I ignored him. He was baiting me and I had no intention of fueling his rage. He could get over it or he could fuck off for all I cared.
“How well did you know the dead girl?” I said.
“I knew Masha a little. She was great dancer. Always twelve guys hanging around for her.”
“Fine. I’m not going to ask how come you didn’t tell me you knew her in the first place or what shit you know about Dacha, the club, just find out who they were, the twelve guys, also the girls she knew. Get me some hard information.”
“Not twelve exactly.”
“I get it. I get it’s not exactly twelve, but however many.” I was impatient. “What else?”
“Once we eat on the boardwalk on Saturday night, a group, seven, eight friends, we just sit out and watch the ocean and talk. Masha was there.”
“Write it down. Send me an e-mail.”
“Artie?”
“Yes?”
“You ever wonder about the m on Masha, the one somebody made with a knife?”
“The lab’s been looking at it all along.”
“You wonder what it stands for? You think it stands for Masha?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“What about Mohammed, what about this guy Moe?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, but he’d planted the seed of doubt into my head where it could take root.
Bobo’s car was at the curb. He unlocked the door.
“I’m on it,” he said, his voice turning chilly. “You don’t have to bust my balls.”
“Very nice car,” I said. “You got it where?”
“My parents.”
“Your parents are doing so well?”
“Fuck you.”
“Give it a break, Bobo. Relax.”
“No, I don’t want to fucking give it a break. My pop opened another dry-cleaning place. Why? You think because my parents are living in Brighton Beach, they’re crooked? Because I’m living at home I’m in on some game, too? I stay there to help out with my mom who has arthritis bad, right? The car was a present, right? It was my birthday present.”
“Forget it.”
“No. Let’s discuss. I take a lot of shit from you, okay, so I learn this way. But some stuff it’s not okay. Not okay that you think I take money in some way unclean, you know? Not all Russians are corrupted bastards,” he said in English and then switched to Russian, his voice very cold and very low. “You think that all of us are just creeps, I know that, Artemy, I know how you think, you always show it to me, one way or the other. You’ve turned into an American, so for you Russians are gangsters or religious nuts, you’ve forgotten your country, and I don’t care about that, but get off my fucking back. I’m not your kid.”
“Calm down,” I said.
“Sure.”
“One more thing, Bobo.”
“Yeah?”
“You slept with her? You slept with Masha? You had something going on?”
Standing near my car, I opened the package I had taken from the house in Brighton Beach and found a videotape, and a few sheets of paper. I scanned them, and then yelled for Bobo Leven who was climbing into his car. He shut the door and jogged over to me. I held out a piece of paper. He took it, read it, grunted.
“Jesus, Art.”
“Yeah.” I felt sick.
“Masha Panchuk waited tables for your pal, Anatoly Sverdloff,” he said.
“Give me a cigarette.”
Bobo handed me the pack along with his lighter.
“Fuck it, Artie, didn’t Sverdloff mention this?” said Bobo. “He didn’t tell you one of his girls was missing?”
“Why would he? Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe she was a temp.”
“Don’t be so defensive, but you have to figure by now someone maybe called him about it, Sverdloff, I mean. Right? Or you want to do that?”
“He’s on his way to London. He didn’t have anything to do with Masha Panchuk’s murder.”
“You want to hang onto that raft, like they say, Artemy?”
“Fine. I’ll call him,” I said.
“You trust him, right?”
I lit the cigarette and handed him back his smokes and the lighter.
I worked my phone, I made some calls, nothing. I turned to Bobo.
“Find Dravic, if you can,” I said. “He was supposed to meet me at the house the club uses as an office, he wasn’t there, I just tried him on the phone, there’s no answer. I called the club, nothing. Now I’m thinking he was scared, but of what? Scared because he promised to give me some stuff on Masha Panchuk? Did someone overhear us talking at the club?”
“Sure,” said Bobo. “I will work everything,” he said formally, his English sounding as if he had learned it in school, his Russian accent more pronounced now. “I will be taking everything into consideration, of course, Artemy.”
I knew that Bobo Leven would get into everything, he was tenacious, relentless, one of those cops, even at his age, who never let go. At two in the morning, he’d still be at his desk doing the paperwork. Before the other guys got into his station house, he’d be combing his computer, and then when they arrived, he’d bug them for scraps of information. The phone would be permanently attached to his ear, he would be calling, asking, bribing if he had to. I had known a few cops like Bobo. It wasn’t just that he wanted to make a name for himself, it was who he was, what he lived for. Everything would come under scrutiny, he would talk to everybody, Albanians, Jamaicans, Mexies, Serbs, Russians, and he would go through every detective report on crazy people, on thugs who sliced people up, on the kinds of knives they used, and if they also used guns, and he would read medical reports, and reports on duct tape, fibers and feathers, anything he could get his hands on.
Every single homicide pattern that was anything like the case would be worked by Bobo; so would cold cases he kept in a bottom drawer.
Moving around, he would get to Starrett City, Brighton Beach, looking at how people had been mugged, sliced, killed. He wanted this case, and he would go without sleep, night after night, until fatigue made him crazy.
“I’m going back to the city,” I said, but Bobo didn’t answer; he was already on the phone, already tracking Tito Dravic.
In my car, I studied the picture of Masha I had with me, I stared at it hard as if it would give up some secret, and without warning a faint finger of panic crawled up my neck. The thing I hadn’t seen, the thing I didn’t want to see.
But I had to look. And I looked, and the face stared back at me.
If some creep had snatched Masha Panchuk, and Masha had worked at Tolya’s bar, was it Masha the creep really wanted? Was it a mistake? Were they looking for someone else? Somebody connected to me? Somebody who scared Tito Dravic bad?
Masha Panchuk, in the picture I held, was tall with short platinum hair. It had been taken the month before.
The face looked back at me, and in it, there was the resemblance. To Val. She looked like Val. Val’s hair had been short and blonde, too. Only recently had she let it grow out; only recently had she let it go back to her dark red.
Had I missed this? How? Did I fail to see it because I didn’t want to see it?
I started the car, I drove like crazy back to Brighton Beach, to Val’s office, and when I got there she was gone. I called her. Val? Val? Answer the phone!
Val?
All the way home, I called, I put my phone on redial, and when I got to my block I barely noticed that Roy Pettus was leaning against the wall of the Korean grocery on the corner. Holding a bottle of Coke, he saw me pull up. I put my phone away.
“Hello, Art.”
“Roy. You following me?”
He looked at his watch.
“Nope, just hoping you might be coming home before I have to go back to New Jersey,” Roy said who was wearing a suit, the jacket too big, the collar of his shirt too tight. “You give my offer some thought?” he said. “You okay, Artie? You look shook up.”
“What offer?”
“Coming in with us.”
“No thanks. I’m helping out on a homicide. I’m busy.”
“The Russian girl, right? I could give you some stuff on this, help you finish it up.”
“What kind?”
Leaning forward, his head jutting out of his tight shirt collar, he reacted fast, and said, voice low, “This personal with you at all, Artie? You have a stake in this case?” He stuck his finger into his collar like he was suffocating. “God, I feel like a horse’s ass, suit and tie, haven’t been in a get-up like this for years since I left the city.” He adjusted the jacket. “It’s too damn hot for this.”
“You want to come up to my place?” All the time we were talking, I strained to hear my cellphone. Call, I thought. Val?
“Thanks. That would be fine,” Pettus said. “I won’t stay long. Just need to cool off.”
Upstairs at my place, Pettus removed his jacket carefully, folded it neatly on a kitchen stool, sat down on another one and asked if he could smoke. I said sure and got him a cold Coke, which he asked for, confessing he was addicted to the stuff.
I put a glass and an ashtray in front of him, then checked my messages and my e-mails, while he watched me, guessing how frantic I was, that I was waiting to hear from somebody.
He concentrated on his drink, but I knew he was looking around, watching me, taking a good look, appraising my place, me, how I lived. It was what he had wanted, maybe even why he had been waiting for me on the street in front of my building.
“Nice place,” he said.
I got a beer from the fridge, sat opposite him and said, “Thank you.” And waited.
“Tough living in the city these days. Expensive.”
“Roy, let’s skip the small talk.”
“Just wanting to help.”
“Spit it out, Roy, you’re still wanting me to go to London, spy on the Russians there, get involved, is that it? If so, please don’t follow me around and bug my friends, it doesn’t make me feel comfortable at all.”
“Like I said, I’m sorry about that,” said Roy. “We’re in trouble,” he said, as the phone rang, and I bolted from the kitchen to answer it. It wasn’t Val.
“Not the call you’ve been waiting for?” Pettus added mildly.
I didn’t answer, just said, “What makes you so sure I’d be good at this stuff, this whatever you call it? Intelligence. Isn’t that the polite term, Roy? Isn’t that what Bush calls it every time he wants some more money to bug our phones? It’s all just bluster, it’s just the fucking Russians rattling their missiles and stamping their feet.”
Pettus crushed out his smoke, got up, loped across my loft, admired some photographs on the wall, looked at my books, picked one out and examined it. I couldn’t see the title. From one of the big industrial windows that faced the street, he looked at the building opposite mine. He turned to me.
“I am really sorry for not coming to you straight,” he said. “I don’t know what got hold of me. I need your help. We need you bad. It’s that simple. I can’t think of anyone else I can ask, or trust.”
Climbing back on the stool, he put his elbows on the counter, asked if he could have another Coke and smiled, as if at his own pathetic addiction to the soda.
“You’d be attached to Scotland Yard along with a few other NYPD detectives.”
“For real? Or as a cover?”
“You’d be working normal terrorism stuff, of course, but it’s obvious you’d hang out with some of the new Russians, being a Russian yourself.”
“You’re figuring if I’m in London I’m spending time at Tolya Sverdloff’s London club. With Russians.”
“It’s where they go.”
“I can’t do that. I’d be lousy at it.”
“You’ve been undercover from time to time in New York, right? Even doing your homicide cases, you specialize in getting people to tell you things. Right? This isn’t any different.” Roy turned the pale brown eyes on me. “You have the gift,” he added.
“What makes you think that?”
“Your dad, wasn’t he an agent? Didn’t he work for the KGB back when? I read he was the best, subtle, he could charm anything out of anybody.”
“How the hell do you know?”
“When the Soviet Union collapsed, for a time we were on good terms with their people, they let us read a lot of their stuff.”
“A long time ago, Roy. It’s not genetic.”
“People tell us it’s like a family, KGB, FSB as it’s become. They only trust their own. Your family was in the business, you’re part of it, it’s dynastic.”
I saw now what Pettus wanted. He wanted somebody ex-KGB guys would trust, maybe even current FSB guys.
I didn’t answer.
“Your job here, I could clear you on that. There’s plenty of detectives could take your place for a while.”
“You already checked?”
“Yes.”
“Look, there’s a whole lot of Russians in New York, cops, too, I’m sure you can buy a couple. People who speak the lingo better than me.”
“We want somebody who looks and sounds American.”
“Well, you could always pay somebody.”
“We don’t want people we can buy. We need people who do it for America. Don’t you owe this country?” said Pettus softly. He didn’t harangue, he didn’t yell, just asked. “Isn’t that what your father did in his day, for his country?”
Putting his jacket on, Pettus fished in the pocket, put a card on the counter.
“I’ve put all my numbers on this,” said Pettus. “I’ll be in the New York area for three more days. Please call me, Artie.”
*
Rattled by Pettus. I drank a shot of Scotch. Then I called Sonny Lippert.
“Go on, man.”
“He told me we owe our friends in London, Pettus said they need to watch out for the Russkis?”
“He’s right, man, about that, at least. I’m guessing he wants you to move into some kind of intel work, and why not? You got the brains, man. I mean, like you could be a spy man, James Bond, George Smiley, whatever,” said Sonny. “Joseph Conrad.”
“But why the snooping around?”
“Fuck knows, man. Obviously he wanted you to know he was at it, maybe put you off guard, maybe let you know he knows where your friends are, what do I know, maybe Roy Pettus has turned into J. Edgar Hoover in his old age, or maybe he just likes spying on people.”
“You know him at all?”
“Some. Years ago. Always seemed like a straight arrow, far as it goes. You want me to ask around?”
“Yeah. Could you, Sonny?”
“You told him to work it up his ass, man?”
“I was polite.”