The Shake

by Mel Nicolai

  Chapter 18

  Just before midnight, the tattooed Ukrainian came out from behind the bar. This time he was wearing a leather jacket. After a brief conversation with one of the bartenders, he started walking toward the front door.

  “Tony,” I said, leaning closer so he could hear, “Mio and I have to go out for a bit. It shouldn’t take long. We’ll either come back to the club when we’re finished, or I’ll call Karla’s cell and you can come pick us up.”

  Tony nodded assent and I headed downstairs. The club was now packed, the music thunderous. About half way along the right balcony, I caught a clear view of Mio. In my normal speaking voice, I said her name. Thirty feet away, her eyes turned instantly to mine. I motioned with my head toward the front. She stopped dancing and beckoned Karla to come closer. Karla leaned down and she and Mio conferred briefly, then Mio turned and moved cat-like through the crowd of dancers.

  At the door, I gave Mio her handbag and we left the club. The night had grown dead calm. The Ukrainian was about twenty yards away from us, headed, I guessed, to his car. There was no need to be surreptitious, so we followed, Mio taking my arm as if we were just another couple enjoying the local version of the good life. The guy’s destination turned out to be the same garage where we were parked. He stopped in front of the street-level elevator, pressed the button and waited. Mio and I continued past him and into the stairwell. We paused at the bottom of the stairs, listening for the elevator to start its ascent, then went up following the sound. It stopped at level 4. We heard the doors open, then watched through a small window in the stairwell door as our Ukrainian emerged. I opened the door and followed Mio into the parking area.

  Not far from the elevator, the Ukrainian aimed his electronic key at the long row of parked cars. A double beep followed by blinking taillights: a late model BMW about six cars further along marked our destination. Mio slipped silently away, moving fast and low along the front of the parked cars. I was only a few paces back, walking down the center of the driveway.

  “Pardon me,” I said, when the Ukrainian reached his car.

  He stopped and turned around, but didn’t say anything. He was a big one, six-two or three, probably two-sixty, or so, and lots of muscle. I thought I’d try being polite.

  “Sorry to bother you, but I’m wondering if you might be able to help me with something.” I stepped forward while saying this. There was something surprisingly mild-mannered about the guy. His size probably made him scary to most humans, but he didn’t strike me as being volatile. I stepped closer and extended my hand. “My name is Shake.”

  He shook my hand, flinching slightly, probably at the temperature of my skin. “I am Levko.”

  “It’s a pleasure, Levko.”

  I let go of his hand and took a step back, giving him some space to cooperate in. He glanced behind him and saw Mio standing next to his front bumper, her feet shoulder-width apart, hands hanging relaxed at her sides, so motionless she could have been cast in bronze. I noticed that she was not holding her purse, which meant, in all likelihood that she was holding her new knife. Her presence seemed to confuse Levko. His head kept snapping back and forth between Mio and me, as if it were operating independently of his volition.

  “You’re probably wondering if a big guy like yourself needs to be concerned about a woman, especially one her size.” My voice compelled his head to stay turned toward me. “That’s the primitive part of your brain trying to take over. You know, fight or flight? You don’t want to listen to it, Levko. You need your higher faculties right now.”

  At that point, it was obvious we weren’t there for a friendly chat.

  “Am I supposed to be afraid of you and little girl?” he asked. He said this with a certain bravado, but when he glanced back at Mio, he jumped like he’d been goosed. Mio was standing in exactly the same posture, but closer, next to the driver’s door.

  “Be smart,” I said, “and this will be easy for all of us.”

  People are peculiar creatures. If you tell them what the smart move is, sometimes, not often, but sometimes, they’ll make it, just to prove they really are smart.

  “What is this about?” he asked warily. “You are not cops?”

  “We are not cops.”

  “Then I don’t have to talk to you,” he said, as if that settled the matter.

  “You don’t have to, Levko. But it would be better if you did.”

  “I want to go home now,” he said, almost as if by saying it, he would be able to follow his own lead. But his feet weren’t cooperating. Instead of moving toward his car door, he stepped around the front of the adjacent car, putting some additional space between himself and Mio. There was something slightly humorous and a little bit endearing in the discrepancy between his words and his actions.

  “You’re not going to run home, are you?” I asked.

  With Mio no longer directly behind him, he seemed a fraction more relaxed “What do you want?”

  “Just some information.” I said.

  He was still looking at Mio, standing motionless as stone. “Is she alive?” he asked.

  “More alive than you’ll be if you play this wrong.”

  Direct threats like that generally increase the human male’s flow of testosterone. I expected him to puff up, show us he wasn’t afraid, and dare us to fuck with him. But that’s not what happened. Instead, he looked me in the eye and I could see that he was frightened and tired and constitutionally disinclined to fight. “So ask your questions,” he said.

  “About a year ago, a Sacramento cop named Dean Arnaud was killed shortly after buying cocaine from a mutual acquaintance of ours.”

  “We did not kill cop,” he exclaimed. “We are not criminals.”

  Something in the way he’d said it made me think he was telling the truth. “Who’s ‘we’?” I asked.

  “Me and my cousin, Leo.”

  “Was he the one at the club who helped you with the injured guy?”

  “Yes, that was Leo.”

  “When you say you didn’t kill Arnaud, does that mean you didn’t buy the coke from him?”

  “We never bought anything from the cop.”

  “But you went to Sacramento to buy coke.”

  “Sometimes. To buy drugs from Danny Weiss. Not from cop.”

  “Then who did Yavorsky send to meet Arnaud?”

  Yavorsky’s name seemed to surprise him. Or scare him. “If you know Yavorsky, you know I cannot tell you that.” It was a cool evening, but he was starting to sweat. He wiped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “I cannot discuss this.” The guy was genuinely distraught. He started to run his hands through his hair, but stopped midway, his hands clasping his head like he was trying to prevent it from opening.

  “Are you afraid of Yavorsky?” I asked.

  Levko laughed, but not because he thought it was funny. “If you are not afraid of him, it is because you don’t know him. He has many powerful friends, here and in Ukraine. Bad men, like him. We, me and Leo, we have family in Ukraine. If we cross Yavorsky, he will hurt our family.”

  The odd thing was, I could see he wanted to talk, to get it all out. He just wasn’t sure it was me he wanted to tell. The circumstances of his life had trapped him in a situation not at all to his liking, but he didn’t know if I was a way out of the trap, or if I would only get him more deeply ensnared.

  “I know you’re in a tough spot, Levko. You don’t want to do anything that will put your family in danger. I understand that. But you’re going to have to tell us more.”

  “We are not criminals,” he said again. “Leo is good man. He is studying at University to be engineer. He works part time at Satellite, as bouncer. He is big, like me, but nice guy. He is not killer. Yavorsky has someone else do his killing.”

  “This someone else is who he sent to meet Arnaud?”

  He looked at Mio again, who still had not moved. “She is making me very nervous.”

  When he said this, Mio folded her arms across her che
st, turned and leaned her back against the door of his car, then proceeded to examine one her shoes.

  “Who killed Arnaud, Levko?”

  “His name is Nikolai Beketov. He is ex-Soviet Army. Very bad. Very dangerous.”

  “Does he live here in San Francisco?”

  “No. He is gone. Back to Ukraine. He only comes to States when Yavorsky calls him.”

  “Why did Yavorsky want Arnaud killed? That’s a lot of bother and expense to bring this guy all the way from Ukraine.”

  “I am not positive,” he said, sighing like an exhausted bear.

  “None of this will get back to Yavorsky, Levko. Just tell me what happened.”

  “A year or so ago, this guy, Arnaud, he came to Satellite with picture of young girl, asking people, employees and customers, did they know her. He showed me picture. He said girl was his niece and he was trying to find her.”

  “And you recognized her from somewhere?”

  “Yes. Yavorsky sells young girls. Boys, too, sometimes. But mostly girls. They are taken to Mexico, then to Middle East somewhere, I think. Or maybe India. I am not sure. But sometimes they are delivered to guy here, in California. He lives in mountains, near Pollock Pines. The girl in picture, she was delivered to Pines Guy. That’s what I call him, Pines Guy.”

  “How do you know? Did you and your cousin deliver her?”

  “Not Leo. He knows nothing about this. I delivered girl.”

  He looked like he was going to start crying. “So after Arnaud showed you the girl’s photo, what happened?”

  “I told Yavorsky. I think he told Pines Guy. After that, I am not sure. Maybe Pines Guy paid Yavorsky to kill cop. Or maybe Yavorsky did it on his own. But Beketov was here, in San Francisco.”

  It was all starting to make a certain twisted sense. “What about this Pines Guy?” I asked.

  “I don’t know anything about him. I don’t even know his name. He is just Pines Guy. He must be rich, I think, to buy girls. And he has big house.”

  “How many girls have you delivered there?” I asked.

  He didn’t have to think to answer. His conscience had been keeping track. “Five.”

  “Over how long a period?”

  “About two years.”

  “Have you ever seen any of them again, after you delivered them? Did you see any of the first girls when you delivered the later ones?”

  “Never. I always make deliveries late at night. House is always dark. I only saw Pines Guy.”

  Arnaud probably didn’t have any idea what happened to his niece. His snooping around just made these guys nervous enough to have him disposed of. It didn’t sound good for the girl. Levko’s head was jerking back and forth again between Mio and me.

  “Levko, do you have regular days off?”

  “I am off Monday and Tuesday,” he answered, as affably as if he thought I might invite him bowling.

  “Good. Here’s what I’d like you to do. This coming Monday evening, the day after tomorrow, I want you to drive to Sacramento and pick me up at 9:00 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency. It’s across the street from the capitol. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “We’ll take a little drive and you can show me where this Pines Guy lives.”

  Levko forced his hands into his pants pockets and started shaking his head. He looked like a sullen, recalcitrant teenager. “I am sorry, but I won’t go near Pines Guy.”

  “I just want you to show me where his house is. That’s all. After that, you can drive me back to Sacramento and I’ll leave you alone.”

  I waited while he thought about it, but he was taking too long.

  “I’m making it easy for you, Levko. This way, Yavorsky and Beketov are left out of it.”

  “I will show you,” he said, after another bear sigh.

  It was a little weird, his being so accommodating. I’d anticipated having to get nasty. Levko really was in the wrong line of work. “Why are you working for someone like Yavorsky?” I asked.

  “In Ukraine I was farmer. My family is poor. I don’t have skills here, in America. Yavorsky is evil fuck but he pays good money, so I can help family in Ukraine.”

  Mio moved silently back the way she’d come. “Good night, Levko,” I said, turning to leave. “Monday, 9:00 p.m.”

  He hadn’t noticed Mio leave and was briefly confused when he saw that she was no longer leaning on his car. He opened the door, but hesitated before getting in, scanning the garage, looking for her. When he saw her standing next to the elevator, their eyes locked for just a second before he scrambled into his car and drove away.

  •

  Karla had had a couple more drinks in our absence, so Tony drove us back to Sacramento. I sat up front, Karla and Mio rode in the back. We were hardly on the bridge crossing the bay before Karla was asleep. She had leaned over to lie down with her head on Mio’s lap. When I looked back, Mio was absently stroking Karla’s hair. She looked my way briefly, her face expressionless, then turned her eyes back to the night.

  I knew Mio was neither sentimental nor the least bit maternal. One night, many years ago, I had watched while she drank the blood of two of the cutest little six-year-old twin girls. Her only comment after she was finished was that even their blood tasted identical. She often expressed affection for humans with whom she maintained various relations, but as far as I could tell, her behavior was part of a general strategy of resource management, rather than an expression of genuine affection. All of which made me wonder what was behind the camaraderie that seemed to have developed so quickly between her and Karla. I also knew that any discussion of the matter would be at Mio’s instigation.

  Karla woke up as we were arriving back in Sacramento. I told her I’d be needing her services again sometime toward the end of the coming week, and I would give her a call. She moved up front to drive when Mio and I got out at the footbridge. On the walk back to the house, Mio asked if I wanted her to accompany me to Pollock Pines. She had told me earlier she was planning to leave Sunday evening, so I said it wasn’t necessary. As things turned out, it was probably just as well that she was leaving.

  Chapter 19

  At nine o’clock on Monday evening, I was standing near the lobby entrance of the Hyatt when Levko drove up in his BMW. If providing financial assistance to his family back in Ukraine was a hardship, it wasn’t preventing him from cultivating his image here in the States. He saw me and stopped at the curb, hardly looking at me when I got in.

  From downtown Sacramento, Pollock Pines was less than an hour’s drive up Highway 50. The night was clear and cold. California was having another dry year. It was the middle of December, and there was hardly any snow in the mountains. We drove for fifteen or twenty minutes before Levko spoke.

  “Your woman friend?” he said.

  I wasn’t sure at first if it had been a statement or a question. “She left last night, to Mexico, on business. Were you hoping to see her again?”

  He made a little choking sound. “After tonight, I will not see you again, right?”

  He’d had some time to think since Saturday. I wondered how close he’d come to not showing up. “This isn’t so bad, is it, just taking me for a drive?”

  “You do not know Yavorsky. He is nut case. Really crazy when he is mad. If he knew I showed you Pines Guy’s house, I think maybe... I don’t know... it would not be good for me.”

  Levko seemed genuinely concerned, but I didn’t think there was much danger of Yavorsky finding out what we were up to. Levko, I assumed, felt the same way, otherwise he would have put up more resistance. “Does he know you’re here, in Sacramento?” I asked.

  “No. It is my day off. He does not watch so close.”

  “Then there shouldn’t be any problem.”

  There wasn’t much traffic on I-50 at that time of night. The commuters had all long since returned to their little castles in the foothills. I hadn’t been in the Sacramento area long enough to witness the spread of its suburban communit
ies, but the process is similar everywhere. Once a city’s more centrally located areas have reached a density that either leads to over-congestion and decay or prohibitive property values, or both, the new money moves to the periphery. The periphery expands outward with each migration, spawning larger and more expensive homes. Developers market these communities to appeal to egos delusional with new wealth. The communities offer a kind of landed-gentry fantasy that appeals to the young, upwardly mobile professionals eager to display their superiority through flamboyant possessions. They can sleep soundly in their gated communities, safe behind their high-tech security systems, confident that their neighbors, though they my be borderline psychotics, are not dangerous in virtue of disparities in wealth.

  The night grew colder as we climbed out of the valley. Levko made another in a series of fine adjustments to the car’s heater. Watching him drive, it was clear he was emotionally attached to his car. There was the obvious ego aspect of it, using the car to project his self-image; the sexy side of power, speed, luxury craftsmanship. But there was also the more tangible, tactile side of operating the car. The physical manipulation of its various parts brought the car’s power under human control and gave the machine its symbiotic seductiveness. It was, I suppose, an ideal choice as a status symbol. But if cars didn’t exit, something else would have served the same purpose. When your self-image is nine-tenths wishful thinking, you need a way to prop it up.

  Mio once told me an interesting anecdote that occurred in Japan during the Tokugawa Shogunate. The official class structure of Japan was Confucian, which placed merchants at the bottom of the social scale. The merchants, however, did what merchants tend to do. They got rich. And they displayed their wealth the way the wealthy do: ostentatiously. Naturally enough, they used their clothing as a symbol of their elite status. They decorated themselves in sumptuous fabrics as an advertisement of their true social standing and a direct challenge to the Shogunate’s professed Confucian values. They were supposed to be at the bottom, but their growing wealth had gradually inverted the Confucian totem pole.