Last Dance

by Jeffrey Fleishman

  “Could be.”

  “Could all be unrelated too.”

  “Bitch of a case you’ve got.”

  “Says the woman chasing Russian hackers. Why all these Russians in our lives?”

  “Cold War reboot.”

  “You know anything about Orlov and Katrina? You holding back?”

  “Could be deep Russian shit buried in Moscow. Aliases and reinventions. All kinds of mirrors that don’t reflect back what’s in front of them. Speaking of which . . .”

  “Don’t get on me about Stefan. I’m already pissed at him. He dated Katrina for a while, about two years ago.”

  Azadeh nods. “I’d be more than pissed,” she says. “I’d be goddamned suspicious. Don’t get played, Carver. I know you have this bruised-past-guy thing with him. He whispers tips and all that shit to you. But we don’t think he ever went clean. Guys like that never get out of what brought them to where they are, no matter how many clinics in Africa they build.” She hits the vape. “Think about it. All of a sudden, he delivers you Zhanna, tells you he dated Katrina—”

  “I’m sufficiently warned. But he’s a good source.”

  “Jesus, Carver.”

  She reaches into her bag, puts on lipstick. Her hands are quick, her eyes too. I like that about her, the deliberate way she approaches herself and the world—not without compassion, but with a wry acceptance that one shouldn’t be surprised by disappointments never anticipated or imagined. Perhaps her exiled Iranian father taught her that.

  The mist has burned off the lake. The joggers have multiplied. Anglers are casting in the shallows. A couple of actors running lines from a sci-fi script pass; the man mentions the cruelties of the galaxy, but the woman says no, there is a planet in the fourth quadrant where goodness reigns. Azadeh rolls her eyes. She brushes her hair and heads to court.

  I finish my coffee, and since I’m close, drive up the hill to Carroll Avenue in Angelino Heights. There’s a family in the house now. Toys on the porch, trimmed bushes, clipped green lawn. It must have been hard for her to leave. All the work she put into the wood floors, banister, kitchen, turret, and eaves of the old Victorian. I wonder what she thought while staring out of those windows. What the skyline seemed to her. What she was going to build. The dreams she had. Dylan Cross almost told me the night she broke into my apartment, tied me up, and tried to explain why she killed two men and left another chained to a wall in this house. She wanted to tell me about architecture, the mathematical and the divine. How cities are born to die and rise again in cycles; from ruins, new places are born. She started to tell me but she disappeared, leaving behind this house, which was sold to others.

  Chapter 23

  “Thing is, Jimmy,” says Lily, sliding next to Krause at the bar, “you’re in a jam.”

  “She’s right,” I say, slipping in on his other side. “Serious predicament.”

  We flash our badges. He looks at her, at me, back at her. Stares ahead, sips his beer. It’s after happy hour. The place is quiet. Elton John is playing softly from the speakers. A waitress pockets her tips and heads into the Burbank night. Krause checks his phone. He starts to make a call but puts it down.

  “I saw you the other day around my apartment building,” he says to Lily. “Thought you were moving in. Thought I might ask you out. I’m neighborly like that.” He smiles. “You’re in good shape, I noticed. Used to be myself.” He grabs his left shoulder. “Blew out a rotator cuff. Hard getting back to it. What do you bench?”

  “Enough.”

  “Secret, huh? I get that.”

  “What do you weigh, Jimmy,” says Lily. “I’m guessing two-twenty.”

  “Give or take.”

  “Six foot three, shaved head—I like that cologne, by the way. But you’re starting to lose the cut. Pecs going, biceps shrinking. That’s why the big shirt, right? Loose fit. Cover things up. I sympathize. Happens to a lot of guys.”

  “I’m beginning to think I don’t like you,” he says.

  “Nobody does at first,” she says, nodding toward me. “Even him. But then he did. It’s like that with me.” She signals the bartender for three beers. “But tell me, Jimmy, what is it with Burbank, anyway?”

  “Peaceful up here,” he says, taking measured breaths, holding his anger in. He would run if he could, but he’s wedged between us. “I like peace. Like now, I’m sitting here enjoying this beer and then I’m gonna leave. Walk out that door into a peaceful night. Know why? You got nothing. I’m clean. Did my time a while ago for a few things. I’m what you call reformed. Zen-like in my thinking. You guys bringing me in?” He looks to us both. “Thought not. So sit and have a beer if you want. I got nothing for you.”

  “I can see that logic, Jimmy,” I say. “But I don’t think you know the shit you’re in.”

  Lily drops the security-camera photo on the bar. He squints, looks at it. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pair of glasses. “Need these for reading,” he says, lifting the picture, studying it, putting it down, picking it up again. He takes off his glasses, rubs his face. “I’m calling my lawyer,” he says.

  “Could go that route,” says Lily.

  “Then we’d have to take you in,” I say. “You’d be upping the suspicion level.”

  “Dramatically,” says Lily.

  “We wouldn’t be taking you in for us,” I say. “We’re LAPD. You fucked up higher up.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “FBI. Homeland Security,” says Lily. “You could end up in a small, dark room for a long time. Orange jumpsuit. National security threat. I don’t think they waterboard anymore, but who knows, right?” She leans closer to Krause. “This isn’t about a chop shop or fencing diamonds, Jimmy.”

  “What the fuck you talking about? They’re just two guys.”

  “Two Russian guys involved in hacking our election,” I say.

  “These guys?” he says, pointing at the picture and laughing. “Give me a break.”

  “FBI thinks so.”

  “They’re gone. Outta the country. They didn’t even have fucking laptops with them. These guys hacked us? I don’t think so.”

  “They’re not out of the country,” says Lily, playing the bluff.

  “Drove them to the airport myself.”

  “Did you see them get on the plane?” I say.

  “Jimmy,” says Lily, “you look confused.”

  He takes a long draw on his beer. Runs a hand over his shaved head.

  “Saw you were up at Mickey Orlov’s the other night,” says Lily. “Nice company, movie producer. They casting you for something? You shopping a screenplay?”

  Krause’s eyes go to the door and back. He looks at us.

  “I don’t know Mickey Orlov. A friend of mine works for him. I did a little security work for the studio when I got back from Iraq. Temp thing.”

  “So you know Armando Torres?” I say.

  “Same unit,” he says. “What’s this about?”

  “We just want to know who these two guys in the picture are,” says Lily. “These two, right here.”

  “I’m calling my lawyer.”

  “Go ahead,” I say. “We have a car outside. We’ll all go downtown together. Once you do that, though, everyone knows. I’m wondering if you want everyone to know, given the company you keep. It’s a situation.”

  “A predicament,” says Lily.

  Krause sits back, sighs. He puts his glasses on and picks up the picture.

  “I don’t want in this,” he says. “You keep me outta whatever this is.”

  “We just want to know who these two guys are.”

  He glances at the door again, checks his phone.

  “It’s like this. Armando calls one day looking for someone to ferry two guys around town. That’s all he says. Two guys from out of the country who want to
see Hollywood. Good money. Two thousand bucks a day. Pick them up at the hotel in the morning, drop off when they’re done.” He sips his beer. “I took them to the usual spots. Venice Beach, Rodeo Drive—you know the drill. They don’t talk much. Talk Russian to one another. Something like Russian, anyway. Quiet but nice, you know. Shit dressers.” He holds up the picture. “Who dresses like that?”

  “Fashion is different all over the world,” says Lily.

  “Whatever.”

  “You take them anywhere else?” I say.

  “I don’t know. I drove them all over the place.”

  “Think,” says Lily.

  “Took ’em to La Brea Tar Pits. LACMA. They weren’t museum guys though. I should have known but I was trying to show them a good time. It’s killing me you say they’re Russian hackers. I’m laughing inside. Where else? Took ’em to lunch out near Echo Park. Some Cubano place. They had the address. Someone told ’em best sandwiches in LA. I waited in the car. Don’t know how they ordered. Barely spoke English. Probably pointed. They brought me out fries. Oh, yeah, and twice I took ’em downtown.”

  “Where?”

  “Café on the corner of Spring and Fourth.”

  “Why there?” says Lily.

  “I don’t know. They gave me the address. Said they were having a drink with a friend from back home.”

  “They gave you an address for two places, right?”

  “Yeah, the café and the Cubano place.”

  “You didn’t go in either one,” says Lily.

  “Listen, man, I’m carting these guys around all day, like all fucking day. They want a little free time. That’s fine with me. I like a breather myself.”

  “What’d you do when they went into the café on Spring?”

  “Parked the car. Walked over to Grand Central Market. Had a coffee, read a book. I like it over there now. Everything’s fixed up. Expensive though. Four and a quarter for a coffee. Ridiculous, right? It’s the hipsters. Changing the demographics and pushing up prices.”

  “You didn’t meet anyone?”

  “Just me and my book.”

  “Both times?”

  “Yeah, both times.”

  “What are you reading, Jimmy?” says Lily.

  “I read all kinds of shit.”

  “Give me a break,” she says.

  “What?”

  “You read cereal boxes.”

  “Hey,” says Krause, glancing over to me, “your partner’s a bitch.” He looks to Lily. “That week, I was reading about coyotes.”

  “The smuggling kind,” says Lily.

  “The four-legged kind. Amazing species, you know. They almost disappeared a century ago. But they came back. Resistant as hell. They’re this creature between mythology and reality. My bet is that if anything survives the apocalypse, it’ll be coyotes.”

  “I’ve seen them downtown late at night,” I say.

  “My point exactly,” he says. “You push them out of one place, they find someplace new. Highly adaptable.”

  “Okay,” says Lily. “You can read. I’m impressed. So, after you drink your coffee and read your coyote book, what next?”

  “Get the car and pick them up.”

  “Each time,” I say.

  “At the café,” says Lily.

  “Yeah, each time at the café. Jesus! You guys are an aggravating tag team.”

  The door opens. Krause looks. A man in a suit lets the night air in. He sits across from us, orders a scotch rocks, looks around, and opens a magazine on the bar.

  “Expecting someone, Jimmy?” says Lily.

  “No. I’m almost done with my beer. Then home. I told you guys; I don’t know anything about hacking. I drove two fucks around for a week, took them to the airport.”

  “Was Armando Torres happy?” says Lily. “I’m asking cause, well, since you’re a big reader, must read the Times, right? Keep up on the news. You know anything about a dead ballerina?”

  “OD case. You guys lost the body. That one?”

  “Exactly,” I say. “The café where you dropped your guys off is on the corner next to her loft. You take two big Russian guys to that corner on two days in the same week that the ballerina gets visits from two big Russian guys. What are the odds?”

  “And she ends up dead,” says Lily.

  “Then two big Russian guys meet a friend of hers at the Cubano place, and guess what?”

  “He ends up dead too,” says Lily. “You starting to see a pattern?”

  “Were these guys carrying anything when you picked them up at the café?” I say.

  “Like what?”

  “Little red books.”

  “I didn’t see any little red books.”

  “You sure?”

  “Absolute.”

  Krause finishes his beer. Sets the glass down. Slow. He looks at the picture, shakes his head, wants to smile but can’t, rubs a hand over his mouth, thinking he’s been in deep before, in Iraq, then back home fencing diamonds, getting arrested, doing time, wondering how a kid from Ohio ends up with a rap sheet in Burbank. Lily’s quiet, letting Krause take it in, wondering whether he can find a narrow tunnel out. He looks to the door, blows out air, slides his reading glasses into his pocket. I believe him. He didn’t know what the Russians were up to. But he knows he’s put this thing inside Orlov’s mansion, which, if he makes the call—but my guess is, he’ll try to disappear—Armando Torres will not be happy about. Seconds pass. I like the intimacy of these moments. The calculations between strangers. You wait and study, letting the man next to you wear himself out over a choice that he’ll never know is the right one or not. There’s no rushing it; it unfolds in its own time. Lily sips her beer. She’s smart, playing off me, going at Krause, then backing off. A good partner, if I wanted one. I take out my notebook and scribble: bottles, bartender, Elton John singing “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,” Krause drumming his fingers, Lily’s stillness in the warm, alluring yellow light, Mickey Mouse sketches on the wall, the bartender scrubbing glasses, the guy with the scotch across the bar, blond, slender, midthirties, who—

  Two shots.

  Krause goes down.

  Lily falls.

  I reach for my gun. The guy pops off three more rounds over my head. I duck. He bolts out the door. I check Krause: bullet to the forehead, dead. I scramble to Lily. Blood on her neck. A grazing wound—alive but unconscious. The bartender is staggering, rag in hand, pointing to the door, mumbling. I run to the sidewalk. The shooter is gone. Not even a car, just a bottomless quiet and a thin wind out of the canyon. I call dispatch, run back inside to check Lily. She’s got a bump over her eye. Must have hit the bar when she fell. I pat her neck wound with a cloth napkin—a few stitches probably—and rub ice over her brow. She stirs, in a haze. She tries to get up. I tell her no. Her eyes go heavy, and she drifts off again. Krause is on his back, looking up, a nickel-size wound centered in his empty stare. Sirens. Red lights in the window. The bartender is crouching in a booth, crying into a phone. I check my gun. I didn’t fire. I play it back in my head, kneeling beside Lily, holding her hand, watching the bar fill with faces, syringes, vials, and kits. Radio squawks and footsteps far and close, voices echoing across broken glass.

  Chapter 24

  “She okay?”

  “Bullet grazed her. She’ll be fine. Hit her head on the bar. She was out for a minute. They’re keeping her overnight.”

  Ortiz sits with me outside Lily’s hospital room. A janitor is running a mop. It’s nearly midnight.

  “Krause?” says Ortiz.

  “Perfect shot. A pro. I saw him come in. Blond, trim guy in a suit. Looked like a young studio exec. Krause had been glancing at the door the whole night. Like he was waiting for someone. But the guy didn’t register. He ordered a scotch rocks and read a magazine. Quiet. Krause didn’t seem agitated.
”

  “This guy have an accent?”

  “I couldn’t hear. He was across the bar.”

  “Bartender say anything?”

  “His back was to me. I only saw him grab the bottle and pour.”

  “Did Krause know our two big Russians?”

  “Yes, but not what they were up to. It was a chauffeur job. Armando Torres hired him. They go back to Iraq together.”

  “Torres means . . .”

  “Mickey Orlov.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But it’s looking that way. We’re in dicey shit here, Carver. We’re at the bottom looking up. FBI. CIA. They want Orlov for this election-hacking shit. They don’t want it sidetracked with the murder of a ballerina and her cello player.” Ortiz looks down the hall and back to me. “I can’t figure out the why of it. Why would Orlov take out a ballerina? Maybe he was screwing her. Things didn’t work out; he got jealous. Doesn’t seem like him, though, right? I mean, Orlov’s all about control. Isn’t that what you said? Maybe it’s a connection or shit from back in the old country. But Katrina Ivanovna was not a spy or a hacker.”

  “We don’t know.”

  “She was a troubled pill popper on her way down. She wasn’t cracking DNC hard drives or posting fake shit out on Facebook. Not her profile.”

  “That’s the thing with a spy.”

  “C’mon, Carver. What’s your gut?”

  “Orlov.”

  “Or she had a thing with Torres that went bad.”

  “No. It’s about Orlov.”

  “Then get me a why.”

  The janitor turns the corner with his mop. Voices float over the nurses’ station. The hallway is empty.

  “She was good,” I say.

  “Who?”

  “Lily. Real good.”

  “Partner good?”

  “She almost got killed with me.”

  “She can get killed anywhere, Carver.” He stands, stretches, pats me on the shoulder. “I’m going home. Get some sleep yourself. You’ve got blood on your shirt. Broken glass in your shoe.”

  “I never got off a round.”

  “Guy was a pro.”

  “I should have—”