by Mike Doogan
“We’ve got a situation,” Doyle said. “We need to figure out what to do.”
“Why don’t you stop bouncing around like a demented bunny rabbit and tell me what’s going on?” Kane said.
Doyle threw himself into the chair and immediately started bouncing on the seat.
“Bezhdetny’s lawyer called me,” Doyle said. “He said his client wants to see you.”
“So?” Kane said.
“It’s unusual—it’s very unusual,” Doyle said. “Someone who is accused of crimes wanting to see one of the witnesses? It’s not done. I think I should go with you.”
“Stop bouncing,” Kane said. “You’re making me seasick. Have you been using illegal substances to pep you up?”
The lawyer stopped bouncing, stood, and pulled himself to his full height.
“I do not use illegal substances,” he said with dignity. “Although I have had a lot of coffee this morning.”
Then he began pacing. Kane sat thinking, then said, “What does Bezhdetny want?”
Doyle paused in his pacing to say, “His lawyer claimed not to know. Said he’d advised his client that such a meeting was unwise but that his client insisted.”
“Okay,” Kane said. “I’ll do it.” Doyle started to say something, but Kane held up his hand. “It’s not that much of a problem. I’m not really a witness against the guy; Alma Atwood and Grantham are. And who knows? Maybe he wants to confess to killing Melinda Foxx.”
So Kane found himself limping into the hospital again, leaning on Cocoa’s arm. The detective was wearing fancy gear that Cocoa had purchased at the outdoor store across from the hotel.
“It breathes,” the cabbie had said as he dragged it out of the bags. “It repels insects. It will probably do your taxes if you let it.”
Salmon and balsam aren’t really my colors, Kane thought, but at least the stuff is clean.
A uniformed cop sat on a chair outside of Bezhdetny’s room.
“I’m going to have to pat you down,” he said, and did so. When he was finished, Kane went into the room. Bezhdetny lay like Gulliver, strapped to a bed he came close to overflowing, his left leg raised above the bed by a cat’s cradle of wires. Tubes and wires ran from machines and disappeared under his hospital gown. His hair was a mess and there were deep lines in his face. Kane moved slowly to the chair beside the bed and sat.
“You look like I feel,” he said.
Bezhdetny gave him a wan smile.
“I apologize for the shooting,” he said. “There should have been no shooting, but those men had no training and no discipline.”
Kane shrugged and said, “I suppose there’s no reason criminals should have better luck getting good help than anyone else.” When Bezhdetny didn’t reply, he said, “Why did you want to see me?”
“My lawyer is negotiating now with the authorities,” Bezhdetny said. “He is trying to make a deal. I will name my employer and testify against him for certain considerations in charging and sentencing. Therefore, I cannot tell you the name of my employer, although I can tell you everything else.”
“Why would you do that?” Kane asked.
“Why would I not?” Bezhdetny said, surprise in his voice. “Someone killed those people, that White Rose and the other. Maybe something I say will help you catch that killer.”
Kane thought about that for a while, then said, “Okay. Start talking.”
Bezhdetny reached over and took a cup from the table that was positioned next to the bed. His hand shook. He managed to corral the straw with his lips and suck down some liquid. He put the cup back and began.
“I am from Kiev,” he said. “My parents were not important, so I didn’t have many opportunities. But I did well in school and was accepted by the state security service. That is where I learned English. I had a good life in Kiev by the standards of the time. But I had rivals, too, in my job—office politics, you know? They are everywhere—and when one of them was promoted over me, he sent me to Magadan, in the Russian Far East. Magadan is not so nice as Kiev. Not so nice as Hell, really. But there were opportunities and compensations for a man in my position, so I made the best of it.
“Then the Communists gave up. Can you believe it? It was like I had been cursed. I did not get paid and life in Magadan got worse. I thought about going back to Ukraine, but why? So I came here, to Alaska. I had met some people on cultural exchanges, and everyone was so happy about the change in relations that I had very little difficulty getting the necessary permissions.”
Bezhdetny took another drink, sighed, and continued.
“I thought perhaps my luck had changed. I studied those around me and decided that politics offered the fastest path to success. So I came to Juneau and got a job working in the lounge, and I watched and I learned. Perhaps no one in history paid such close attention to the Alaska State Legislature and how it worked and how someone could make money from it. It was obvious that of all the people associated with the legislature, a lobbyist made the most money. So I became a lobbyist.
“At first, I thought my lack of success was due to the fact that I was new and did not know the task well. Then I thought perhaps it was because I was an outsider and did not have the connections necessary to succeed. But as time went on I realized that history was my handicap. I had grown up in a much different society, with different standards and rules, and no amount of study and hard work would give me the…reflexes…I needed to succeed here.”
The Ukrainian stopped to stare off into the distance for a while.
“Once I realized that, I didn’t know what to do. I am getting older and I have the same concerns as anyone: What happens if I get sick? What do I live on when I retire? I began to feel that I had wasted my life and my opportunities and that the curse had defeated me.
“Then, near the end of the last legislative session, the man I will not name came to see me. He owns a company in the oil field service business. He told me he knew that the legislature would attempt to raise taxes on the oil industry. This, he said, would slow down oil development and cost him a lot of money. He needed my help to prevent it.
“I knew who this man was. I knew he could afford many lobbyists much more successful than I. I asked him why he was talking to me then. He said that with oil prices so high, regular lobbying could not defeat this bill, that the House was impossible, and that he had counted the votes in the Senate and was one short. He said that he knew something of my past, and that he thought perhaps I had learned some things in state security in the Soviet Union that would help him prevail. He said he would pay me much money, but that I would be hired—how did he put it?—off the books.
“I asked him for time to think. I didn’t know what he meant. Americans have this strange idea of the old Soviet Union, one that perhaps made him believe I had spent all my time in state security making people do things against their will. The truth is that all I pushed around was paper. I spent my time drinking tea with my comrades and standing in lines and maybe enjoying too much vodka at night.
“But I looked at his list of names and how they would vote, and I saw Senator Grantham’s name and I had an idea. I knew that he was having an extramarital affair of long standing with his aide. Such a man is subject to pressure. I thought about asking his aide, Alma, to help me bring that pressure but decided she would not. Then I asked myself, What does such a man as Grantham want? And the answer came to me: A younger, more beautiful woman. I knew his receptionist was quitting, so I found such a woman who would do what I asked for money, helped her compose a résumé that would get her hired, sat back, and waited.”
Bezhdetny tried to adjust himself in the bed and winced.
“This knee is very painful,” he said. “They did much surgery on it and say they must do more. I had no idea how powerful that man was, that such a powerful man existed. It is the curse working, that I should encounter this man who is more powerful than I.”
He shook his head, then picked up the thread of his story.
“As I thought, Senator Grantham was attracted to the younger, more beautiful woman and I soon had what I needed. I told my employer to arrange for the bill to advance and that I was certain there were not eleven votes to pass it.
“Then Melinda Foxx was murdered and Senator Hope arrested. And I became greedy. I blame myself, although I had been working around greedy people for so long I can understand completely my failure. I thought that if I could just keep Senator Hope off the scene, I could save my information on Senator Grantham for another time, another client. So I asked this man I cannot name for some help and he sent me those two amateurs.”
“I don’t understand,” Kane said. “How could you expect to manipulate the criminal justice system to keep Hope out of the Senate long enough to do what you wanted?”
Bezhdetny shrugged.
“I wasn’t sure that I could,” he said. “But I knew that others, some for the same reasons as I and some for other reasons, would want Senator Hope to be out of the picture. And I only needed three days: One to get the bill to the floor, one for the vote, and one for the reconsideration vote.
“My plan was good, but it did not allow for Senator Potter ’s ambition. He wanted to hold the bill in his committee and win the support of the oil companies for his candidacy for governor. So the bill did not move. I needed to keep Senator Hope in jail longer. I thought perhaps to take his attorney captive, but feared that would stir up the authorities too much. Then the man who I cannot name told me that you were coming to investigate. Even in the Soviet Union, lawyers are dependent on investigators, so I knew that removing you would slow the proceedings. I sent those men to see you, but you bested them. Then Senator Hope was released, so I decided to abandon that strategy.
“I went to Senator Grantham and told him about the evidence I had of his infidelity, and he reacted as I thought he would. But before I could do anything more, I heard about the report of Melinda Foxx’s pregnancy. And the other aide was murdered, and I knew Senator Hope would be arrested once more.”
He raised a fist and pounded weakly on the hospital bed’s metal railing.
“Again, I was greedy,” he said, “greedy and stupid and proud. I should have continued as I did, in the end, with Grantham. But I wanted to keep that information for later. And you had insulted me in the restaurant by declining my hospitality. I knew that Alma wanted to leave, so I arranged your capture. I told myself that without your help Senator Hope would be less likely to be released, but really I was only trying to salvage my pride. But it was all for nothing. The bill moved more quickly to the floor than I anticipated, and I was unable tell Senator Grantham he could vote as he wished. Then you escaped, and now here we are.”
He waved vaguely at the room and was silent.
“You had me kidnapped because I insulted you?” Kane said. “Really?”
“It is so,” Bezhdetny said. “Since coming to Alaska, I have swallowed many insults many times. I saw an opportunity for revenge that seemed to coincide with my goals and I took it.”
Kane sat trying to digest that. A smart man would have ignored his emotions, wouldn’t he? That’s what he’d always thought: Don’t let your emotions interfere with your work. But was he doing so well that he could look down at the Ukrainian for trying to get a little of his own back?
“So your efforts were all about the oil tax bill?” Kane said. “And you had nothing to do with Melinda Foxx being killed?”
Bezhdetny nodded.
“That is correct,” he said.
“Might your employer have had it done?” Kane asked.
“Why would he?” Bezhdetny asked. “She was not a problem on oil taxes, and that is all he is interested in.”
Kane sighed. If Bezhdetny was telling the truth, and he seemed to be, then he was probably right. His efforts to defeat the oil tax bill and Melinda Foxx’s murder weren’t connected.
“Do you know anything about that murder that might help me?” Kane asked.
Bezhdetny smiled.
“That, really, is why I asked you here, to see your face when I told you this,” he said. “As I said, I watched everyone very carefully. I do know something about Melinda Foxx that might help you. But I will not tell you what it is. I will not tell anyone, unless I need the information to trade with the authorities.”
The Ukrainian laughed unpleasantly.
“You have ruined my life,” Bezhdetny said. “I will not help you with yours. We are like your country and my country, Nik Kane. You have won a battle but not the war. You may leave now.”
31
A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma.
MARLENE DIETRICH
The bastard,” Doyle said when Kane called to tell him about his interview with the Ukrainian. His voice was so revved up with anger that it was practically ultrasonic. “He knows something that will help us and he won’t spill it because, why, he’s pissed at you?”
“Says he knows something,” Kane said. “We don’t know that he actually does.”
In the silence that ensued, Kane looked around his hotel room. He needed to finish with the lawyer, take a shower, and get some sleep. He wanted to be more alert when Dylan arrived.
“So did you believe him?” Doyle asked.
“I believe most of his story,” Kane said. “It had just the right mixture of intelligence and incompetence to be a true criminal story. But knowing something about the murder? He might just be trying to mess with me to get even. I don’t know what to believe.”
“Yeah, me either,” the lawyer said. “We could tell the cops and see if they can get anything out of him. But it might be handy just to file that piece of information away until we need it. This Bezhdetny seems like just the kind of villain juries love to pin things on. With him in the mix, Matthew Hope skates out of trouble.”
“I thought about that,” Kane said. “You might be able to keep Hope out of prison, but the only thing that saves his political career is establishing his innocence.”
“Saving his political career is not my problem,” Doyle squeaked.
“You may not think so,” Kane said, “but I’m sure your client, and the woman who is paying you, would both like that to happen. So I reckon I’ll just keep snooping around.”
“I’m not sure I like that,” Doyle said. “If you continue investigating, you might turn up information that hurts our case rather than helps it.”
“Risk you take,” Kane said and closed his phone.
He took a while getting out of his clothes, then examined the bandage on his leg. No blood showed. He’d had Cocoa stop at the grocery store on their way back to the hotel and buy a roll of plastic wrap. Now he covered the bandage in several layers of plastic, got into the bathtub, and turned the shower on as hot as he could stand it. He let the water wash his thoughts away, until his mind was blank to everything but the pounding of the spray. He didn’t know how long he had been standing there when he roused himself, shampooed his hair, washed his body, rinsed, and got out of the shower.
Toweling himself off was a logistical nightmare, and the calf of his wounded leg was still wet when he dragged himself out of the bathroom and flopped onto the bed. He had just enough energy left to leave a wake-up call before his eyes closed and he was gone.
The telephone woke him. A recorded voice told him to wake up. The pain that shot through his thigh when he swung his legs out of the bed nearly made him faint.
Maybe lying down and stiffening up wasn’t the best idea, he thought.
He gritted his teeth, levered himself to his feet, and more or less hopped into the bathroom, where he splashed cold water on his face. He dried himself, ate some prescription painkillers the doctor had given him, and made it back to the bedroom, where he tried vainly to dress without hurting himself some more.
This is stupid, he thought. I’d have as much luck throwing the clothes into the air an
d running under them. So he put up with the pain it took to get dressed, then hopped around making the bed and picking clothing wrappers and tags off the floor. When he was satisfied with the condition of the room, he sat in the chair to wait. He opened Montaigne and found himself at an essay called “Of Judging the Death of Others.” He read along until he hit a quotation from Pliny: “A quick death is the supreme good fortune of human life.”
Is that so? he thought. Maybe if you are old or in bad health. But for a young and vital person like Melinda Foxx, was that really good fortune? And what about the man he had shot? Certainly, his death was quick. But didn’t he regret, even in that moment, all the life he might have had if he’d behaved differently? Or are the young so sure of their immortality that they never consider death, even when they are looking it in the face?
And he himself, Nik Kane? He could feel the breath of age on him. Would a quick death be a blessing? Since he’d gotten to Juneau, he’d had nothing but aches and pains and injuries, his pleasant, happy moments, like the night he’d spent with Alma Atwood, only setting him up for more unpleasant, unhappy ones.
No, he decided, putting the book down. I’m not ready to die. I have too much to do, too much damage to repair, too many flaws to overcome, to welcome a quick death. I am, as Montaigne says, like everyone else, too full of myself to contemplate death: “Whence it follows that we consider our death a great thing, and one which does not pass so easily, nor without solemn consultation with the stars.”
That’s me, he thought. Too important to die.
He found he’d been sitting there for some time, thinking what Laurie would have called “morbid thoughts,” when a knock at the door brought him to. He got to his feet with difficulty and let Dylan in. He offered the young man the chair and perched on the bed.
“This is easier on my leg anyway,” he said.
Dylan picked up the book and looked at the cover.
