In for a Ruble

by David Duffy

  Beria put in a brief appearance, across the room, chuckling.

  I know all about selling souls. You’ll get used to it after a while. We all do.

  He didn’t leave when I told him to go away, but he didn’t say any more either.

  As I sipped my vodka, I kept thinking that some event had set off the horrors of the Leitz family. The obvious candidate was the suicide of Sebastian’s daughter, Daria. Everything from Pauline’s breakdown to Marianna’s drinking to Thomas’s blackmail dated to four years ago. But I was guessing there was something else, something earlier, something that had been, in Thomas Leitz’s words, swept under the rug—an open wound growing more infected with each passing year. At some point, nothing short of amputation would cure it. Perhaps Sebastian and his siblings believed that the early death of their parents was sufficient tragedy for one lifetime, that they were entitled to bury any others. They were justified in doing whatever was necessary to avoid the heartbreaks that inevitably came later, as they do to all families.

  My deliberations were punctuated with refills of my glass and checks of my watch and the hope that the next sound would be the chime of the elevator and the scrape of Victoria’s key in the lock. Beria shook his head.

  No key by 9:30, and the Leitzes were growing foggy in a vodka haze, so I took myself and Lavrenty Pavlovich over to a brew pub at the Seaport that makes a passable burger and pretty good beer. Neither shed further light. When I got home, the apartment was still empty and I had the first unhappy premonition of what that emptiness could feel like if it lasted beyond the next day or two.

  * * *

  I went to the office early and worked the Basilisk. Irina had hit eight ATMs after she took off, withdrawing a thousand dollars from each as she made her way downtown. I’d spelled out the game plan for her, two nights ago in the car. The last withdrawal was on Canal Street—Chinatown. Not where I’d expect her to run. Unless …

  In the last few years, low-priced bus service between New York and Boston has become a booming business. The Fung Wah Bus company was the pioneer, running hourly coaches from Chinatown to Chinatown. Irina wanted her car. That would give her freedom. I reached for the phone to call Gina and stopped. Too much time to get to Gibbet. There had to be a faster way.

  Feeling a touch of the same satisfaction I used to get when I fed some Yasenevo desk jockey the kind of bullshit that would make his life miserable for a week or two, I called Philip Paine. Dragon Lady had been tamed, she put me straight through. He didn’t sound happy to hear from me.

  “I need a favor, on behalf of Leitz and Batkin.”

  “We’re not in a position to—”

  “There’s a barn near your campus, on Martin Lane, right off Hayfields Drive. I want to know if there’s a car in it, a BMW Three Series with New York plates.”

  “This is a very irregular request.”

  “It’s important.”

  “Do Ambassador Batkin and Dr. Leitz know you’re calling?”

  His reliance on titles grated—if only because they slowed everything down. I ignored that and put down my bluff.

  “Call them if you wish. I’ll hang on.”

  An easy bet, and I won.

  “What does this have to do with…”

  I raised just to make sure. “It has to do with a group of students at your school who’ve been running a porn ring right under your nose. The Feds are aware of it, and I’m trying to make sure it doesn’t blow up in everybody’s face.”

  A very long silence.

  “Pornography?”

  “Child pornography. A crime—good tabloid copy too.”

  “Oh, my God…”

  “You’ll get someone to check the barn?”

  “Please … Don’t do anything. I’ll call right back.”

  * * *

  The car was gone, as I suspected. Paine peppered me with panicked questions, which I evaded. He grew increasingly excited until I hung up. I felt more guilty pleasure—akin to what the Germans call schadenfreude, delight in someone else’s difficulties. Paine should have kept better tabs on his students. In loco parentis, as he said.

  With the cash and her car, Irina was going to be tough to track. My one link was Andras. I called Leitz.

  “I need to talk to your son.”

  “Not a good idea.”

  “I’m not concerned with good or bad. I need to talk to him.”

  “He’s in a safe place. Like you suggested.”

  “I’m not going to give him up. He’s in a world of trouble—of his own making. I’m his best chance to get out of it, maybe in one piece.”

  “The answer is still no.”

  “He may feel differently.”

  “You’ve been paid. You’ve gone to extra trouble, I’m aware of that. Tell me what you consider fair compensation, and I’ll consider it.”

  Did he think I was shaking him down? Or was he trying to buy me off?

  “How do I get in touch with your pal Konychev?”

  He paused. “Why?”

  “It could help your son.”

  “I … I don’t know.”

  “You have investors you don’t know how to contact? I find that hard to believe.”

  “I know where to find his lawyers. I only met the man once.”

  I wasn’t sure whether he was telling the truth, just being cagey, or outright lying. I didn’t have time to think about it.

  “Talk to your brother recently?”

  “Thomas? Why?”

  “He had Nosferatu outside his apartment yesterday, he’s looking for your brother-in-law’s computers.”

  “What would Thomas know about those?”

  “He’s been blackmailing Coryell for the last four years.”

  “WHAT? Thomas? Walter? Blackmail? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “One of the things this is about. One of the reasons I need to talk to your son.”

  “What blackmail?”

  “I suspect it has to do with the death of your daughter.”

  A long silence. Then a whisper. “Daria?”

  “That’s right.”

  Another silence. “Your services are finished. Don’t call again.”

  I started to respond. But I was talking to a dead line.

  CHAPTER 41

  I’d told Leitz to take it away, but I asked the Basilisk if Andras was using his cell phone.

  No deal, it responded.

  Okay, what’s Sebastian Leitz been up to?

  Ah-ha, the beast said, you’re not as dumb as you look.

  But Leitz was. For a supposed genius, he was rock-fucking stupid. He’d used his American Express black card to guarantee a suite at the Regency for a guest named Robert Klein.

  I left a note for Foos to be on call before I caught the subway uptown. I spent most of the train ride cursing Leitz. Not just for his overprotective stubbornness, but his idiocy. The Regency was a well-known luxury hotel and exactly the kind of place a rich Wall Streeter would park his son. Worse, at Park and East Sixty-first, it was right around the corner from his mansion. Leitz probably figured—again foolishly—he could look in on the kid on his way to and from power breakfasts with his Wall Street advisers over fifty-dollar eggs in the Regency restaurant.

  I called “Robert Klein” from the lobby. He shouldn’t have answered but he did.

  “It’s Turbo—your chauffeur, remember? We need to talk, about Irina. I’m downstairs.”

  “What about Irina?”

  “She’s gone. On the run. What room?”

  “My dad said…”

  “I know what he said. I told him to say it. Things have changed.”

  Silence.

  “She’s in trouble Andras. Big trouble. You can help her. You may be the only one who can. I’m Foos’s friend, remember? Call him if you want.”

  More silence.

  Then, “Room eight-oh-one.”

  * * *

  He answered the door wearing jeans and a plaid shirt. He was tall in a way t
hat I hadn’t noticed over the weekend, in my haste to get out of Gibbet. Almost six one, with blue eyes and a soft-featured baby face. His hair was curly, like his father’s, more brown than red, and cut neatly around his head. His eyes looked past me and darted up and down the hall, before he stood aside. I wasn’t sure who he was looking for, but I would have bet his bank account on his old man. We shook hands. His grip was firm enough, but uncertain, quick to let go.

  A suite at the Regency was not the way I’d treat my son if I’d just found out he’d been running a porn ring, but Aleksei would say I had my own fatherly shortcomings. The living room reflected someone’s idea of what wealth should look like. Expensive wallpaper, striped fabrics, chintz pillows, solid, anonymous furniture. Three doors leading elsewhere, two bedrooms and a bathroom, I guessed. The kid standing in the middle of it looked out of place.

  “Thanks for letting me come up,” I said, starting easy. “How’re you doing?”

  “Okay, I guess.” He plopped on a striped couch. “To tell you the truth, I have no idea.”

  “You’re going through a rough patch.”

  “Yeah. What about Irina?”

  “She’s run away, like I said. You heard about her stepfather, yesterday?”

  He nodded. “It’s my fault.”

  “I don’t know that. I want to hear your story.”

  His hand sliced through the air. Tough kid. Or kid trying to play tough. “What else do you know about Irina?”

  I settled in on an upholstered chair across from the sofa. “She took off right after the shooting, like she was waiting for a chance to run. She withdrew eight thousand dollars, went to Gibbet, and picked up her car. I think she had a destination in mind. I think you might know where it is. She doesn’t believe this—she thinks she’s smarter than he is—but if Karp, the assassin, finds her before I do, he’ll snap her in half like a little bird. I like his chances a lot better than hers. Any idea where she went?”

  He put his head in his hands and said nothing.

  “Andras—you can help her.”

  “It’s all my fault.”

  I had no patience for that self-pitying refrain, but I backed off to give him a chance to think.

  “Tell me about the Players? Your idea?”

  He shook his head. “It just happened, you know?”

  “No. I don’t know.”

  He shook his head again. “I can’t explain. It just kind of happened.”

  I’d thought, perhaps, the events of the last few days would have been traumatic enough to make him want to talk. He wasn’t ready. Part me, the Cheka part, said sweat him, punish him, the kid was guilty, a child-criminal, criminal first. Would’ve worked, more than likely. Maybe he deserved it. Maybe we’d get to that. But not yet.

  “How long ago? When did it start?”

  He shrugged. “Few years.”

  “Why? How? Who rented the place above the liquor store?”

  He shrugged again. “We all did.”

  “We?”

  “Yeah. We.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “You already know that. If you don’t, then…”

  The kid was thinking.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why’d you do it?”

  “We had our reasons.”

  “Had or have?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just asking if the reasons are past or present? You want to tell me about them?”

  He shook his head.

  “You know we’re going to get there sooner or later, don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure I should be talking to you. I think I should call my dad.”

  “Go ahead.”

  He didn’t move. Neither did I.

  “You ever think you’d end up here?” I asked. “A spot like this, looking at options, or absence of options? In a box?”

  He took a minute before he shook his head, no. The first positive sign since I arrived.

  “Life works like that. You think you control it, to the extent you think about it at all, then fate intervenes, shit happens, shit multiplies, and here you are. I’m not sure you know half your own story. Want to hear it?”

  He paused, then nodded. He didn’t look happy. I wouldn’t have either.

  I took him through the whole tale. The bug on his father’s computers. The interviews with his aunts and uncles. The junkies at the Black Horse. I skimmed over uncles Walter and Thomas for the moment, we’d come back to them. It took maybe half an hour.

  “You tricked your uncle. You used Irina’s—Salomé’s—e-mail to set up the date at the Black Horse. She found out and followed you there. You weren’t expecting her, you were waiting for him. He didn’t show. You didn’t know he’d been busted with a kid in his car a hundred miles away.”

  “That’s what you were talking about Saturday? When you said rape?”

  “Rockville, Connecticut, is where it happened.”

  “How do you…?”

  “Know what I know? I have lots of sources. Your friend Foos helped.”

  I retraced the ground we’d covered in the car—I wasn’t sure how much had sunk in—I figured the repetition wouldn’t hurt. He didn’t interrupt. He stayed head down, then stood and walked around the room, looking here and there, but seeing little. He returned to the couch where he curled up in a fetal position. He made me feel worse than a Cheka interrogator. Every piece of information I flung inflicted pain.

  I wound down the story. He was in tears. Tough kid evaporated. This was a family matter, except the failings of the family had let others in, to take advantage. Thousands of kids victimized in the pictures and videos Walter Coryell and the BEC enabled. I couldn’t rectify that, but I couldn’t let it go on either.

  “You know where this is going, don’t you?” I asked.

  He shook his head, still crying.

  “Sure you do—Uncle Walter.”

  “What about him?”

  I took out the note from Thomas Leitz’s locker and put it on the coffee table in front of him.

  “I’m sorry, Andras, you have to believe that. This is from your sister.”

  He unwound himself slowly. It took a minute or two for curiosity to win out over self-pity. At least that was my unkind perspective.

  He unfolded the paper and read it. He crushed the note and dropped it as if it burned his fingers. He cried loud, hard enough to shake the walls of the hotel.

  “OH, NO, JESUS GOD. I DIDN’T … I COULDN’T…”

  “Walter was the bad guy. He caused this. Do you understand that?”

  He curled up again, shaking his head.

  “Andras?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “This isn’t your fault.”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s his. He’s the reason you’ve done everything you’ve done. The reason you all have. You’ve got to acknowledge that.”

  No response.

  “Andras?”

  “I need … I need some time … alone.” The voice was below a whisper.

  I didn’t like that idea, but I didn’t see any way around it, if I wanted to stay on his side.

  “Okay.”

  He got to his feet and wandered aimlessly off toward one of the bedrooms. I started to follow, to see where he was going. He closed the door in my face.

  I went back to my chair. The family had delivered nothing but trouble since I’d met them, each member finding a deeper mine to dig. The note on the table looked up at me. The key, I’d told Andras, not sure I was right, until he reacted. None of us can make excuses for abuse, especially of a child. But all too often we seem able to find an excuse for covering it up. For all the right reasons, we tell ourselves, oblivious to the magnification of the crime.

  My cell phone buzzed.

  Victoria said, “Turbo, where are you?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “Can you talk?

  “A little.”

  “I
’m outside your office. I’m sorry about yesterday. I’m … I’m having a hard time reconciling all the conflicting things that are going on.”

  “And I don’t make it any easier.”

  “I wasn’t going to say that. But…”

  “I know. I’m sorry too.”

  “Will you be back?”

  “Not sure when. I’m trying to find the girl before Nosferatu does.”

  “That what Batkin wanted?”

  “Yes. But I’d be doing it anyway.”

  “He still your client?”

  “Not voluntarily. I tried to walk away.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Beria was sitting in a chintz-covered chair.

  How are you going to explain that, smart guy?

  “I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. If you’re asking whether I still feel any obligation to him, the answer is no.”

  Beria frowned at that.

  Victoria hesitated a moment. “I thought about what you said. There are things you should know.”

  “About Konychev?”

  “Among other things, yes.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t, on the phone.”

  “I can’t leave here now. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Your stubbornness is going to be the death of one of us.”

  She hung up. More in frustration than anger this time, or so I hoped. She was trying, I wasn’t helping. That’s the way fate works. Beria smiled.

  I picked up the note and pulled apart the crushed-up ball. I flattened it on the table. Daria Leitz’s tidy script reached through the years, grasping for vengeance.

  If you want to know how this happened, ask Uncle Walter.

  CHAPTER 42

  The first crash was a thudding bang, behind the bedroom door. The second was accompanied by breaking glass. The third, more glass.

  Door locked. Another crash. More shattering glass.

  I kicked the door. Once. Twice. Some give on the third try. The wood cracked on the fourth, and I hit it with my shoulder. It crashed open. Andras was climbing through the shattered window across the room. A blast of cold air blew through my clothes.

  “ANDRAS!” I shouted.

  He turned, just for a moment, enough for me to grab the leg that dangled inside the sill. I hung tight while I gathered my feet under me.