Russian Roulette

by Austin Camacho

  A two-car garage, when the girl didn’t even have a driver’s license. What could a single woman possibly do with all that space? He might never know. But even if he could not be seen with Cindy or have a conversation with her, he could observer her reaction to the house. It was as close as he could get to spending time with her until he had satisfied Ivanovich that the case was over. Under normal circumstances he might feel funny spying on his woman this way, but he knew that three or four other observers were out there. In this situation, one more person watching her made little difference.

  “Leon Martin. How can I help you?”

  The voice prompted Hannibal to pull himself back into business mode. Martin needed to believe he was sitting in his office, not out in his car. He explained that he was a professional investigator vetting a new potential investor for some major corporation.

  “Sir, we are in possession of a letter of introduction written by you to a Mrs. Raisa Petrova, confirming the credentials of one Dani Gana of Algeria.”

  “Yes, well, as I told Mrs. Petrova a few minutes ago, the letter is from our bank. I was simply the officer authorized to sign it.”

  “I see,” Hannibal said, holding a pen over a pad while one eye monitored the driveway down the block. “Now sir, do you have personal knowledge of Mr. Gana? Have you met and spoken with this gentleman?”

  “This is highly irregular. If Mrs. Petrova hadn’t personally asked me to speak with you…”

  “Yes, but she did,” Hannibal said, adding a little edge to his voice. “I’m sure you understand that with these kinds of sums involved, my clients want to be very certain of the people they do business with.” No need to specify what kinds of sums. The banker would mentally fill in whatever he thought was a lot of money. “Did you handle Mr. Gana’s accounts personally?”

  “Yes, I handled his accounts, but no, we haven’t met. However, understand that Mr. Gana is one of our more substantial foreign customers. He was recommended to us personally by a United States senator whom I’m afraid I cannot name.”

  Hannibal watched a midnight blue Lincoln Towne Car ease down the street from the opposite direction and slide into the target house’s driveway. “I quite understand, sir. Did you have the opportunity to speak to the senator yourself?”

  “No, but I have his letter here. It is a glowing testimonial.”

  Hannibal’s mind was elsewhere before he politely ended the conversation. Gana had come to Washington with a recommendation from a New York banker, but that letter was written based on a letter of recommendation from a Beltway insider. Why not cut out the middleman? Why was it so important for him to be accepted by the Washington inner circle? That certainly wouldn’t protect him from a fanatical jihad.

  Up the block, the passenger side door opened. Hannibal assumed there was a lot of conversation in the car while the real estate agent explained how much Cindy was going to love this house. But now the showing would begin. To Hannibal’s surprise, the showing started as the Realtor stood up outside the car.

  Hannibal thought of real estate agents as retired schoolteachers or bored housewives. This one was very male, black, and built like a running back. Hannibal judged him at that distance to be about six feet three but the black pinstriped suit made him look even taller. This was the guy she had been following around for several weeks, walking in and out of vacant houses. He walked around the car and opened the passenger door. Cindy swung her legs out onto the asphalt and stood quite close to him. She looked up into his eyes while they exchanged a few more words and shared the smile that Hannibal thought of as his.

  A tap on his window spun Hannibal’s face to his left. The man standing beside the car recoiled and raised his hands on either side of his chest.

  “I’m not the enemy,” the man said. Hannibal could only guess how much anger his face was reflecting when he turned. He powered his window down, forced a smile, and let his eyebrows rise to their normal position.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to… I was thinking of something else. Something I can do for you?”

  “I think it’s the other way around,” the man said. “I’m here at Mr. Ronzini’s request.” He was a medium-sized man with a neutral face, but Hannibal noticed the bulge at his waist under his gray sweatshirt.

  “I see. So what brings you here?”

  The man rested his elbow on the roof of Hannibal’s car, facing forward. “I’m watching him watching her.”

  Another man was walking toward them across the street, on the side Cindy’s dream house was on. He was also a neutral looking man with vaguely Eastern features. He would pass the house in a moment.

  “I appreciate that. Really. But maybe I should be gone before this guy spots me.”

  “OK, but take this,” the man said, passing an envelope through Hannibal’s window. “Mr. Ronzini figured you’d turn up here sooner or later. He said when you did to give you this letter.”

  Hannibal thanked the man, who then stood away from the car, about to turn and walk away.

  “Hey, hang on a second, friend. You got a name?”

  The man looked at Hannibal with no expression at all on his face.

  “No.”

  And then he was gone, another faceless soldier in an underground army. Pulling away from the curb, Hannibal wondered what the job description looked like for the position of thug. Did they have a union, have to update their resumes, hassle about their benefits?

  Another part of his mind wondered how long Cindy and the broad-shouldered Realtor would be in that house.

  Four blocks later, Hannibal stopped at a red light and used the pause to open Ronzini’s envelope. He resented Ronzini knowing that he would try to see Cindy even if he couldn’t talk to her. He hated knowing he was in this man’s debt. But it gave him some small measure of peace to know that Ronzini’s men would give their lives to defend anyone under Ronzini’s protection.

  Inside the envelope he found a single sheet of expensive stationery folded in thirds. The note was handwritten, in a firm, aggressive hand that had to be Anthony Ronzini’s. Under a large letter H it read:

  Thought you might want to know that Nikita Petrova didn’t leave behind the fortune most of the Russians assume he had. A quick look at Raisa P’s finances showed that she’s running out of money.

  There was no signature, but none was needed.

  A horn blaring behind him prompted him to surge forward and catch up with traffic. This news offered a good reason for Raisa to fool herself about a wealthy young suitor asking for her daughter’s hand. He drove home on automatic pilot, pushing this new puzzle piece around with the other bits of information he had gathered.

  By the time he got home, he had to admit that he himself should have been the target of much of the rage he was feeling. His anger at Ronzini was based on his own inner belief that people were either good or bad. Bad people doing good things made him almost as uncomfortable as good people going bad.

  He parked in his usual place and hurried into his own apartment without encountering another soul. He hung up his jacket, pulled off his tie, and poured Kenyan coffee beans into his grinder. Strong, fresh, hot coffee was Hannibal’s drug of choice for dealing with his emotions. In this case, that meant his anger.

  Listening to the whirring gnash of the grinder’s teeth, he also had to admit that part of his anger toward Ivanovich was misplaced. It was not his fault that Hannibal had gotten so deeply involved with this case. Coffee aside, the real drug that Hannibal was hooked on was mystery and although he didn’t expect it, he had stepped into one here. While filling a carafe with water he considered the disturbing fact that, had he known what he now did about the situation, he would have been willing to investigate it anyway. Regardless of his feelings about Ivanovich, he couldn’t ignore the very real danger Viktoriya’s mob-connected mother might be putting her in, especially if Gana was on the run from the law or his country’s legal government.

  Aside from the case, Hannibal’s mind was clogged with thoughts about
his own isolation. Ivanovich had found it quite simple to create a situation in which Hannibal was not able to discuss the case with any of his closest confidantes. Just as he had to keep an eye on his top priority, keeping Cindy safe, he had to keep his neighbors out of the case to shield them. He trusted Ronzini on the subject of who not to mess with and knew that if Ivanovich had nothing to lose he would be a danger to all those around him.

  But in the meantime, Hannibal couldn’t think of anything else he could do to finish his assignment. Like most days, when the work was done, Hannibal changed into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Hours passed in solitude, filled by frozen egg rolls and a marathon of television episodes. Cindy had given him a DVD of the short-lived Blade television series. He had enjoyed it more than he had expected to, and couldn’t wait to tell Cindy. He tried hard not to notice that she hadn’t called him to talk about her day or the house she looked at. She was probably working late again, as lawyers so often do.

  When the phone did ring, Hannibal checked his watch before answering. She really had worked late.

  “Hello,” he said, eager to hear her voice again, even if he had to tell her he couldn’t talk.

  “Come over for a drink.” It was Ivanovich’s hard, accented voice. The anger Hannibal had put away earlier in the day popped out of its box.

  “Bitch, I’m done working for the day. I’ll get more answers tomorrow.”

  Pause. “I thought a bitch was a woman only. Come over for a drink.” This time Hannibal noticed a slight slurring. He must have started drinking alone.

  “Look, Alex, it’s after eleven. I need my sleep.”

  “Aleksandr,” Ivanovich said. “Never Xander. Never Lex. Never Al. Never Alex. You are not asleep. You are alone. Like me. Come over for a drink.”

  Hannibal thought about his own isolation, and about the fact that Ivanovich had not left that office for more than forty-eight hours and in that time had seen no one except Hannibal and, he assumed, a delivery boy from the liquor store. Well, he did it to himself, Hannibal thought. Screw him. He was about to say it aloud when Ivanovich appeared to remember something from their very first conversation.

  “Please.”

  * * * * *

  When Hannibal walked into his office, he bypassed the wall switch for the ceiling light. His desk lamp shed the only light in the room. Ivanovich seemed more at home in the relative gloom. He was still in Hannibal’s desk chair. His pistol still lay on the desk pointed toward the door. The black photo album still lay open in front of him. But Ivanovich had changed into a t-shirt, one of those you see so often in Washington gift shops, that said “You Don’t Know Me,” and in smaller lettering, “Witness Protection Program.” He held a tumbler of clear liquid in his right hand. He put it down to pour vodka into a similar glass on the desk.

  “So, you can call a man a bitch?”

  “Anything can be a bitch,” Hannibal said, picking up his glass. “A man you don’t like. A woman you do like. An object like, oh, I don’t know. You poured some nasty vodka into this bitch and I picked it up. Hell, life’s a bitch.” He took a swallow from his glass, finding the drink surprisingly smooth but just as fiery as he expected.

  “So sit,” Ivanovich said, reaching behind his head to start another Nine Inch Nails CD. “Tell me of your progress, Mister Detective.”

  Hannibal dropped into his visitor’s chair as the warmth from the drink spread through his body. He noticed that his office smelled just a bit like fried food, and the cartons in his trashcan confirmed the reason. Did this guy live on Chinese takeout?

  “The way I see it, you gave me four jobs,” Hannibal said. “I’ve got a banker who confirms in writing that Gana is who he says he is. I got an expert to help me test him for background knowledge and I’m convinced he’s from where he says he’s from. In conversation with him and the Petrovas, it became pretty clear that he’s primarily here for the girl.”

  “Viktoriya,” Ivanovich said, raising his glass and emptying it, almost as if he was toasting the woman’s name.

  “Yes. That leaves the money. Normally, Ms. Santiago could help me with that part, but I have another friend with connections who will be able to tell me in a day or two where Gana got his money. That’s all you need to know, right? Then you disappear from my life—and Cindy’s.”

  “You miss her, don’t you?” Ivanovich asked, signaling to Hannibal to return his glass. When Hannibal didn’t answer he said, “Yes, that is the deal.”

  “You want details?” Hannibal asked, setting his glass back on the desk.

  “Please,” Ivanovich said, refilling the glass. “As much detail as possible. I want to know everything you’ve learned about this man Gana, and how you came to these conclusions.”

  While listening to heavy industrial rock and sharing three more rounds of drinks, Hannibal recounted his day, omitting his detour to see Cindy. Ivanovich was not pleased but he was satisfied, which meant that once Ronzini put Hannibal on the money trail he would be free. He didn’t say so, but with Ivanovich gone he would also feel free to pursue the real mysteries raised by his investigation without worrying about Cindy. God, he missed her. More than this Russian killer could know. What could a murderer for hire know about human feelings anyway?

  “You are thinking too hard,” Ivanovich said. “What is on your mind? Your woman? She is safe.”

  Hannibal stared at his glass instead of his client. “Actually, I was thinking about you. I know who Dani Gana is now. I know who Viktoriya Petrova is. Just who the fuck is Aleksandr Ivanovich?”

  - 10-

  Ivanovich stood up, maybe just to stretch his legs, maybe to see himself more clearly. Hannibal watched him, trying to center his mind. He knew that the casual profanity was a sign that the alcohol was loosening him. He seldom drank and for that reason his tolerance for liquor was low.

  “Your real question is, how do you get the job of assassin in the Russian Mafiya? Is that not so?”

  Hannibal emptied his glass anyway. “No. Let me ask you the same shit you want to know about your rival. Who are you? Where are you from? Why are you here?”

  “I am a man born to dirt-poor farmers in Georgia,” Ivanovich said, staring at the wall like a student giving a dissertation. “Too poor to seek a proper education. So poor that I sought refuge in military service. So I signed up to fight for my country, much as your father did.”

  Ivanovich paused while he refilled his glass, as if he could not talk and pour at the same time. When the bottle was empty he reached under the desk and produced another, opened it, and filled his glass to its rim.

  “Little did I guess that I would be fighting my own countrymen in Chechnya.”

  “That must have sucked,” Hannibal said, wondering how much alcohol Ivanovich had had delivered to his office.

  “I was a teenager. A boy. But I grew up a lot in those three years. My father had taught me to hunt and I stood out on the firing range. Then my colonel said he saw something in me. Whether it was the strong hands of a farmer or the cold impatience of a boy who had nothing to lose I don’t know. Anyway, he selected me for sniper training. There was a bonus involved, so of course I excelled.”

  “So you had a talent for hitting the target. How’d they know you had the nerve for killing?”

  Ivanovich paced to the window and looked out for a moment. “They knew after that riot in Chechnya when I gunned down half a dozen citizens.” He quickly returned to the desk and raised his glass. Hannibal thought he was trying to rinse the taste of that memory out of his mouth.

  “Sounds like you had a future in the army.”

  “Yes, but the world moves and we move with it.” Ivanovich glanced at the photo album, then quickly away. “The colonel was my benefactor then. At the time, military officers often raised funds in unauthorized ways. He left the army and asked me to go with him. He had plans. He was going to America to turn his black market business into an empire. He needed a good gun at his side. He offered me more money than I had ever seen.
I followed him here. How could I know I would find the girl I left behind?”

  Hannibal stood to sit his glass on the desk. “Excuse me?”

  “The Petrovas were neighbors back home. Nikita Petrova was also a soldier. He served in Afghanistan under fire, and in Algeria undercover. But when I was in secondary school, I knew him as the man who would only let me visit his daughter in his presence or his wife’s. I knew I loved Viktoriya even then. You see? I’ve carried this picture for so many years.”

  Hannibal looked down to see a photo of Viktoriya, the girl he had only met that day. In the photo she was just a child of perhaps fourteen. “Your childhood sweetheart. Touching. And you come to the U.S. to help launch a crime family and learn that her father is in fact a godfather.”

  Ivanovich turned, spilling his drink as he moved closer to stare into Hannibal’s eyes. “You asked a question. I open my heart and you greet this with sarcasm?”

  Hannibal stared back, leaning even closer. “Save that shit for somebody who’s scared of you. Which maybe isn’t as many people as I thought. I know you’re here because you’re hiding out from the mob, and now I know why. Daddy wouldn’t let you have his little girl, so you got him out of the way.”

  Ivanovich’s eyes blazed and for a moment Hannibal thought he would get a chance to kick this arrogant Russian’s ass. Instead, Ivanovich looked down at the bottle and refilled his glass.

  “Nikita Petrova was a great man,” he said in a low voice. “He was my mentor when I arrived here and explained to me that I did not need to live in thrall to the colonel. I could be my own man and do my work for anyone in the mob. I did not kill him.”