Russian Roulette

by Austin Camacho

  Hannibal turned and walked away at a casual pace. Behind him, he heard low conversation between Gana and Viktoriya, then Gana’s door opened and closed. He heard the Mercedes pull away in the opposite direction. He heard the finality of the camera being crushed under the tires. And he heard Cochran mutter a single profane epithet before he too drove away.

  Hannibal continued without a backward glance. When he reached the corner, he crossed to the side on which Gana lived. Only then did he look up the block, but both the Saturn and the Mercedes were gone. He continued to the next corner, turned again, and found himself in front of a long winding flight of stone steps. He started up them, between waves of purple, blue, and white flowers growing out of an evergreen plant. Daffodils scattered among the ground cover nodded their yellow heads at him as he passed.

  A broad patio ahead held a wrought iron table and chairs where two people sat separated by a large French press coffee maker and a pair of cups. The woman was in her forties, with hair cut in a trim bob that left a thick slice of hair to hang at an angle between her eyes. It was the same ink black as the woman in the Mercedes. This would be Raisa Petrova.

  The man facing her had come to breakfast in a gray wool suit. Hannibal picked up his musky fragrance from three feet away. He was wearing too much cologne and too much eyebrow, and he looked at Hannibal the way a deer watches a wolf trot into view. Hannibal tried to defuse his discomfort with a smile, but the woman turned a dazzler on him that put his own smile to shame.

  “Can I help you, young man?”

  Those were the woman’s words, but they sounded just like “would you like to come to bed with me?” Hannibal stopped ten feet away and tried to take them both in with his greeting.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Petrova. Good morning, sir. I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Hannibal Jones and I was hoping to have a few words with you about Mr. Dani Gana.”

  “Please, come sit,” Raisa said without even a beat of hesitation. “Yakov was just leaving.”

  Judging by his face, Yakov was unaware of his plans to depart until that moment, but he was a gentleman. He stood. Raisa offered her hand and he kissed it. Then he nodded toward Hannibal and stepped past him down the winding stairs toward the street. It was too late to apologize to him so Hannibal again turned to Raisa.

  “I really didn’t intend to interrupt your morning, ma’am.”

  She waved his words away. “Relax, young man. Yakov Sidorov is my physician, not my lover, although I’m sure he would want it otherwise. Besides, I think Aleksandr Ivanovich sent him to spy on me. Now come, sit, and tell me what you want to know about Dani.”

  Hannibal continued to stand. “You know Ivanovich?”

  “I will not discuss it further unless you sit.” She poured from the press into her cup, picked up Sidorov’s cup and stepped into the house. When she rose, Hannibal could see that she had a reasonable shape hidden inside her flower print dress. She returned in seconds with a clean cup which she also filled from the press. Hannibal understood the law of house rules. He sat opposite her, in the chair still warm from Sidorov’s expectations. He sipped the black liquid in his cup, realizing too late that it was tea.

  “You are good,” Raisa said in what Hannibal identifed only as an Old World accent. “You didn’t flinch. Tea is better for you than that coffee you Americans drink all day.”

  “It’s good and strong,” Hanibal said, “but tea doesn’t give you the aroma like coffee does. Now, you know Ivanovich?”

  Raisa smiled and made a show of pulling a cigarette from a silver case. “Of course, dear boy. He has been sniffing around my Viktoriya for years. Ever since my dear husband, God rest his soul, brought him into that ugly business he was in.”

  She paused, holding the cigarette out, until Hannibal noticed the small box of matches on the table. He struck one, freeing the sharp scent of sulfur. She ignored it as she leaned in, drew a lungful of smoke, and let it carry her words out.

  “He is a violent boy who does the dirtiest work for gangsters. But when Vitoriya saw Dani, she realized what a good man looks like.”

  Hannibal blinked away the smoke. Raisa was starting to sound like a bad imitation of Shirley MacLaine. Was it the accent the actress had used in Madame Sousatzka or the attitude from Steel Magnolias that gave him that impression? He turned his gaze back down the path while he gathered his thoughts.

  “You like the flowers, young man? Those are periwinkles.”

  “Periwinkle was a color in my crayon box when I was a kid,” Hannibal said, “but that color didn’t match any of these. And just how much do you know about this good man Dani Gana? How did he come to be so wealthy?”

  “Why do you care? Are you here working for Aleksandr Ivanovich too?”

  “Are you paranoid, Mrs. Petrova?”

  He had guessed correctly. She did not want her sanity questioned, and if she insisted that everyone was sent by Invanovich that would be evidence that she was becoming paranoid. Blinking back those thoughts, she leaned in, as if to share a confidence. Hannibal moved forward too, looking around as if to make sure no one was listening.

  “Dani Gana is a very important man. He is no simple financier. He is Algerian, you know.”

  “Yes,” Hannibal said. “I know.” What else you got?

  Raisa set her jaw and raised the stakes. “He is living in exile from his own country. Gana is not his real name.”

  Inside the house, a cockatiel screamed. Hannibal looked into Raisa’s eyes from behind his sunglasses. “How do you know he’s telling you the truth?”

  Raisa almost leapt to her feet, snugged her floral gown around herself, and moved off into the house. Hannibal sipped his tea and examined the irregular flagstones underfoot. The house must have dated from the 1920s or before. With four levels, an attached garage and maybe a fireplace it would go for a million six or seven if she put it on the market.

  Mrs. Petrova returned with a flourish, leaving her front door open. She slapped a letter down on the table and glared at Hannibal as if daring him to pick it up. He did.

  -4-

  As soon as he saw it, Hannibal understood why Raisa thought this letter was so important. It was typed on heavy, crème-colored stationery with a classic watermark and it carried the letterhead of Leon Martin, a vice president of the Chemical Banking Corporation in New York City. It was a formal letter of introduction addressed to Raisa Petrova.

  This is to introduce you to Dani Gana, who has been a substantial depositor at our institution for five years. He has asked our bank to formally introduce him to you because of your position as a pillar of the community in Washington.

  Mr. Gana is a man of influence in both business and government circles in his native Algeria. He now wishes to establish financial ties in the United States and has asked us to help him establish valuable contacts.

  Mr. Gana will be in your area in the next few days and he shall be contacting you soon to arrange a meeting.

  I am sure you will benefit if you agree to see him.

  Sincerely

  If Gana wanted to establish his legitimacy, this was a powerful bit of evidence. Assuming, Hannibal thought, that the letter itself was legitimate.

  “I take it you know Mr. Martin?” Hannibal asked.

  “He has handled my personal finances for more than a decade.”

  “I see. Well, thank you. This helps a lot. May I borrow this? I’d like to contact Mr. Martin to confirm his relationship with Mr. Gana.”

  “Perhaps,” Raisa said, lowering herself into her seat. “On one condition.”

  “And that would be?”

  Raisa leaned in again, pulling out her seductive voice. “You are a professional investigator, yes? Someone has hired you to investigate Dani. What I want you to do is to drop the case. Give these two a chance to succeed. Give my Viktoriya a chance to find her happiness.”

  Hannibal wondered if it would make any difference to Raisa if she knew that the life of the woman he loved hung in the balance. No, h
e decided, it would not. Like any mother, the happiness of her child was her highest priority. But did Ivanovich want to destroy Viktoriya’s life? All he had asked for was the truth.

  “I promise that I won’t do anything that hurts either of them if Gana turns out to be all you say he is. But before I make that determination, I have to meet the man himself.”

  “By all means, go and meet him,” Raisa said, sitting back and swallowing half her cup of tea in one long drink. “I expect him to be back from his morning business by eleven. I’ll call and tell him to expect you.”

  * * * * *

  Before speaking with Dani Gana, Hannibal had a previous appointment. The time in his car gave him a chance to think through his conversation with Mrs. Petrova. He considered why the letter from a banker might mean so much to her. She did have a fine home, but its value had nothing to do with the cost of maintaining it. His read of the woman was that she would never part with it, even if she couldn’t afford to keep it up. It was symbolic of the fortune her husband had made for her and her daughter. A wealthy man in her daughter’s life could be insurance of a sort.

  But if she wanted the man to stay in his daughter’s life, that raised its own questions. Knowing that Hannibal was investigating her prospective son-in-law, why had she dealt with Hannibal so kindly?

  It didn’t take Hannibal long to reach the meeting place for his appointment. The drive to one of the southwest entrances to Rock Creek Park was brief, and it took Hannibal only five minutes to find the man he had arranged to meet.

  On a map, the District is an almost perfect square balanced on one corner. Rock Creek Park is a long swath of green shoved up into the upper corner, with the Maryland towns of Chevy Chase on its left and Silver Spring on its right. At the worst of times it has been an island of tranquility in the tumultuous city, a place where ash, beech, birch and butternut, hickory, elm, and cedar trees can all live together. It is also a place where bikers and hippies, hikers and joggers, Republicans and Democrats, and even law-abiding citizens and retired professional criminals can find peaceful coexistence.

  Before he made eye contact with Anthony Ronzini, Hannibal spotted his two-man protective detail. These were big, beefy men who wanted the world to know they were there. Ronzini had few living enemies, but his boys didn’t want any muggers or pickpockets to think he was an easy target. They both recognized Hannibal as he approached and one tapped his boss on the shoulder. Ronzini stood back, letting an elder jogger pass him on the gravel path he had chosen for his morning constitutional.

  Ronzini was a big man who appeared physically soft, but if you looked into his eyes you could still see the hardness of his youth. As a young man, Ronzini made his fortune as a pimp, a gambler, and a fixer. Now he was simply a man who knew people, knew things, and took a slice of other people’s activities in exchange for his permission to do business unmolested in certain parts of town. Hannibal had never imagined this man wearing a blue sweat suit and running shoes, but even in that outfit he exuded a quiet menace.

  “Good morning, Mr. Ronzini,” Hannibal said in the soft voice he used for those he wished to show respect. “How is your son these days?”

  “Salvatore is doing well up in New Jersey,” Ronzini said, walking at an easy pace. “I must grudgingly thank you for showing him the error of his ways when he was dealing drugs. He is really doing much better in gambling operations.”

  Gravel crunched under their feet. The air was crisp and sweet from the mingled scents of a bewildering variety of trees and flowering plants that formed an endless green tunnel for them to walk down. Yet Hannibal carried a sour taste in his mouth as he considered asking Ronzini for assistance.

  “Go ahead,” Ronzini said, as if reading Hannibal’s mind. “It gets easier each time you admit you need someone else’s help.”

  “It’s not someone, it’s you,” Hannibal said. “I shouldn’t have to go to a criminal to get my job done.”

  “But I seem to be the person who knows what you need to know,” Ronzini said, taking a deep breath and letting it leak out. He seemed to enjoy his life more than a retired professional criminal should. “What do you need to know?”

  Hannibal walked with his hands in his pockets, eyes to the ground. “What do you know about the Russian mob?”

  “Could you be a bit more specific?”

  “Aleksandr Ivanovich.”

  Ronzini stopped in his tracks. His two escorts looked around as if they sensed ghosts in the woods. Ronzini turned to face Hannibal.

  “You know, I respect you,” he said. Hannibal felt a blush begin, and then hated himself for being flattered by this man’s respect.

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  “No, seriously, I do,” Ronzini said. “In a lifetime of dealing with dangerous men, you are one of the most dangerous men I’ve ever met, and one of the most determined. You are smart and tough and you have character. There are few I would bet on against you. So when I say this Ivanovich is a man that you don’t want to mess with, you should understand what that means.”

  “Don’t always have the choice.”

  “Unless what you are really asking for is some help from a few of my boys. Is that it?” Ronzini resumed his walk. He seemed to enjoy the fresh air and verdant view. A step behind, Hannibal considered this veiled offer. He probably could get a team of professional muscle to go after Ivanovich. But that would mean they’d have to go crashing into his office. But if Ivaonvich was telling the truth, that would also mean that his agents would hurt or maybe kill Cindy. He could not put her at risk, and besides, that simply wasn’t the way he worked.

  “No, forget that. The guy I really want to know about is named Dani Gana.”

  “Oh yes, the recently arrived Algerian,” Ronzini said with a nod. “He’s quite a hit in some parts of the city’s high society.”

  “Yeah. Do you happen to know if he’s who he says he is?”

  “I haven’t had any reason to doubt it,” Ronzini said. “The right people seem to know him.”

  Hannibal saw a rabbit near the edge of the trail. It wriggled its nose and watched the men pass as if they represented no danger. If that bunny only knew, Hannibal thought.

  “I’ve heard that Gana is a legitimate businessman. I’ve also been told he has ties to the Russian mob. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that he has money. Know anything about that?”

  “I know he opened an account in the Provident Bank two weeks ago. Opened it with a couple hundred thousand dollars.”

  How does he know this stuff? Hannibal wondered. Aloud he asked, “Is it mob money?”

  “Who do I look like, Tony Soprano?” Ronzini asked.

  Well, yes, you kind of do, Hannibal thought.

  “I need to find out where that cash came from,” Hannibal said. “If he stole it, things go one way. If he earned it, things go another way. If he borrowed it to impress his prospective mother-in-law, well, then he’s busted.”

  Ronzini stopped at a wooden bench on the side of the trail and smiled at Hannibal. “This is about vetting a groom? You never cease to surprise me. Who is the lucky girl?”

  Hannibal moved to the opposite edge of the trail. “Her name is Viktoriya Petrova. The reason I asked about the Russians is that she has mob connections.”

  Ronzini laughed one loud, harsh laugh. “Viktoriya? Is this Raisa’s little girl?”

  This time Hannibal said it out loud. “How do you know this stuff?”

  “I got history with the Petrovas,” Ronzini said, his smile fading off into the past. “Pleasant history, as it happens. I knew the girl’s father, Nikita. For his little girl, I’ll check into this Gana for you. If he’s not legit, you can run him off her, right?”

  “That’s the job,” Hannibal said. “I take it you liked her old man.”

  “Respected him,” Ronzini said. “He was a fixer, helped the Russians get established in this town, but he was also kind of like you. Smart guy, tough guy, lived by his own code. Nobody to mess with. Cops sa
id he threw himself off a roof.”

  “What do you say?”

  “I say guys like you don’t throw themselves off roofs. I know how things were back then. I’d put my money on Ivanovich.”

  Hannibal nodded and stepped closer so that Ronzini’s bodyguards would not hear his words. “I really appreciate the information, Tony. And thank you for checking into Gana. I promise you I’m going to look out for the girl’s best interest.”

  Ronzini nodded. They both knew that his boys didn’t like to hear people using Ronzini’s first name. They took it as disrespect. But as Hannibal turned away, Ronzini pulled his jacket lapel.

  “One more thing. The Santiago girl. She’s got a mouth on her, but she’s a righteous innocent.”

  “Yeah? What about her?” Hannibal ignored the hand, watching Ronzini’s eyes.

  “Those boys watching her. Maybe it would be good to have some boys watching them? You know, just in case something happened.”

  How does he know this stuff? Hannibal considered Ronzini. He was no longer a crime leader, but he was a player, and not without influence. He didn’t have to bother with these things. There could be only one reason for such an offer.

  “That would be... thank you, Tony. I owe you a big one.”

  “You already owe me big, Jones. Now go find out what you can about this Gana, and I’ll do the same.”

  * * * * *

  In his car Hannibal decided to try again to play with one of his new toys. The Volvo S60 was a gift from a wealthy client as compensation for Hannibal’s previous car that was totaled while working that client’s case. Cindy had given him an iPod, loaded it with his music, and showed him the basics of how to make it work. Monte, the teenager he mentored, had installed a device that allowed him to plug the iPod into the Black Beauty’s stereo system, directing his chosen tunes through an impressive bank of Bang and Olufsen speakers. He could control it all from the steering wheel. If he pushed the right buttons in the right order, he could get the telephone to work, hands free, through those same speakers.