The Final Fabergé

by Thomas Swan

  “I also believe that in some unexplained way, they have strong suspicions that you killed Prekhner. That Vasily was innocent.”

  Deryabin lowered his head. He rubbed his fingers over his face, concentrating on what the Estonian had said.

  “Why not reconsider selling the egg?” Trivimi asked. “It’s quite valuable. And, though you won’t admit it, you desperately need the money.”

  Deryabin said, “I am not superstitious, but neither am I a fool. I believe it is possible that Rasputin put a curse on the egg. The mad monk called it the Egg of Eternal Blessing. Vasily’s father told him.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a curse.”

  “I believe Rasputin cast a blessing over the rightful owner. But for any other person to profit from it there could be unpleasant consequences.”

  Chapter 9

  Left over from the grand opening celebration that had festooned Carson Cadillac & Oldsmobile’s showroom were the helium balloons that had floated up to where they looked like giant M&Ms glued to the ceiling. The shooting two days before had received the usual local television coverage over the weekend, replete with twisted presumptions about the mysterious Russian victim and even wilder speculations concerning the gun-wielding woman masquerading as a Carson employee. The publicity, grudgingly (though secretly) applauded by Patsy Abromowitz, had generated far more traffic into the showroom than even her most optimistic projections.

  One potential buyer was looking at Oldsmobiles shortly after 10:00 A.M. He passed the coupés, and sedans and settled behind the wheel of an Oldsmobile Bravada, a chunky sports utility colored medium red metallic on the outside with fresh-smelling graphite-gray leather on the inside. The man was in his early thirties, casually dressed in jeans, sweater, a Mets baseball cap, glasses, and appeared to be a quintessential yuppie father complete with a mortgage and 1.8 kids. Viktor Lysenko had been trained for the role, as well as others, and there was zero chance that he would be identified as the man an eyewitness saw next to Dennis LeGrande, who had run off with the woman who shot the Russian up there on the mezzanine in the office with all the glass.

  A Carson sales consultant with dirty-blond frizzy hair, and outfitted in the company uniform, approached the driver’s side door, her hand extended.

  “Georgia Gradowski,” she gushed in a rich accent straight out of Atlanta. “That’s a great piece of machinery you’re sittin’ in.”

  Viktor nodded and waved a hand at the interior space. “I need something bigger. For the family.” His English was barely marred by an accent.

  “Give it a test,” Georgia said helpfully. “Bring the family and you’ll see they fit just fine.”

  “Perhaps,” Viktor said. He turned to Georgia, his face a picture of innocence. “Was someone shot here on Saturday?”

  “You can bet that someone was shot right up there. Right in that office where I’m pointing at.” Georgia’s finger was aimed up to Mike Carson’s office on the mezzanine.

  “Was he killed?”

  “He was shot pretty bad, but he’s alive. That’s the good news. But Dennis? That big old football player is the one we’re all worried about. I was standing not ten feet away when he was stabbed right here—” She put a hand on her side. “I got to say, it was horrible. And such a nice man.” Georgia pronounced “man” as if it had two syllables. “Mr. Carson said that Dennis lost a powerful lot of blood.”

  “Is Mr. Carson here today?” Viktor asked.

  “Heavens no,” Georgia said. “He was just here for opening day. He has a big office somewhere. And he works in his home. He works all the time, that man does.”

  “He lives in the city?”

  “Now, just a minute,” Georgia said, smiling supremely. “I’m the one supposed to be asking the questions . . . like do you want to take that Bravado for a spin . . . and do you have a car to trade?”

  Viktor laughed, too, but there was something more that Georgia saw. Something in his eyes that frightened her.

  He stepped out of the vehicle. “I’ll take one of the brochures and show it to my wife. Maybe she will want to see it.”

  “You ask for me.” She plucked a business card out of a little wallet. “Now, don’t forget, you come back!”

  Viktor pocketed her card, then slowly made his way past the brightly polished Cadillacs clustered at the front of the showroom. He paused, glanced up to the mezzanine a final time, then pushed open the double-glass doors and walked off.

  Georgia followed him with curious eyes until he disappeared in a virtual sea of automobiles surrounding the dealership. “Goll-ee,” she said quietly to herself.

  Viktor Lysenko sat in the Taurus, a powerful, collapsible telescope on the seat beside him. He had driven out of the parking spot and was now parked alongside a row of Oldsmobiles, from where he had an unobstructed view into the showroom. A cellular phone came with the rental car. He touched the numbers. He asked the motel operator for Mrs. Lysenko and let the phone ring ten times before hanging up. Galina was not in their room.

  It was eleven o’clock and clouds blew in from the southwest, bringing a light rain. Shortly after noon the rain intensified and made the inside of the car a safe haven. He called the motel again. Galina answered.

  Viktor said, “Akimov is alive. He is in special care, and under guard. I am at the showroom. Carson is not here.”

  “The Estonian called,” Galina said. “Oleg said we must learn what Akimov said to Mikhail. He’s angry that he’s still alive, and wants—”

  “Damned fool,” Viktor interrupted. “Oleg doesn’t know what a miracle it was that we found Akimov at all.”

  Viktor held the phone with one hand and with the other he panned the telescope slowly across the faces in the showroom. He said, “Before Akimov arrived last Saturday Carson was with a man and a woman. The man was tall. The woman had red hair.”

  “I remember,” Galina said impatiently. “I was there. But why does it matter who he was with—”

  “Because I’m looking at a tall man right now. The same one.”

  Georgia Gradowski was standing at the foot of the escalator. “We met on Saturday,” she said. She had regained her big smile and was beaming it up to Lenny Sulzberger, who towered over her. “I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. You’re Mr. Saintsbury. Right?”

  “Sulzberger,” Lenny corrected.

  “Ooh, I’m sorry.” She blushed. “I’ve been practicing all those tricks for remembering names, and I thought I had yours. You came with Patty Abromowitz, and you were going to meet with Mr. Carson. Now, you tell me if I have that right?”

  “You do. I was going to interview him, but the Russian came. Then the shooting.”

  “And the stabbing. Don’t you ever forget that. It happened right where we’re standing and I was this close.” She pointed to the carpet at Sulzberger’s feet. “They cleaned up the blood and you see they didn’t get it all.” She winced. “It was the most terrible thing I ever saw.”

  “Yeah,” Lenny said. “I’m sure it was. Did you see the woman who did the shooting?”

  “You mean could I tell you what she looked like? Awful pretty I can say. Not the kind of face that goes around shooting people.” Her eyes widened, her head began to shake. “Would you believe she was dressed just like I am? Can you ever imagine that? Truth is, I don’t remember anything else about her.”

  “Lot of excitement,” Lenny said, understanding Georgia’s confusion. “I was hoping to find Mr. Carson. Is he here?”

  Georgia’s smile expanded. “Lord, love a duck. Somebody else was asking for him.” She shook her head. “Mr. Carson is not here and I do not expect he will be here. Like I said to that other man . . . ” Her voice went silent and she peered past the showroom windows to the steady rain.

  Chapter 10

  Lenny Sulzberger lived in a loft apartment on the north side of North Moore Street in New York City’s TriBeCa neighborhood. He shared the space with another writer, a Japanese woman who at one time thought it wo
uld be a good idea to marry a New Yorker with a name like Sulzberger and be instantly absorbed into the Manhattan mainstream. But Sheri Ono was having second thoughts and was on her way home to be with her father in Japan where she could “sort out” her relationship with Lenny.

  “Why not sort it out with me, for God’s sake,” Lenny said aloud, as if Sheri were still somewhere in the vastness of the loft apartment. Sorting out personal problems with Lenny was not easy because Lenny’s ego was liable to soar to heights about as tall as he was. Strange, how he managed to encapsulate a little man’s pomposity in a big man’s body. It wore off, too, witness the fact that Lenny generally made a positive first impression, but subsequent encounters invariably resulted in flat rejection. His résumé showed that he had been with a dozen blue-chip publishing and PR firms over the same number of years, then for the past couple of years he could do no better than a grab bag of assignments with third-rank outfits that paid little and usually paid late. In spite of all, Lenny was a damned good writer with a knack for putting punch and energy into his profiles of successful businessmen and women. Patsy Abromowitz knew Lenny’s dark side, respected his talent, and still liked him, disagreeable disposition and all.

  But the assignment Patsy had given Lenny was about to fizzle, his deadline for the profile article now only three days away. He had failed to catch up with Mike Carson, and the response that came back to him was simply that Mr. Carson was not available. Compounding his personal diminution, Sheri had gone off, at least tripling his feeling of abandonment. Along with Sheri’s departure went half of the money necessary to pay rent and all the bills coming due for the utilities and maintenance. He tore up Sheri’s note and let little pink shreds fall from his hand as he walked to the middle of the huge center room. He thrust both arms over his head and shouted, “Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  It was a catharsis, cheap and fast. He was saved from worrying how long the spell would last because the phone rang. Patsy Abromowitz had worked a small wonder and if Lenny wanted one last crack at an interview with Mike Carson, he’d have to act damned fast.

  “I tried, God knows,” he complained. “I waited so long in that showroom I smell like the front seat of a goddamned Cadillac Deville. Besides, it’s after nine o’clock.”

  “Tell me about it!” Patsy said sharply. “I know he keeps crazy hours, but if you want to see him, get your ass over to Fort Lee before ten-thirty.”

  “Where’s—”

  “The Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge.”

  “I know where Fort Lee is,” he said impatiently. “What’s his address?”

  “One-five-two Palisades Avenue.”

  The cab ride went as Patsy said it would. At 10:15 Len reminded the driver to wait. He had negotiated a round-trip flat rate and didn’t want to be left stranded by an impatient Indian with a red circle impressed into his forehead. “One hour. Any longer and you get extra. Okay?”

  The high rise was one in a row of apartment buildings on the scenic side of Palisades Avenue in what was known as the Gold Coast. Buildings put up after the war were gone, replaced by taller, more modern designs. Mike Carson lived in the Atrium Palace, eighteen floors of condominiums priced from a half to over a million dollars and nestled between the Colony and the Plaza. The lobby was empty, except for a uniformed guard with a badge on his chest that read Carlos, and who was seated before a bank of black and white monitors, a switchboard, and a radio tuned to the Mets–Pirates game. Carlos spoke into the phone, nodded, then said “18 South” and pointed to the elevators.

  Mike answered the door. He was dressed in jeans and T-shirt and guided Lenny past unopened cartons spread throughout high-ceilinged rooms. The furniture was covered with drop cloths and paint cans were arrayed over the floor. Wide, gray-tinted windows faced east and south to a spectacular view of the Hudson River. Immediately north, and as if one could reach out and touch them, were the towers and cables of the George Washington Bridge. Directly across the river were the northern reaches of New York City, and to the south were the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

  They stopped in a small room lined with bookshelves, and a desk on which were several stacks of letters and folders, two phones and a combo fax/printer. Beside the desk was a personal computer.

  “Excuse the clutter,” Mike said. “Any more and I’ll have to move.” He motioned Lenny into a chair and sat behind his desk. He smiled, genuinely. “As I remember, you like to be called Lenny.”

  “Yeah,” Lenny said, “good memory. You know, Playboy’s going to run the story and they’re big on photographs. Maybe that sales gal in your new showroom. Georgia?”

  “She’s a sales consultant,” Mike said evenly.

  The mild rebuke went right past Lenny. “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Okay if I send a photographer here? Good idea to show you at home.”

  “Home is a mess. Talk to Patsy about photographs. In fact, talk to Patsy about everything, except the interview. She can’t do that. I’m sorry about Saturday. That wasn’t a good day for any of us.”

  “She gave me a file on Carson Motors, and a little bit on you, but not enough to do a profile. And I want to ask questions about the shooting.”

  “You can ask, that’s why you’re here.” Mike sat back, relaxed. “But let me warn you that there might be questions about the man who was shot that I can’t discuss. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough,” Lenny said. “Nice apartment. You live alone?”

  Mike nodded. “I do now. Had a friend, but she was getting impatient. Wanted kids. A bunch of them. You know how that goes.”

  “Yeah,” Lenny said. “I damned well know how that goes. Had the same situation. No kids for me, not now. Don’t know if that was the issue, but she took off. Going to sort it all out, she said.”

  “You were married?”

  “No. It didn’t get that far.”

  Lenny balanced his notebook on a corner of the desk. “I asked because I don’t see any pictures.”

  Mike opened a desk drawer and took out a silver frame and handed it to Lenny. In it was a photograph of Mike and a young woman. They were on board ship and wearing evening clothes. “I kept one, just in case.”

  Lenny made a low whistling sound. “She’s beautiful.”

  “I know. Everyone felt the same way. Problem was, so did she.” Mike put the photograph back in the drawer. “But you’re not here to talk about an old girlfriend.”

  “Yeah.” Lenny began with his questions. They were succinct and flowed in a natural progression, never prying for dark secrets, always slanted to keep Mike involved, even interested in searching his memory for obscure, interesting details.

  Indeed, Lenny was a pro and in thirty-five minutes he filled twenty-five pages with a fast pen that wrote squiggly big letters in a weird scrawl, plus his own bastardized shorthand.

  “That pretty much takes us up to last Saturday,” Lenny said, turning to a fresh page. “The media are trying to figure out what happened.” He glanced up. “And you’ve gone under cover. What can you tell me about the man who was shot? We know he was Russian, but who was he?”

  “You talk as if he was dead. He’s not.” Mike rubbed his hands together. “He is someone I knew when I was very young.”

  “Can you tell me his name?”

  “Sasha Akimov.”

  “How old were you when you last saw him?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Just a little guy, maybe seven or eight. He was a friend of my parents.”

  “So, it’s been twenty-five or more years since you last saw him?”

  Mike nodded.

  “After all this time, why did he come to see you?”

  “I never found out. I think he was about to tell me, then—” Mike’s hand went involuntarily to his throat.

  “How long had you been together before he was shot?”

  “Ten minutes, but that’s a guess. I didn’t expect him, but I was expecting other people. Then, he began telling me about my family.”
r />   “Was he a close friend of your parents?”

  “He and my mother came from the same town. It’s on the Black Sea. He was in the navy with my father.”

  “They’re still friends?”

  “They went separate ways. It isn’t something I want to discuss.”

  Lenny turned a page. “Akimov came from Moscow?”

  “St. Petersburg.”

  “You said you were a kid when you last saw him. Where would that have been?”

  “St. Petersburg.”

  “Is that where you always lived? When you were in Russia?”

  “I was born in Estonia. My father was in the navy and stationed in Tallinn. I was just a little guy when we moved to St. Petersburg.”

  “Was Akimov in the navy?”

  Mike nodded. “And he was transferred to St. Petersburg, too.”

  “So, after all these years, he showed up in your showroom? Pretty good for a guy who doesn’t speak English. Why did he want to see you?”

  Mike shrugged. “He started by telling me that my father had a party the night I was born. He wanted me to know that my father invited his navy buddies to celebrate the fact he was a new dad and also because President Kennedy had been assassinated.”

  “That’s an interesting headline,” Lenny said. “Mike Carson born the day John Kennedy died.” His pen flew across a page. “So, there was a party—”

  “With a lot of drinking and gambling.”

  “The old Soviet Union wasn’t crazy about Kennedy, and I suppose your dad and his friends thought they had a couple of reasons to celebrate.”

  “Akimov said that.”

  Lenny smiled. “He told you about a party that took place more than thirty years ago? Must have been some hell of a party. What else did he say about it?”