Brainy-BOOM!

by Wally Duff

  His face softened, relieved that I had changed the subject. “Of course not. Why would you even ask that?”

  “You keep saying that you don’t want me to do any stories that might be risky.”

  “And I don’t, but what could possibly be dangerous about interviewing a Russian money manager at his request?”

  “Can’t think of a thing.”

  Unless that Russian money manager had been murdered and the killer knew who I was.

  17

  Tuesday morning, I sent a group text to the Hamlin Park Irregulars detailing what happened to me at Zhukov’s office and the possibility that we might have a great story to work on. I told them I would have more information for them soon.

  Twenty minutes later , I met with Janet Corritore.

  “Carter said I could keep working on Zhukov’s story,” I said.

  Janet stared at me. “That’s hard to believe, him wanting you not to work on anything dangerous.”

  We sat in our neighborhood Starbuck’s, which is across the street from Dinkel’s Bakery, a Hamlin Park Irregulars favorite eating and gathering place. Macy was asleep in the stroller. Kerry was in preschool.

  We were there instead of Dinkel’s because the unsweetened iced green tea in front of me had significantly fewer calories than anything I would be tempted to eat from Dinkel’s.

  “He said, and I quote, ‘Of course not. Why would you even ask that?’ ” I said.

  “This before or after you told him about the bullet hole in Zhukov’s forehead?”

  “I didn’t exactly mention that part.”

  “What did you mention, exactly?”

  “That I didn’t see a living soul in the office.”

  “Clever.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’d make a good lawyer.”

  “I’ll leave that to Linda. Did you check the recordings from the building’s security cameras?”

  “I did. The head of security is a retired Chicago cop. He let me watch them.” She took a small spiral notebook out of her jacket pocket and flipped it open. “On Monday, at 1330, the security cameras in the outside hall recorded Zhukov entering his office.”

  “Coming back from lunch?”

  “Yep, and it looked like he enjoyed eating.”

  “He was reported to be a little over six feet tall and weighed about two hundred thirty pounds, including the red hair.”

  “You might need to check that weight. This guy was way fatter than that.”

  “Cameras add ten pounds, or so.”

  “So do donuts. He had a box of them when he went into his office.”

  Explains what I smelled.

  “Are you sure it was Zhukov?”

  “Fat guy with red hair. Expensive suit. Gold Rolex watch on his left wrist. Big diamond pinky ring on his right hand.”

  “Which describes what I’ve heard from Linda about him, but that night I was too scared to see any jewelry.”

  “You didn’t stay around all that long.”

  “With good reason.”

  She flipped a page. “No one else came in the rest of the afternoon. At 1702, the cameras in the outside hall show a female leaving his office. We identified her as his secretary.” She turned a page. “At 1900, another female entered the office. Left the door open.”

  “Me.”

  “It was.”

  “At 1911, you ran out the open front door. No shoes on. Started to run and fell on your ass. Began doing an imitation of a pinball being played in a machine.”

  “Not easy to run on a polished marble floor in panty hose.”

  “Never tried it.”

  “Don’t. It doesn’t work.”

  “You sprinted out the back stairs exit and disappeared. You came back on the elevator at 1932. You held a gun in front of you when you walked into his office. The door was still open. At 1936, I arrived.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing until this morning. At 0900, a secretary came in.”

  “How did the killer get in?”

  “And how did he carry the body out?”

  18

  “You’re missing something,” Janet said.

  “Obviously,” I said.

  I assumed she meant Zhukov’s body.

  “In his office,” she prompted.

  I pictured the room in my mind. Zhukov had a lamp on his desk, three computer screens on the credenza, and one large picture on the wall to the right of the desk and credenza.

  “Was it that big picture on the wall?” I asked.

  “Yes. It’s a map of Cold War Leningrad.” She checked her notes. “It’s now called St. Petersburg, and it’s his birthplace.”

  “I remember reading about that from the background information Linda sent to me on Sunday night.”

  Janet continued to read from her notes. “The map was made by CIA cartographers. It showed the city’s labyrinthine streets, canals, and alleyways in painstaking detail.”

  “Linda’s research said Zhukov was proud of it.”

  “He was. Did you notice anything else in the room?”

  “No.”

  “What about the framed paper money hung on the wall next to the picture?”

  “I missed that.”

  “The face of Nicholas II, the last czar who was executed after the revolution, was printed on it,” she paused, “and it’s the solution to what happened to Zhukov.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It covered the release latch to a door hidden behind the picture.”

  Huh?

  “Did the Leningrad picture conceal a staircase?”

  “No, an elevator that went down to his private garage.”

  “Were there any security cameras in there?”

  “None. When I didn’t see the suspect carrying out the body on the security recordings, I asked the security guy what I was missing.”

  “Did he know about the secret elevator?”

  “Yep, and he was the only one in the building other than Zhukov who did. He said Zhukov used the elevator to sneak female visitors into his office.”

  “A convenient way to keep his wife — or anyone else — from finding out.”

  “It would be.”

  “The killer might have known about the elevator.”

  “I agree. The security guy said she might have been a working woman who could have brought her pimp up there with her and he shot Zhukov.”

  “Or she was alone.”

  “Possible. Female shooters are becoming more popular.”

  “Interesting. She comes to service her client, but the pimp shoots him instead. They wait for me to leave and then drag him over to the elevator and disappear.”

  “Good thing she had a man with her. She would have to be super strong to drag a dead weight that heavy without help.”

  “Did you go back and inspect the carpet in front of the picture? They must have left some deep tracks struggling to tug his fat body onto the elevator, maybe even left some blood spatter.”

  “I wanted to, but I ran into a snag. The security chief called Zhukov’s secretary to let me into the office, and she informed him that her boss was out of the country.”

  “Zhukov? Out of the country? That’s impossible. He’s dead.”

  “According to the note he left on an email from his computer to her computer, he flew to Brunei. It came in to her computer at 1923 last night. It was time stamped. She forwarded a copy of it to the head of security’s computer. He sent it on to me.”

  “That was after I left the first time and before I came back.”

  “It was.”

  “The killer sent it.”

  “A possibility.”

  “Why Brunei?”

  “The secretary told the security chief that the sultan is one of Zhukov’s clients. Her boss cashed him in before the fund tanked. The sultan was the only client who didn’t lose any money.”

  “Convenient.”

  “It is, if that’s a place where you want to hi
de out.”

  “This should be easy enough to check.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Until then?”

  “You better find the suspect before he finds you. If you’re the only witness and you disappear, there won’t be a crime if the cops can’t find Zhukov’s body.”

  “And without me as a witness, the killer will be in the clear.”

  Part 2

  19

  Tuesday afternoon, I sent out another group text to the Irregulars with my game plan for the story. That night, Molly Miller and I stood in the alley outside of what I hoped was the entrance to Zhukov’s private garage. Carter babysat the girls. I told him I was going to work on Zhukov’s story.

  “Tell me again why we’re doing this,” Molly said.

  Her attention span is short. We’d talked about this on the drive there.

  “We need to search Zhukov’s office before the cleaning crew ruins the crime scene and destroys any remaining evidence.”

  “Why don’t we call the CSI guys? That’s what they do on TV.”

  “I suggested that to Janet, but she can’t do it until she has evidence that a crime has been committed.”

  “How about the dead guy’s body?”

  “Works for me, but I kind of lost it.”

  “How do you lose a body?”

  She would have wrinkled her forehead trying to figure that one out, but, like Marcia Peebler, her recent Botox injections eliminated that possibility.

  “It isn’t easy, which is why we’re here. I need to prove the body was removed.”

  “Why didn’t you ask Cas or Linda to come along instead of me?”

  “The killer might be a woman. If she is, I think she’s a hooker, and neither one of them can imitate a prostitute.”

  She flung her coat open and thrust out her spectacular chest. “But I sure can.”

  Amen.

  If any man with a functioning penis were to amble down the alley while we were breaking in, Molly would be the perfect cover. Tonight, she wore a micro-mini black skirt, black fishnet hose with thigh-high black leather boots, and a black lace bustier that made her 875 cc breast implants seem to defy gravity. If she sneezed, she was going to give herself a pair of black eyes. It was cold, so she also had on a long black leather coat which she could throw open if someone came along.

  I wanted to appear to be Molly’s pimp coming along to protect her during her visit with Zhukov, so I was dressed like a man, with no makeup and my newly cut hair tucked up in a bun under a black stocking cap. A black peacoat, black pants, and black, low-heeled ankle boots completed my disguise. I also had my usual equipment, including my Glock, in my backpack.

  “After I talked to Janet this morning, I went online when I returned home and accessed the plans for Zhukov’s building,” I continued. “There’s a garage for the tenants, which has a door at street level. There was no indication of any other garage, so before Kerry got out of preschool, I drove down here with Macy and circled the perimeter of the building. I found this.” I pointed to a single garage door and a regular door to the right of it.

  “Where do those doors go?” Molly asked.

  “Hopefully down to his private garage.”

  “Do you think the missing body is down there?”

  “Probably not. I think the killer shoved Zhukov’s body on the elevator and then carried it away in a vehicle. I hope to find some blood spatter that will prove that’s what happened.”

  “Way cool. How do we do that?”

  “Janet gave me a bottle of luminol.”

  “I’ve seen that on the CSI shows. They sprayed it on stuff and turned out the lights. If there was any blood, it glowed. They swabbed it and ran it for DNA. In a couple of minutes, they had the picture of the killer and his address.” She paused. “It’s kind of weird, but the bad guy was always home when they got to his house.”

  “I don’t think this is going to be that easy.”

  “How are we going to get in?” she asked.

  I reached into my purse and pulled out my lock pick gun and torque wrench. “With this,” I said.

  Both pieces of equipment had been held by the police as part of the crime scene in the last story we worked on. Right before Macy was born, Janet brought them back to me after that case file was closed.

  “Does that work on keypads too?” she asked.

  20

  Dang it!

  When I chased major stories before I had two kids, I would never have made a rookie mistake like this. I’d driven by both doors but hadn’t spotted that there were no locks on either of them.

  Maybe I should just stay home and make more babies.

  “Now what?” Molly asked.

  “I assumed Zhukov had a garage door opener so he could go in and out. I also figured he gave the women a key so they could come in this door and then use the elevator.”

  “But there’s no lock, so why would they need a key?”

  “I guess we either figure out the combination or we go home.”

  “It’s 10-13-69.”

  “And how would you be knowing this?”

  “The farmers taught me.”

  Molly traveled the world as a supermodel before she married her husband, Greg. He introduced her to his friends at one of our embassies overseas. They recognized Molly’s many talents, so they hired her to do jobs for them. She originally told us they were farmers but later admitted that, even though they were listed as agricultural attachés, they were CIA agents.

  “What did they teach you?” I asked.

  “Where to hunt for combinations,” she said.

  “Why would you ever need information like that?”

  “Well, duh? For when they wanted me to break into places. They said most people can’t remember their passwords to computers or combinations to locks so they always write them down somewhere. I’m thinking that this Russian guy told the women the combination, but most of them are probably like me so they forgot it.”

  “And they wrote it down somewhere. Smart thinking. Where did you find it?”

  “Where I would put it.”

  She fluffed her hair and shifted her weight.

  “Molly?”

  “What?”

  “The combination. Where did you find it?”

  “Sorry, I get distracted. These boots are new and they’re starting to hurt.”

  “But they look great.”

  She smiled and struck a model’s pose.

  I stared at her and shrugged.

  “Oh, right,” she said. “The combination. Like I said, they told me to always check in the place where I would write it.”

  “And where would that be?”

  “Right up there,” she said, pointing up at the lintel of the doorjamb above us. “Most of us wear super high heels so we can reach up that far.”

  10-13-69 was written on the lintel. I put on a pair of latex gloves and punched in the code. The locked clicked, and we were in.

  21

  The door opened into a windowless, cement staircase that plunged down into total darkness. Suddenly a light went on, illuminating the stairway.

  “That’s pretty cool,” Molly said. “It’s automatic.”

  “My guess is it’s connected to a warning system so Zhukov would know his visitor was on the way.”

  The echo of Molly’s heels clickety-clacking on the stone steps was the only sound as we descended two floors, entering into a dark, low-ceilinged, cement room. When we arrived there, the stairway lights went off, and the lights in the garage came on.

  It was big enough for at least four vehicles. I sniffed several times, but except for a dank, musty smell, I didn’t detect any lingering exhaust fumes. No cars had been running in there recently.

  The garage wasn’t heated, and it was cold enough that we could see our breath. Molly tugged her long coat around her. I stomped my feet and blew on my latex-gloved hands as I studied the room.