I asked.

  “Exactly around that time.”

  “Ok, so tell me about this car.”

  “It was a black 1929 Packard, a real gem. It was my uncle’s pride and joy. Catherine used to joke that he loved that car more than her – only, she wasn’t really joking. The story was that it used to belong to Lucky Luciano. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But I do know that whoever owned that car before my uncle was one bad motherf–” Dmitri cut himself off and cleared his throat. Then he continued, “One bad person.”

  I grinned at that and then asked, “What makes you say that?”

  “Because this thing was death on wheels. I used to call it the Black Beauty. You know, like the Green Hornet’s car?” He looked to me for confirmation, and my grin doubled in size. He was so cute when he was dorky. “I mean, ok, it was totally the wrong make and model. Wrong decade even, by far. But hey, I was a kid, what did I know?

  “Anyway,” he continued, “It had all these secret compartments and built-in weapons – that was the part that made it like the Black Beauty. It actually had two Gatling guns that would fold out of the front fenders. And it had two decorative finials at the top of the driver’s seat that were actually the handles of these long, curved knives. Cat and I used to have sword fights with them.”

  “Damn,” I murmured.

  “Catherine and I were in love with this car almost as much as my uncle was. We’d sneak the key when we knew he’d be tied up in meetings – he always kept it locked. And we’d sit in the car and pretend to drive it, taking turns being the Green Hornet and Kato.” Dmitri shook his head. “That car belonged in a museum. It was like nothing we’d ever seen before. Or since.”

  “And the car was stolen?”

  “Well, that’s what we were told. One day the Packard was out in the warehouse, the next day it wasn’t. And even then, even at fourteen, I remember wondering who would have the balls to sneak into the headquarters of the Russian mafia and drive away with a car that flashy. I mean, you wouldn’t get two feet without being spotted in something like that. Assuming you even made it out the door, assuming my uncle and his men didn’t eviscerate you first.”

  Dmitri crossed his feet at the ankles as he leaned against the counter. “So, the day after the car goes missing, the police show up at my uncle’s office. I remember being surprised by that, surprised my uncle had called the cops to help him find his car when he’d never done anything but badmouth the police. But they weren’t there about the car. They were asking a bunch of questions about Vince Pasteretti. How well did my uncle know him? Was my uncle aware that Vince and his wife were having an affair? So on and so forth.”

  “That’s right,” my father said in a low voice. “He was our prime suspect. Jealous husband and all that.
But we couldn’t find a shred of evidence. We got warrants, searched his home, his vehicles, his places of business top to bottom. We couldn’t find a thing.”

  “Mr. Nolan,” Dmitri asked, “where was Vince Pasteretti killed?”

  “We never found the spot where he was actually murdered,” my father said. “His body was left on the meat counter at his deli, hacked to shreds. It was one of those crime scenes that I’ll never forget, not if I live to be a hundred. But that’s not where he was killed. There wasn’t enough blood.”

  My mother crossed herself and murmured, “Sweet Mother of God.”

  “So, what are you thinking?” I asked Dmitri. “That maybe your uncle killed Pasteretti in the Packard?”

  “Maybe.” He looked up at me. “And if that’s what happened, there might be DNA evidence left in the car that would send my uncle to jail for murder.”