by Neil Plakcy
“You might find this a very personal question, but I’ve got to ask. How’s your sex life, Mrs. Cardozo?”
“We have been married fifteen years. It’s what you would expect.”
“You have any sexy underwear of your own?”
She looked at him with alarm. “My underwear is my own business.”
“Yes, it is. But if I might make a suggestion—make a visit to a store like Victoria’s Secret. You’ve got a very nice figure. Buy yourself something sexy that shows it off. And then model for your husband. Give him the opportunity to show off for you, too.”
“This is very strange.”
“Nothing in this world is strange if it makes you—or someone you love—feel good, Mrs. Cardozo.”
She opened her black bag with a grim expression. “What do I owe you, Mr. Andromeda?”
26 – An Awful Woman
Tuesday morning Biff dressed for another workout at the Bolshoi Gym. He drove down to the gym, and as he ambled through the parking lot, with Raki hopping and darting beside him, he noticed the white butterfly circling in the air around him. With the lightest of touches, Syl landed on Biff’s shoulder, and with his wings flattened he was nearly invisible against Biff’s white T-shirt.
Raki scampered toward the grocery store in the shopping center without a backward glance at Biff. “Have a nice day,” Biff called after him. “Squirrels.”
The ductwork in the gym was exposed, and once they were inside, Syl rose up to the ceiling level and perched there, probably investigating the air handling system. Laskin wasn’t in the locker room or at any of the machines, and Biff wondered if he was skipping another workout. To maintain his cover, though, he began at the bench press.
He’d just completed a dozen reps when Laskin appeared next to his head. “You don’t wait for your spotter, Bill?” he asked.
“Hey, Igor,” Biff said, making sure to huff between reps to make it appear that he was working hard. “Wasn’t sure you’d make it.”
He appeared to struggle with the last rep, allowing Laskin to help him replace the weights. “Wow, you are strong one, Bill.”
Biff sat up and shrugged. “Regular workouts.” He looked at his watch. “You’re running late this morning.”
Laskin walked to the incline press and settled down. “Had to work late. My boss, he has – moved on. So I am climbing up ladder in organization. More work, much driving around, meeting with people.”
Biff was curious about what Laskin did now that Ovetschkin was dead. “Yeah, I know what that’s like. They just keep shoveling more work on you.”
“You got it,” Igor said.
They grumbled back and forth about bosses and schedules as they moved from the lat pull-down to the leg press. “I see we think alike, Bill,” Igor said. “Like me, you look for way to make yourself success. But sometimes I think maybe my brain not good enough. My girl, very smart.” He tapped his head. “Not so much, me. Nothing stop me from hard work. I go, go, go. But hard to think ahead, you know?”
Biff pushed his feet forward on the leg press, holding the handles by his side. “I’m more like your girl. I think ahead a lot.”
“Maybe we make good team,” Igor said. “When Natasha go to college.”
“We’ll see,” Biff said. He looked at his watch. “I’m ready to quit. See you tomorrow?”
Laskin gave up, stood, and stretched. “You like Russian girls, Bill?”
“If they’re pretty.” Biff stood, too, and they walked toward the locker room together.
“Is party tonight,” Igor said. “At the Marouschka in Hallandale. You know it?”
“Fancy place.”
Igor nodded. “But tomorrow night is party for younger people, like you and me. Lots of pretty girls there.”
“You think I could get in?” Biff held the locker room door open for Igor.
“You are friend of Igor!” the Russian said, slapping Biff on the back. “Of course you get in. Come after ten o’clock, yes?”
Biff agreed. While Laskin stripped for his shower, Biff left the locker room and walked outside. He looked around but couldn’t see the butterfly, and assumed that Syl was still inside, waiting for Laskin to leave.
As he unlocked his car, Raki appeared, dragging with him a big hunk of chocolate-chip cookie. So you’re back. Were you afraid of the big bad butterfly? Biff asked.
Huh? Raki replied, intent on chewing his cookie.
Biff gave up. Back at the office, he wrote up the notes of his morning with Syl and Laskin, and then emailed both Jimmy and Hector that he had established a relationship with Laskin, and had an operative following the Russian. By the time he finished it was lunchtime. The squirrel accompanied him outside, then disappeared to do some kind of squirrely business. Biff walked over to the café in the shopping center and ordered a platter of ropa vieja, a Cuban dish of shredded flank steak in tomato sauce. He smiled at the idea of walking into an American restaurant and asking for a platter of old clothes.
Back in the office, he spent the afternoon familiarizing himself with Customs procedures so that once he was embedded in the office he’d know what he was doing. Just before four, he heard a knock on the exterior door of his office, and he stood up and opened it for a middle-aged black woman pushing an elderly white woman in a wheelchair.
“Good afternoon,” the aide said to Biff in a musical Jamaican accent.
The elderly woman ignored Biff and addressed her aide instead. “Leave me in the office and then wait outside.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the aide said. She positioned the wheelchair carefully across from Biff’s desk and set the brakes. Then she nodded to him and stepped into the outer office, closing the glass door behind her.
The woman was nearing ninety, Biff guessed, and her aura was a washed-out pale green, a color he had always associated with end-of-life issues. Her purple-tinged hair was thinning, though expertly coiffed, and she had more wrinkles than a Shar-Pei. She wore a red suit that looked to be a relic of the 1980s, a strand of pearls, and a diamond brooch.
“How can I help you?” Biff asked.
“These aides are robbing me blind!” she said. “I want you to make it stop.”
The woman’s name was Etta Himmelfinger, and she lived in the Jade Winds, a circular condo tower south of Biff’s office. She told him she had started to notice things going missing ever since she began having a live-in aide, and she had fired a succession of women.
“But things are still getting stolen. My diamond engagement ring. A gold necklace my son gave me with little heads on it.”
Biff looked up in alarm. “Shrunken heads?”
“Gold heads, dummy. One for each of my grandchildren.”
He made a list of everything Mrs. Himmelfinger believed had been stolen. “Do you have a safe in your apartment?”
“You think I can crawl on the ground like a lizard to get into it?” she asked. “I want my things handy so I can wear them.”
He nodded, then asked for name of the agency that supplied the aides to her. She handed him a card for it. “You want to talk to the girl? I can call her in.”
“How about if I run some background checks, and then come over to your apartment when I finish,” Biff said. “I can talk to her then.”
She peered at his contract through a pair of red-framed reading glasses, and Biff wondered if she chose her glasses to match her outfit. He imagined that there were a dozen different pairs in her voluminous pocketbook, which he recognized as coming from Bottega Veneta, a high-end leather store that he was sure Farishta would like.
“What is this crap about a wish?” she asked, looking up at him.
“Do you wish me to investigate this case for you?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. Evelyn Greenberg spoke very highly of you.”
He remembered Mrs. Greenberg, who had hired him to do a background check on her granddaughter’s fiancé. He was working as a valet in Mrs. Greenberg’s building, and it turned out he had an unfo
rtunate penchant for taking cars that didn’t belong to him. Biff met with him and strongly suggested he should start over somewhere new, and the valet took the hint. The granddaughter cried for a couple of days, then started dating the podiatrist who came by to trim her grandmother’s toenails regularly. Mrs. Greenberg was very pleased.
“Evelyn said you did good work, but you were flaky. I don’t like flaky.”
“There are plenty of private investigators you can choose from.” Biff sat back in his ergonomic chair and steepled his fingers.
“What the hell,” Mrs. Himmelfinger said. “If you screw up I’ll tell everyone how lousy Evelyn’s potato kugel is. She thinks her kugel is so much better than mine. But it’s not.”
She scrawled her name on the contract and handed it back to Biff, along with two hundred-dollar bills to cover his retainer. Then she pulled a decorative bell from her pocketbook and rang it.
The aide opened the office door. “I’m ready to go,” Mrs. Himmelfinger said. “We can stop at the Winn Dixie on the way home and get some of that challah I like.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the aide said, expertly maneuvering the chair around and smiling a goodbye at Biff.
He closed up the office then, looked for the squirrel in the parking lot, and when he couldn’t find him, drove home. He relaxed, fixed himself a light dinner, and then just before ten, he dressed for the party at the Marouschka. He put on the new clothes Farishta had bought for him—designer black slacks and a black and silver shirt that fit him perfectly but did not have any of the goofy character of things he’d have bought for himself. As he drove to the Marouschka, he allowed himself to wonder where she was and what she was doing, then pushed those thoughts away when he reached the restaurant.
The parking lot was already crowded, and Biff followed a group of twenty-somethings speaking Russian up to the restaurant’s front door. He looked around for Syl but couldn’t see him, and he had no way to communicate with him. Had he even picked up Laskin at the gym? The sylph had demonstrated that he had a short attention span when he was in Biff’s office—suppose he’d gotten distracted and given up on the assignment?
But then, Syl had only been a backup plan anyway. Biff had always had to rely on himself to find information, and tonight was going to be just another assignment.
He stepped inside the Marouschka. Though the interior was as opulent as it had been the last time he was there, this time the staff were dressed in contemporary clothes, mostly in black, and Biff felt that he fit right in. His outer appearance made him look no older than thirty or thirty-five, and though many of the girls were younger, the men ranged in age from mid-twenties to early forties.
“I’m Bill Adams,” he said to the hostess at the front desk. “Friend of Igor Laskin.”
She smiled and ushered him in. The Russian pop music was loud, and the buzz of chatter in the room had to be even louder to compete. Biff spotted Igor and Natasha in a corner of the room, with three other young women and two young men—the bodybuilders Biff had first spotted at the gym, Yuri and the friend whose name he’d never caught.
Igor welcomed him into their circle, introducing him to everyone. The girls were all school friends of Natasha’s—Katya, Vera and Galina, and Yuri’s friend was Vsevolod, but he said to call him V. “You look familiar,” V said. “You work out at gym?”
Biff nodded. “That’s where I met Igor.”
The group resumed the conversation that Biff’s entrance had interrupted, and he had a few moments to observe them. Katya was the prettiest of the girls—but also the poorest, if Biff compared her wardrobe and jewelry to that of her friends. Natasha was the best-dressed, and though she had a very pretty face, she had the flattest chest. Vera and Galina had both already had cosmetic surgery—Vera a nose job and Galina breast implants.
They all chattered away about movies and restaurants, and then people began to dance. Igor offered his arm to Natasha in a courtly gesture, and then Yuri went for the beautiful Katya, whose blonde hair cascaded to her bare shoulders. V immediately invited the breasty Galina, leaving Biff and Vera together.
“Do you dance?” he asked.
She smiled and extended her hand to him. He was lucky; Vera was the best dancer of the bunch, and once they got accustomed to each other they were stepping and swinging together in fluid movement. Galina danced like her new breasts unbalanced her, hopping back and forth from foot to foot and bouncing her girls so much Biff expected them to jump out of the filmy blouse that held them in.
The others danced like Americans: awkward swaying and exaggerated hand movements. Biff, who had spent a lot of time in Latin climes, swayed his hips and rotated his shoulders, and Vera followed his lead. When the music changed to a Russian version of “Strangers in the Night,” Igor led them all to the bar, where they drank vodka shooters flavored with raspberry and cranberry, even though it was clear to Biff, and probably the bartender, that the girls were all under age. Biff enjoyed himself—but he’d rather have been with Farishta, and he smiled to think how she would show up these young girls with her beauty and her experience.
By two a.m., he was getting ready to leave, when he saw Igor and Natasha arguing. His extra-sensitive hearing allowed him to eavesdrop. “You cannot do this,” Igor said.
“I do what I want!” Natasha stepped backward.
“You are childish!” Igor said, advancing on her. He took her by the hand and towed her toward the same back door he’d ducked out with Ovetschkin the first time Biff had come to the restaurant.
Biff kissed the cheeks of the three girls, shook the hands of the two bodybuilders, and made his excuses, then walked out the front door of the restaurant. It was hot and humid, especially after the pleasure of the air conditioning. He was already sweating by the time he rounded the corner of the building to the rear service drive. Lurking in the shadows, he listened as Natasha and Igor continued their argument. “She was awful woman!” Igor insisted. “Is good she is dead.”
“You don’t understand,” Natasha said, stamping her delicate foot, encased in a strappy sandal. “She paid me. Without her I have no money.”
“I give you money.”
“I want my own!”
Igor’s face reddened. “Sveta take pictures of you when you younger. Is terrible. But do she still pay you to pose?”
“Not for years. I’m too old, don’t you know.” She put her hands on her hips. “But every time I referred a girl to her, she gave me a percentage of what she made on the pictures.”
“You were like pimp for her? Finding girls?”
Natasha laughed harshly. “Not a pimp, Igor. I never made any girl do something she didn’t want to. I just connected pretty girls I knew with Sveta.”
“Baby girls.” Igor stepped back from her.
She fanned herself with her open palm. “Not babies. I would never get involved in something like that. Girls who were thirteen or fourteen. Old enough to know what they were doing.”
“Your father, he knows this?”
“Of course not. Daddy would go ballistic.”
“You are supposed to be good girl, Natasha. Go to college. Maybe I tell your father, so he protect you.”
Natasha reached out and slapped Igor on the cheek. “You better not,” she said. “You say anything to him and you know what he’s going to do. Lock me up somewhere until I have to leave for Yale. And that means no more going out with you.”
“I don’t wish to go out with you again,” Igor said. “Goodbye, Natasha.”
He turned and walked back into the restaurant, leaving Natasha standing in a shaft of moonlight, clutching her tiny evening bag in her right hand.
Who would have thought Igor Laskin had a conscience, Biff thought.
27 – A Little Birdie
The next morning there was no sign of Raki at the townhouse. Biff had been just fine on his own, he thought, as he got into his car. Then Raki had showed up, then Farishta, then Syl. He had a team. Now he was on his own again. It was disconcerting
.
Laskin was already at the Bolshoi Gym when Biff arrived, and the sweat stains on his tight-fitting tank top indicated he’d been there for a while. The gold coin was around his neck as always. From his tight jaw to the fists clenched around the handles of the bicep-tricep machine, the Russian radiated anger.
Biff slid into the machine next to him and simply nodded, then began his workout. Laskin was a good six inches shorter than Biff, and though he was muscular, he was top-heavy—too much focus on pecs and biceps and not enough on legs. Biff’s physique was better proportioned.
They moved silently around the circuit for a half hour. Without Laskin’s conversation to distract him, Biff worried about Syl. He couldn’t see the butterfly in the gym, and he didn’t want to stop his workout to focus on finding the sylph’s magic signature, which was so tiny that it would require opening his third eye and concentrating.
Biff had only known the sylph for a short time, and though he accepted that Syl was an ephemeral creature, he was worried. It wouldn’t have been hard for a stiff breeze to blow the sylph away, or for him to get swatted by a careless human or eaten by a bird, lizard or snake. Raki was most likely okay; squirrels were resilient creatures. And Farishta? There was no use worrying about what she was getting up to. But that didn’t stop Biff.
It was Laskin who spoke first. “You worried about something, Bill? You are lacking focus this morning.”
He was surprised that Laskin had noticed. “My girlfriend went off on a trip on Sunday, and I haven’t heard from her. Just thinking about her.”
“I hear you,” Laskin said. “I break up with Natasha after party last night. Makes me angry, and sad. But is best, after all. She go off to college in August.”
Biff was curious to see how much Igor would reveal. “What happened? It kind of looked like you guys had a fight.”
“She is not nice girl I think she is,” he said. “All time she is not having sex with me because she is good girl, right? And I am stupid. I say I will wait until she is eighteen.”
“Smart move,” Biff said. “How old are you?”