Beating the Babushka

by Tim Maleeny

  She let her right hand slip across her waist as she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She lay like that for a minute, her fingers barely moving, when suddenly a car engine reverberated through the walls of her bedroom. Her eyes snapped open as her hand moved from under the covers to reach for the bedside lamp.

  Sleep isn’t coming tonight, she thought miserably. And neither am I.

  Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Grace padded to the bathroom as the sound of the car Dopplered down the street. She briefly wondered who was out for a drive at four in the morning, but quickly turned her attention to the shower. Once under the stream of hot water, the sounds from the street disappeared.

  She thought about her day, which would begin in just under three hours, and all the work still to be done. Sitting on her desk were stacks of binders, ledgers, and production notes moved from Tom’s apartment to hers. Tom was meticulous about production details, schedules, and budgets. Naturally she’d talked with his assistant producers and some of the crew about what they’d planned to do next, but his notes were critical. She had to start getting up to speed on his half of the production, something she couldn’t put off any longer.

  Grace rolled her neck under the pulsing spray as she visualized the black binders waiting in the next room. She shuddered and turned the faucet as hot as it would go as she realized she was afraid to open the notebooks. Suddenly the drugs found in Tom’s apartment flashed into her mind, a secret life hidden inside canisters of film. A secret she didn’t want to know.

  But those were just drugs. Surprising, definitely. Confusing, certainly. Something that needed to be explained, but nothing to be afraid of. The drugs were a mystery, not a written record of events. Circumstantial evidence but not a written confession.

  Grace didn’t want to open the notebooks because she knew, deep in her gut, that that was where the ugly truth lay waiting.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Cape was worried that they wouldn’t let him check into the hotel without first getting a Botox injection.

  The people moving through the lobby came together as one seething mass of beautiful bodies and perfect hair, loosely connected by furtive glances at the giant mirror on the lobby wall. Everyone was young and excruciatingly attractive. The pair behind the registration desk—a young man and woman—were even more striking than their guests. Cape wondered if the hotel’s employment application had minimum requirements for cheekbone development.

  The Soho Grand sat at the fringe of everything hip and trendy, its austere design popular with models, photographers, and advertising executives—anyone self-conscious or pretentious enough to put fashion before comfort. But it had the perfect location. Empire Studios was only a few blocks away, so Cape and Sally decided to embrace the madness.

  Just off the lobby was an enormous bar curving around a cavernous space filled with geometrically challenging tables and impossibly high stools, all accented by halogen lights just dim enough to guarantee eye strain. Cape spotted Corelli instantly. He stood out like a carbuncle.

  Cape stepped into the bar as Sally continued toward the elevators. Corelli stood and extended his hand. Around five-ten, black hair cut short and peppered with gray. The lines around his brown eyes multiplied when he smiled. He wore black shoes, gray slacks, and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing a faded tattoo of a scorpion on his right forearm. Cape guessed the tattoo was probably older than most of the guests at the hotel.

  “Guess I stand out around here as much as you do,” Cape said as they shook hands.

  “Beau wired me a photo,” said Corelli, his voice rich with Brooklyn undertones. “Said you were uglier in person.”

  “An honest cop,” said Cape. “So rare these days.”

  “He also told me you should be dead.”

  Cape nodded. “For the time being, anyway.”

  “He asked if I wanted to place a bet on whether or not you’d survive this case. I bet against you—hope you don’t mind, but Russians are involved.”

  “Two cops betting on my life expectancy? I’m flattered.”

  “Don’t take it personally,” said Corelli. “We only bet on people we like.”

  “Thanks for meeting me.” Cape took a seat on one of the ergonomically challenged stools. “Beau said he knew you from the service.”

  Corelli nodded. “Semper Fi.”

  “And that you saved his life,” said Cape.

  “He mention that he saved mine first?”

  Cape shook his head. “He left that out.”

  “He would,” said Corelli. “What’s your story? Beau told me he lost his badge once, but you got it back.”

  Cape gave him a noncommittal shrug. “It was stuck between the cushions of his couch.”

  “That’s not how I heard it.” Corelli smiled. “But I can see why he likes you.” A woman in her early twenties brushed past their table, wearing a miniskirt cut short enough to pass for a belt. Corelli almost got whiplash as she passed by. “This place is surreal.”

  Cape flagged down a waitress dressed demurely in a skintight purple jumpsuit. “Not my normal scene, either.” Cape was feeling the flight and ordered coffee. Corelli was off-duty and went for a Bud.

  “I saw you talking to that Asian number in the lobby,” said Corelli. “You know her?”

  “Old friend.”

  “Want to introduce me?”

  “Stay away from her,” suggested Cape. “She’ll tear your heart out.”

  Corelli laughed. “Don’t they all.”

  “I meant it literally.”

  Corelli half smiled but let it go, realizing he’d missed something.

  “So Beau tells me you made some new friends,” he said.

  Cape nodded. “I don’t know how many. Two for sure. There were three, but…” He let his voice trail off.

  “Dead guy on the beach,” said Corelli. “He had Cyrillic letters on his fingers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re dealing with the mafiya,” said Corelli, putting extra emphasis on the y.

  “The Russian mob.”

  “Yeah,” nodded Corelli. “Charming bunch of guys.”

  Their drinks arrived and Cape charged it to his room. “What can you tell me?”

  “Thanks,” said Corelli, raising his beer. “I can tell you a lot of stories, you tell me when to stop. They’re everywhere, but it’s hard to get a handle on the organization itself.”

  “The feds must be all over them.”

  Corelli’s mouth twisted into a cynical grin. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Know what happened when La Cosa Nostra first came over from Sicily?”

  “The politicians went into denial?”

  “You must know something about mob history.”

  Cape shook his head. “No, but I know something about politicians.”

  Corelli nodded his approval. “In the sixties, J. Edgar Hoover was too busy worrying about communism to do anything about the mob.”

  “J. Edgar also had to worry about what dress to wear on the weekends,” said Cape, “and finding shoes to match.”

  “True, but it was years before anyone in the government even acknowledged the existence of organized crime. By then it was too late. The Mafia controlled the docks, the labor unions, and most of the garment industry—and those were the legitimate enterprises.”

  “You saying the government didn’t learn from its mistakes?” said Cape. “I’m shocked.”

  “Some things never change,” said Corelli. “The Russian mob was treated the same when it first appeared in this country. In the seventies, Russian gangsters started coming over in force, but it was another ten years before the FBI assigned a single agent to the problem. Ten years.”

  “How’d they get into the country?”

  “A lot of them are Russian Jews by birth. Back home they probably didn’t give a rat’s ass about being Jewish—their only religion was money—but their heritage proved mighty useful when it came to immigratio
n.”

  “Asylum?”

  Corelli nodded. “Don’t get me wrong—a lot of Russians emigrating in the seventies and eighties were legitimate dissidents, sponsored by U.S. citizens. They were good people who had to either get out or go to jail.”

  “But not all of them.”

  “Some were fresh out of the gulag and on the verge of going back. Instead they found religion, claimed persecution, and came in under the radar. And after the first wave got a foothold in the U.S., they sponsored their scumbag friends and relatives back home.”

  “What about perestroika?” asked Cape. “The fall of communism. That must have changed things.”

  “Yeah, it opened the floodgates. Easier to leave Russia, travel abroad, come back home, or change your citizenship. Even better, it meant millions of dollars in foreign aid pouring into Russia, every cent flowing through the fingers of the mafiya.”

  “How?”

  “These guys built the black markets in Russia,” said Corelli. “They were the only economy Russia had, so they already controlled ninety percent of the banks. I read an FBI report that estimated almost six hundred billion in foreign aid was stolen during the nineties.”

  Cape whistled. “Naïve question, but didn’t the Russian government notice?”

  Corelli laughed. “That’s the best part—the old guard was so determined to control the money, even after the collapse of the Communist Party, they turned to the KGB.”

  “A brand you can trust.”

  “Exactly. Government officials told the organization formerly known as the KGB to work with the mafiya to siphon off money from the now-private banks and give the government direct access to the funds.”

  “Nice.”

  “It gets even better,” said Corelli, pulling his stool closer. Nothing made a cop happier than finding a bureaucracy worse than the one he had to deal with on a daily basis. “The KGB got in bed with the mafiya and helped them steal all the money. They turned the loosely organized collection of gangsters and thugs into a well-funded, multi-national crime organization.”

  “That’s the spirit of capitalism for you.”

  “So much for the Cold War, huh?”

  “No shit.”

  “So that’s your history lesson for the day,” said Corelli. “Any questions?”

  “How big is the organization?”

  “Let’s put it this way,” said Corelli. “New York’s Russian émigré community numbers about three hundred thousand—that includes law-abiding citizens as well as thick-necked goons. But in Brighton Beach alone, there are almost five thousand Russian criminals. That’s why they call it Little Odessa.”

  “Brooklyn.”

  “My borough,” nodded Corelli. “Different neighborhood from where I grew up, but still Brooklyn.”

  Cape raised one eyebrow. “Five thousand?”

  “More than the five families of La Cosa Nostra combined,” said Corelli. “How about that?”

  “Surprised you don’t hear more about them.”

  “You will—The Sopranos still sell a lot of DVDs, but the feds actually made headway against the Mafia after Giuliani, since they put Gotti away. After a series of RICO indictments against mob bosses in Miami a few years back, Russians stepped in to take their place. Now half of Miami is under the control of the Russian mob, when before they were only minor players.”

  “Where else are they?”

  “Pretty much everywhere, but only about seventeen cities with any strength.”

  “Only?”

  “There’ll be more,” said Corelli. “Don’t doubt it for a second.”

  “How about San Francisco?”

  “The Lyubertskaya crime family has a growing presence on the West coast.”

  “Why haven’t I heard of them before?” asked Cape. “Why hasn’t Beau?”

  “He probably has, but just doesn’t know it. The Russians partner when they can’t dominate. They stay in the shadows unless they’re running things.”

  Cape sat up straighter. “Partner?”

  “They strike up alliances,” said Corelli. “In the case of San Francisco, that’s the Italians and Chinese. The Russians will cut deals with them, offer to supply muscle, get to know the city.”

  “And then?”

  “If there’s a chance to expand their operation by fucking over one of their business partners, they don’t hesitate.”

  Cape nodded but said nothing. He was out of his depth and knew it. He needed a way in, something that could reduce the scope of the hunt down to a single, tangible target.

  “What are they into?” he asked. “Drugs, unions, what?”

  “That’s the big difference between the Italians and the Russians,” said Corelli. “The Italians have a rigid organizational structure, with turf clearly assigned to different captains.”

  “Capos.”

  “You must watch The Sopranos, too,” said Corelli. “They specialize in certain types of criminal activity—mostly unions, gambling, and extortion. But the mafiya, the Russians, they’ll get into anything that turns a dime.”

  “Anything.”

  “The usual stuff—drugs, extortion, gambling—muscle businesses with no finesse involved. But the Russian mob has also been implicated in arms smuggling, Wall Street investment scandals, gasoline tax evasion—even rigging hockey games.”

  “The NHL?” Cape raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “I knew the league had problems…”

  “Believe it,” said Corelli. “It was a cash cow for the mafiya for a while. A lot of the best players came from former Soviet countries, and the mob squeezed every one for a percentage of their salary. They threaten the players, and if that doesn’t work, they threaten their families.”

  “That supposed to cheer me up?”

  Corelli leaned forward and put his hand on Cape’s arm. When he spoke, his voice was as flat as his eyes. He sounded like a cop who had seen too much and finally lost his sense of humor, as black as it might be. “Let me be clear about something. These guys are animals. The Italians might threaten to kill you, and in most cases they’ll mean it.”

  Cape met his gaze. “But the Russians…”

  “They’ll kill your whole family,” said Corelli. “They go after cops, journalists, judges. They don’t give a fuck. The ones behind bars threaten people from their jail cells. They laugh at our judicial system. I guess after you’ve been in the gulag, you don’t scare too easy.”

  Cape nodded. “Thanks for the warning.”

  Corelli leaned back, his face softening. “That’s about all I know.”

  “One more question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You mentioned drugs. What drugs are we talking about?”

  “Let’s see,” said Corelli, his tongue moving around the inside of his cheek searching for a memory. “On the import side, they’ve done business with the Colombians for years—that’s all cocaine, mostly smuggled by the Russians into Eastern Europe. On the export side, they move a lot of Turkish heroin.”

  “Why Turkish?”

  “Just happens to be where it comes from,” said Corelli. “Turks smuggle most of the heroin moving through Eastern Europe, including the stuff from Pakistan and Afghanistan. According to the government, those drugs fund terrorists.”

  “I thought that was oil.”

  “You and me both,” replied Corelli. “But when it comes to heroin, you can tell it’s Turkish by checking the morphine content—higher than average, sometimes double. The Russians buy it wholesale, then ship it to the States and other drug-addled Western countries.”

  “Beau always talks about drugs coming into the U.S. along the West coast from Asia.”

  “He’s talking about the Triads.”

  Cape thought of Sally. “Another fun group of people I wouldn’t want to mess with.”

  Corelli nodded. “Triads pretty much control all the drugs in Asia. The Russians might buy from them and distribute in other countries, but they don’t move any heroin themselves in
to San Francisco or L.A.”

  Cape shook his head to clear it, a wasted effort. He tried again. Corelli watched him with a sympathetic eye.

  “You’re just groping around in the dark, aren’t you?”

  “You’ve discovered my secret investigative technique,” Cape said as he reached for his coffee. “Now I’ll have to kill you.”

  “You have a plan?”

  “Not really,” said Cape. “You have a suggestion?”

  “I think you should go to a plastic surgeon, change your name, and lay low for a while.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “I like you,” said Corelli. “I just don’t like the odds.”

  “Me neither,” admitted Cape. “One more question?”

  Corelli shrugged and took a swig. “I’m off-duty, like I said.”

  “I know the organization behind the crime, thanks to you, but I need to know the people behind it.”

  “You want a handle on the guys who tried to kill you.” Corelli watched Cape carefully, not liking where this was going.

  Cape nodded. “Or someone who knows them.”

  Corelli sighed. “If you’re asking for what I think you are, then I’m gonna win that bet with Beau.”

  “I won’t take it personally.”

  Corelli looked at him for a full minute, then sighed again.

  “You want to meet someone in the mafiya.”

  “That would be nice.”

  Corelli laughed despite himself.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “I won’t be dead forever.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  Sally was in the lotus position on the floor of her hotel room, looking far more comfortable than Cape felt. He was sitting on a narrow, high-backed leather chair that must have been designed by an art director with an impossibly small ass. Cape shifted in the chair and managed to replicate the discomfort on his other cheek.

  “So I’m going to visit the Berman brothers at Empire this afternoon,” he said.

  “Need a date?”

  “Nah,” replied Cape, shifting again. “I’ll do better on my own at the studio. But if Corelli comes through for us with a name, I’ll need you to suit up.”