by Chris Orcutt
“Hi, Laura. Listen, I have to—”
“What’re you doin’ in town? Do you live here now? Last I heard, you were in D.C. Are you still with the FBI?”
“Laura, I’d love to talk, but I have to catch somebody. Sorry.”
“Wait…how about a drink later? We could—”
“Another time maybe.” I spied the pre-wrapped bouquets of flowers on her kiosk. “How much for these? Oh, whatever. Here.” I tossed down two twenties, grabbed the flowers and took off.
“Bye, Dakota!”
I ran up the stairs and through the station searching for Svetlana’s gate. At the very end of the cavernous terminal, I saw a group of men leering at someone and ribbing each other. As I got closer, I saw who they were leering at: Svetlana in a short belted trench coat that showed off her legs. Even the Amtrak employee checking tickets, a dowdy middle-aged woman, was sneaking an envious peek. Svetlana was third in line to go out to the platform. I had to act fast.
My hair was dripping, so I took a detour through the food court, grabbed a fistful of napkins and dried myself off the best I could. When I emerged next to her platform entrance, she was already gone.
Through the open doorway I glimpsed her wheeling a Louis Vuitton suitcase down the platform. Unsure what to do, I considered the Amtrak woman and something occurred to me: Deep down, most middle-aged women are hopeless romantics. I went to the front of the line and showed her the flowers.
“That’s my girlfriend, the one that just went out,” I said. “I need to ask her to marry me, but I don’t have a ticket.”
She nodded and smiled. “Sure, honey…go ahead. Good luck!”
I ran outside. The rain was streaming off the platform roof. Three train cars down, Svetlana was about to board.
“Svetlana Krüsh!” I shouted. “Wait!”
Initially she looked annoyed to hear someone shouting her name, but as she turned and peered down the platform, she recognized me. For a nanosecond, her face brightened, before returning to its default intensity. I caught up to her at the train door.
“Please don’t leave,” I said. “I’m sorry about the other day. Here, these are for you.”
“Thank you, Dakota,” she said, “but there is no need to apologize. You were right—I am not a detective. I am a chess player. That is what I know, and I need to focus on what I know.”
“No, Svetlana,” I said. “You have an untapped talent for detective work and you need to pursue it.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “but...”
Other passengers rubbernecked at us as they boarded the train. Down the platform, the locomotive engines idled loudly. Svetlana compressed her lips and eyed the car door.
“Don’t leave, Svetlana,” I said.
“We will see each other again, Dakota. We both live in Manhattan and we know how to reach each other. And I will still rent you the basement of my building if you want.”
“I don’t care about that,” I said. “Look…can we talk about this? It’s really important.”
“Dakota, my train is leaving any minute.”
“Take the next one.”
“This is the last train tonight. I have a blitz tournament at the Marshall tomorrow.”
“The Marshall?”
“The Marshall Chess Club,” she said. “My base of operations. Now I really must go. Thank you for the flowers. Call me sometime soon and we will make arrangements regarding the office space. Goodnight.”
She turned and was about to step into the train when I blurted out, “Svetlana, you were right! About all of it! Don’t go!”
She turned around and stepped under the platform eaves beside me. “You have my attention.”
“I was wrong to say we should drop the case,” I said. “I only said it because my old boss, the Director of the FBI, was pressuring me. I care, Svetlana. I care about those girls. I do. Hear me out, please.”
In a rapid monologue I told her about everything case-related that had happened since the two of us argued in the Charles hotel bar: returning to Malone’s, only to find the place cleaned out; foiling the kidnapping at Walden Pond; and learning that the fourteen abducted girls were being held at the waterfront in Quebec City, and that they were being shipped to Dubai by container ship in three days. I decided not to mention Sally and me ravishing each other, and I capped my speech by saying I’d given Svetlana’s advice a lot of thought.
“The bottom line is,” I said, “I need you, Svetlana.”
“Oh?” She squinted at me. “How?”
“Well, for starters, I have to go to Quebec City and I don’t speak French,” I said. “Stanley said you speak two or three languages.”
“Six.”
“Languages?” I said.
She nodded.
“Wow. And French is one of them?”
“Oui,” she said. “That means ‘yes.’ ”
I gave her a waggish smirk. “Look, can we talk about this…inside maybe? There’s a bar in the station. Even if you—”
She shook her head. “There is no time for socializing. You said the ship with the girls leaves in three days?”
“Yeah.”
“There is much planning to do,” she said. “We must drive up tonight and—”
“We can’t,” I said. “My car’s dead.”
“Then we must fly to Montreal and rent a vehicle,” she said. “First I will call the Marshall to cancel.”
Handing me her suitcase, she took out her cell phone, dialed a number and walked down the platform beside me.
In that moment it seemed like the reason the universe had brought me this case was so Svetlana and I could meet and join forces. We were a born team, each instinctively complementing the other’s strengths and weaknesses. But what exactly should her role be in my burgeoning agency?
She was far too intelligent and talented to be a mere assistant, a glorified receptionist. However, she didn’t have any detecting experience, so I couldn’t justify making her my partner.
Chuckling to myself, I thought about the two mugs that work for PI Jake Gittes in Chinatown. Svetlana would be like them—an associate—except much easier on the eyes.
She hung up and put her cell phone away.
“Before I forget,” I said, “we should probably get me one of those.”
“A cell phone?”
“Yeah.” I lifted my jacket and showed her the beeper on my belt. “I think it’s time.”
“There is a store at the airport,” she said. “Dakota…just to be clear…are you hiring me? That is to say, will I be receiving a paycheck for my services?”
“You’ll get a percentage of my fee.”
“And what is your fee for this case?”
“After expenses?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Let me see…nine, carry the one…and…nothing.”
“Nothing?” She looked at me in disgust. “You are quite the negotiator.”
I shrugged. “I’m not very good with money.”
“From now on then,” she said, “I will handle the money.”
“Deal. You can start by handling this.”
Reaching into my jacket, I pulled out the envelope of cash, pocketed a half-inch of it, and slapped the envelope with the rest into her hand.
“What is this?” she said.
“Expense money from Sally’s father. Handle it.”
Her eyes dilated at the sight of the bulging envelope, then narrowed as she tucked it into her purse. This was my first sighting of Svetlana’s mercenary nature.
As we walked inside together, the Amtrak woman pressed my arm and grinned.
“I take it she said yes.”
I looked at Svetlana, who eyed me skeptically.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, she did.”
“Congratulations,�
�� the woman said. “You know…I have a good feeling about you two. I think you’re going to be very happy together.”
“Thank you,” I said. “So do I.”
I held out my arm, Svetlana looped hers through it, and we walked through the station. We must have cut quite a figure together because men and women alike, including scowling Laura at the flower stand, turned their heads as we passed.
“Oh,” Svetlana said, “while we are on the subject of money—”
“I didn’t know we were still on that subject,” I said.
“We are,” she said. “You should know that each of the abducted girls has a reward for her return. Together, the fourteen rewards are considerable.”
“Really?” I said. “How much?”
“I think it best if you do not know,” she said.
Outside, I hailed a cab by whistling sharply. Svetlana patted my shoulder.
“Dakota?” she said.
“Yes?”
“The next time you do the fake proposal gambit with me…”
“Yes?”
“You should give me a ring, not flowers,” she said. “No self-respecting woman would say ‘yes’ to a proposal made without a ring.”
“Svetlana, you’re the U.S. chess champion, correct?”
“That is correct,” she said.
“All right, Champ.” I smiled and opened the cab door for her as it pulled up. “Let’s go solve this case.”
Taking hold of my hand, she muttered something in a foreign language and eased into the car.
About the Author
Chris Orcutt has written professionally for over 25 years as a novelist, short story writer, speechwriter, journalist and playwright. A Study in Crimson is his eleventh book.
Orcutt is the author of the critically acclaimed Dakota Stevens Mystery Series, including the Amazon bestseller A Real Piece of Work. Orcutt’s short story collection, The Man, The Myth, The Legend, was voted by IndieReader as one of the best books of 2013. His modern pastoral novel One Hundred Miles from Manhattan (an IndieReader Best Book for 2014) prompted Kirkus Reviews to favorably compare Orcutt to Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Cheever. In 2017, Orcutt released The Ronald And Other Plays and a humorous memoir about the writing life entitled Perpetuating Trouble.
As a newspaper reporter Orcutt received a New York Press Association award, and while an adjunct lecturer in writing for the City University of New York, he received the Distinguished Teaching Award.
If you would like to contact Chris, you can email him at [email protected] or tweet him: @chrisorcutt. For more about Orcutt and his writing, or to follow his blog, visit his website: www.orcutt.net.
Excerpt from A Real Piece of Work
Book 1 in Chris Orcutt’s Dakota Stevens Mystery Series is also available. A Real Piece of Work, the 1st novel in the series, delves into a world of art forgery, secret identities and murder. Following is the opening of A Real Piece of Work.
Back in my FBI days, during soporific stakeouts when I dreamed about the life I might lead as a private detective, I never imagined the job would one day require me to scuba-dive across a half-mile of ocean brimming with sharks.
Basically, anything capable of eating me was absent from my business plan.
Right now, despite the Caribbean sun on my face and the piquant salt air in my nose, I wished I were back in snowy Manhattan, safe behind my desk, listening like Sam Spade to some elegant dame tell me her troubles. Instead I had a 20-year-old scuba bum and my bikini-clad associate, Svetlana Krüsh, all but shoving me into the water. They stood silently beside me as wave after wave spanked the hull. Under my wetsuit, the heat began to rise.
“You’re positive they’re both on there,” I said, nodding at the 80-foot motor yacht in the distance.
“According to the chambermaid,” Svetlana said, “they left together this morning.”
“And we’re sure they’re, ah, busy?”
“I am told they never leave the room.”
She adjusted her bikini strap. After three days down here, Svetlana had only a whisper of a tan, but the way the leopard print hugged her aristocratic curves, you didn’t care. Kyle, our alleged guide, leered at her. I grabbed him by the mouth and pinched his cheeks together.
“How about it, dude?”
“Wha?”
“Our friend on the yacht.”
“Already told you—guy runs their slip says they put out every morning, come back around one.”
“What time we got?”
With a flourish, Svetlana held out her watch. High noon.
“How long to get over there?” I asked.
“Half an hour, tops.” Kyle scratched in his ear. “Quit stalling, man. I’ve gotta meet somebody at Sloppy Joe’s soon.”
I looked over our stern. Key West was a purple mist on the horizon. I turned back to the yacht.
“Let me see, one more time.”
Svetlana passed the binoculars. While the captain and his mate read newspapers on the bridge, three bodyguards sunned themselves on the bow. Conover and his mistress had to be inside, doing what mistresses and CEOs of financial services companies did.
“Moneta?” Kyle said. “What the hell kind of name for a boat is that?”
“Goddess of money,” I said. “Greek, I think.”
“Roman,” Svetlana said.
“There you go—Roman. We know what he worships anyway.”
To the south dark clouds were creeping in, and the mounting wind flapped Svetlana’s hair across my cheek. Between their boat and ours was a gulf of iridescent blue-green water that looked like it would take a week to cross. I wanted to call it off, but if I chickened-out now, in two weeks my business would shrivel up. Besides, Mrs. Conover was counting on us. I handed the binoculars back.
“Ready, Mr. Stevens?” Kyle said.
“Stop with the ‘Mister’ already. It’s Dakota.” I strapped on the flippers. “Why am I doing this again?”
Why? Because Mrs. Conover had made it sound so simple—snap a few photos, collect a big check. “I’ll cover any expenses,” she said. “Consider it a vacation…take a week, a month—I don’t care. Just catch the bastard.”
Svetlana nudged me. “Because you are sucker for jilted women. Especially when they are rich.” She handed me a mask. “And don’t forget, a blizzard is starting in New York, so we must catch six o’clock out of Miami.”
I spit in the mask, rubbed it around and put it on.
“Sharks?” I said to Kyle.
“Sure. Blacktips, a few bulls maybe. No big deal.”
I squatted down and slipped into the vest with the scuba tank. Kyle showed me the buttons for the buoyancy compensator.
“So, Miss Krüsh,” I said, “while I’m risking life and limb, what will you be doing?”
She donned a pair of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses and tied a mocha sarong around her waist so it hung fetchingly off one hip.
“Wave when you finish, and I swoop in like cavalry.” She plopped down behind the wheel, crossed her runway legs and rubbed sunblock on her shoulders. Kyle jammed the regulator in my mouth.
“Remember what Nietzsche said, man—the shit that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Trust me, you’re gonna love it.” He tipped backward into the deep.
I patted the vest’s waterproof pouch to check for the camera and plunged in…
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