Beating the Babushka (11 page)

Chapter Twenty-five

“We could always cancel our arrangement.”

The Major smiled and held the receiver at arm’s length to protect his hearing. When the shouting stopped, he brought it closer and fanned the flames he’d just lit.

“I’m sure it is minor investment for you,” he said slowly. “We can work together another time.” His arm uncoiled like a spring before the rebuttal screamed down the line.

As he talked on the phone, the Major watched Ursa through the glass window of the office, pacing around the empty warehouse. Even next to his giant companion the shipping containers looked big, each one eight feet square and capable of holding half a ton of laboratory equipment. Everyday shipments were made to hospitals all across the country, sensitive measuring devices and lab equipment packed in custom foam sized to fit the containers. The Major marveled at the precision of the operation, so different from the anarchy of his current venture.

“You sound committed,” said the Major soothingly. “Commitment is all I ask from business associates. We must share risk if you expect to share reward.” This time he kept the phone pressed to his ear, listening carefully for the grudging response. When it came, he rapped on the office window and signaled Ursa to join him. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his prints off of the phone, then cradled the receiver gently.

“Get the car,” he said to Ursa. “I want to go shopping.”

Chapter Twenty-six

Cape liked flying about as much as getting shot. Maybe less.

He and Sally caught the last flight on JetBlue from Oakland to JFK. The plane was full, but even Cape had to admit the flight was a smooth one. Sally pointed out that he was safer in a plane than crossing the street or, in his case, strolling on the beach at Ghirardelli Square.

“I know that,” said Cape. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“You hate situations you can’t control,” replied Sally. “Like turbulence.”

“Or aging aircraft.”

“This plane’s brand new,” said Sally. “This airline’s practically brand new.”

“Financially strapped airlines are a problem,” suggested Cape. “The first thing they cut is maintenance.”

“This airline’s making money. You told me so yourself when we bought the tickets.”

Cape said nothing, glancing out the window to make sure the wing was still connected to the fuselage.

“I’ve never known anyone who so actively courts danger but wants it to happen completely on his terms,” said Sally.

Cape turned away from the window. “I suppose you think that’s contradictory.”

“I think it’s very Western,” replied Sally. “You want to choose how and when things occur. But you can’t choose…all you can do is prepare.”

“Are you prepared?”

“Always.”

Cape looked out the window again.

“Face it,” said Sally. “You won’t be comfortable until they let you fly the plane.”

“You think I should take flying lessons?”

“I think you should go to sleep,” said Sally, closing her eyes.

Knowing sleep was beyond his grasp, Cape took out his notebook and turned to a clean sheet of paper. Down the center of the page he started to write the names and descriptions of all the people involved in the case so far. After he’d written a description of the guy at the beach, he scanned the list to see if he’d overlooked anyone. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he added Grace to the list.

By the time the plane started its descent into JFK, the page looked like a child’s drawing—lines, circles, and boxes connecting the names. Many had been erased and redrawn as Cape tried to establish links between various people and events. He squinted at the paper, hoping to see a pattern emerge, but his eyes were tired and all he could see was a jumbled mess.

“I see you’ve solved the case,” said Sally, stretching herself awake.

“Absolutely. It was Colonel Mustard in the park with an AK-47.”

“I thought he favored the candlestick.”

“Times change.”

“So tell me again why we’re about to land in New York,” said Sally. “You really think the studio is involved?”

Cape shook his head. “No, I don’t. Why would they fuck with their own production?”

“So?”

“I think the Russians have something to do with the drugs, and the movie happens to be in the middle of it. I think the movie provided some sort of cover for moving the drugs, but whether Tom—the dead producer—acted alone or worked with someone else from the studio, I couldn’t tell you. I asked the Sloth to dig into Tom’s finances before I left. If he finds a money trail, we can follow it back to the source.”

“Then isn’t this trip pretty much a waste of time? I get that you want to talk with the brothers running the studio, but you could do that over the phone.”

“True.”

“And even if they know something,” continued Sally, “I doubt they’ll want you to know.”

“You forget how persuasive I can be.”

“You forget they’re the ones paying you.”

“Also true,” said Cape, shrugging. “But I can’t think of anything else to push against, and I needed to get out of San Francisco for a couple of days.”

“So we’re hiding?”

“I prefer to call it laying low,” replied Cape. “Aren’t you the one who told me to keep a low profile?”

“Yeah, but I know you—you’re like a dog with a bone. There must be something else to this trip.”

Cape smiled. “You must be a detective.”

“Not me,” said Sally. “I’m just the girl from the escort service.”

“I’m meeting a cop.”

“What cop?”

“Guy named Michael Corelli—Beau hooked me up.”

“NYPD?”

Cape nodded. “Their Organized Crime Unit—OCU if you prefer acronyms. In Corelli’s case, that’s mostly involved La Cosa Nostra, the nice old men sitting in the supper clubs watching
The Sopranos
on DVD.”

“Corelli’s an Italian name.”

“Yeah,” said Cape. “Beau says Corelli has a chip on his shoulder about the whole thing, takes it very personally. When he was growing up, his dad had to pay extortion money to keep his store open. Some of the guys collecting the money were his friends’ fathers. Corelli decided to chase the mob before he was old enough to ride a bike.”

“You think he might know something about our Russian friends?”

“Not specifically, but he’s bound to know a helluva lot more about the Russian mob than I do.”

“We don’t know they’re with any mob.”

“Gotta start somewhere,” said Cape. “Someone tries to kill you with a sniper rifle, it’s usually not their first offense. And I could use a few pointers.”

“Like how to say ‘hello’ in Russian?”

“Or ‘please don’t shoot me’.”

“How about ‘fuck off or I’ll kill you’?” asked Sally. “I think I’d like to know that one.”

“If it comes to that, I don’t think you’ll need a translator.”

Cape felt his ears pop as normal gravity returned. The flight had landed on time. He looked at his writing pad one last time before stuffing it into his bag, frowning at the illegible scribbles and overlapping lines and boxes. He took a deep breath and blew out his cheeks.

“What a mess,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Somewhere deep in her subconscious, Grace was struggling to choose between crying or masturbating.

She stared at the ceiling and watched the reflected light from her alarm clock, her hands resting lightly on her abdomen. A moment ago she’d been thinking about Tom, his crooked smile and gentle touch, the wounded expression on his face when she’d told him it was over. The sweetness of the man even after she’d pushed him away, his undying support of her at every turn. Only now, over the past few days, had she realized that he must have loved her.

Grace felt the tears welling up as she faced the awful truth that she never felt the same way he did, and she never would. She wanted to give him that, at least, a confession of love to his ghost and his memory, but no matter how much she wished it had been true, the feeling wasn’t there. Her feelings ran deep, but not deep enough.

She closed her eyes, then blinked them dry, letting her thoughts drift. From Tom to the movie. From giant asteroids to Empire Studios. Harry and Adam, the cast and crew. To the detective she’d hired impulsively, a man she’d just met but trusted as if she’d known him forever.

Must be those eyes, she thought, laughing at herself. She was a sucker for blue eyes, and his had that touch of gray near the center. She wondered how old he was, decided he was probably her age. The eyes made him look older, but the rest of him looked about right. The sandy hair would hide the occasional white strands, so that was no help. Did it matter?

She let her right hand slip across her waist as she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She lay like that for a minute, her fingers barely moving, when suddenly a car engine reverberated through the walls of her bedroom. Her eyes snapped open as her hand moved from under the covers to reach for the bedside lamp.

Sleep isn’t coming tonight, she thought miserably. And neither am I.

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Grace padded to the bathroom as the sound of the car Dopplered down the street. She briefly wondered who was out for a drive at four in the morning, but quickly turned her attention to the shower. Once under the stream of hot water, the sounds from the street disappeared.

She thought about her day, which would begin in just under three hours, and all the work still to be done. Sitting on her desk were stacks of binders, ledgers, and production notes moved from Tom’s apartment to hers. Tom was meticulous about production details, schedules, and budgets. Naturally she’d talked with his assistant producers and some of the crew about what they’d planned to do next, but his notes were critical. She had to start getting up to speed on his half of the production, something she couldn’t put off any longer.

Grace rolled her neck under the pulsing spray as she visualized the black binders waiting in the next room. She shuddered and turned the faucet as hot as it would go as she realized she was afraid to open the notebooks. Suddenly the drugs found in Tom’s apartment flashed into her mind, a secret life hidden inside canisters of film. A secret she didn’t want to know.

But those were just drugs. Surprising, definitely. Confusing, certainly. Something that needed to be explained, but nothing to be afraid of. The drugs were a mystery, not a written record of events. Circumstantial evidence but not a written confession.

Grace didn’t want to open the notebooks because she knew, deep in her gut, that that was where the ugly truth lay waiting.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Cape was worried that they wouldn’t let him check into the hotel without first getting a Botox injection.

The people moving through the lobby came together as one seething mass of beautiful bodies and perfect hair, loosely connected by furtive glances at the giant mirror on the lobby wall. Everyone was young and excruciatingly attractive. The pair behind the registration desk—a young man and woman—were even more striking than their guests. Cape wondered if the hotel’s employment application had minimum requirements for cheekbone development.

The Soho Grand sat at the fringe of everything hip and trendy, its austere design popular with models, photographers, and advertising executives—anyone self-conscious or pretentious enough to put fashion before comfort. But it had the perfect location. Empire Studios was only a few blocks away, so Cape and Sally decided to embrace the madness.

Just off the lobby was an enormous bar curving around a cavernous space filled with geometrically challenging tables and impossibly high stools, all accented by halogen lights just dim enough to guarantee eye strain. Cape spotted Corelli instantly. He stood out like a carbuncle.

Cape stepped into the bar as Sally continued toward the elevators. Corelli stood and extended his hand. Around five-ten, black hair cut short and peppered with gray. The lines around his brown eyes multiplied when he smiled. He wore black shoes, gray slacks, and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing a faded tattoo of a scorpion on his right forearm. Cape guessed the tattoo was probably older than most of the guests at the hotel.

“Guess I stand out around here as much as you do,” Cape said as they shook hands.

“Beau wired me a photo,” said Corelli, his voice rich with Brooklyn undertones. “Said you were uglier in person.”

“An honest cop,” said Cape. “So rare these days.”

“He also told me you should be dead.”

Cape nodded. “For the time being, anyway.”

“He asked if I wanted to place a bet on whether or not you’d survive this case. I bet against you—hope you don’t mind, but Russians are involved.”

“Two cops betting on my life expectancy? I’m flattered.”

“Don’t take it personally,” said Corelli. “We only bet on people we like.”

“Thanks for meeting me.” Cape took a seat on one of the ergonomically challenged stools. “Beau said he knew you from the service.”

Corelli nodded. “Semper Fi.”

“And that you saved his life,” said Cape.

“He mention that he saved mine first?”

Cape shook his head. “He left that out.”

“He would,” said Corelli. “What’s your story? Beau told me he lost his badge once, but you got it back.”

Cape gave him a noncommittal shrug. “It was stuck between the cushions of his couch.”

“That’s not how I heard it.” Corelli smiled. “But I can see why he likes you.” A woman in her early twenties brushed past their table, wearing a miniskirt cut short enough to pass for a belt. Corelli almost got whiplash as she passed by. “This place is surreal.”

Cape flagged down a waitress dressed demurely in a skintight purple jumpsuit. “Not my normal scene, either.” Cape was feeling the flight and ordered coffee. Corelli was off-duty and went for a Bud.

“I saw you talking to that Asian number in the lobby,” said Corelli. “You know her?”

“Old friend.”

“Want to introduce me?”

“Stay away from her,” suggested Cape. “She’ll tear your heart out.”

Corelli laughed. “Don’t they all.”

“I meant it literally.”

Corelli half smiled but let it go, realizing he’d missed something.

“So Beau tells me you made some new friends,” he said.

Cape nodded. “I don’t know how many. Two for sure. There were three, but…” He let his voice trail off.

“Dead guy on the beach,” said Corelli. “He had Cyrillic letters on his fingers?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re dealing with the mafiya,” said Corelli, putting extra emphasis on the y.

“The Russian mob.”

“Yeah,” nodded Corelli. “Charming bunch of guys.”

Their drinks arrived and Cape charged it to his room. “What can you tell me?”

“Thanks,” said Corelli, raising his beer. “I can tell you a lot of stories, you tell me when to stop. They’re everywhere, but it’s hard to get a handle on the organization itself.”

“The feds must be all over them.”

Corelli’s mouth twisted into a cynical grin. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Know what happened when La Cosa Nostra first came over from Sicily?”

“The politicians went into denial?”

“You must know something about mob history.”

Cape shook his head. “No, but I know something about politicians.”

Corelli nodded his approval. “In the sixties, J. Edgar Hoover was too busy worrying about communism to do anything about the mob.”

“J. Edgar also had to worry about what dress to wear on the weekends,” said Cape, “and finding shoes to match.”

“True, but it was years before anyone in the government even acknowledged the existence of organized crime. By then it was too late. The Mafia controlled the docks, the labor unions, and most of the garment industry—and those were the legitimate enterprises.”

“You saying the government didn’t learn from its mistakes?” said Cape. “I’m shocked.”

“Some things never change,” said Corelli. “The Russian mob was treated the same when it first appeared in this country. In the seventies, Russian gangsters started coming over in force, but it was another ten years before the FBI assigned a single agent to the problem. Ten years.”

“How’d they get into the country?”

“A lot of them are Russian Jews by birth. Back home they probably didn’t give a rat’s ass about being Jewish—their only religion was money—but their heritage proved mighty useful when it came to immigration.”

“Asylum?”

Corelli nodded. “Don’t get me wrong—a lot of Russians emigrating in the seventies and eighties were legitimate dissidents, sponsored by U.S. citizens. They were good people who had to either get out or go to jail.”

“But not all of them.”

“Some were fresh out of the gulag and on the verge of going back. Instead they found religion, claimed persecution, and came in under the radar. And after the first wave got a foothold in the U.S., they sponsored their scumbag friends and relatives back home.”

“What about perestroika?” asked Cape. “The fall of communism. That must have changed things.”

“Yeah, it opened the floodgates. Easier to leave Russia, travel abroad, come back home, or change your citizenship. Even better, it meant millions of dollars in foreign aid pouring into Russia, every cent flowing through the fingers of the mafiya.”

“How?”

“These guys built the black markets in Russia,” said Corelli. “They were the only economy Russia had, so they already controlled ninety percent of the banks. I read an FBI report that estimated almost six hundred billion in foreign aid was stolen during the nineties.”

Cape whistled. “Naïve question, but didn’t the Russian government notice?”

Corelli laughed. “That’s the best part—the old guard was so determined to control the money, even after the collapse of the Communist Party, they turned to the KGB.”

“A brand you can trust.”

“Exactly. Government officials told the organization formerly known as the KGB to work with the mafiya to siphon off money from the now-private banks and give the government direct access to the funds.”

“Nice.”

“It gets even better,” said Corelli, pulling his stool closer. Nothing made a cop happier than finding a bureaucracy worse than the one he had to deal with on a daily basis. “The KGB got in bed with the mafiya and helped them steal all the money. They turned the loosely organized collection of gangsters and thugs into a well-funded, multi-national crime organization.”

“That’s the spirit of capitalism for you.”

“So much for the Cold War, huh?”

“No shit.”

“So that’s your history lesson for the day,” said Corelli. “Any questions?”

“How big is the organization?”

“Let’s put it this way,” said Corelli. “New York’s Russian émigré community numbers about three hundred thousand—that includes law-abiding citizens as well as thick-necked goons. But in Brighton Beach alone, there are almost five thousand Russian criminals. That’s why they call it Little Odessa.”

“Brooklyn.”

“My borough,” nodded Corelli. “Different neighborhood from where I grew up, but still Brooklyn.”

Cape raised one eyebrow. “Five thousand?”

“More than the five families of La Cosa Nostra combined,” said Corelli. “How about that?”

“Surprised you don’t hear more about them.”

“You will—
The Sopranos
still sell a lot of DVDs, but the feds actually made headway against the Mafia after Giuliani, since they put Gotti away. After a series of RICO indictments against mob bosses in Miami a few years back, Russians stepped in to take their place. Now half of Miami is under the control of the Russian mob, when before they were only minor players.”

“Where else are they?”

“Pretty much everywhere, but only about seventeen cities with any strength.”

“Only?”

“There’ll be more,” said Corelli. “Don’t doubt it for a second.”

“How about San Francisco?”

“The Lyubertskaya crime family has a growing presence on the West coast.”

“Why haven’t I heard of them before?” asked Cape. “Why hasn’t Beau?”

“He probably has, but just doesn’t know it. The Russians partner when they can’t dominate. They stay in the shadows unless they’re running things.”

Cape sat up straighter. “Partner?”

“They strike up alliances,” said Corelli. “In the case of San Francisco, that’s the Italians and Chinese. The Russians will cut deals with them, offer to supply muscle, get to know the city.”

“And then?”

“If there’s a chance to expand their operation by fucking over one of their business partners, they don’t hesitate.”

Cape nodded but said nothing. He was out of his depth and knew it. He needed a way in, something that could reduce the scope of the hunt down to a single, tangible target.

“What are they into?” he asked. “Drugs, unions, what?”

“That’s the big difference between the Italians and the Russians,” said Corelli. “The Italians have a rigid organizational structure, with turf clearly assigned to different captains.”

“Capos.”

“You must watch
The Sopranos
, too,” said Corelli. “They specialize in certain types of criminal activity—mostly unions, gambling, and extortion. But the mafiya, the Russians, they’ll get into anything that turns a dime.”

“Anything.”

“The usual stuff—drugs, extortion, gambling—muscle businesses with no finesse involved. But the Russian mob has also been implicated in arms smuggling, Wall Street investment scandals, gasoline tax evasion—even rigging hockey games.”

“The NHL?” Cape raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “I knew the league had problems…”

“Believe it,” said Corelli. “It was a cash cow for the mafiya for a while. A lot of the best players came from former Soviet countries, and the mob squeezed every one for a percentage of their salary. They threaten the players, and if that doesn’t work, they threaten their families.”

“That supposed to cheer me up?”

Corelli leaned forward and put his hand on Cape’s arm. When he spoke, his voice was as flat as his eyes. He sounded like a cop who had seen too much and finally lost his sense of humor, as black as it might be. “Let me be clear about something. These guys are animals. The Italians might threaten to kill you, and in most cases they’ll mean it.”

Cape met his gaze. “But the Russians…”

“They’ll kill your whole family,” said Corelli. “They go after cops, journalists, judges. They don’t give a fuck. The ones behind bars threaten people from their jail cells. They laugh at our judicial system. I guess after you’ve been in the gulag, you don’t scare too easy.”

Cape nodded. “Thanks for the warning.”

Corelli leaned back, his face softening. “That’s about all I know.”

“One more question.”

“Shoot.”

“You mentioned drugs. What drugs are we talking about?”

“Let’s see,” said Corelli, his tongue moving around the inside of his cheek searching for a memory. “On the import side, they’ve done business with the Colombians for years—that’s all cocaine, mostly smuggled by the Russians into Eastern Europe. On the export side, they move a lot of Turkish heroin.”

“Why Turkish?”

“Just happens to be where it comes from,” said Corelli. “Turks smuggle most of the heroin moving through Eastern Europe, including the stuff from Pakistan and Afghanistan. According to the government, those drugs fund terrorists.”

“I thought that was oil.”

“You and me both,” replied Corelli. “But when it comes to heroin, you can tell it’s Turkish by checking the morphine content—higher than average, sometimes double. The Russians buy it wholesale, then ship it to the States and other drug-addled Western countries.”

“Beau always talks about drugs coming into the U.S. along the West coast from Asia.”

“He’s talking about the Triads.”

Cape thought of Sally. “Another fun group of people I wouldn’t want to mess with.”

Corelli nodded. “Triads pretty much control all the drugs in Asia. The Russians might buy from them and distribute in other countries, but they don’t move any heroin themselves into San Francisco or L.A.”

Cape shook his head to clear it, a wasted effort. He tried again. Corelli watched him with a sympathetic eye.

“You’re just groping around in the dark, aren’t you?”

“You’ve discovered my secret investigative technique,” Cape said as he reached for his coffee. “Now I’ll have to kill you.”

“You have a plan?”

“Not really,” said Cape. “You have a suggestion?”

“I think you should go to a plastic surgeon, change your name, and lay low for a while.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I like you,” said Corelli. “I just don’t like the odds.”

“Me neither,” admitted Cape. “One more question?”

Corelli shrugged and took a swig. “I’m off-duty, like I said.”