Last to Fold tv-1

by David Duffy

  “I’ve learned humility ain’t one of them.”

  “I have others.”

  “Sugar, I’ll be honest. I’ve liked you from the first time I saw you—I have no goddamned idea why—and I’m hotter than the Texas Playboys to do something about it. But, like I already said, no hanky-panky with criminals. Deep down I really am a cautious country girl, and I still have no idea where you stand or what game you’re playing. If I end up having to come after you in a professional capacity, make no mistake, I’ll do that as hard as I know how. I don’t want my heart broken at the same time.”

  I reached across and took her hand. “Vika…”

  “Vika?”

  “Sorry. Russian nickname. Just slipped out.”

  “That’s okay. I never had a nickname. Didn’t like the obvious candidates.”

  “We give everyone nicknames. I won’t break your heart. You can trust me because I know how it feels. I just told you the story. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

  CHAPTER 35

  The Chekist replayed the tape one more time. Just a fragment of sound, less than a minute, before the fire consumed the microphones. The flames whooshed and roared and popped. He could hear Kosokov shouting, the words impossible to make out. Then that other noise—squealing, high-pitched, rising in volume.

  Now he realized after all these years, it was the girl. She must have been there the whole time. It was her in the horse stalls, not rats. He’d almost shot her. How the hell had he missed?

  How had she survived the inferno? The only answer was the old shelter. Somehow she’d had the sense to seek protection there. Maybe that’s what Kosokov was yelling. He’d never know for sure. One more thing that didn’t matter.

  She was alive, she was here, she knew who he was. That did matter.

  She would have to be dealt with.

  Before anything else went wrong.

  WEDNESDAY

  CHAPTER 36

  I woke feeling born again, just like they sing about in those gospel songs, although my particular form of rebirth probably wasn’t what they had in mind. A little after six o’clock, and I lay there watching her chest rise and fall under the sheet.

  I don’t know whether it was the nickname or what I said about heartbreak, but I’d led her to bed without resistance. It was far from my best night, which she more than made up for with her own intensity and tenderness, a combination that took us places where I could leave the pain of my injuries far behind. She’d undressed herself, then me, then used her breasts, eyes, thighs, lips, hands, and teeth to work both of us into a white-hot heat, on the edge of ecstasy, before we wrapped ourselves together and plunged. Sometime later, we broke the surface of reality, panting and sweating, partly sated, knowing there was more to come. We lay quietly, her head on my chest, holding each other close, saying nothing. I dozed until I felt her restless hands start to work, and I responded with mine, and without a word we carried each other a second time to the door of oblivion. I slept through the night, visiting no netherworlds for the first time since Saturday.

  “Okay, give.” She was looking at me from her pillow, smiling.

  “What?”

  “How’d you get the funny name?”

  I laughed. “That’s why I finally got you into bed.”

  “You think it’s your shaved head and hairy chest? I’ve been wondering about this ever since I read your immigration file.”

  “Talk about privacy.”

  “Don’t change the subject.” She doubled the pillow under her head and waited. Her big eyes were green pools I wanted to jump into.

  I caressed her cheek. She knocked my hand away. “Get on with it.”

  “My grandfather, Turba Petrovich, he’s the culprit. One of the original Chekists. Ardent Bolshevik. Knew Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin, the whole gang. He worked with Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka.”

  “But that means he helped create the Gulag!”

  “Yes. Grandpa Turba was one of the officers who oversaw the construction of the camps—and became an early victim of his creation. He was caught in one of Stalin’s purges, when Comrade Yezhov took over the NKVD from Comrade Yagoda in 1937. Grandpa was taken away on Christmas night, although it was no longer called that, and sent to Norilsk, where he died four years later. But what goes around comes around, as you Americans are fond of pointing out. Yezhov was arrested in 1938 and shot in 1940, after Lavrenty Beria took over the Cheka. I hope my grandfather at least knew he outlived the man who caused his downfall.”

  She was looking at me, dark eyes wide with interest. I reached for her cheek again, but she pushed my hand away. “None of that. Keep going.”

  “While he was still on the rise, Grandpa Turba and Grandma Svetlana gave birth to their only son. Nineteen twenty-six; revolutionary fervor was morphing into Stalinist zeal. Turba believed Stalin was a great man doing great things for his country, including pulling it into the modern age. Industrialization was the big thing—railroads, factories, dams, electricity—Stalin was building the new Russia. A lot of people were caught up in the excitement, and they demonstrated their enthusiasm with names for their children. Some kids got lucky—Len, for Lenin, is a perfectly serviceable name. Or Ninel, Lenin spelled backward, for a girl. Even Engelina or Melor, shorthand for Marx, Engels, Lenin, and October Revolution.

  “Grandpa had different ideas. Remember, we like wordplay. The family name was Vlost, as you know, which dates from the thirteenth century and is a variation of Vlast, which can be traced to the twelfth. Means ‘power.’ Seemed perfectly reasonable to him—highly desirable, in fact—to call his firstborn Electrifikady. Full name Electrifikady Turbanevich Vlost. Means Electrifikady, son of Turba, and electric turbine power. Apparently Grandpa was quite a card.”

  “You know, every story you tell gets more absurd.”

  “All true. I swear on the graves of Marx, Lenin, and Ronald Reagan.”

  “But you never knew him, right, the guy with the power name?”

  “Right. I think my mother feared they would never be together again and giving me his name was a way to make sure we were part of something that had a history, that had lasted. Technically, I should have been called Electrifikady Electrifikadyvich—Electrifikady, son of Electrifikady. We don’t do ‘junior.’ But she gave me exactly the same name he had. I shortened it all to Turbo as soon as I was old enough to know how.”

  “I like Electrifikady. Can I call you that?”

  “Not if you want to continue whatever it is we’ve started.”

  “Don’t be so defensive. It’s cute.”

  “So’s Vicky.”

  That brought out the pout. She sat up and the sheet fell away. I reached for her, but she pushed me back.

  “I’ve gotta get to the office.”

  “I usually run in the mornings. Want to go with me?”

  “In this heat? Are you crazy? Never mind, I know the answer to that. What illegal activities do you have planned for today?”

  “Going looking for Rislyakov’s database.”

  “What if you find it?”

  “Probably go out to Brighton Beach, see Lachko, try to make a deal.”

  That got a worried frown. “I won’t ask if that’s wise. We both know the answer. Am I going to approve of this deal?”

  “I hope so. You could be the primary beneficiary.”

  “You want to tell me what you’re thinking?”

  “At dinner. If we’re still talking.”

  “I’m beginning to have some sympathy for your ex-wife. Since you’re such a good cook, you can make me breakfast before you go running or whatever. I like it when a man does that. I prefer my eggs scrambled, with a little Tabasco.”

  The bare behind sashayed to the bathroom. I waited a few minutes before I got up to follow her instructions, enjoying a long-gone feeling. I hadn’t really expected to encounter it again.

  * * *

  Victoria left for the office, declaring my eggs delicious, my health still doubtful, and
my plan for the day borderline crazy. This time, she was three for three. I logged in to the Basilisk and retrieved the information it had generated on Ratko and his alter ego, Alexander Goncharov. I found the charge three weeks earlier on a Rislyakov Visa for $862 from a Moscow undertaker. I reached for the phone.

  In a ten-minute conversation with a helpful mortician’s assistant, during which I posed as the late Rad Rislyakov, I learned that he had arranged for the disinterment of his parents on his last trip to Moscow and the shipment of the cremated remains to New York. That made my first stop of the day Chelsea.

  I logged on to Ibansk.com. Petrovin was still feeding Ivanov.

  WHITHER POLINA BARSUKOVA?

  And how soon, Ivanov wants to know. Whispers from New York are that the once (and still?) wife of Lachko Barsukov and (con?)-current wife of American banker—and potential jailbird—Rory Mulholland is getting ready to repeat the vanishing act she perfected in Moscow back in 1999.

  Mulholland might want to take heed from his predecessor (con-cessor?). Polina saw the writing in the early October snow and left Barsukov—along with her late lover, Anatoly Kosokov, among the smoldering remnants of Rosnobank. Is she getting ready to do it again? Where can she run this time? A few things are evident to Ivanov—and he is only too happy to make them apparent to all Ibansk. One is, Polina Barsukova sheds identities like a viper sheds skins, and she takes on new ones as easily as any chameleon changes protective colors. Another is, husbands and lovers are no anchor for her. Ivanov is also told that a noose is tightening. Russian and American authorities have Polina in their sights. And there’s still Lachko. Hard to believe Badger pride will let her leave him grasping empty air again.

  The race is on! Ivanov isn’t prepared to take bets on the winner.

  My cell phone buzzed. Gina said, “She’s on the move. Quite a looker.”

  “So was Pandora, I’m told. Anyone else following?”

  Pause. “Can’t tell yet.”

  “You see anyone else, you think you see anyone else, break it off and get out of there. Okay?”

  “Okay. She just came out. I’m watching. We’re headed for Madison. I’ll call back.”

  Had Polina been reading Ibansk.com this morning? Had Petrovin counted on that?

  * * *

  Eva could have gone anywhere, but I bet on her clinging to Ratko’s orbit. She’d fallen hard. It would take time to shake him, especially since his end was so abrupt. I took a cab to Sixth and Twenty-first, which was showing more activity than my previous visit, though the heat on the sidewalk was no less punishing.

  The lobby was cool and empty, other than the doorman behind his sleek blond desk. I was marginally worried about Lachko’s thugs, but he has always lacked imagination—or he was counting on me to do his dirty work. No Russian beef in sight.

  The doorman looked up helpfully before he recognized me and frowned. I put the photo of Eva on the counter.

  “She’s upstairs, isn’t she? Rislyakov’s place.”

  He stammered for a moment, then looked away.

  “How much she give you?”

  “What?”

  “How much she give you not to say she’s here?”

  “Nothing! She didn’t—”

  “Don’t lie to me. You’re in enough trouble already.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Patriot Act, remember? Give me the key.”

  He looked around again. No help appeared. “She’s not there. I mean… she was, but she left.”

  “When?”

  “This morning. Couple hours ago.”

  Maybe Eva followed Ibansk, too. “Coming back?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  “Anyone else asking for her?”

  He looked around once more. “Those guys that were here before. They came yesterday.”

  “You get rid of them?”

  “Yeah. They didn’t press it.”

  “You tell her about them?”

  If there had been a hole under his countertop, he would have gladly dropped in. “This morning.”

  “She say anything?”

  “Uh-uh. Went back upstairs for a few minutes, came back down and left.”

  “She won’t be back.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “My job. Key.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I took the elevator to seven, inserted the key, rang the bell, waited, rang again, waited, turned the knob, and shoved the door open.

  Everything was as it had been. A few articles of women’s clothing dropped on the furniture. Ratko wouldn’t have approved. It took a short twenty minutes to make sure there was nothing to find, except for the heavily taped box on the kitchen counter with the return address of the Moscow undertaker in the Cyrillic alphabet.

  Violating the dead is a difficult thing to do, but neither Ratko nor his parents were going to haunt me. Still, it took a few minutes to cut open the box and a few more to fish through the two containers of coarse, hard ashes inside. Cremains, they’re called in the trade. I stuck my arm into Mom until I felt something solid. I did the same with Dad. Buried in each box was a portable hard drive, smaller than a paperback book, tightly wrapped in plastic. I undid one—five hundred gigabytes, more than enough to hold the database and the key to Ratko’s laundry. The other, Kosokov’s bank records?

  I found some tape and resealed the box. Maybe Eva wouldn’t notice—if she did come back. No one else would care. I stopped long enough to say a silent prayer for the dead. They wouldn’t hear it. They’d never know how they’d been used either. On the way out, I grabbed Ratko’s copy of Travels with My Aunt. A long time since I read it, and he didn’t need it anymore.

  CHAPTER 37

  “Jackpot!” Foos said.

  “Whattaya got?”

  “Ratko’s database. Forty-two million potential bank accounts—along with the code for the laundry. We could go into business tomorrow.”

  “Victoria wouldn’t like that. Neither would Lachko. How much money are they moving? Can you tell?”

  “More than fifty mil a month, but they’re still ramping up, adding accounts, increasing the flow. May was twenty-two percent higher than April, which was up twenty-one percent over March. Classic early growth curve. Sky’s the limit, with that many names to work with.”

  “Let’s see.”

  He spun the computer screen around. The columns were all the same as the ones that had given me a headache last Thursday. Now they showed bank names and branch locations, account names and numbers and dollar amounts moving in and out. Overseas deposits and withdrawals were shown in local currencies. The sheer volume of transactions made it complicated, but the underlying program was decidedly simple.

  “Gotta hand it to him. Helluva operation,” Foos said.

  “No wonder Lachko wants it back so bad.”

  “You already gave him half of it. You gonna give him the other?”

  “I’m thinking to sell it. About time the Barsukovs started to spread the wealth.”

  Foos raised a bushy eyebrow. “What’s Victoria going to say about that?”

  “She’s not my minder.”

  “That’s not what you said yesterday. And the lipstick on your neck suggests different.”

  I put a finger to my skin, where she’d snuggled when we’d said good-bye. It came away purplish red. “I’m doing this partly for her. Can you bug the database the way you did Ratko’s computer?”

  “I’ll attribute the stupidity of that question to your impaired mental condition.”

  “Okay. What about the other hard drive?”

  “That one’s your department.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s in Russian.”

  * * *

  My ribs had started to ache, but I did my best to ignore them as I took a cab to Second and Eighth. The street was much as I’d found it before. All kinds of people going about their lives. I stopped at a bank to buy a roll of nickels before watching Slav House from the opposite sidewalk fo
r about ten minutes. Nobody came or went. That was good for my purposes. The mattress salesman emerged from his store, smoked a cigarette, and went back inside without noticing me.

  I crossed the street and pulled open the metal door. The same big guard sat on a stool in front of the turnstile.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  I put my hands in my pockets and moved toward him.

  “You’ve been in a fight,” he said, rising off his stool. “Looking for another?”

  I hit him across the face with my right hand wrapped around the nickels. He fell over the stool with a crash. He pulled himself halfway up, and I hit him again. This time he stayed down.

  I stood back against the wall under the one-way window until the steel door opened and a hand holding a gun poked out. Colt .45. I hit the door with my shoulder, which made everything hurt, but not as much as the other guy’s wrist. Bones cracked as he shrieked in pain. The gun clattered to the floor. I kicked it away and pulled open the door. The short, greasy-haired guy Gina had described held his damaged wrist, the hand hanging as if no longer connected, his face twisted in agony. I grabbed his shirt and yanked him into two hard jabs with the nickels. Teeth dropped to the floor. I let go of the shirt and the rest of him fell on top. He didn’t move.

  Ten minutes later, I blinked as I stepped into the sunlight, holding Eva by the hand. Slav House consisted of a large meeting room, three smaller classrooms, and a couple of conference rooms and some offices. I found her in one of the latter, asleep on a cot. There were three large safes against the wall, all locked, presumably where they kept the cash. I gave the place a quick once-over before waking her, but it yielded nothing. She didn’t seem surprised or resist when I asked her to come with me. She wasn’t stoned, as far as I could tell, just exhausted.

  “Please,” she said, “not h… h… home.”

  “My office.”

  “Okay.”

  The cab was crossing Delancey Street when the cell phone buzzed.

  Lachko said, “You have a fucking death wish, shit-sucker. You’d be a dead man, if you were a man at all. As it is, you’ll be a dead nonevent no one will remember. By midnight.”