The Fedorovich File

by Ross H. Spencer

  “No, but I expected something!”

  Lockington said, “You hired me—you can fire me.”

  “Aw, now don’t go off half-cocked! When do you expect a break in this thing?”

  “The very moment I can force one—possibly tonight, possibly not.”

  “What’s happening tonight?”

  “I’m going to a wake.”

  “No levity, please.”

  “No levity intended.”

  “A wake—there’s a connection?”

  “I believe there is.”

  “Lockington, I’m under big pressure.”

  “Check with me tomorrow morning.”

  “What time tomorrow morning?”

  “Look, Bresnahan, I stopped punching clocks before I left Chicago. Keep trying until you get me.”

  “Okay, okay, no offense, but you know how it goes—I get paid for results and if I don’t produce ’em, somebody else will!”

  “And I do the best I can with the cards I get. That wasn’t a straight flush you dealt me.”

  “What’s with this wake?”

  “I’ll know when I get there.”

  “Well, play it cool—we don’t want publicity—we want Alexi Fedorovich.”

  Lockington stepped away from the Escort and Bresnahan backed from his parking place.

  Barney Kozlowski was peeking around a corner of the office doorway. He said, “You didn’t have a thing to worry about—I had my eye on him all the way!”

  Lockington said, “Anybody call?”

  “Yeah, the painter. He said that he’ll be here around the middle of November.”

  “What for?”

  “To paint your office—he said that your office gets painted once a year—it’s in your lease. You get your choice of sixteen shades of eggshell white, he said.”

  “White? White ain’t a color—white is the absence of color.”

  “All I know is what he told me. Say, Mr. Lockington, isn’t there something I could be helping you with? I ain’t cut out for a desk job—I want to be out where it’s happening!”

  “Where it’s happening—where what’s happening?”

  “Don’t kid me, Mr. Lockington—I know you’re working on a major case!”

  “I am?”

  “Damn right—I can feel it!”

  “Uh-huh. How does it feel?”

  “Well, I’m sort of jingly in my stomach. You’ve never felt jingly in your stomach?”

  “Kid, I haven’t felt jingly in my stomach since July of ’83.”

  “In July of ’83 you probably got into a big shootout with a bunch of Mafia guys.”

  “No, I got into a big dose of ptomaine at Mamma Mia’s Pizzeria.”

  He’d lied, of course. He’d never gone through the doors of Mamma Mia’s Pizzeria, and he’d been feeling jingly in his stomach since he’d first laid eyes on Natasha Gorky. But Lockington wouldn’t have described that sensation as “jingly.” He’d have likened it to King Kong teeing-off on a church belfry with a telephone pole.

  35

  It was 5:00. Barney Kozlowski would be closing the office, Lockington was at the kitchen table with Natasha, and Natasha was eyeing the stack of yellow legal paper in front of her, shaking her head ruefully. She was saying, “I’m not sure that there’s anything here—if there is, I can’t find the key.”

  Lockington said, “The book’s dust jacket hooked you.”

  Natasha nodded. “It may have been nothing more than happenstance and wishful thinking—those wheels intrigued me.”

  “The puzzle, or game—just how was it set up when you learned it?”

  Natasha sketched three eight-spoked wheels on her legal pad, circling them with numbers, filling the spoke gaps with letters. She said, “This way,” pushing the pad to Lockington. He studied the arrangement:

  After a while he said, “You matched the numbers to the letters in the gaps?”

  “Yes, three wheels, twenty-four spokes, twenty-four letters between the spokes—X and Z were omitted, Q indicated a space, or the end of the message.”

  “The letters run clockwise in proper order—was that standard procedure?”

  “That’s how it was introduced to my brother and me. That’s the easy way, of course—the letters could have been entered in random fashion, but in that case the number of combinations would be staggering!”

  Lockington slid the legal pad back to Natasha. “Yeah, twenty-four multipled by twenty-three, that total multiplied by twenty-two, and that total multiplied by—Jesus Christ, you’d need a computer!”

  “At home we kept it simple—it was just as you’ve seen it. The trick was to find the key.”

  “How did you go about finding it?”

  “My father would place tiny dots under a book’s page numbers, or under its index numbers—he made it difficult, but not too difficult—after all, he was dealing with children. Under the numerical and alphabetical arrangement you’ve just looked at, 8-5-12-16 would translate to HELP, but there’d be longer messages, like DON’T FORGET TO FEED THE CAT. It was a time-consuming exercise, that’s all.”

  “There’s nothing that resembles a key in Fedorovich’s book?”

  “Well, yes, there’s a special list of footnote numbers in the introduction, divorced from the main body of footnote references—there are seventeen of these, and they’re jumbled, all out of order. There are five repetitions, and numbers repeated usually represent vowels, A, E, I, O, or U, but not so in this instance. Applying that string of numbers to this lettering system results in mumbo jumbo.”

  “What about the footnotes on the special list—what do they make reference to?”

  Natasha turned her attention to an isolated sheet of paper, rattling off the numbers in rapid-fire fashion, “20-24-9-20-2-14-20-4-17-1-3-6-15-22-24-3-17. All correspond to the General’s estimates of Warsaw Pact and NATO combat losses at various points of certain encounters, in the Fulda Gap and at the Danube, for example—planes, tanks, artillery pieces, communications gear—and troops, of course—General Fedorovich predicts astronomical loss of life.”

  “During the third world war.”

  “Or what will most certainly provoke it!” Natasha’s voice was small.

  Lockington said, “Does he pick a winner?”

  “No, he picks a dozen losers, including the Soviet Union.”

  “Well, if there is a message, and if there is a key, who the hell would General Fedorovich be trying to reach—and why?”

  “At this juncture, these are two more unknowns.”

  Lockington shrugged, lighting a cigarette. “Okay, so to hell with it—I have time for a fast sandwich, then I gotta cut out for Candice Hoffman’s wake.”

  Natasha got up, busying herself with the construction of a sandwich. “Where will the wake be held?”

  “A joint on the South Side—Sabatini’s on South Avenue.”

  “What’s the point—why bother going?”

  “I just might run into Candice Hoffman’s daughter.”

  “Would that be good or bad?”

  “Good, hopefully—Candice picked up Olga Karelinko’s mail—Olga Karelinko has been Fedorovich’s postal contact—Candice’s daughter may know something of Olga, Olga certainly knows something of Fedorovich. That’s why it might be good.”

  “What’s Candice’s daughter’s name?”

  “Her first name’s Brenda—I don’t know her last name.”

  “It isn’t Hoffman?”

  “No, she’s been married a few times, I’ve heard.”

  “She’s young, obviously.”

  “Approaching thirty.”

  “Pretty?”

  “So they say.”

  “Still married?”

  “Not as I understand it.”

  Natasha spun away from the sinkboard to slam Lockington’s sandwich plate onto the table. She pointed an authoritative finger at him, her eyes snapping pale blue sparks. She hissed, “Lacey Lockington, you be home not one damned moment later than ele
ven o’clock, do you hear me?”

  Lockington grinned. “Da.”

  Natasha said, “Never trust an American who speaks Russian!”

  Lockington bit into his cheddar cheese sandwich. A man up to his ears in love rarely knows if he’s eating cheddar cheese or moose dung. Nor does he care.

  36

  The night streets of Youngstown’s South Side are for the weak of mind, the strong of heart, or the fleet of foot. Being none of the three, Lacey Lockington checked his .38 before taking Route 680 to the South Avenue exit.

  Sabatini’s Funeral Home was a three-story gray frame building in an excellent state of repair. Its front lawn was neatly manicured, its windows were bordered by stained-glass panels, its front porch was the length of a bowling alley. Back in the twenties or thirties it’d been a mansion, Lockington figured, but since the war the neighborhood had gone downhill on roller skates and its occupants had packed up to light out for the tall timber. As a residence it was outdated, as a funeral home it was okay, as funeral homes go, which wasn’t a great distance in Lockington’s book.

  He swung the Mercedes into the wide blacktopped drive that looped the big gray house, backing into a parking place in the north corner of the parking lot, noting that his was the only automobile in sight save for a brace of black Cadillac sedans nosed against the red-on-white EMPLOYEES ONLY sign tacked to the rear of the building. He glanced at his watch—5:50. He lit a cigarette, settling back on Mercedes leather to watch late afternoon begin its long blue slide into twilight. They’d be rolling back the clocks in a couple of weeks and that wouldn’t serve to accomplish a great deal other than to disturb the nation’s sexual and drinking rhythms. Lockington had never been able to see the advantages of clock jockeying, putting the practice down as just one more change for the sake of change. He turned on the radio, tuning to 1390 on the AM dial, listening to Nat Cole sing “A Blossom Fell,” the likes of which hadn’t been composed in more than thirty years.

  At 5:58 an ’87 gray Buick Skyhawk slipped into the Sabatini parking lot. Its driver, a woman, wheeled the car southward to the opposite side of the expanse, where she left it to cross the blacktop and enter the funeral home through an entrance at a rear corner of the building. She had a nice gait, Lockington thought—free-striding. He was unable to get a head-on look at her, but her profile was promising. Her hair was chestnut, wavy, cascading to her shoulders. She wore a form-fitting, black satin, short-skirted dress and three-inch-heeled black sling pumps. Her legs were excellent, in Lockington’s opinion. She had a gray sweater slung over her left forearm and she carried a small black patent leather clutch-purse. She was slim, trim, closing in on thirty, but certainly not that far along yet. Lockington was confident that he’d just witnessed the arrival of Candice Hoffman’s daughter, Brenda Who-the-hell-ever.

  He waited in the Mercedes, smoking, listening to WHOT. At 6:30 there were no other cars in the Sabatini parking lot, nor were there any at 7:00. By 7:30 mid-October darkness was blanketing the city, and the parking lot lights had clicked on—blindingly bright, too bright, Lockington thought, but then considering the neighborhood, perhaps not. Candice Hoffman wasn’t attracting a standing room only turnout. Two men in dark suits left the building to drive away in the black Cadillacs—Sabatini and son, probably. At 7:45 the Mercedes and the Skyhawk were still the lot’s only occupants, and when Brenda hadn’t emerged by eight o’clock, Lockington went in.

  Sabatini’s Funeral Home possessed the facilities for two wakes. On Lockington’s right the first suite of rooms was deserted. Farther down the hushed hallway he forged into Candice Hoffman territory—to his left a small room lined with uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs and pedestal ashtrays, to his right an amber casket resting on a black velvet-draped stand. The casket was closed. They can’t do much for a woman who’s been bludgeoned to death. There was a single modest flower arrangement in a white wicker basket. Somewhere in the dim recesses of Sabatini’s Funeral Home a pipe organ recording was playing “Jesus Savior, Pilot Me.” Good taste, Lockington thought—beat hell out of “Darktown Strutters’ Ball,” not that Candice Hoffman gave a damn one way or the other. Funeral homes depressed Lockington, not so much because another soul had departed this world for the next as for the fact that the undertaking industry was a ravenous beast growing fat on heartbreak. Lockington rated undertakers on a level with lawyers and used car dealers—there wasn’t a drop of genuine mercy in the lot. Over the years, he’d had occasion to shoot a few people, but he hadn’t shot a lawyer or a used car dealer or an undertaker. He regretted that. He was seating himself in the smokers’ alcove when he heard a female voice. “You knew her?”

  Before he turned, Lockington said, “Not long.” The woman’s eyes were large, dark brown, with flickers of gold in their depths. Her nose was short and upturned, her mouth full-lipped. She was smiling. It was a smile to be remembered. She said, “You were her lover?”

  Lockington shook his head. “Did she have a lover?”

  “Well, my God, I hope so.” Lockington didn’t say anything. She sat beside him, crossing her legs, her short black skirt hitching to within six inches of where the panther pissed in the pea patch. “I’m her daughter, Brenda Willoughby.”

  The pipe organ recording had drifted into “Just As I Am.” Brenda had put out her hand. Lockington had taken it. He said, “I’m Lacey Lockington—how are you?”—the question having nothing to do with the title of the pipe organ selection. Brenda was looking him full in the eyes. She said, “That’s right—you wouldn’t know.”

  Lockington grabbed the brass ring. “If I knew, I wouldn’t ask.”

  “I’m very good—exceptional, really.”

  “From here, I believe that.” Under the circumstances, the conversation had taken an unusual turn, Lockington thought, but grief sometimes turns glows into bonfires. Whatever the reasons prompting her approach, Brenda hadn’t minced words, she’d laid it right on the line.

  She said, “You can’t tell a book by its cover.”

  “No, but you can come close.”

  “‘Close’ counts only in horseshoes.”

  “It’s a long time between ringers.”

  “Not if you practice.”

  “‘Practice makes perfect’?”

  “Well, not perfect, perhaps, but I’ll bet you won’t know the difference.”

  Mabel Johannsen had said that Brenda was a nymphomaniac. Mabel might have been guilty of understatement—it appeared that he was on the shortest road to Rome.

  “I’d like to talk to you, Ms. Willoughby” he said. “In private.”

  She popped to her feet. “He who hesitates is lost, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I might, if somebody else hadn’t said it first.” Brenda Willoughby put her hand on his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

  She left the room, returning within moments, carrying her gray sweater and her clutch-purse. She stood in front of Lockington, pigeon-toed in her black pumps.

  Lockington said, “Ready?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  Lockington didn’t doubt her, not even a little bit. “You aren’t going to ask why I came?”

  She reached for his hand, pulling him to his feet. “Later. First things first.”

  37

  They were walking down the long corridor in the direction of the rear exit, Brenda at Lockington’s side grasping his arm. It was the grasp of complete possession, however temporary. She was saying, “Nobody came—nobody but me. And you.”

  Lockington said, “Who didn’t come?”

  “Damned near everybody—they stayed away by the dozens!”

  “I mean, did you expect relatives that didn’t show?”

  She was silent for a few steps. “No, I guess not.”

  Lockington said, “We should stop for a drink.”

  “Why? I have a bottle in the trunk.”

  “You’re driving?”

  She squeezed his arm. “Not far, just a mile or so south on Market Street—coz
y little motel.”

  “Maybe I should follow in my car—this might be time consuming.”

  She nodded. “Never in haste—never!”

  It would be a tough one to wiggle out of, and he couldn’t squirm until he’d gotten around to the subject of Olga Karelinko. Brenda said, “You’re a policeman, of course.”

  Lockington didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no. He busied himself with opening the door for her. They stepped into the parking lot. A breeze was sweeping from the west and leaves were pinwheeling across the broad span of blacktop, making tiny little scratching sounds in their hurry. Brenda was saying, “The police have been around, I’ve been told, but you’re the first I’ve seen.”

  Lockington said, “No questions from anyone?”

  “I had a telephone call from a detective at the funeral home the moment I arrived.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Mawson, I think he said—Lieutenant Mawson—he—” There was a dull plopping sound from the south, like someone had dropped an empty shoe box. Brenda was spinning, staggering. Lockington grabbed for her, missing. She went down, flat on her back, one hand to her face. On the side street to the south there was the roar of an engine and the scream of spinning rubber. Lockington knelt beside Brenda Willoughby. Her right eye was missing. She’d been dead before she hit the blacktop.

  38

  Natasha was seated at their basement bar, chin in her palms, a yellow legal pad between her elbows. Lockington said, “Could a man get a cognac in this establishment?”

  She got up, pouring a double for him. “Lacey, I’m seeing wheels in my sleep!”

  “Progress?”

  “Not a blessed inch.” She perched on the stool behind the bar, watching him down the cognac, refilling his glass. She said, “There was trouble tonight.” It was a statement, not a question. She knew him well.

  “I saw a woman killed.”

  “Brenda?”

  Lockington nodded.

  Natasha’s facial expression didn’t change. “How?”