Last to Fold

by David Duffy

  “Hold on.”

  A click on the line, silence, then another click.

  “Lincoln Town Car. Mulholland and two other guys, probably Barsukov’s.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  “Call me back? Call me back when, dammit?”

  “When I get to Brighton Beach.”

  * * *

  I phoned Gina while piloting the Potemkin out Ocean Avenue. I didn’t want to take it—Lachko might try to add it to his collection—but the Valdez was still uptown at its observation post.

  “We’re doing another bank tour,” Gina said.

  “ATMs?”

  “Real branches. She’s going in and talking to tellers.”

  “Keep a record. Branches and times.”

  “Turbo, what do you pay me for?”

  “You see anyone else watching you—or her?”

  “No, and I’ve been looking, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I’ve got a sense I’m not the only one on this tour.”

  “How many banks have you hit?”

  “Four.”

  “Get lost. I mean now, right now. E-mail me the bank information.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “NOW!”

  “Hey, you’re scared.”

  “Down to my shoes. You saw what I look like. Beat it.”

  CHAPTER 38

  I pulled up at the pink palace at three ten. A guard pointed a shotgun through the iron bars as I got out of the car.

  “Tell Lachko Turbo’s here,” I said in Russian.

  The guard called to someone else while he kept the barrel pointed squarely at my midsection. After a few minutes, the someone yelled back and the gate swung open. The guard didn’t move. Two others came out, checked inside and under the Potemkin, then signaled me into the courtyard. I parked next to the ZiL limo. Auto détente. I was searched and escorted along a different set of hallways to an open courtyard in the center of the complex. At one end was a chapel in the Greek Revival style. Lachko wasn’t remotely religious, probably keeping the bases covered. A large swimming pool took up most of the middle, lounge chairs spaced evenly around. A bar with a fake thatched roof faced the chapel across the pool. Waikiki meets Delphi. Lachko was in his wheelchair on the far side in the shade, oxygen tubes in the nose, papirosa in hand. Another muscled thug, could have been Sergei’s brother, stood beside him.

  First things first, my first thing being self-preservation. “Lachko, let’s you and I be clear from the outset,” I called across the pool. “That guy or anyone else lays a hand on me, your laundry is out of business.”

  “You’re in no position to dictate anything, Turbo.”

  “In that case, I drove out here for nothing.”

  I turned back toward the house.

  “Wait. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “That’s exactly my point, Lachko. I come and go as I please, unmolested. Your word on that, for what it’s worth. Otherwise, we won’t even get started.”

  “Fucking zek.” He spat on the tile.

  “You can drop the zek bullshit, too. I’m tired of it.”

  He let the cigarette fall to the ground. “That’s what you are, Turbo.”

  “I’m here to make a deal. We can talk about that or we can wallow in old insults that don’t mean anything anymore.”

  “So you have come to think. I’m not sure everyone would agree.”

  “I’ll take that chance. Where’s Mulholland?”

  He ground the cigarette under his foot and lighted another. I could smell the cardboard forty feet away. “I have no idea.”

  “Come on, Lachko. You brought him out here. Why?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “You know full well.”

  “I know you’re a useless—”

  “Where is he now?”

  “How should I know?”

  My phone buzzed. Victoria said, “Mulholland left that cotton-candy cabin fifteen minutes ago.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  “Look like?”

  “Normal or like me?”

  “Appeared to be unharmed. Does that go for you as well?”

  “So far. But I just got here.”

  “Turbo! Get out of there.”

  “I’ll call when I do.”

  She started to say something, but I cut her off. Lachko was watching from across the pool. None of this made sense. Some kind of game—he’d used Mulholland as a lure—but games were never his style. When he wanted something, he sent muscle, as he’d done before.

  “I did drive out here for nothing,” I said as I pocketed the phone. “See you.”

  “What’s your rush? Company not to your liking?”

  “Too much of a good thing.”

  I started for the house. I hadn’t taken half a dozen steps before I felt a hand on my shoulder, spinning me around.

  “Handle with care. Boss doesn’t have what he wants yet.”

  The big man took a step toward me but veered away and went inside.

  “Come over here, Turbo. I’m tired of yelling,” Lachko said.

  It might have been the bright sun, or the disease, but up close Lachko looked like he’d aged ten years in the last few days. I didn’t feel sorry.

  “Tell me about Eva,” I said.

  “Why should I tell you one fucking thing about anything?”

  “It’s part of the deal we’re going to make—for the code and the database.”

  “What deal?”

  “We’ll get to that. Eva. She’s not your daughter, is she?”

  He threw the smoking cigarette in the pool. “She’s Kosokov’s.”

  That admission must have hurt. I still didn’t feel sorry.

  “I fell hard for Polina, that’s true,” he said, lighting another. “She was screwing him, but I thought I could pull her away. She told me they were never serious, but that was before I learned she lies as easily as I smoke Belomorkanals. She married me, but I think she was still trying to get even with you. Or she was trading one protector for another—or keeping two on the leash. Kosokov was so fucking venal, he didn’t give a damn. The man was a whore.”

  He was angry. Maybe I could provoke him. “That’s why you killed him?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  He threw his cigarette into the water, next to the other one, and held up two tobacco-stained fingers, a half inch apart. “You are this close to choking on that butt underwater.” He wheeled his chair a few feet, following the shade. “You’ve always considered me slow-witted, and perhaps in this instance I was. It took me too long to discover she’ll eat your balls for breakfast and throw them back up to make room for lunch.”

  “She said the same about you.”

  “I can imagine the lies she told. I didn’t kill Kosokov. I would have, gladly, but fate didn’t put that in my path.”

  I kept at it. “He lost your fortune—one of them—or did he just steal it?”

  He laughed out loud, long and hard, until he started to hack. He bent over double, body shaking so hard I thought he’d fall out of his chair. I was about to go in search of help when he gave a final, choke-filled cough, spat a cupful of yellow-brown bile on the bluestone, and pulled himself upright.

  “Turbo, you are without a doubt the dumbest fucking Russian in all of Russian history. You swallowed Polina’s lies so deep, the hook buried itself in your bowels. I ask myself, whenever I’m unfortunate enough to think of you, how the fuck did you ever make it into the Cheka? I told you before—Kosokov was a fool, a big-mouthed moron. He was the tool of our mutual friend, Polya. She suckered me, I admit, but not so much I didn’t make sure every kopek of my profit left his fucking bank the moment it was booked. Kosokov made some bad bets at the end, or so I’m told, but he made them with his money—and Polina’s—or the bank’s, not mine.”

  That sounded like the Lachko I knew—but it wasn’t Polina’s hook buried in my bowels. “So who
killed him?”

  “Who the fuck cares? If I wasted any time thinking about it, I’d assume she did.”

  “Why was Ratko operating behind your back?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “You hadn’t seen him in months. You had your men out looking for some sign of him. You had no idea about the Greene Street loft. He took everything necessary to run the laundry and went underground. He was shutting you out.”

  “Turbo, you and I have coexisted on the same planet for the last twenty years only because our paths did not cross. Now they have, and it remains to be seen whether we will continue to coexist at all. If we do not, you can be assured your soul will be resting back in the zek-filled sewer it crawled out of in 1953. I practically raised Ratko from the time he was a teenager. When I find out who killed him, I’ll make sure he pays. It could well have been you, in which case I’ll be doubly happy to even the score. Rurik is watching from the window. He was a guard in the Gulag. He hates zeks almost more than I do.”

  He grunted and moved his chair again. Didn’t appear to take a lot of effort. I wondered how sick he really was. Ivanov wasn’t infallible.

  “Still no answer.”

  “You despise me, Turbo. I despise you. Part history, part jealousy, part fate. You’re still healthy. I sit here in a wheelchair with fucking tubes up my nose.”

  He sucked the papirosa down to the nub. The late-afternoon sun burned as hot as noon.

  “You destroyed my career. For what? Score points with my father? Claw your way over my back? You always hated me because I was born with the Cheka in my blood and you were just a shitty zek.”

  He spat so hard the bile landed in the pool with a dull plop. While he fished for another smoke, I walked around the water. The sun bounced off the palace roof, rays splintering off the tiles, solar blades baked in reflected heat. I could see Rurik through the glare, behind a picture window, watching my every step. I stopped in front of the chapel doors. Prayer wasn’t going to help. I continued my circumnavigation of the Barsukov world I’d left—been thrown out of—long ago and been sucked back into. The old world had been twisted but something I could comprehend. I understood how it worked. This one, I wasn’t sure I could wrap my head around. Bigger question was, why did I want to?

  I arrived back at the wheelchair. Lachko was staring at the pool in a haze of cardboard smoke.

  “You still haven’t answered the question. Ratko was running out on you. Why?”

  He bent forward in the wheelchair, hands at his sides, cigarette hanging just above the ground. “I don’t know.”

  I almost believed him, but it could’ve all been an act. He could lie as easily as Polina—or the Politburo bosses he used to work for.

  “What the fuck do you want, Turbo?”

  “What was that ruse with Mulholland all about?”

  Lachko looked up, eyes as empty as a beggar’s soup bowl. “I told you before, I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”

  In a strange way, I sensed he was telling the truth.

  “Why’d you bring him out here?”

  He shrugged and turned the wheelchair away. I’d learned as much—or as little—as I was going to. I said, “Okay, let’s talk business. Twenty percent.”

  He spun back. “What the fuck?”

  “You heard me. The database and the code. They’re yours for twenty percent of the profits.”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind.”

  “Business, Lachko. And maybe a little bit of payback. I’ve got it, you need it. That’s the deal.”

  “Have you forgotten Friday night?”

  “Do I look like I have? I’ve put all the necessary protections in place. Anything happens to me, Aleksei, Victoria, anyone, you’re shut down.”

  “Ten.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Fucking zek.”

  “You’ll be a richer Chekist. I’ll be a rich zek. We’ll still hate each other.”

  I dropped the portable hard drive in his lap.

  He spat once more into the pool. “Don’t come back.”

  * * *

  The Potemkin was where I’d left it. The cell phone buzzed again as I crossed the courtyard.

  Foos said, “She’s gone.”

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t know. We went to Lombardi’s with Pig Pen, came back, she said she was tired, wanted a nap, and stretched out on the couch. I thought I heard a cell phone ring a little later, and when I came out to check, she was gone.”

  “Dammit.”

  “She’s a sweet kid, but a real head case. Ratko screwed her over pretty good. Probably best for her he croaked. He would’ve broken her heart otherwise. It’s pretty damned fragile as it is. She’s still too hung up on him to see what was happening.”

  “Sounds like she told you a fair amount.”

  “I just bought the pizza and listened. Been a long time since anyone took an interest in what she thinks.”

  “She say anything about her mother?”

  “Uh-uh. Only that she and Ratko talked about family a lot. His parents were dead. He was always asking about hers.”

  No surprise there.

  “Can you tell who called her?”

  “On it right now.”

  The Potemkin’s tires squealed as I accelerated through Lachko’s gate. I knew why I’d been tricked into visiting Brighton Beach. The trickster wanted Eva. I didn’t know why, but I had a good idea who. The list of potential tricksters was growing short.

  CHAPTER 39

  “Disposable cell phone,” Foos said. “The one that called her.”

  “Fuck your mother.”

  He ignored me. He’d heard it before. “Call came in a few blocks from here. Dover Street.”

  My head whipped around. I yelped as my neck sent a shot of pain down my right side.

  “You okay?” Foos said.

  “Yeah. Where on Dover?”

  “Dover and Front. Right under the bridge.”

  The pain vanished as I ran for the door.

  * * *

  Spies are a paranoid bunch. For good reason. There usually is someone out to get us. That doesn’t mean we lack humor.

  One of the trickiest challenges I faced in a foreign city was finding secure venues to meet agents. America’s most crowded metropolis, New York, offers wonderful anonymity. Everyone consciously ignores everyone else around them. But it’s still difficult to find places where one is truly alone—and out of the reach of prying eyes, ears, cameras, microphones, and binoculars, should there be any interested, which, of course, we constantly assume there are.

  I found a few good venues in my time—the bar at the Village Vanguard, any number of undervisited rooms at the Metropolitan Museum (ditto for the Cloisters), the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens (less crowded than its Bronx brethren), windswept piers on either river, especially in winter, and, one of the very best, a well-traveled, thoroughly anonymous gay men’s pickup spot in the parking lot of a Queens park. I appreciated the irony of that one more than my agents. By far my favorite was the old Civil Defense shelter in one of the stone piers supporting the Brooklyn Bridge. I happened on it completely by accident, in the mid-1980s. The lock had rusted to the point of breaking, or maybe someone had broken in and run away, leaving the iron door banging in the wind on a sleeting winter night, the noise echoing around the chamber of the bridge’s understructure. I was walking to the subway after meeting an agent on one of the East River piers. There was nobody on the street, so in I went.

  I found a forgotten Cold War fallout shelter. Big, damp, dirty room, stocked to the ceiling with cases of high-protein crackers (date-stamped 1962), drums of water, crates of medicines, and boxes of blankets. There were some wooden chairs and tables, two dozen folding canvas cots, some kerosene lanterns and multiple cans of fuel. Iron rungs climbed to a second exit in the bridge ramp. Whether the stone of the superstructure was enough to protect the inhabitants from the feared nuclear winter was a
nybody’s guess, but the early 1960s—the months of the Cuban Missile Crisis (we knew it as the Caribbean Crisis)—were hardly a rational time in America. Everyone was scared, for good reason.

  I wedged the door shut that night and returned the next day with a heavy-duty combination lock. I spent a good hour kicking it around the street to make it look old. I checked the place periodically over the next three months. So far as I could tell, no one ever got near it. I used the shelter more than a dozen times over the next two years. I never saw evidence that anyone else even knew of its existence. My agents were evenly divided. Half found it fascinating. The rest disdained the dirt and damp. I took pleasure in the irony every time I visited.

  Another summer thunderstorm tonight. I ran through seven blocks of rain to Dover Street, clothes glued to my body when I got there. Early evening, sunset still hours away, but it might as well have been midnight. No lights from the buildings. No one on the street. Dim pools of reflection on the asphalt from a few streetlights. The hulk of the bridge weighed heavy above. An urban no-man’s-land, bereft of life, except for the rumble of traffic on the ramp.

  Lightning flashed off the door to the old shelter. No way to tell if anyone had been there since my last visit in 1988. I took refuge in the entrance of an unlit building and waited. No motion, no people, nothing. The rain slackened some but still fell hard. I didn’t have a good idea—I didn’t have any idea except to hope the lock was still my own and take my chances. The exertion of running made everything ache. I hadn’t brought a gun. A good hand to fold.

  I waited another few minutes on the grounds that summer storms pass. The rain kept falling.

  Muttering under my breath, I started across the street at a trot. I could see the old iron door more clearly as I got closer, the pockmarks of rust and age brightening in the lightning flashes. I could almost see there was no padlock on the latch when a strong arm grabbed my shoulder and pulled me around. My feet gave way on the asphalt, slick with rain, and my butt hit the pavement, setting off a chain of pain through every bruised muscle I had.

  Damned fool! Of course he’d have someone watching.

  I looked up, expecting to see the bullet that would split my skull, thinking about Victoria and Aleksei and Eva and my own stupidity.