by Alina Adams
Which was why, for skating purposes, all Russians had only first names when spoken about and addressed on the air, and only first and last names when they were Chyroned during a broadcast (the only exception being Russians who had particularly difficult-to-pronounce first names, like Stanislav or the aforementioned Ludmilla, at which point they were to be given nicknames like Stan and Millie and exclusively called that while they were skating and later while being interviewed). To show how the arrangement wasn't personal or culturally insensitive in the slightest, Gil also pointed out that 24/7 had a policy regarding the Chinese skaters as well. Even though 24/7 knew full well that in China a person's family name came first and their given name last, 24/7 would reverse the order on air and on the Chyron. Because, well, because they could.
Which brought Bex back to her current dilemma.
"Hello, Sergei," she said, knowing full well that she was being disrespectful in both his culture and her own. And knowing full well there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it.
"What can I do for you, Miss?" Oh. And one more thing to discombobulate her. Popeye and Ronald McDonald's Russian love child sounded eerily like Paul McCartney. In an interview at the start of the season, Sergei had told Bex that he taught himself English by buying bootleg Soviet Beatles records, transcribing the songs, and looking each word up in the dictionary.
"Oh, right, yes," Bex stammered, wishing that, at the moment, her English were half as good as his. "Listen, we're doing a special for the Sunday exhibition on Silvana Potenza's death. Do you think I could come in and maybe ask you a few questions?"
Did Bex imagine it, or did Sergei actually flex those head-to-toe rippling muscles of his as he considered her request? She tried to remember her “Murder, She Wrote”: Was it prudent to walk alone into the hotel room of a potential murder suspect who looked like he could crack her skull like a walnut merely by pursing his muscular hips?
"All right," Sergei said after a beat and stepped aside from the door to let her pass.
Guess Bex was about to find out the answer to her question. (For the record, she was really hoping it was yes.)
His hotel room was standard issue. Two double beds, two end tables, two lamps, a chair by the window, a TV, a full- length mirror, and a dresser, on top of which lay what looked to Bex like half the breakfast buffet from the competitors' lounge downstairs. There were slices of bread stuffed into plastic baggies, cold cuts and cheese, packets of tea, three apples, four boxes of cold cereal, and a bagel that looked prechewed, as if it had been stuffed into somebody's pocket. And then Bex remembered: while the local organizing committee made sure that skaters had tickets for their meals, they usually didn't distribute them to the coaches. The coaches had to buy the passes to eat in the competitors' lounge. Most could easily afford it. Some clearly couldn't.
Sergei saw Bex looking at his hoard and swallowed in embarrassment. He shifted from foot to foot, then abruptly barked, "So. You wished to speak to me about Silvana?"
"Yes." Bex nodded furiously, as if vigor could wipe away both his embarrassment and her embarrassment at causing his embarrassment and so on and so on. "I do. I—I want to show you something."
He crossed his arms. It looked like two jumbo jets refueling. "Very well."
Bex reached into her research binder, feeling her hand trembling and reasoning that it had a pretty good cause to do so. After all, if walking alone into the hotel room of a potential murder suspect who looked like he could crack her skull like a walnut merely by pursing his muscular lips was less than prudent, what in the world would Angela Lansbury say about taunting and/or infuriating said murder suspect by showing him her one piece of evidence?
Bex slipped the E-mail copy out of the binder and folded it at the top so that Sergei's return E-mail address wasn't instantly visible. She took a small step toward him and stretched her arm forward, close enough for Sergei to see the list of skaters' names in their order of finish but far enough away that, if he wanted to grab it, she could still spring back.
At least, that was the plan. Bex figured it was always good to have a plan.
Bex said, "Silvana had this E-mail in her purse when she died."
Sergei squinted, trying to read the small print, but at no point did he make any effort to actually reach for the copy or bring it closer. Bex was most grateful for that. On top of her fear of being murdered, dismembered, and tucked away in a plastic bag next to the squished bagel, there was also her fear of Sergei grabbing the E-mail, ripping it up, Bex not being able to get another copy from Stace and, as a result, feeling most stupid. To be honest, Bex wasn't even sure which doomsday scenario she was actually most afraid of. At least, when you were dead, you didn't have to live with your stupidity.
Sergei said, "That list, it's not accurate, you know?"
"What?" Bex had been so busy imagining him stuffing the plastic bags full of her into the minibar and some hapless tourist stumbling upon them when he only wanted a ten-dollar can of Fresca, that she hadn't even bothered following along with what Sergei was reading.
"Yes, look, right here." Sergei lightly tapped the E-mail with his finger, making Bex realize that what she'd assumed to be a safe distance was actually about as safe as a stop sign at the edge of a cliff. "After the top three girls, Xenia, Erin, Jordan, the list is actually not at all consistent with the final standings."
"It isn't?" Bex hated to admit it, but she hadn't looked beyond the top three, figuring everything else was irrelevant.
"No, it's not. For instance, cast your eyes, here, at Lian Reilley. She is ninth on this list, when I believe she finished seventh overall, did she not?"
"Uhm ..." Bex said.
"This isn't the final standing for the ladies' final."
Bex turned the E-mail to face her and finally deigned to look lower than third place—like she should have done in the first place. "No, you're right, it's not. Definitely not." But then a brainstorm slapped her, and she practically jumped in place from the impact. "Sergei, do you have the competition protocol handy?"
The protocol, a four-colored book of all the results, including every judge's marks for every skater during the course of the competition—pink for the ladies, blue for the men, yellow for pairs, and green for dance—was printed and handed out as soon as the last event was officially completed. Bex's was back at the production trailer. But fortunately, Sergei had one handy.
He handed the book to Bex, and she eagerly leafed through it, finding exactly what she was looking for in minutes. She was a researcher, after all.
This time, she actually checked closely, comparing every name on the E-mail against the one in the protocol before leaping to her conclusion.
"Aha," she said, mostly because she'd always wanted to, and those opportunities, like the ones for visiting a police station, did come up so rarely. "Look," she pounded her finger triumphantly against the pink sheets. "The list on the E-mail, it may not be the official, final result, but it is exactly how Silvana voted. Lian Reilley may have finished seven overall on the ordinals, but Silvana had her in ninth place."
"Oh," Sergei said. "I see. Well, then, I suppose that is logical."
Bex said, "Silvana got this E-mail the morning before the ladies' final, and that night, she voted exactly the way the E-mail told her to."
"Yes," Sergei nodded. "That would seem to be the case under consideration."
Bex asked, "Do you have any idea who sent this to her?"
Sergei shook his head. "I did not know Silvana very well. We were acquaintances, nothing more. She judged me when I was still competing."
Bex unfolded the top of the E-mail, wishing there was music to accompany her dramatic revelation. She said, according to the return address, "You, Sergei, sent her the e-mail."
Between the word "you" and "sent," Sergei had reached over and snatched the copy out of Bex's fingers. She didn't even have the chance to react, much less stop him. Well, so much for her certainty that she'd be able to leap out of the way should he de
cide to kill her.
"This is ridiculous! Ludicrous! Unconscionable!" Apparently, when he got angry, Sergei's English slipped from the Beatles into Masterpiece Theatre land. "Where did you get this? Who gave this nonsense to you?"
"It was inside Silvana's purse. I got it at the police station. The officer in charge of the investigation will confirm that it's authentic."
"Rubbish! Fucking rubbish!" Now there was a word Bex didn't hear much of on PBS. "You think this means I was in cahoots with Silvana Potenza to obfuscate the results?"
"Yes," Bex said. "That's exactly what I think."
Only without the word obfuscate.
Sergei said, "Xenia told me she believed there was a conspiracy against her. She told me the American media wanted to take her medal away and give it to Erin Simpson. I did not believe her at first. I told her that is not what Americans are like. Truth and justice for all, that's what Americans believe in. They would not cheat a poor Russian girl out of a prize she deserved."
"Do you believe she deserved it?" Bex knew that the middle of a pro-American political treatise was probably not the best time to interrupt, but it did beg the question so tidily. "Do you have no doubts at all that your skater deserved to beat Erin Simpson?"
"Don't be foolish," Sergei said. "To say I have no doubts is to pretend skating is a sport of the clock, like horse racing or the America's Cup. Skating is subjective, every person knows that. Four judges preferred Erin Simpson's skating. They are not wrong, they are merely in the minority. That is also most American, is it not? Majority rules? Majority ruled in this case; it always does in skating. Five judges voted for Xenia. So Xenia deserved to win. Absolutely."
"But, if Silvana's vote was tainted ..."
"Not by me!"
"So you do think it was tainted by someone?"
"What evidence do you have of this?"
"Well, this E-mail, for starters."
"I did not send it."
"Is it your E-mail address?"
A pause. Then, reluctantly: "Yes."
"Does anyone else have access to your account?"
More reluctance. "No."
"So who then—"
"I have no way of sending an E-mail. I have no computer."
"You have an E-mail address but no computer?"
"No." Even his eyeballs were muscular when they rolled in his head. "I have no computer with me when I travel. None on the premises."
"Oh." Bex looked around the room. Yup, definitely no computer that she could see. Of course, that didn't mean ... "Couldn't you have used someone else's?"
"I did not send this E-mail!" Sergei thundered. Bex wondered if it would be redundant to add that even his tongue had muscles. "If Silvana were still alive, she would tell you this. I did not tell her or ask her or pay her to do anything for me and for Xenia!"
"Which brings me to my next point," Bex said. "If Silvana really didn't cheat, why do you think she refused to speak up and clear her name?"
Sergei's breath was coming out in gasps. Not the uncontrolled gasps of an out-of-shape weekend athlete gulping for air at the end of a mile run. But the slow, steady, controlled in and out breaths of a man so in charge of every fiber of his being that he could regulate his heartbeat and the color of his face and the timbre of his voice simply through inhaling and exhaling. Bex bet that Sergei's pulse hadn't budged since their conversation began. She bet that his blood pressure was perfectly normal and not a bead of sweat had squeaked out of a single pore. And yet, he was nervous. Bex would have bet her life on it.
Why the heck not? She was already betting her life on him being able to stay in control long enough to refrain from killing her.
"I do not know why Silvana did not defend herself."
"Did you ask her?"
"Yes." Up until the moment the word came out of his mouth, Sergei had been shaking his head side to side. And yet, in the end, he seemed incapable of lying. "Yes, I did. When she would not speak to the press corps and impart upon them her side of the story, I did ask her why."
"And what did she say?"
"She said ... she said ..." Sergei cleared his throat. "She said that to answer the charges against her would be to dignify them with a reply."
"And she didn't want to do that?"
"No. She did not. She said answering the charges would make the media corps think they had the right to make the accusation."
"And she didn't think they had that right?"
"There is no proof Silvana cheated. How dare they ask her questions with no proof?"
"What about this E-mail?"
"This E-mail is a lie!"
"What a shame Silvana isn't alive to tell us that."
"You think I killed her." Like Xenia, Sergei did not so much ask a question as make a statement. Bex wondered if this was another side of the Russian psychology. After a century of borderline-psychotic leadership, they were much more accustomed than Americans to being accused of committing random crimes.
"You have to admit, you have an excellent motive. If Silvana is dead, she can never confess to colluding with you and changing the results. Xenia gets to keep her title. She's your first world champion student, isn't she?"
"Yes. Xenia is the first."
"And," Bex pressed on, "In fact, she's kind of your nyah-nyah-nyah in the face of the Russian federation, isn't she?"
Finally, Sergei asked a question. "What is nyah-nyah-nyah, please?"
"It means Xenia's win is a chance for both you and Xenia to stick a finger in the Russian federation's eye and tell them they were wrong about you both. Xenia told me the federation thought she was finished, that they withdrew their support, their funding."
"The federation knows about business. They do not know skating."
"They never supported you, either, did they Sergei?"
"I was national champion. Three times."
"And one of those years, they left you off the world team in favor of another skater." Bex loved it when she got to use her research powers. Made her feel like a superhero.
"So? Past history. Long time ago." Now Bex knew Sergei was feeling nervous. His hard-earned English grammar was disappearing by the mouthful.
"The reason Xenia is your only big student is because the federation won't let anyone they consider a real contender take from you." Like Xenia and Sergei, Bex decided to give that whole nonquestion statements strategy a try.
"Not true."
"No?" Darn...
"They allow them to take from me. They just will not pay for them to take from me."
"Ah." Hoo-ha, she was getting good at this!
"I bet that's all going to change now." Bex framed her guess as yet another statement. "You've coached a world champion. I bet the money will just start rolling in. And I'm not even counting the percentage you get from Xenia."
Ever since "amateur" skaters started earning prize money along with their medals, their coaches started taking a percentage of the winnings.
Sergei conceded nothing. "Perhaps this will happen, yes."
"So you've got a lot to lose if Xenia is stripped of her title."
"You are playing pretend games."
"And you certainly had a lot to gain from first telling Silvana how to vote, then making sure she could never expose you."
"I did not kill Silvana."
"Can you prove it?" Bex gambled that a Russian wouldn't know anything about innocent until proven guilty.
"Yes," said Sergei.
Double darn. "Okay, I'm listening."
"Silvana was killed while the women were practicing, correct?"
"Correct."
"Well, I was not at the arena at that time."
"You weren't?" Bex pointed out, "Xenia said you were. She said all of the ladies doing the exhibition were there, along with their coaches."
"Xenia is confused. She is used to my always being with her on the practice, and so she forgot that this time I actually was not."
Okay. Now. A big part of Bex's job as 24/7 rese
archer was to interview the skaters and coaches and write down their answers. Even when she didn't exactly believe them. For instance, it didn't matter that Lian Reilley had yet to land her triple-triple combination in competition. Bex still, for every event, dutifully wrote down, "Lian will be performing a triple-triple combination in her long program." Because that's what Lian and Gary Gold told her. But this ... this was a jump of a different edge. Bex wasn't about to take anything either Sergei or Xenia told her at face value. Even if, at the moment, she figured it was in her best interests to pretend she did.
"Fine. So if you weren't with Xenia at the arena, where were you?"
"Here."
"In the hotel?"
"In my room."
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"I thought you said you can prove where you were. If you were alone and nobody saw you, that's not what we call an airtight alibi."
"I was speaking on the telephone."
"To whom?"
"To—to a person."
"Really? Well, that narrows it down."
"To a friend. Yes. To a friend."
"Can I call this friend to confirm?"
"Absolutely, yes." Sergei fumbled in his pocket for a scrap of paper and after a moment of rifling, pulled out a folded-up, old receipt. He handed it to Bex without a second thought. A phone number was scribbled in blue pen across the back. "Here," he said. "Here is who I was speaking to. Please call and ask. He will confirm."
On her way down to the lobby in the hotel elevator, Bex felt like the proverbial cat that'd swallowed an entire shelf of Barnes & Noble self-improvement manuals. Yes, Oprah, yes, Dr. Phil, yes, the really tall guy with the infomercial, she felt that empowered! In fact, if at that moment Bex were pressed to come up with a title for her own existence, she'd feel obligated to go with "You're Okay, but I So, So Rock."
