The Russian Heist, page 16
SheknewsomewhohadmilitaryorFSBbackgrounds,whocouldspeak several languages fluently, and were long practiced in corrupting men and governments alike. They could burrow into a legitimate company and turn it into a soft puddle like flesh-eating bacteria and then go on to the next, getting fatter and richer each time.
Shehadtriedtodescribefortheinvestigatorsintheprecinctitsclannish brotherhood, known by its tattoo signifyingVor V Zakonye, but veteran copsalwaysthoughtthey’dseenitall.Theyturnedasthetaverndoorswung open with a loud bang. The long-legged blonde, Tiffani Webb from the Youngstown TV station, came out laughing at something said by her cameraman. The remainder of the press trickled out in twos and threes. Wrapped in a fawn coat, she carried a model’s trim, elegant body and lavishedhersmileuponall.Anniefeltthatfamiliarstrangenessamongwomen like her, in her foreign genes, in the shape of her eyes and her high-carved cheeks, a gift from a Mongolian great-grandfather from Haerbin. Even in China, hers was an inferior look in contrast to the Han people, the only people of the Middle Kingdom for thousands of years in contrast to the barbarians outside the gates of the imperial city. But here in the American Midwest,herfeaturespaledtoinsignificancebesideTiffaniWebb’sglowing radiance.
“See what I mean?” Kirran stomped on his third cigarette. “The world doesn’t change.”
Kirranprecededherupthestepsandtoretheyellowcrimescenetapefrom the door. The house on the shoreline of Lake Glacier looked the same. The realtor company had put a new lock on the door. All was quiet within, a place where people used to live and two had died violently. But no ghosts were wandering about.
Theywentfromroomtoroom,ashisrunningcommentarysummedup what they knew from the spatter and footprints after the killer or killers blitzed them inside the house. “We think they parked up the street and walked.Nobodytoseethematthisangleof thelake.Notiremarkswecan use. It was all frozen slush that day, remember?”
“What about next door?” “A husband and wife, no kids. He worked that day. She said she slept all day. She didn’t know your Aleksei by sight.”
Cheng didn’t appreciate the way the victim had become “her Aleksei.” “Let’s try her again when the husband’s gone,” she said. “They did the girl in front of him. They didn’t get what they wanted
from her and went to work on him after.”
“Maybe he wouldn’t tell them.”
“You saw what they did. Jesus. Nobody holds back under torture like
that. Somebody’s got a sharp instrument in one hand and your manhood in the other, you’ll give him all the secrets he wants. Hell, you’ll make shit up.”
“Thank you. I’ll bear that in mind.” She knew she was wound too tight. If Harry had said that, she would have concurred immediately. “I think the killers came in fast, got the drop on him, hogtied her—
made Aleksei do it if it’s one guy.”
“Unlikely. The girl was tortured a good two hours. Elizabeth said her
histamine levels were off the charts.” She remembered the conversation
distinctly because Bhargrava’s musical cadence was so out of sync with the
clinical reality of what she described. She died screaming behind that gag. “OK, let’s say it was Russians. How do we proveit?” They stared at the
bed’s rusty spotting, the brown circle lighter at the edges, where the sere
separated, and dark in the center.
“Theylikeknives,”shesaid.“Theyliketohumiliatebeforetheykill.Two
is worse than one. They’ll try to outdo each other to see who can inflict
more pain.”
“I thought you Chinese were unparalleled when it came to torture” She lifted up the mattress corner. “Remind me someday to tell you the
story about the emperor’s fifty goldsmiths.”
He pushed a curtain aside and looked out the window where a thin
slice of blue water showed where the ice had thawed at the western edge
of the lake.
“IcutmyteethinYoungstownhomiciderightafterthesteelmillsstarted
closing. knowHarrywasdealingwithmobcrazinesswhenJimmyTraficant
was still feeling up cheerleaders at the University of Pittsburgh. Harry’s a
good liar, but I think you’re holding out on me, Cheng.”
Shewasn’treadytopickafight,sosheasked: “Whataboutthefemale?” “Name’s Emma Sue Wakeman, no priors, local girl, usual sad story.
High-schooldropout.Foundhappinessinastripbartakingoff herclothes
and grinding her pelvis at factory workers. Knocked out a kid every couple of years. Some went to foster homes. Grandma’s raising two of them
right now.”
“What do her friends say about her boyfriend with the accent?” “He bought the adult bookstore about a year ago. We know the figure
on the papers he filed is so lowball it’s a joke. He probably paid cash to
avoid taxes. The previous owner is supposed to be in a trailer park in Cantonment, Florida, but he hasn’t turned up. Florida says they can’t find him
and his trailer was recently ransacked. He’s got a brother in Niles.” “What did the girlfriend think he was?”
“She told a girlfriend at Tres Bién—that’s the strip club she worked for
over on Mahoning—he was from Belgium.”
“Jesus, and they say ignorance is bliss.”
Kirran shuffled impatiently from one foot to the other, stamping his
feet as if he were still outside. The heat had been turned way down by the
realtor. “Russian mobs are into everything from banking to prostitution.
They’reusinggirlsboughtontheEuropeanslavemarkettostocktheirclubs
and massage parlors.”
“I thought massage parlors were Asian girls, Filipinas mostly.” “Not anymore. American men will pay a lot of money for sex with a
youngCaucasiangirl.Advertisementsareallovertheinternet.Someof the
males even comment openly on the girls they’ve had. Many are young,
beautiful.”
“Talk about sex bother you?” Kirran looked at her.
“Sexual slavery bothers me. Governments that support it bother me. A
UnitedNationsthatrefusestosetsanctionsagainstviolatorcountriesbothers me.” She felt her face darken.
“Didn’t mean to push a button. Where’s the connection?” “Aleksei took orders from New York. Maybe this is a rival faction.” “Any known associates in your file notes I should know about?” “Why don’t you tell me. You kept me waiting in the cold for twenty-five
minutes. Plenty of time to run a check.”
“Touché, Cheng. You ever deal with the Aryan Brotherhood?” “Only indirectly.” She didn’t want to mention the class in Quantico. “You should see them up close. They’re a cancer in this state. They can
be a mite secretive about their doings. This Zulinsky’s got a jacket. NCIC
showedathird-degreefelonyfiveyearsago.Trafficcopfounda.357Ruger
underhiscarseatandadisassembledHK91assaultrifleinthetrunk,drug
paraphernalia, a prior aggravated menacing—”
“Which means he’s not supposed to work in bars.”
“Look, Cheng, I’m not wasting time on chickenshit busts. I want you to
lookdeeper,seewhatyourNewYorkcontactsandsecretdatabaseshave.” “There are no secret FBI data bases, Kirran.”
“Right, and if my tea cart had balls, it would be my uncle.” He was busy
running his hands over the plywood paneling in the closet and fingering
Aleksei’ silk ties and shirts. Aleksei’ shoes were packed off.
TheFBIhadalreadycrossedhimasaknownassociatetoonehigh-rankingmemberof theBrandinLucasville.ItbotheredKirranthatZulinskydid
time in Ohio for the felony, and celled five months in the same block with
an AB member doing life for murder. Even more suspicious, Zulinsky was
furloughedwithoutanyseriousparoleconditions.Thatfailedthesmelltest.
Kirran hinted at worse.
“The Aryan Brotherhood extends its greetings to women of anybody
they want punished,” Kirran said. “It’s their idea of collateral damage for
somebody they’ve put in the hat.”
“This isn’t biker or prison-gang related, detective,” she said. “There’s
too much—”
“Too much what?” Kirran was playing around with a trajectory rod one
of the technicians left behind.
She almost said nimiety, her father’s word that she had never heard used
byanyoneelse.“Excess,”shesaidatlast.Shefeltitthefirsttimeshewalked
into the room. It was how her first few crime scenes back in New York
made her feel. Disbelieving, afraid, unwilling to accept a radically different
and much lower definition of humanity from what you were raised to believe in or tried to cling to even after you saw what human beings could inflict on other human beings. Aleksei Gunin Kuchenyavenko belonged to
the Solnstsevoskaya mafia in Moscow. His presence in a low-class adult
bookstore in Ohio made no sense.
“I doubt Aleksei was out here chartering porn franchises,” she said. “It
would make as much sense as the Italian mob buying up soybean fields to
take over the commodities market.”
“Maybe his past caught up with him,” Kirran said, thinking aloud.
“Maybe some of Harry’s old throwbacks didn’t want any foreign scum
moving in on their porn rackets.” A homicide detective’s arch disdain for
motives showing through, but she took the bait if only to disabuse him of
a notion that would waste time.
“You’re thinking money-laundering? They don’t need middlemen for
that. They own the banks. Don’t you think a shady business attracts a little
too much unwanted attention?”
“What better place to hide something, eh?”
“I see you’ve studied Conan Doyle, detective.”
“DoyoumeantheFBIdoesn’tincludeHolmesinitstrainingmanuals?” “Actually most of his deductive syllogisms are wrong.” She laughed. “While we’re all waiting for forensics to work leads, what exactly can
you tell me about this Aleksei Kuchenyavenko?”
She made a decision to feed him a little. She had empathy for his frustration, if not for him personally, but she didn’t yet know what Harry’s allegiance to him was, and it was strictly for her partner’s sake she gave him
anythingatall.“HeappliedforaGreekvisaattheMoscowconsulate.That’s
how he got in here.”
“When were you going to share this? Christ, you feds are all alike.” She told him how it worked. “It’s an old story. Bribe a government official at the Foreign Ministry. Everything in Russia today has a price. If a
woman wants a divorce, she often has to sleep with the judge to get it
stamped. Years and years of dealing with an inefficient government that
boughteverythingoff theblackmarketmeanstheyknowhowtostayunder
the radar.”
Hestaredather,hisbreathsteamingandbillowing.Hewaslikeanopera
mask wearing a single emotion at a time.
“It’s capitalism’s dark twin,” she said. “It’s one vast global network of
rival organizations with four hundred banks to do their bidding. It’s a fight
fortheworld’smoneylaundering,drugcartels,extortionschemes,andarms
dealing.”
“You’repreachingatme,Cheng.Idoreadsomethingbesidesthecomics
in the Sunday papers, but come on, five dead bodies in two weeks.” “Good because maybe you should go back to reread your case file,” she
said, her temper flaring. “Did you really think that a man castrated and
bleeding to death hauled himself out of his house, climbed into his vehicle, and then decided to return to his house for the sole purpose of dying
on his own couch? Don’t they teach drag marks at your academies?” Kirran’s countenance hovered between surprise and amusement. “Here’sanotherthingtoponder.Alekseiwasleft-handed.Aleft-handed
man doesn’t hold his penis in his right hand and he doesn’t shoot himself
in the right temple.”
By turns blasé and cynical, then suddenly an emotional weathervane,
Kirran was not her idea of a typical detective once you separated out the
fondnessfordrink.Mostsheknewwerelikeairlinepilots,coolunderstress,
usedtolonghoursanddetachedonthejob.Sheremindedhimof theLondonundergroundbombings,theworld’sIslamicextremistsactivelyseeking
fuel for dirty bombs. Saddam Hussein had tried to buy nuclear staves from
Reactive Metals extrusion plant in Northtown, fifty miles north of where
they stood, as far back as 1983. The former Soviet Union dumped radioactive-contaminated water into its Moscow water supply before it was
dominated by almost a hundred distinct mafiya families.
Back at the office, phone calls, emails, teletypes, and reports to be written were piling up with dizzying speed. She checked her watch. “I have to
go,” she said.
“Me too. Do let’s keep in touch when necessary, eh?” He checked his
own wristwatch and stalked off. Rising vapor clouds made his head smoke. She tried not to judge all male cops as cast from the same mold, but
Kirran was a reminder why the stereotypes existed. His sense of being in
charge, boredom with motives, the hardboiled slang, the peremptory demands—it was like visiting too long in a house where teenagers ran the
family.EveninChina,fivethousandyearsof traditionhadbeenbuckledby
a single generation of one-child families, spoiled children come of age
where an entire vocabulary had been forced to grow up around them and
their needs—irksome to be around for long periods of time. Kirran’s temper,herownexhaustionfromthelongnightbefore,andherplungingblood
sugar level were souring her mood fast.
She stood there a moment and rolled her head to loosen the tension in
her neck; then she strolled out back to look at the lake and the pine trees,
thecolorof driedthyme,onthedistantshore.Itwasserene,agouache.Except for the one big expensive house in view, all was solitude and peace, a
picturesque setting without human beings or any noise except the wind
soughing in the tops of the trees. She hugged her coat around her and remembered something her ex-husband had said about a warm coat being a
fashion statement, not a necessity. One of many things she had to unlearn
on her own. She held the scene a moment longer, took a snapshot with her
tired brain, and walked slowly back through his tracks to her Jetta. It might
helphergetthroughthelonghoursof paperworkandphone-callingahead.
Chapter 17
Tuesday: Tarzan Macbride looked around the room and felt giddy. Waves of nausea alternated with bouts of hysteria. It wasn’t to be believed, but here they were. Smitty and his wife were glued to the television set while the kid bounced a leather ball against his instep. Dimitri sat brooding in the kitchen with a bottle of Stolichnaya. Tod, unused to his new surroundings, drifted immediatelytoMacbride’ssidewheneverhewasn’tmakingoneof hisforaysinto the earthen cellar, where he would emerge hours later draped in cobwebs. Tod instinctively avoided Dimitri, who threatened Macbride with gripping the hissing cat by the scruff of the neck and smashing it against the wall.
The drive north on Route 11 with Bobbi and her stepson had been the longestdriveof hislife.OncetheyditchedhercaratthehouseinCortland and loaded the money into the SUV, she refused to go back, insisted they follow the plan. Macbride held firm. Rather than argue in the middle of a stop light, she floored the vehicle back to Macbride’s house and waited for him to fetch the cat. When Macbride came out with the portable cage, she said, “You can be the one to tell him.” There wasn’t any doubt whohim was, either.
They were as vulnerable as they would ever be until they reached de la Torriente’s house in Austinburg. Thirty minutes north on Route 46, up hill and down dale, around curves shiny with black ice through Mecca, Colebrook,andintoJefferson,pasttheSheriff’s,pastthecourthouse.Macbride felt his buttocks clench at intersections. He swiveled his head in search of snipersandSWATpolicemen.Peoplewalkedpastthem;theywentintothe Jeffersondinerorthesupermarket,thelibraryandthelaundromat—everyday, normal life.
Macbridewasquitesureheleftnormalbackthereattheexitramp.Here they were transporting garbage bags stuffed with money—hundreds of pounds of it—to the so-called safe house in Austinburg. He tried not to think of de le Torriente’s corpse back there. If Dimitri ever learned he and Carlos had talked the night before the heist, he knew his fate. He remembered how Bobbi gripped the wheel and never looked at him once. She wore a blue watch cap over her blonde hair. From behind his closed eyelids, he replayed the scene back there and tried to block out the carnage.
He didn’t see any of the killings, not that it would count if they were caught.Smith’srecitaldidn’tincludecapitalfelonymurder,notawordabout lethal injection. There wasn’t any point in brooding over it now.
Dimitri was furious—first over the cat and second, when he found out that duct tape and rope had been left in the abandoned van. Macbride decideditwasthebetterpartof wisdomnottomentionthelostwalkie-talkie. He shuddered when he recalled Dimitri’s instructions about the “backup” guns—it was clear in hindsight the guns were never meant for scaring peopleintosubmission.Thoseworkersweredeadthemomenttheypassedthe gatehouse. Poor Carlos, sacrificed like a lamb to the slaughter. Macbride remembered how confident he was with his little gun. He wished he had read more Schopenhauer and less Nietzsche. Confronting Dimitri’s implacable will was not a paper dialectic but a descent into the black hole of the unknown. A descent too abrupt.
