“Why bother? We all knew you were never coming home again.”
“But—”
“—now, my friend, you will always be known as ‘The Lost Russian.’” The line went silent. “And you’ll be The Dead Lost Russian if you ever set foot in Minsk again.”
Alex felt faint as Misha’s voice became a menacing growl.
“Do you understand me, Alexander Yurev? If you return to Minsk, you will The Dead Russian.”
“I’ve worked hard for the organization. I’ve given up my family, my home. I followed the code—our code.”
The line was dead.
Chapter 47
Gina and Harry were waiting for Christina Simon. The woman insisted on also meeting Gina before deciding whether to hack into Tallent’s computer. Gina had never met a computer hacker and her curiosity was killing her. What kind of person did that sort of thing? What was she like?
Glasses of merlot in hand, and their feet up on the coffee table in the living room, they were talking about their dual wedding with Helen and Vinnie.
“Between the four of us, the number of people we’re inviting is getting bigger and bigger.” Harry nuzzled her neck. “At least you won’t have to deal too much with my parents—they’ll be lost in the crowd.”
“Don’t you think it’s time we visited them? I really should meet them before we get married.” Gina looked into his eyes. “How bad can they be when you’re their son?”
“They’re not bad. They’re irritating and thoughtless. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I don’t know—”
The phone rang.
“I hope it’s not our hacker backing out.” Gina struggle off the sofa and went across the room.
“Hello.”
There was long pause.
“Hi, Gina.”
“Lolly! Gina hit the speaker button so Harry could hear, too. “I’ve been leaving messages—you never answer. Are you all right?”
“I’m getting there,” Lolly said. “It’s been pretty difficult.”
“Tell me what happened. Please?”
“I’m calling because I couldn’t stop worrying about you.” There was a long pause before she spoke again. “I meant what I said before—stay away from Tallent. You hear me! Stay away from him!”
“I understand what you’re saying, but I want to know what happened with you.”
“Mort Tallent caught us on tape sneaking into his office.”
“I know that,” Gina said.
“What you don’t know is that there’s a maniac working for Tallent. The crazy man who killed Maria and her mother.”
“He’s the one who hurt you?”
“Gina, he didn’t just hurt me. He interrogated me, he raped me, sliced me open, and tried to find out what we saw on Tallent’s computer the night we snuck into his office.”
“We didn’t see anything. Did you tell him that?”
“Yes, yes, but he didn’t believe me. He wanted your name and when I wouldn’t give it to him, he cut me some more.”
“Oh, Lolly. Have you been to a doctor?”
“As soon as I got here I went to a plastic surgeon.” Gina heard a catch in her voice. “He said he’ll do the best he can, but I’m going to be badly scarred, no matter what he does.”
“I’m so sorry,” Gina said.
“I’m the one who brought you into this mess, Gina. It’s not your fault.”
Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Stay safe!” Lolly paused. “Watch out for Tallent’s hired murderer.”
“I think he may have found me already. Someone has been following me. What does he look like?”
“Tall, very muscular—looks like he’s on steroids,” Lolly said. “And worst of all, he’s a merciless cold killer. Just looking at him tells you that. This man would cut you into pieces and eat a chocolate bar at the same time.”
“My God!”
“Stay clear of Tallent. You hear me, Gina? Stay clear of Mort Tallent no matter what else you do.”
Lolly hung up without another word.
During the conversation, Harry had moved in close to Gina and heard most of the conversation on the speaker. “You know, doll, maybe we ought to back off on this whole hacking business. Let’s stay out of Tallent’s affairs. This is getting more bizarre by the minute.”
“Tallent knows I’m involved.” Gina wrapped her arms around his waist and looked into his eyes. “I think it may be too late to start doing the backstroke.”
The door bell rang, Gina tapped the intercom button.
“Hi, who’s there?”
“It’s Christina.”
“I’ll buzz you in. We’re upstairs.”
“I’ll go meet her and bring her up,” Harry said.
Harry had told Gina that Christina was a woman who could take of herself. One glance when Harry ushered her in confirmed that.
Christina didn’t waste any time. Her hand was extended to Gina right away as she stepped inside.
“Nice to meet you,” Gina said, shaking her hand. “Let me take your wet jacket.” She helped her out of a very damp pea coat.
“Would you like some coffee?” Harry said. “We just made a fresh pot.”
“That would be great. Don’t bother with any extra fixings. I like it black.” She walked into the living room. “Man, I like that purple sofa.”
“It was a steal.” Harry held out a hand offering her a seat. “We got it at a garage sale. I won’t tell you what we paid—you’ll think we’re thieves.”
“Maybe you are a bunch of crooks since you’re asking me to hack into a rich doctor’s computer.” Christina plopped down.
Gina came back with a cup of black coffee and handed it to Christina. She sat down in a chair opposite her. “The only thing we’re stealing is information.”
“You two really are babes in the woods,” Christina said. “Information can be as valuable as cash in your pocket.”
Her voice had hardened and Gina could see Harry was dead-on when he evaluated her the first time they met at Paul’s. This woman wouldn’t take crap from anyone. She would survive anywhere—even in the Bronx.
“So you think this doctor is a murderer?” She let out a cynical laugh. “Isn’t that what they do legally, like all the time?”
“We think he hired someone to kill the woman who was taking care of his books,” Harry said. “She got too close to the whole mess. Whatever she saw meant she had to be eliminated.”
“You do this from your home?” Gina asked. “I mean, hacking. I know zilch about it.”
“And let’s keep it that way.” Christina leaned back into the sofa and took several sips from her cooling coffee. “But, my group is not a gang of terrorists. We’re the good guys. In fact, we’ve been uncovering some ISIS messages and tipping off Homeland Security. That’s all I’m saying about that.”
Gina smiled at Harry. “I think we found a winner.”
Chapter 48
Christina Simon took a few days to think about the request to hack into Dr. Morton Tallent’s computer files. What finally swayed her was that not only had she taken a liking to Gina and Harry, she trusted Paul Lucke. He was a stand up guy.
What struck Christina most about the couple was their unselfish motives—they weren’t trying to rip off anyone, they were only trying to make things right. There weren’t enough people in the world like that.
She hopped on a bus to her hacker buddy, Blitz. Whenever she went on what she called a 007 caper, she traveled by public transportation to keep as low a profile as possible. She also encrypted her emails and text messages.
Blitz lived near the San Francisco Zoo—claimed the only thing that kept him sane were his trips to see the animals. He really hated the idea of zoos—caging living beings—but he accepted that without them, most people would never understand how wonderful animals really are. His favorites were lions, but elephants were a close second.
Early on Christina had sexual fantasies about
the tall, dark-haired Blitz. He was handsome in an offbeat kind of way, but she preferred men who were a little more testosterone-fired. The guy had no interest in women, or men, or much of anything else—not even money. After all, he was a trust fund baby who would never have to wonder where his next meal was coming from.
For Blitz, if it wasn’t about computers, he didn’t care.
Off the Muni, she walked along a couple of blocks that were lined mostly with two-story, pastel-colored homes common to the Sunset District. His house definitely fit the pattern—the residence of someone with a wife, 2.5 children, a dog, a cat, one car, and a regular 9-5 gig, probably even shopped at the co-op.
In Blitz’ case, you’d be dead wrong.
Christina had phoned ahead because Blitz was pretty ugly when anyone just dropped by. She climbed the concrete steps to an enclosed entryway, gave the bell the required dot-dot-dot-dash signal, and Blitz answered the door within seconds.
He was wearing torn jeans and a t-shirt with a faded logo from an eight-year-old telecon. After a quick exchange of cheek kisses, they went straight to his workshop, which had been created by knocking out the wall between two bedrooms. There was barely room for the two of them to ease through the jungle of equipment, loaded shelving, and stacks of books and magazines.
There was one small loveseat near his main desk, half of it filled with paperback novels, all thrillers.
“Want something to drink, sweetheart?” he asked.
“No, I don’t want a drink and you know how I hate that sweetheart shit.” She walked over to the sofa and plopped down.
He gave her a wide smile. “Whadda ya gonna do? Ah loves it.”
“And stop sounding like an idiot. A Harvard pee-aitch-dee doesn’t talk that way.”
“You’re no fun, sweetheart.” He sat opposite her on a rolling stool. “So what’s the deal?”
“I was hoping you’d take time out and help this neat couple uncover a murderer.”
“Murderer. Oh, oh, right. Okay, feed me the data.”
he handed him a thumb drive. “It’s in here, including his most recent password.”
* * *
“You’re sure this Gina and Harry combo is the real thing/” Blitz said after scanning everything on the drive. “I don’t need any undercover snitches sending me off to the slammer.”
“No, they’re good people. They’re only looking to out this creep of a doctor.”
“Okay, let’s get started.”
Blitz pivoted around to face the arc of seven monitors. Just how many different computers they were linked to, Christina had no idea. Whatever the setup, lines of code scrolled across the screens in what seemed to be a never-ending stream of data.
“Okay, Leo baby, let’s see what we can do here.” Leo was his main computer, named after a beloved lion. A photo of the big cat sat atop almost every piece of equipment.
* * *
Gina and Harry offered to meet Christina at a semi-posh restaurant to go over her findings.
“Rather do it at your place,” she said. “Never really know who the wait-staff are, or who’s in the booth next to you. What say I bring over a little something and we can nosh while we talk?”
“Sounds nice, but the idea was that we would be treating you,” Gina said.
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”
“Around six, is that okay?”
It would have to be okay, but it meant changing plans they’d made with Helen and Vinnie to discuss more details for their joint wedding.
Gina picked up the phone.
“We’ll have to cancel our dinner plans for tonight. A friend of Harry and Paul’s is in town for just the day and they wanted to see her.”
“No problem, sis. Tomorrow okay?”
“I think so,” Gina said. “I’ll let you know.”
“So what’s really going on, liar?”
“What do you mean? It’s just what I told you.” Gina could feel the heat crawling up the back of her neck. Telling a lie did that to her.
“Gina, you could probably get away with that phony excuse with almost anyone else, but not me. I know you. Something’s up.”
“Look, we’ll talk tomorrow. Besides, why are you always so suspicious of me?”
Vinnie let out a loud laugh. “Are you kidding me?” And then he was gone.
“Sounds like Vinnie didn’t buy your little white lie,” Harry said while putting out some wine glasses. “Knew I should have called.”
The bell rang, Gina opened the door.
“Oh, the parking around here is a bitch!” Christina stood in the doorway with a large take-out bag in her arms.
The aromas broadcast a bag filled with Chinese food. “Come in! Come in!” She took the food from Christina and carried it into the kitchen and sat in on the counter. Christina followed her.
“This is very sweet of you,” Gina said.
“I agree,” Harry said. “We would have been glad to make dinner.”
“Two nurses?” Christina said. “Are you kidding? I knew it would be something like salad and fish or something healthy and boring. No way! Let’s eat some real fun food.” She looked around the small kitchen. “I assume you have chopsticks, right?”
* * *
They were sitting in the living room, Gina and Harry on the sofa, the hacker on a chair opposite them. Christina spread sheets of paper across the coffee table. She started explaining what Blitz and she found when they hacked into Tallent’s computer.
“The man keeps two sets of books for his practice: One of them is for his consults and surgeries—they add up to close to a cool half-million a month. Most of the surgeries are listed as Cath Lab procedures. There’s a number of triple bypasses, valve replacements, and blah, blah, blah.”
“Blah, blah, blah is a new cardio surgical procedure?” Harry said with a laugh.
“I’m sure you’ll be much more interested in some of the other stuff we found.” Christina pointed to the spreadsheet on the table.”
“He’s just teasing you,” Gina said.
Christina gave them the hint of a smile and continued. “The second set of books shows the same income/expense records as the first, plus entries for other financial activities, like double-billing Medicare and the insurance companies, plus blah, blah, blah. I’m not all that savvy with all this medical stuff, but it’s sort of like ghost-chasing. It’s probably what his accountant stumbled on.”
“You mean the charges look phony?” Gina asked.
“Yep. Definitely cooking the books.”
Christina scooted to the edge of her seat. “There was a separate password for an account named Vlad.”
“Vlad?” Both Gina and Harry said at the same time.
“Now, that’s really interesting. There are three fifty-thousand dollar entries in it, one from almost two years, another couple of weeks ago, and the third from only yesterday. Also, there’s a twenty-five thousand dollar entry right after the second fifty.” Christina’s eyes were intense.
Gina did some mental calculations and said, “The dates sort of line up with the death of Tallent’s wife, the deaths of Maria and her mother, and the twenty five is around time Lolly decided to pull up stakes and go back to New York. But the third fifty thousand entry?”
“Maybe he’s hired Vlad to kill someone else that you don’t know about,” Christina said.
Gina and Harry looked at each other. He reached for her hand and squeezed it hard.
* * *
After Christina left, they looked at each other for a long time before walking back into the living room. They fell onto the sofa like twin puppets.
“Do you think Vlad’s been hired to kill me? I mean, first it was Tallent’s wife, then the bookkeeper and her mother, and now...”
“I know it looks bad,” Harry said, but—”
“—Harry! He had me cornered in the locker room at Ridgewood. If you could have seen his face—it was a mask of pure malice. I could have some doubts that the man is
a murderer if that hadn’t happened.”
Harry reached out and took her into his arms. “Let’s think about it. God, I wish we could go to Mulzini about this.”
“We can’t do that.” Gina squeezed him tighter. “He’s scared about his own problems right now. We can’t go to him.”
“Calm down and think about it logically.” Gina pulled away, looked at him, and nodded. “Why did he let Lolly live?” Harry said. “That doesn’t make sense. I mean, he certainly wasn’t bargain shopping at that stage of things.”
“True. He could have thought it was way too soon for another murder, afraid he might interest the police.”
“So Lolly just may have lucked out,” Harry said.
“I wouldn’t call what Lolly described as lucky. She ran away, maimed, and terrified.”
“At least she’s alive.”
“All this for greed?” Gina asked. “You saw his financial run down.”
“Maybe” Harry said, “but it looks as though once he took his wife out, it was like a domino effect.”
“Yeah. And I’m the next domino set to fall!”
Chapter 49
Mulzini knew he was losing it. He’d been feeling crazy all day.
In all the years he’d lived and loved Marcia, he’d rarely made her cry. No credit to him. It was her. That woman really got him.
Pure luck that he’d found her.
Yet, twenty minutes ago she stormed out of the house, and as the door slammed shut, he heard, “You’d better get it together, Mulzini, or I’m never coming back—surgery or no surgery.”
He pulled a chair up to the living room window and watched the rain come down in torrents. Marcia always said it was his dark side that drew him to the damp and rainy weather—made him feel better.
Not today. The only sunny side in my life just stomped out the door.
Dirk came and stood by Mulzini’s chair—wrapped an arm around his shoulder.
“You know, Mulzini, I’ve been wanting to ask you a question for a long time. I just didn’t know how you’d take it. Maybe this isn’t the best time.”
Bone Crack: A Medical Suspense Thriller (The Gina Mazzio Series Book 6) Page 18
