The Final Fabergé (13 page)

Mike answered the door. He was dressed in jeans and T-shirt and guided Lenny past unopened cartons spread throughout high-ceilinged rooms. The furniture was covered with drop cloths and paint cans were arrayed over the floor. Wide, gray-tinted windows faced east and south
to a spectacular view of the Hudson River. Immediately north, and as if one could reach out and touch them, were the towers and cables of the George Washington Bridge. Directly across the river were the northern reaches of New York City, and to the south were the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

They stopped in a small room lined with bookshelves, and a desk on which were several stacks of letters and folders, two phones and a combo fax/printer. Beside the desk was a personal computer.

“Excuse the clutter,” Mike said. “Any more and I'll have to move.” He motioned Lenny into a chair and sat behind his desk. He smiled, genuinely. “As I remember, you like to be called Lenny.”

“Yeah,” Lenny said, “good memory. You know,
Playboy
's going to run the story and they're big on photographs. Maybe that sales gal in your new showroom. Georgia?”

“She's a sales consultant,” Mike said evenly.

The mild rebuke went right past Lenny. “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Okay if I send a photographer here? Good idea to show you at home.”

“Home is a mess. Talk to Patsy about photographs. In fact, talk to Patsy about everything, except the interview. She can't do that. I'm sorry about Saturday. That wasn't a good day for any of us.”

“She gave me a file on Carson Motors, and a little bit on you, but not enough to do a profile. And I want to ask questions about the shooting.”

“You can ask, that's why you're here.” Mike sat back, relaxed. “But let me warn you that there might be questions about the man who was shot that I can't discuss. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough,” Lenny said. “Nice apartment. You live alone?”

Mike nodded. “I do now. Had a friend, but she was getting impatient. Wanted kids. A bunch of them. You know how that goes.”

“Yeah,” Lenny said. “I damned well know how that goes. Had the same situation. No kids for me, not now. Don't know if that was the issue, but she took off. Going to sort it all out, she said.”

“You were married?”

“No. It didn't get that far.”

Lenny balanced his notebook on a corner of the desk. “I asked because I don't see any pictures.”

Mike opened a desk drawer and took out a silver frame and handed it to Lenny. In it was a photograph of Mike and a young woman. They were on board ship and wearing evening clothes. “I kept one, just in case.”

Lenny made a low whistling sound. “She's beautiful.”

“I know. Everyone felt the same way. Problem was, so did she.” Mike put the photograph back in the drawer. “But you're not here to talk about an old girlfriend.”

“Yeah.” Lenny began with his questions. They were succinct and flowed in a natural progression, never prying for dark secrets, always slanted to keep Mike involved, even interested in searching his memory for obscure, interesting details.

Indeed, Lenny was a pro and in thirty-five minutes he filled twenty-five pages with a fast pen that wrote squiggly big letters in a weird scrawl, plus his own bastardized shorthand.

“That pretty much takes us up to last Saturday,” Lenny said, turning to a fresh page. “The media are trying to figure out what happened.” He glanced up. “And you've gone under cover. What can you tell me about the man who was shot? We know he was Russian, but who was he?”

“You talk as if he was dead. He's not.” Mike rubbed his hands together. “He is someone I knew when I was very young.”

“Can you tell me his name?”

“Sasha Akimov.”

“How old were you when you last saw him?”

“I don't know exactly. Just a little guy, maybe seven or eight. He was a friend of my parents.”

“So, it's been twenty-five or more years since you last saw him?”

Mike nodded.

“After all this time, why did he come to see you?”

“I never found out. I think he was about to tell me, then—” Mike's hand went involuntarily to his throat.

“How long had you been together before he was shot?”

“Ten minutes, but that's a guess. I didn't expect him, but I was expecting other people. Then, he began telling me about my family.”

“Was he a close friend of your parents?”

“He and my mother came from the same town. It's on the Black Sea. He was in the navy with my father.”

“They're still friends?”

“They went separate ways. It isn't something I want to discuss.”

Lenny turned a page. “Akimov came from Moscow?”

“St. Petersburg.”

“You said you were a kid when you last saw him. Where would that have been?”

“St. Petersburg.”

“Is that where you always lived? When you were in Russia?”

“I was born in Estonia. My father was in the navy and stationed in Tallinn. I was just a little guy when we moved to St. Petersburg.”

“Was Akimov in the navy?”

Mike nodded. “And he was transferred to St. Petersburg, too.”

“So, after all these years, he showed up in your showroom? Pretty good for a guy who doesn't speak English. Why did he want to see you?”

Mike shrugged. “He started by telling me that my father had a party the night I was born. He wanted me to know that my father invited his navy buddies to celebrate the fact he was a new dad and also because President Kennedy had been assassinated.”

“That's an interesting headline,” Lenny said. “Mike Carson born the day John Kennedy died.” His pen flew across a page. “So, there was a party—”

“With a lot of drinking and gambling.”

“The old Soviet Union wasn't crazy about Kennedy, and I suppose your dad and his friends thought they had a couple of reasons to celebrate.”

“Akimov said that.”

Lenny smiled. “He told you about a party that took place more than thirty years ago? Must have been some hell of a party. What else did he say about it?”

Mike looked down to the keyboard and tapped on the keys, causing the cursor to dance across the screen. He tapped again and the word Fabergé appeared.

Mike said, “My father had too much to drink. He did that a lot, I remember. But that night he lost his money, his watch, then . . .” He deleted the words on the monitor and turned to Lenny. “It's all kind of personal from there on.”

“Yeah,” Lenny said, clearly disappointed. “Can you describe the woman who shot Akimov?”

“She was tall, had short, blond hair, and damned good-looking.” Mike paused for several seconds, “That's not much of a description but that's what I remember.”

“Is it possible this good-looking assassin was trying to shoot you?”

“I hadn't thought of that.” Mike smiled weakly. “I don't think so. She wasted no time putting her gun on Akimov.”

Len paused and rubbed his hand across his chin. “What else can you tell me about Akimov?”

“I can tell you he's a little man. Seventy or a little older. I don't think he has a family.” Mike shrugged and added, “I said he was alive, but I'm afraid he's going to die.”

“That bad?”

“I'm not sure how much fight he's got in him. And he's alone in a strange country. In fact, I'm having him transferred to a hospital in Englewood. That's right next to us. I'm also looking for someone to stay with him. Someone who speaks Russian.”

Lenny made a final note and put his pad away. He thanked Mike Carson for his time and at ten after eleven was back in the cab.

Across from the Gold Coast on Palisades Avenue was the rest of Fort Lee; small homes and duplexes on typically suburban side streets. One such street, Slocum Way, was directly across from the circular driveway in front of the Atrium Palace, and where the yellow cab was parked. A gray Ford Taurus was parked close to the intersection. From it the driver could observe the entrance to the apartment. Viktor Lysenko had driven with all his skill to stay close to the cab on its race through red lights up the West Side Drive to the bridge. He had lost sight of it when he reached the New Jersey side of the bridge. But the yellow taxi was like a moving beacon as it reflected the bright lights that flooded over the ramps and toll plaza. He had caught up to the cab and had followed it to the Atrium Palace.

Viktor watched Lenny Sulzberger get into the cab. It immediately drove off. He picked up the phone and spoke into it.

“They are coming. Forty-five minutes and they will be at Sulzberger's home on North Moore Street.”

It was a few minutes before twelve when Lenny's cab stopped in front of 68 North Moore Street. The driver had computed the elapsed time for the round-trip, “Two hours and fifty-eight minutes. And four dollars for the bridge.”

“You agreed to a hundred bucks, tolls included,” Lenny said. “But
here's another ten for keeping me awake with your recipe for curried lamb and fermented eggs.” He handed the driver a wad of fives and tens. “I'll skip the eggs.”

Lenny took his keys from his shoulder bag and went up the worn marble steps. He was about to turn the key when he was overwhelmed by the frightening sensation that he was not alone. He turned.

Standing on the step below him was a woman. She wore a black raincoat over a stocky body, a scarf covered her hair and was tied under her chin. Her face was colorless and featured a broad nose and thick eyebrows.

“Are you Mr. Sulzberger?” she inquired in a faint, accented voice.

“Lady, you scared the hell out of me. Yeah, but who are you?” Lenny looked behind the woman, searching for others in the sidewalk, or in one of the cars parked across the street.

“I am Katya Mirova. I know about the man who was shot in the automobile place.”

“It was in the news. A lot of people know about him.”

“I mean to say that I have met him. His name is Sasha Akimov.”

Surprised that a stranger would appear at midnight to tell him that she knew Akimov, Lenny pulled the key from the lock, then stepped down to the sidewalk. “Why have you come at this hour to tell me that you know Sasha Akimov?”

“I am sorry that it is late, but I am flying from New York in the morning. Are you not writing about the Mr. Carson who owns the place where Akimov was shot?”

“You seem to know quite a bit about me; where I live, that I'm a writer. How the hell do you know all this?”

“I will tell you, but you must tell me what you have learned about Akimov. Is there a place,” the woman gestured suggestively to the door, “where we can talk?”

Lenny looked up to the windows of his apartment, then turned. He said, “There's a restaurant a block south that's open. We can go there.”

Yaffa's was at the corner of Greenwich and Harrison, a bar and eatery that was gaining recognition as an institution for the newly burgeoning TriBeCa neighborhood. Its aged-wood bar ran nearly the length of the front portion of the restaurant and had a back bar made from dark walnut and stained oak. Odors wafted up from a kitchen in the basement. A few young people, Wall Street and ad agency types, were finishing a late supper. Lenny led the way to a table that could be made private by
pulling a stained maroon curtain. He asked the waitress for two bottles of Evian, a lime and a knife to slice it.

“I thought my day was over,” Lenny said, unzipping his shoulder bag and taking out his notepad. “But, if you've got something to tell me about Akimov, I'll be happier 'n hell to listen.”

The café, while not large, was illuminated by the dull power given off by 25 watt bulbs scattered on the walls. Small candles in round globes were meant to supplement the light, though the flame in most had died hours before.