A Town Called Malice

by Adam Abramowitz

  Anitra Tehran again looks at me for a long time without speaking, but I meet her eyes this time.

  “I know, it sounds like blackmail, right?”

  “Pretty much,” I say. God, your eyes are beautiful, I want to say.

  “It’s not. I was the first reporter on the bridge only because I was doing my morning run on the Charles. I’d just cut up into the Back Bay when I saw all the squad cars and knew this was more than a traffic accident. Brill moved that body back to the Boston side. Those Cambridge Homicides, Powers and McGowan, were the ones who pulled it first.”

  “You saw that?”

  “No. But I’ve seen enough murder scenes to know what it should have looked like. And by the way the blood was streaked, I could tell the body had been dragged. I also saw Brill break McGowan’s nose. If you ask me, both detectives must have lost their minds.”

  But it’s all good, I think to myself, because Tehran gets to play the middle, cashing in with Wells as a source as he works this case. And she gets to keep that ace up her sleeve with Cambridge PD for whenever she needs it down the line. Makes perfect sense. What I don’t get is are things so slow in Cambridge, they’d actually pull a body over the line to get some work in? Did Cambridge Homicide fear for their jobs, have to justify their existence in the world’s most liberal city, where property values have driven out every single criminal?

  “A girl’s gotta eat.” Tehran reads part of my mind and scrutinizes the computer, turning it so I can see numbers scrolling across the screen.

  “And you think whoever followed you to Nick’s and put a bullet through your window is tied to Mass Ave.?”

  “I don’t know shit except that there’s a lot of pressure on Batista to solve this case fast.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Really, Zesty? You need me to answer that question?”

  I didn’t. The police commissioner will look for a scapegoat, and that would be Brill, whom they’ll claim contaminated the crime scene and botched a high-profile murder case. And what would the fallout be for Wells? Possibly the same thing.

  And if that happens, MIT would probably prefer Roshan’s murder fade from the public’s consciousness, not much stink likely to be made all the way from Mumbai, maybe some sort of reparation paid to tamp down the family’s grief or outrage. Only Wells isn’t the type of cop who would just drop an investigation even if he did get canned. Badged up or not, one way or another, Wells was going to solve the mystery of Rambir Roshan.

  “So what am I looking at?” I point to the screen, where the numbers had finally stopped moving.

  “If I had to take a guess, I’d say they were some form of transactions. Look at the numbers; if you add them all up, they’re in the millions.” One hundred and thirty-seven of them, according to the computer count at the bottom. “And then there’re these … Holy shit.” Tehran’s mouth drops open as a number of files appear on-screen. She clicks on a file titled Albov LLC.

  “That means something to you?” The file doesn’t open.

  “Yes. I’ve seen these names before as I researched the real estate series.” There are other files on the screen: Odessa Holdings. Baltic LLC. Park Place LLC. Marvin Gardens LLC. Each click yielding nothing.

  “They’re all shell companies. Each of these LLCs owns property in Boston. Some of them multiple properties. None of these files will open. They seem to be encrypted.”

  “Why would Rambir Roshan have this information on his computer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Aside from Katanya and Namestnikov, have you come across more Russians digging into the Roshan thing?”

  “No,” Tehran says. “Yes,” Tehran says. And that right there is probably why I don’t have a girlfriend. I hear yes and I hear no and I’m supposed to find the true meaning lying somewhere in between?

  “Kirilenko Labs, where your pal Sam Budoff and Roshan interned. Viktor Kirilenko, the founder, is Russian. The firm is a relatively new start-up, but already they’ve scored some pretty hefty government contracts, private businesses. You ever listen to NPR, Zesty?”

  “No, I live in a cave, under a rock,” I say. “Kirilenko Labs is a WBUR/NPR underwriter.”

  “Exactly. And I apologize.” Tehran pauses to look at me with that slight tilt to her head again, this time the hoodie falling off her ponytail. “How come you don’t have any tattoos, Zesty?”

  “I wanted to be different,” I say, the swerve in conversation puzzling me. “And I’m Jewish.”

  “You’re religious?”

  “I pick and choose from the menu.” I shrug. “That’s just one thing.”

  “There are others? Like what?”

  “I don’t eat pork. I don’t drive on the Sabbath.”

  “Now you’re playing with me. Batista told me you don’t drive at all, not legally at least. And Zero?”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s all tatted up, works on the Sabbath.…”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t work. Can we finish up here, there’s someplace I have to be.”

  “At this hour? It’s two in the morning.”

  “Moonlighting,” I say. “Literally. So the pipeline of interns from MIT makes sense, then,” I say. “For Kirilenko Labs. Plus, it’s MIT, where the kids dream in physics and piss math. Why would they recruit from anywhere else?” Not that the other twenty thousand colleges in Boston were slouches.

  It’s not really a question I need answered, but I have learned something new. Sam Budoff scored Roshan an internship he squandered. Roshan gave Sam almost a million dollars in chips to hide and hold. When he ends up dead, Sam goes into hiding and sets me up with Roshan’s computer drive with encrypted files of shell companies Tehran had exposed though not fully unraveled through her reporting; many of the true ownerships of the properties were still cloaked in secrecy, the whole thing getting more complicated by the hour.

  “And Wells has also made the rounds at Kirilenko?” I figure.

  “Yes.”

  “Before or after you felt like you were being followed?”

  Tehran squints in thought. “After.”

  “And before or after you got stonewalled at MIT?”

  “After. Right after.”

  “So someone picked you up at MIT or at Kirilenko. Were you threatened directly before the firebomb? Phone calls, emails, notes warning you off this story?”

  “You mean did someone named Natasha or Boris call me with a heavy Russian accent and a sizzling stick of dynamite?”

  “Something like that.”

  “No.” She stops and thinks. “But I did receive an unmarked file at the Globe. Sent by messenger. It was a bunch of clippings, photographs and information about some neo-Nazi anti-immigrant groups. A couple of men listed had criminal histories for assaulting immigrants, actually pretty shocking stuff for Boston. This city might look placid but there’s definitely some shit bubbling beneath the surface.”

  “Really?” I say, sarcastically. “You’re surprised?”

  “What?”

  “You act like people being priced out of their neighborhoods somehow shouldn’t be resentful of it.”

  Anitra rears back. “You’re justifying their actions?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just saying people are angry. And vulnerable to all sorts of things. Fuck it, I don’t really expect you to understand.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She’s angry now.

  “Different worlds,” I say. “Let’s just leave it at that. You followed up on what was in the file?”

  “Of course. But it was a total dead end.”

  “Did Wells follow those same leads?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you fed him the information.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it went nowhere for him, too.”

  “Yes.”

  And meanwhile, all his other leads grew cold. Tehran and Wells in sync, doing the same dance moves, but to all the wrong songs. Anitr
a Tehran takes a deep breath and looks to the ceiling, her index and middle fingers on both hands making a running-man motion, probably a habit of deep thought.

  “What are you thinking?” I ask her.

  “That misinformation is a very Russian way to exploit a situation,” she says after a moment.

  “The file had no return address, no marking?”

  “Just my name and the Globe address.”

  “Delivered by courier,” I say. “I know your front desk security procedure is for everything to be signed for, messenger’s name and company.”

  “Yes. So if I have that—”

  “You can backtrack where the file was picked up,” I finish for her.

  “And if it was just on a random street corner? Would you do that type of pickup?”

  “Sure. But that tells us something, too.”

  Tehran nods in agreement. “Why would some kid like Rambir Roshan have all these account numbers, if that’s what they are, stored on his computer? And these LLC files to boot?” Tehran starts up with her running-man motion again.

  “Wells says that Rambir’s bank account had some serious irregularities to it, large wire transfers of cash, but just below the ten-thousand-dollar threshold that would set off the automatic alerts that obligated the bank to notify the IRS. There was a constant cycle of deposits, transfers, and withdrawals. I’m no computer geek but this could be what we’re looking at here with these numbers.”

  “Which tells you what?” The only thing I know about banking is deposits, withdrawals, and overdraft fees. Well, mostly overdraft fees. And mysterious charges that the banks will generally undo if you happen to notice them. Here Tehran and I were trying to solve a crime while Citibank and Wells Fargo keep holding everybody up in plain sight.

  “Roshan was obviously into something that caught up to him, only we don’t know where it originated from. I know BPD has a cyber unit working on unraveling the transfers and deposits, but it’s going to take some time.”

  “You going to share this drive with Wells?”

  “I think I have to. I don’t have anybody outside the Globe who’s got the skills to access those Monopoly plus-one files.” And then Tehran turns the question around. “Why do you think Sam wants me to have this and not the police?”

  It was the same question I’d asked myself a moment ago and wasn’t sure I liked the answer I came up with.

  “He’s probably involved in some way,” Tehran answers for me when I don’t say anything. “Maybe hoping there’s a way I could use this information but keep his name out of it.” Obviously I don’t know a lot about women, but what especially stumps me is why they always seem to ask questions that they already know the answers to.

  “Can you?” I ask her. “Keep his name out of it?”

  “I’m not sure that’s possible.”

  “Why not? You did it for Brill and Wells.”

  “Because it would have meant the end of Brill’s career,” Tehran says pointedly. “You think I’m just picking and choosing my ethics at random?”

  “It sure feels that way.”

  “Like your religious menu? I’m sorry, that was a cheap shot. I’m just saying I can’t ignore information if it’s important or if it might lead others to getting hurt. And I’m certainly not in a position to offer him any kind of immunity or plea deal. That would be Wells’s ballpark.”

  “I wasn’t asking you to bury anything,” I say. “I’m just trying to protect a friend.”

  “Even if he’s done something illegal? Again.”

  I had never thought of Sam’s psychedelic laboratory as a moral failing, the stain of the hypocrite not something I wanted to wear since I’d often been the beneficiary of his pharmaceutical talents. But Anitra Tehran was of a different world. She was good-looking, educated, surrounded by others who, whether consciously or subconsciously, believed that success was their birthright or destiny and if they just followed the path of the straight and narrow, followed the rules, the world would open its wings and give them flight.

  What these people never acknowledge is the safety net that they operate so high above, that foundational network that’s propped them up—visibly, invisibly—every step of the way. It’s a smugness born of willful ignorance. Most of the people I grew up with in the South End didn’t have that option; when they faltered and fell, you heard their bones crunching, saw the blood on the pavement.

  “I try not to judge,” I say, judging her. “I’m just saying that sometimes the right thing to do is leave things where they’re buried.”

  “I don’t think Batista would agree with that view.”

  “No, you’re probably right about that. We don’t agree on much, me and Wells. Except maybe on our love of fine coffee. Speaking of which. You think there’s any chance of scaring up a cup from this joint? I’ve got another long night ahead of me.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Well, I’ll be damned. This is definitely not something I’d ever thought I’d see.” Detective Batista Wells looks like he’s just stepped out of a spa, his fedora in hand, his hair meticulously parted to one side with a freshly razored line down the scalp, his beard neatly trimmed, his eyes glowing with early morning vigor.

  Only it’s four in the morning. Brill and I are covered in a fine white drywall powder, even his trademark brown cigar looking like a grown-up candy cane, his diagonal fingerprints encircling the smoking baton.

  Earlier in the day, or I should say yesterday, Brill had gotten a delivery of Sheetrock lifted through the window, which was now out of its frame. We’d spent the last hour putting the drywall up, my fingers bloodied from reaching into my waist pouch full of sharp screws, my shoulders stiff and tired from holding up the wall and trying to get the screw to stay on the magnet-tipped end of the electric drill.

  “You’re gonna get your shoes dusty,” Brill growls at his partner, maybe still angry at him for sending me around to check up on him.

  “Why is it you don’t sound happy to see me?” Wells inquires.

  “All the usual reasons. Plus I don’t see a bag of doughnuts in your hand.” Instead a large manila envelope.

  “I need you to look at some pictures,” Wells says. “Fast.”

  “I thought you were suspended,” I say to Brill.

  “I am. Now I just run a charity.” Brill leans into his drill, the screw whining as it catches the wood framing behind the drywall. “I do all Detective Wells’s work for free and hire unskilled labor that can’t put screws in a straight goddamn line.”

  “Ah, but look at the taping.” I point to where I’d started. “Nice and clean.”

  “When we paint you’ll see it’s gonna bulge.”

  “So that’s where you’ll hang some artwork.”

  “You got an answer for everything, Zesty.”

  “Consistency is underrated,” I point out. “At least I show up.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Brill says, grudgingly extending a sliver of respect.

  “You going to wash up first?” Wells, who’s watched our exchange like a tennis match that delivered an unexpected winner, hands the envelope to Brill.

  “With what?”

  “You don’t have running water in this place?”

  “Nope.” And though the wiring had been finished before we put up the drywall, Brill was still only using the generator to power the construction lights. There was still plumbing to be done, which was well beyond my scope of knowledge; the windows needed new frames, some pane replacement; tiling in the bathrooms needed to be laid; and the hardwood floors all had to be sanded, something I’d be interested in taking a crack at if Brill will let me.

  Traditionally in Boston, the Irish do the drywall and electrical, the Vietnamese cornered the floor sanding, the plumbing gets pieced out to all the other minority groups, and the Jews maybe come in and bless the place when it’s all finished, hang a mezuzah. Brill’s building was operating as a true meritocracy, roles given to whoever shows up on his ungodly nocturnal sch
edule. Which will either prove prudent or the first time he turns on a light switch, all the toilets will explode.

  “And you’re staying here?” Wells is aghast.

  “Yep.”

  “So how do you…” Wells registers the Gatorade bottle in the corner. It looks like lemon lime. The label reads Orange. “Never mind.” Brill pulls out the photographs and shuffles through them. Recognition, but no real interest shows in his eyes.

  “Yikes,” I say from the middle rung of the ladder looking down over his shoulder. “These the Russians?”

  “Nikita Kucherov,” Brill says. Wheat blond hair, icicle blue eyes. It’s a name I hadn’t heard before. “Oleg Katanya. Also goes by Mikhail Sergachev.” Erosion face, almost block-square ears, neck-scrawl tattoos. The next photos are of the parts that Wells fished out of the bay. “You found any more of him?” Brill looks up.

  “No. But it’s him.”

  “Leads?”

  “None. But he couldn’t have been an easy kill. Plus the dismemberment. Marks of a pro, likely one of his own tribe. Namestnikov, maybe? He’s still missing.”

  “Antti Voracek,” Brill continues to shuffle, reciting. “Boston boss. Jakub Namestnikov’s boss.” Cliff brows, thornbush eyebrows, boulder nose. “Kucherov drives for him. Maybe more. All but Voracek by way of Odessa, not Moscow. Jews for the most part. Brighton Beach to Brighton, Mass. For all I know they have a beachhead in Brighton, UK. Actually, scratch that. All the big-moneyed Russians are in London, but we’re talking an entirely different class here.” Brill squints hard at a second set of photos. Surveillance pictures. “Where were these taken?”

  “Security cameras from MIT.”

  “All of a sudden they’re helpful?”

  “I pulled a few strings.”

  The pictures are of Oleg Katanya on the MIT campus.

  Wells says, “Katanya used to be muscle in New York for Namestnikov. When Namestnikov got himself a little franchise here in Allston, he came with. The poker club. Other ventures. Word from New York is everybody was happy to see them leave.”

  “Why?” I ask.