“I was with him,” I said. “He was investigating.”
“Where were you?”
“We were interviewing this girl,” I said. “A Russian hooker who knew Brucie, the kid that killed himself.”
After a moment of silence she said, flatly, not crying: “He told me you were visiting comic stores.”
Well Dean, I thought, not even you could blame me for that one. You’ve got to give me a heads up on this stuff.
“Oh,” I said, “well, we checked out some comic stores too.”
“Don’t you lie to me too,” Tina said. “You’re my only friend up here. I don’t have anything to do all day. I just sit around alone. I miss all our old friends from California. I just feel so bad all the time. Dean doesn’t even touch me.”
“Tina,” I said. “It’s okay! Everything’s okay.”
“Not even my daughter loves me anymore,” Tina sobbed. “She doesn’t respect me because she’s doing so well at school. I’m scared the neighbors know about me. The man across the street always stares at me.”
“Well, of course he does,” I said. “You’re a beautiful woman.”
She snuffled. “No, I’m not.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “You’re totally hot. You’re a MILF.”
That made her laugh a little.
“Who is this Russian prostitute?”
“Just a hooker that Brucie was seeing before he killed himself.”
“Why didn’t Dean tell me about her?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You’ll have to ask him.”
“Can I be honest?” she said. “I wish that he was infatuated with some Russian hooker. So that I had a rival for his affections. Because, that way, he would at least have affections. That I could get.”
At the end of the sentence she was tearing up a bit.
“But I think he’s damaged or something,” she continued. “I think he’s been faking it with me for a long time. Maybe since the beginning. Maybe he was only ever grateful for helping him get clean. Maybe he’s only staying with me because he feels like he owes it to me.”
“That’s crazy,” I said. It was, in fact, not crazy at all. Hearing her say it made me cold. I did not think it would go well for Dean if he came home to an empty house that night. “Look, I’m the last one to talk about working harder in your relationships. But I can tell you I have regrets about my ex-wife. I don’t regret that it didn’t work out, but I wish I’d worked harder at it. I wish I’d earned my way out, like Dr. Phil said.”
“I’ve earned it,” she said. “I’ve earned my right to leave. You don’t have to tell me what Dr. Phil says. I still watch him, even if my husband and daughter are too good for him.”
“Well,” I said, and then I trailed off. What was there to say?
“Why didn’t you ever come over and visit, Terrell?”
“Just busy.”
“Busy with what?”
“My regular life.”
“Well, goodbye,” she said.
“What do you mean goodbye?”
“Well, I’m going.”
“Tina, don’t go. Try to talk it out with Dean.”
“I’m done talking with him,” she said. “I tried all I can.”
“Why don’t you call him?”
“No,” Tina said. She’d calmed down. “I’m leaving. I’ll call him from California. We can figure it out there.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Why don’t you come over for a drink, Terrell?” she said. “It would be nice to see you one last time before I left.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Now it would be easy for me to say I went over there with the intention of talking her out of it. And I kind of did. But on some level, I knew. It was all happening by reflex, by automatic process, but that’s not an excuse.
In her prime, Tina had been what you might call ‘stacked.’ Tall, almost six feet, with spectacular natural breasts, big hips, and big shoulders too. Now, after the two kids, and a few years of retirement, she’d gained between ten and twenty pounds. She had space for it, but I could definitely notice it, as I bent her over the bathroom sink and jammed her from behind, a fistful of her fragrant blond hair in my hand. She moaned and shrieked and we watched ourselves in the mirror. We looked just like what we were: a couple of porn stars who were getting a little long in the tooth. But it felt good, to just let go, to stop thinking, stop worrying, to let it all go.
38
When we were done she seemed to be in a good mood. I had to get out of there because I didn’t want her to see the guilt in my eyes. We hugged and kissed and she whispered in my ear, and then I was out the door and back in my car.
Sex. There are a few precious moments when everything feels okay, when you’re locked into the present. But then that passes, and everything comes rushing back in, everything you forgot about for a little while, along with one more thing to worry about. I felt like that was the story of my whole life, just adding the links to my chains, one after another, like Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol.
The next morning I called Mrs. Burke and asked if she was available to come in for a chat.
“Has there been a development in the case?” she asked.
“I just want to talk to you about some things, in person, if possible.”
She didn’t like that but eventually she agreed to come in on Monday.
Later that afternoon Dean called me.
“Hey man,” he said. “Tom wants us to meet him at his hotel by the airport.”
“Okay,” I said. Just the sound of his voice made me feel sick. “What time?”
“I said two pm so we could beat traffic. I’ve got the car so I’ll pick you up at your work.”
“Okay.”
The first thing he said when I got in the car was:
“Look, I’m sorry about the other night. I really lost my temper. I thought about it and I was out of line.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “But I’m still not sure I’ve forgiven you for letting Desean follow me around.”
“Well,” Dean said, “I’m not sure I’ve forgiven you for fucking my wife.”
He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, and he must have seen the anguish in my face, because the next thing he said was: “I’m sorry.”
Then he laughed, and said: “Jesus, why am I sorry?”
And I started to cry. It was not a manly sight, or a pretty one. I am not a pretty crier. Snot was coming out of my nose even faster than the tears were coming out of my eyes. I started to quake like a jell-o statue. Big noisy sobs. You get the picture. I just felt like my whole shitty life had driven me to this point.
“Sure,” Dean said. His voice wasn’t hard or cruel, it was just extremely tired. “You get to cry. Of course. She cries, you cry. Why don’t I get to cry?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It just happened.”
“People always say that. How do these things just happen for you? They are so difficult for me.”
I was still crying, but more quietly now. I couldn’t look at him, so I stared between my feet at the mat on the floor. If I could have been sent anywhere else in the world, I would have taken it. But there wasn’t any escape.
After a moment, Dean spoke:
“Can I be blunt? It did not just happen. It was your fault. You shouldn’t have done it. But you did not sneak in there and bust up this awesome relationship with your amazing seducing skills. It is my fault it came to this. I knew something was going to happen.”
“Why?” I asked. My voice was still a little raw.
Dean shrugged, and smiled his smile that was like a little wince.
“Well. I met up with Tina when I’d been clean for eight weeks. I started looking after her kid, going to parent teacher meetings, she was supporting me through law school. And I really loved her, and I thought I could give her what she needed. But here is the thing. I can have sex with her, I can be kind to her; I can liste
n to her bitch about the neighbors, her family, and her coworkers for hours on end. I can be a father to her daughter and to our son. I can give her my money, I can cook us nice dinners at night. I can show up to her with social functions. But I can’t feel passionate about her, Terrell. That’s not just a switch I can throw. No matter how much I want to. And I can only fake it for so long, until it becomes clear to her that I’m just going through the motions. I wish I could do it Terrell. I really, really do. But I can’t. I just can’t.”
I was wiping my face, trying to clean up.
“I’m sorry man,” I said again.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry too.”
We drove without saying anything for about one song on the radio, and then I said, out of the blue:
“Do you ever think the blind taste testing is a bad idea?”
“What?” he said.
“Do you ever think that you should stop it?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I was talking about it with some guy, and he didn’t think it was a good idea.”
“Well, I don’t know what you mean. I like it to do it. I think it’s important. But it’s not for everyone. I had this buddy that wouldn’t drink McDonald’s coffee. He said he could taste the additives and chemicals. He swore by the stuff he got at this little independent café. I was like, bullshit. I took him to McDonalds and he spat it out, made this face. So one day I switched his coffee.”
“Did he notice?’
“Yeah, he said, which one is this? I told him it was a new thing, shade-grown Ugandan. He told me it was great.”
“What did he say when you told him the truth?”
“I didn’t have the heart.”
“What?”
“Partially I didn’t want to make him feel stupid. Even though he was stupid. But it was more than that. His identity as a person who insisted on superior coffee was important to him. If I told him the truth he wouldn’t just feel stupid. It would shake his whole world, in a little way. I guess I should have done it. The guy was living a lie. Right? He should know that. The same way I should tell him if I knew, say, his wife was cheating on him, even though it wouldn’t make him happy. But I didn’t. I let him go on believing what he wanted to.”
We didn’t say anything the rest of the way.
39
The hotel was massive, one of those new monstrosities that have sprouted up like Triffids in Toronto’s suburbs. Vaguely modern aesthetic, with smart floors and neat paintings on the walls, but the overwhelming impression was of bland empty space. No one was even near us as we walked to the elevator.
Absolutely nothing I saw anywhere in Tom’s hotel room betrayed the nature of its occupant. The two twin beds were both made and there were no clothes in sight, no novels, no leftover takeout food. A black rolling suitcase and a black carryon bag, both zipped closed. That was it.
I sat down at the little round table near the window, and Tom and Dean sat across from me.
“So what have you got for us?” Dean asked.
Tom motioned to three plain file folders sitting on his desk. “I have some friends who ran a few searches. Let’s start with Vasily Bogdanov.”
He opened the first folder. “Here in Canada he was charged with impaired driving twice, beat it both times. In Russia, some juvenile stuff. Smuggling, black market, that kind of thing, but very low level. We’re talking buying cigarettes in Poland and selling them out of the back of his truck. Then he got started up as a hockey agent over there, and it looks like he was involved in some kind of scandal with a young kid. The kid signed an extension with a Russian club, then left the country and said he signed the contract under duress. Vasily mainly came up in the searches as one of the known associates of a real bad guy. He’s the nephew of one Boris Bogdanov.”
Tom opened the second folder. It was by far the thickest of the three.
“Boris was born in 1960. Educated at University of Moscow. He speaks Russian, English, German, Polish. After he graduated he went straight into the KGB. Worked in East Germany. Rubbed elbows with none other than current Russian President Vladimir Putin. Boris was a bit of a hatchet man. The Germans suspect, although they cannot prove, that he was involved in the deaths of several prominent dissidents. Writers, scientists, so on. They can’t prove it because the official ruling in each case was suicide. By jumping from a high place.”
“Holy fucking shit,” I said.
Tom smiled.
“Anyway, Boris returned to Russia just before the wall fell and though he was named in some investigations, truth commissions, that sort of thing, none of it stuck. After the fall of communism he was out of work and with Yeltsin in power he was out of fashion. He comes up quite a lot in police reports during this time. Drugs, human trafficking, you name it. But it’s all second hand, a guy who knew a guy. No one in his inner circle rolled over on him.
“Of particular note is that in the late nineties Boris was implicated in a rather wide-ranging art scam in Japan. You’re familiar with Soviet Realism?”
Dean nodded, but I said: “Nope.”
“Well, it’s the kind of painting Norman Rockwell would have done under Stalinism. It was a joke for a long time but it came back in vogue after the end of the Cold War. And there was a big scandal when it turned out many of those pictures, particularly those sold in Japan, were forgeries. Our boy Boris’s name again comes up. He was mentioned by a disgraced art dealer. But that dealer didn’t deal directly with Boris, and the man who acted as the intermediary disappeared. The Russians wouldn’t extradite Boris and a lot of the Japanese victims are too embarrassed to testify. Boris skated away again.”
I looked at Dean but he was staring at his feet and drumming his fingers on the table.
“In 2000 Putin came to power in Russia,” Tom said. “You would think Boris would be back in favour, but nope. He immigrated to Canada almost immediately. He had big money in the bank, I guess, and planned to start a business. After he arrived in Canada there’s nothing on him. When I say nothing, I mean nothing. The guy doesn’t even have a driver’s licence.”
Tom closed the folder and put it down, and opened the last one.
“I also did a quick search on your friend Desean,” Tom said. “His juvenile record has been expunged, although safe to say he had one considering where he grew up. As an adult he has only been charged once. Human trafficking and living off the avails of prostitution. But he wasn’t convicted. It looks like the state was relying on two witnesses. One of them recanted her testimony. And the other one? Guess.”
Tom closed the final folder, looked at me and smiled.
“The other,” I said, “killed herself by jumping off a bridge.”
“You got it,” Tom said.
“Can I see the folders?” I asked.
“Be my guest,” Tom said.
I opened the one for Boris and paused at the first page.
“What’s this photo from?” I asked.
“It’s from the eighties,” Tom said. “It was the only one in the file.”
I stared hard at the picture, trying to remember how I knew that face. The short, light blond hair. The blue eyes. Looked a little like somebody famous, I just couldn’t remember who.
And then I knew. I dropped the file like I’d been scalded.
“What?” Dean said. “What?”
“This is the guy,” I said.
“What guy?”
“This is the guy from the fishing store!” I said.
40
I jumped up and started pacing back and forth frantically.
“What the fuck man?” I said. “He’s seen my face when I went into his store! Now he knows that I was talking to Ha, he’s got his fucking adopted son or whatever following me around, they’re going to throw me off a bridge …”
“Unlikely,” Tom said.
“Unlikely?” I shouted. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“Hey,” Dean said. “Have you been
writing your daily reports?”
“What does that mean?”
“Well,” Dean said. “If you have, not much sense in killing you, is there?”
“What?” I asked.
Tom wasn’t even paying attention. He’d gone back to writing in his little book.
“There’s no point in killing you,” Dean said. “Right? Look, what does this guy Boris know about you? You’re a private detective and you’re sniffing around his business. What’s the point of whacking you? If they did, someone else from your agency would just get the file. And they’d read your notes. Right? And then they’d just call the cops.”
“Which is what we should do right now,” I said.
“Sure,” Dean said. “We’ll do that soon.”
Something about his tone wasn’t very reassuring.
“But in the meantime,” Dean said, “I don’t think you have too much to worry about. I think Desean is trying to learn a bit about you. Maybe even scare you too. Show that they know where you live. That kind of thing. But kill you? No way.”
“A picture is starting to emerge,” Tom said. “Uncle Boris, at the very least, is a human trafficker and a pimp, and he runs such a smooth operation that there isn’t any significant dirt even on his chief lieutenant. This Oksana, or Tanya, is one of his girls. Nephew Vasily is either an associate or a customer or both. Vasily and Oksana make a little extra money through Brucie.”
“And this comic thing,” Dean said. “It sounds like Uncle Boris’s work for sure. Are you kidding me? What easy money. Once you get those fake comics in the box, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Who is ever going to open them?”
“I don’t disagree,” Tom said. “But there is no evidence linking Vasily or Boris to the comics, other than that Vasily knew both Derek Ha and Brucie Goldstein. We need that evidence.”
“And you don’t want the cops to do it, do you?” I asked. “Why would you? You don’t want to publicize that CQC got fooled. You want to keep it all on the down low.”
“I think we all want the same thing here, Mr. Delacroix,” he said.
I wasn’t so sure of that, at all.
“Well,” Dean said. “Let’s be clear here. We can’t leave Terrell twisting in the wind for too much longer. On the other hand, Tom’s right. All we have right now is a theory. And Boris knows something is up. He’s sniffing the wind right now. If we get any closer, I bet you anything he’s going to get on a plane disappear, and get rid of anything that could connect him to all this.”
The Black Box: A novel Page 15
