Kazakov shook his head. “If you had photos, you would have used them by now.” And if he paid her, he had no doubt she’d probably sell that fact to Bure himself.
“A pity.” She shook her head. “I always wanted to pull him down a peg. He thought he was so much better than us—a descendent of the great Yekaterina, no less.” She looked up at him. “Well? What are you waiting for? You’ve got your money for the month. You stay here too long and that bitch Zelinka will have her lads after me again.”
She turned back to her desk as if he wasn’t even there. The envelopes in his pocket were heavy—just what did Rostoff charge for protection?
The weight of Kazakov’s new knowledge was heavier. Katya. The young blonde girl who’d taken Maria’s cigarettes.
The one who reminded him of Yekaterina.
Instead of returning to the sedan, he stood on the sidewalk outside the brothel feeling sick to his stomach and looked up the street. The Red Veil stood like a central jewel in a tiara of graceful houses that curved along the street edging the park. To either side of the Veil, some of the buildings had been turned into offices when families objected to the Red Veil in their midst. Kazakov trudged up the street toward them. He would have liked to have finished his interviews at the Red Veil but that was apparently beyond him given Rostoff’s words.
The Detektiv Chief Inspektor would surely have a stronger reaction if he knew what Kazakov was about to do. He came to the house just past the Veil and climbed the stairs. There were no signs or brass placards indicating this was a business, so it must still be a personal home. The small alcove by the door was framed with white pillars that gleamed against the building’s gray stone. White sills framed the windows and graceful lace curtains masked what lay inside.
He knocked on the door and soon heard crisp footsteps. The door opened to reveal a woman in a blue, silk suit with lushly embroidered lapels that reminded him of a sari’s veil over her broad shoulders. The woman herself had high Slavic cheekbones and rich golden hair that had been tamed into a tight coil behind her head. The white blouse she wore open at the collar to expose a plunging décolletage left no doubts as to her lusher attributes.
“Yes? May I help you?” Her bright blue gaze met his, but it was guarded.
He introduced himself and produced his badge. “I am investigating the man found dead in the park yesterday morning. I wanted to ask whether those who live here saw or heard anything.”
“I am sorry. I am the housekeeper. I come in only in the morning.” She went to swing the door closed, but Kazakov got his hand in the doorway. There was no way this woman was a housekeeper.
“And the owner, those who live here?”
She shook her head, those precious gold locks bouncing on her head. “Mr. Enver is not here.”
“Enver?” he asked?
“Enver Pasha.” She nodded.
For a moment he didn’t know what to say. For someone named Enver Pasha—clearly an Ottoman name and with an honorary title most often used for military and political dignitaries—to own a house next door to a brothel was unusual on so many levels. “And who is Mr. Enver?”
This time she gave an impatient toss of her head. “Mr. Enver is a businessman from Constantinople.”
Interesting. “What kind of business is he in?”
“Why all these questions? He is not here. Ask them of him when he is back.”
He bowed his head respectfully, for this woman would certainly report this meeting to her employer and the Ottomans were known to be quick to take offence. “When do you expect his return?”
Her sigh was deep as she looked back toward the depths of the house. “I don’t know. It could be a few days or a few weeks. He is in the mountains. He goes there for the waters.”
Odd, given the “waters” would be freezing.
The woman checked over her shoulder again as if someone or something was waiting.
“Mr. Enver lives here alone?”
She nodded. “Except when he has guests, yes.”
“And you are here alone, now?”
Her lips pressed into a line. “I said I was. I am. I have work to attend to.”
Kazakov held up his hands to placate her. “Then one last question. When did Mr. Enver leave for the mountains?”
Another deep sigh. “It was yesterday. Yesterday very early in the morning. He had not expected to go, but something called him away.”
So it was not just a trip for the waters. He thanked her and the door thudded closed behind him as he started down the stairs. At the street he looked up at the house and a curtain stirred. She was watching him leave, and if he was any judge of character, she would be on the phone to her employer soon.
Why he was bothered by the conversation he wasn’t sure, but something didn’t sit right, beyond the fact that Enver Pasha had apparently left home just after the time Collin Archer was killed—at least according to Khan’s estimate of time of death. Had he seen something and, like Maria, decided it was time to run? Could Enver Pasha feel himself at risk even if he was Ottoman? Kazakov added interviewing Enver Pasha to his list of things to do.
He checked at the homes on the other side of the Red Veil but no one had seen anything or, if they had, they weren’t telling. Not unexpected when an establishment like the Red Veil had the influence to make any troublesome neighbor simply go away.
He waded through the snow to the place Collin Archer’s body had been found and looked up at the Red Veil and Enver Pasha’s house beside it. The two were built close together, and the way their eaves and dormers reached across their upper stories, they appeared to lean toward each other. Like sisters. Or perhaps they had been built by the same builder. He looked from the houses back to the spot where he stood and back to the houses again. Odd. He’d thought Archer was found in front of the Red Veil, but now that he considered the curve of the street, the body’s position could just as easily be in front of Enver Pasha’s house.
Considering what this might mean—to incriminate the Ottoman? Intimidate him?—he returned to the sedan. Either reason could lead Enver Pasha to leave the city. Of course, so could responsibility for the murder.
Kazakov headed to the low, bunker-style, politseyshiy headquarters. It was only three stories compared to the steel and concrete towers that had sprung up around it. The square that it faced housed a twice-life-sized statue of the original Yekaterina clad in a long, ornate dress and fur cloak, an extra shawl around her torso. The statue’s hair was spun around her shoulders by a harsh wind as she held up a lantern and peered eastward—presumably through snow. That was what the great tsarina was beloved for—leading her people through the wilderness like Moses. But instead of desert, it was the frozen wastes of Siberia. Like Moses, she had died before she arrived in the promised land.
The stories told how she had shared her shawl and coat with women and children, and it was that generosity that had killed her with pneumonia—but not before the people promised to do her will and find safety.
He chuckled. As if there was safety for anyone trapped as Fergana was between the Chinese anvil and the Ottoman hammer.
He parked the car in the police garage and, original Weber/Manas file in hand, strode into the building. The front reception was a cavernous space of glass complaint kiosks along the rear wall that were staffed by junior officers. It was an onerous task, one every officer had to endure. He had hated his time there, preferring to be on the streets where the real police work was. Except it had turned out that wasn’t the case. Not in Fergana.
Once through the reception area, the place was a warren of offices connected by hallways and elevators that led up to the officers’ floor and down to cells in the basement. The one unique place in the building was on this floor—the central dispatch filled the center of the building with its radio equipment that reached out to all police in Fergana.
This afternoon most of the kiosks were empty and one harried looking uniformed female officer dealt with a lineup ten citizens d
eep. The air was chill and smelled of wet wool as he nodded at the people in line and crossed to a lone door at one side of the room. He knocked and was permitted into the hallway that ran in front of the dispatch center next to the bank of elevators and a stairwell. The duty officer, a dour older Russian uniformed officer named Tsitnikov, with the bulbous nose of the heavy drinker, looked him up and down.
“Haven’t seen you in a while, Kazakov.” His voice rumbled down deep in his throat and he stood close enough for Kazakov to smell the vodka Tsitnikov had sneaked at his break.
“I’ve been busy,” Kazakov went to step past him.
Tsitnikov stepped sideways to block his path. “So I’ve been hearing.”
Kazakov was tall and solidly built even if the years had shifted his weight slightly earthward, but Tsitnikov was bulkier.
Kazakov met his gaze mildly, assessing the other man’s challenge. “Then you’ll know I’ve got better things to do than argue with a glorified doorman.” He shoved past the bigger man and stepped into the open elevator. The doors slid closed and he exhaled. Prisoners had been beaten in enclosed spaces like this. He would not put it past it happening to officers who stepped out of line. In the past, he had been viewed as an asset because of the cases he cleared. Besides, his clearance rates, and those of officers like Antonov and Alenin, took the heat off the others to perform.
But something had changed with the Weber/Manas case.
The elevator doors slid open on the third-floor detective squad room. A stink of harsh cigarette smoke, wet wool, and cold tea slapped him in the face. He stepped out of the elevator and the room went almost as quiet as the Blue Corner café had been. Eight officers sat or leaned on desks, tea cups in hand, cigarettes at their lips. One man, Pavel Chelomeyev—the youngest man on the squad, who had once aided Kazakov on a difficult murder case when Chelomeyev’s partner Sherkov was ill—actually resumed typing as Kazakov wound through the sea of desks to his own. Detektivs Razin and Pogolin nodded hello. Might as well reclaim his hat while he was here. It didn’t look as though the snow was going to stop any time soon.
The top of his desk was clear, as he usually left it, except for a single piece of paper that sat in the center. On it was a crude drawing of a bullet.A warning or a request—either way, something to rid the squad of a problem. He felt the heat of the gazes of the other officers in the squad. Were they all in on it? Someone snickered. Probably Sherkov—he had always been a weaselly khu i—a dick. Young Chelomeyev studiously typed out a report. The kid had shown promise. It was a shame he was partnered as he was.
Kazakov slid the paper off into the waste bin beside his desk. Razin and Pogolin looked away as if they’d rather not see.
Antonov looked up from the file he’d been reading, possibly catching a glimpse of the image. He heaved himself up. “Fuck. What fucking imbecile thought that was a joke? The man’s just been trying to do his job.”
Unaccustomed to feeling gratitude, Kazakov retreated to the break room.
“This is not the Fergana it once was—nor the police force I joined,” Antonov said softly from the doorway.
“You think I don’t know that?” Kazakov said as he poured himself a cup of steaming black tea.
Antonov shrugged. “I think you fail to see what it means for you. We all must do what’s best for Fergana. You’ve been a good officer, Kazakov…”
The unspoken “but” seemed to hang in the air. Kazakov added three sugars and tasted, but the cup was as bitter as the situation. He abandoned it on the counter.
Was he out of date? Out of touch? An anachronism in the police force? Was Antonov, who was his senior, suggesting he quit—or worse, retire?
“I am what I was hired to be all those years ago,” he allowed.
“A self-righteous, pig-headed, asshole?”
Kazakov smiled remembering days when they had laughed together. “Not going to change any time soon. Consider it part of my charm.” He pushed past Antonov back into the room.
Across the desks, Alenin leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, as if a disinterested observer to the scene.
Kazakov turned to Chelomeyev, young, blond, ambitious, and trying his best to fit into the office. “Is Rostoff in?”
The baby-faced detektiv nodded. “I—I think he waits for you.”
Kazakov nodded and dug in his desk’s bottom drawer for his hat. He’d left it there the last time he was here.
The lynx and ermine hat with the earflaps wasn’t there. Frowning, he looked up at the officers who had once been—if not his friends, at least his police comrades. Most were studiously looking anywhere but at him. Even Antonov, but then perhaps someone even older than Kazakov had to work to fit in.
Just how far had he fallen out of favor? If this was any indication, it was very far indeed.
He shoved the drawer closed with his foot and headed for Rostoff’s office.
It lay beyond the elevator and down the hall in the direction of officer territory. He nodded once at Rostoff’s secretary, Dabria Smirnova, a smooth-skinned officer as pale as Arctic ice whose uniform could not conceal her copious other charms, and knocked on Rostoff’s door. She shook her head slightly: Rostoff was in his usual foul mood.
“Come,” Rostoff’s rough voice sounded through the door.
Kazakov shoved the door open and blue smoke met him. This was not the typical harsh smoke of local cigarettes. No, these—these were similar to those Maria smoked. He closed the door behind him.
“What took you so long?” Rostoff growled.
“I brought the file as you requested. And I brought the envelopes you asked me to pick up.” He said it clearly, for there was every possibility their conversation would be recorded and used against him.
Rostoff’s office was the only one delegated to the detective squad and though it did not sit anywhere close to a corner of the building—those offices being reserved for the Chief of Police and the senior officers—it still had the much sought-after view of the haunting statue of Yekaterina. Did it inspire Rostoff? Encourage him to care? Judging by the photos filling the white office walls—all of Rostoff shaking hands with various dignitaries—the only thing Rostoff cared for was himself.
Behind a desk of smooth dark wood, the man himself leaned back in a high-backed, black leather chair. A cup of tea in a fine china cup and saucer with golden edges sat steaming on his desk. A small version of the new-fangled electric samovar sat on a table in the corner, its sides glazed in china covered in scenes of the Russian diaspora. The machine was likely made somewhere in the Ottoman empire, but the irony was obviously lost on Rostoff.
Kazakov crossed to the desk and deposited the file and the envelopes.
“Open them,” Rostoff ordered.
Kazakov flipped open the file. Yekaterina Weber and her pink sweater gazed up at him with her beseeching smile.
“Not the file, idiot. The envelopes.”
Kazakov shook his head and stepped back from the desk. “You asked me to pick them up. You asked me to bring them to you. I will not touch what is inside those envelopes.”
Rostoff’s fleshy face reddened. He grabbed the edge of his desk. “And just what do you think is inside these envelopes?”
Lord, let him out of here. He did not want to play these games of cat and mouse. At forty-five, surely he was too old. He deserved respect—not that garbage on his desk.
He steeled himself, but the question was asked. Now his task was not to incriminate himself. “I do not know for sure. I believe there is money extorted from illicit businesses in New Moscow in exchange for police protection. But given I believe that the higher echelons of the police force arranged such a thing, I do not wish to know for sure, because I cannot countenance such a thing.”
Rostoff’s ruddy face darkened and a vein stood out on his forehead. Finally he gave a nod and Kazakov turned and left. He pulled the door shut behind him, but not before he heard the shatter of china. He would bet the china cup no longer existed. He left the
building after checking for any messages and went down to the garage to leave the keys to the sedan and reclaim his own vehicle—a five-year-old Perseus import, a German brand manufactured in Tashkent. He’d bought the vehicle because he liked its sleek lines and had appreciated the fact it was four-wheel drive. He climbed into the black cloth interior and inhaled. A faint scent of cigarette and vodka lay on the air and the hairs of the back of his neck stood on end. He neither smoked nor drank in the Perseus.
He scanned the front and back seat. There was nothing to see. Plain black seats. Floormats mostly bare. He liked the car enough that he had taken great care to keep it clean.
Someone else had been here. Searching his vehicle?
At least they would not have found anything.
But someone wanted to know what he was doing. Rostoff? But the man already had a good idea what Kazakov was doing and didn’t give a damn as long as Kazakov left the Weber case alone and picked up Rostoff’s payments. So who? Whoever it was had access to the police parking garage.
So there might be another player in the mix, but either way he preferred the Perseus.
He started the vehicle and it purred like a contented Kochka. Satisfied, he backed out of his parking spot and drove out to the street. The streetlights came on in the dusk that came ever earlier each day. It was four o’clock.
The wind grabbed the few falling flakes and whipped them into a frenzy in the fading light. It was going to be a miserable night. He turned the car toward Suvarov Way and followed the road to the edge of the city as the heavy clouds drained the light from the sky. The snow turned to huge flakes that clogged headlights and windshield wipers, forcing him to stop twice to clear them.
When he reached the edge of the housing sprawl, the road that rose upward toward the foothills had disappeared and so had the light, so he drove forward into a swirling tunnel that had no beginning or end.
The Perseus’s heater churned out heat that dried his woolen coat and melted the snow he’d brought in on his boots. The wind buffeted the large car and howled over the hood, so he was surprised when the wail suddenly stopped. He peered out the window and realized he’d reached the trees on the mountain slopes and they blocked the worst of the wind. Ragged flakes still swirled into his windscreen.
After Yekaterina Page 12