Beating the Babushka (6 page)

Chapter Eleven

“I am Major Yuri Sokoll.”

The man in the black coat took off his hat and held it lightly in front of him. Cape could still see the bulge under his coat, but the gun was no longer visible. The giant had moved to stand directly in front of the door, making it clear that the only exit was no longer available.

The man in the coat nodded at his companion. “And this is Ursa.”

Cape grimaced involuntarily as Ursa smiled. He was almost seven feet tall and as wide as the door behind him, his massive head covered in black stubble. Running diagonally from the left side of his scalp to the right side of his chin were three parallel scars, livid tracts of raised flesh maybe two inches apart. The bottom scar crossed Ursa’s lips, giving the first impression that he was swallowing an albino worm. The next broke his nose in half, compressing the cartilage just above his nostrils. The top and final scar bisected his right eye, which had turned a milky blue, the pupil faded and indistinct. It moved in perfect sync with his left eye, which was black. They followed Cape’s movements the way a shark tracks a seal.

Cape looked from the giant to the man in the coat, nodding at each in turn.

“Ursa…Major.”

Ursa continued to smile, a malevolent grin promising a future of pain. His teeth were perfect, almost blindingly white. Cape smiled back at the giant.

“Do you floss every day?” he asked. “Or do you use those whitening strips?” Ursa leaned forward, but the Major waved his right hand in a gesture that was part wave and part Nazi salute, and the giant stopped in his tracks.

“Ursa spent fifteen years in gulag,” said the Major proudly. “Every bone in his body broken.”

“Congratulations,” said Cape.

“Then after many years in prison, Ursa is released in Siberia with no shoes, no coat. He begins the long walk home. Two thousand kilometers.”

Cape glanced at Ursa but didn’t say anything.

“One night he is attacked by bear—Siberian grizzly, very dangerous.” The Major paused for effect, then splayed his fingers and ran them gently across Ursa’s ruined face. “Ursa kills bear and eats it.”

Cape had to ask. “Did it taste like chicken?”

Ursa had no comment.

Cape figured as long as the Major kept talking, Ursa was less likely to start doing whatever it was that Ursa did, which Cape suspected wasn’t anything nice. “So you guys are Russian?”

“Of course,” replied the Major, as if the question itself was insulting.

“How’d you fellas meet?”

“I am ex-KGB,” said the Major proudly. “It was me who put Ursa in gulag.”

Cape didn’t know what to say to that. Ursa was smiling again, clenching and unclenching his hands in anticipation.

“This case you are working on,” said the Major. “It is dangerous.”

“For whom?”

“It is dangerous,” repeated the Major, enunciating each word carefully.

Cape shrugged. “Well, it was awfully sweet of you gentlemen to stop by and check up on me. Can I call you a cab?”

The Major narrowed his eyes and moved his right hand slightly, as if brushing lint from his lapel. Ursa took one giant step forward. Cape figured one more step and Ursa would be standing on top of him.

Cape held up his hands. “Okay—okay. I’ll drop the case.”

The Major gave him a look that said “convince me.”

Cape dropped his hands to his lap with a sigh of resignation. “In fact, I had already decided to drop it—I was thinking of going to Hawaii instead.”

The Major snapped his fingers lightly and Ursa stepped back, disappointment etched across the gargoyle face. Cape moved his hands forward and pulled a revolver from the holster mounted to the bottom of the desk drawer. He lifted the gun deliberately and pointed it squarely at Ursa’s head.

“You know,” said Cape, “now that I think about it, it’s hurricane season in Hawaii.”

The gun was a Ruger .357 magnum, blued steel with a four-inch barrel. The kind of gun designed to get your attention and hold it, and it seemed to be working on the Major. He rocked back on his heels in surprise, his head unconsciously turning toward his giant comrade.

Ursa had the opposite reaction and rolled onto the balls of his feet, a distinctly feral sound starting somewhere deep in his throat. Compared to going to prison for fifteen years and having every bone in your body broken, then dancing with a bear, the prospect of getting shot wasn’t a big threat.

Cape shifted his aim to the Major’s chest, pulling back the hammer with an exaggerated motion. “You go first.”

The Major nodded and said something in Russian under his breath. Ursa stopped growling and blinked, as if awoken from a trance. Then he turned suddenly and pulled open the door. The Major looked over his shoulder at Cape as he was crossing the threshold.

“Hawaii would have been nice this time of year,” he said quietly, a small smile playing around the edges of his mouth. Pulling on his hat, he turned and left. Ursa stepped into the hallway without turning back, pulling the door gently until it latched.

Cape brought the hammer down slowly and put the gun on his desk before releasing the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. He was about to take another deep breath when the wall adjacent to the door exploded.

Plaster and bits of wood flew across the room as Cape grabbed the gun and crouched behind the desk, taking aim at the wall. His first thought was a shotgun blast fired from the hallway.

A massive fist protruded through the wall, knuckles red with blood and fingers white with plaster. As Cape stared, the hand disappeared, replaced a moment later by Ursa’s milky eye glaring at him. Then the eye vanished and the hand reappeared, this time with the middle finger extended.

Cape heard the Major’s muffled voice and the hand retreated back through the hole it had made. The heavy klip-klop of angry feet faded down the hallway.

Cape dropped the gun on the desk and sat down heavily. He looked around the office, now shrouded in a fine white mist of plaster. Outside the window the fog had rolled in, turning the city a pallor as dead as Ursa’s sullen orb.

Cape put his head in his hands and muttered to himself.

“Maybe there’s a direct flight to Maui.”

Chapter Twelve

Angelo took a deep breath as he reached the end of the hall. Set into the wall adjacent to the door was a small lighted button connected to an intercom. Before he could press the button, he heard a familiar voice asking him to come in.

Harry Berman’s office was smaller and more intimate than his brother Adam’s. The walls were lined with bookshelves instead of video cassettes, the chairs wood and leather instead of brushed chrome. It was a more human environment, even though it currently lacked a human occupant.

The television mounted behind the desk was fifty inches wide, a flat plasma display easily seen from almost any angle in the room. Above the screen was a camera, a red light above the lens announcing the presence of its owner even before he spoke.

The face on the screen was benevolent in close-up, the broad smile stretching a good thirty inches across the wall. The eyes were brown, enormous, and gentle. Lines around the eyes suggested that the man with the rugged good looks was older than he appeared, but his voice still sounded boyish and cheerful as it reverberated through the speakers mounted on either side of the screen.

“Hard day, Angelo?” asked Harry Berman.

Angelo shrugged, looking at the face on the screen instead of directly at the camera. “Just the usual, sir.”

“I read the newspaper,” said Harry, his smile spreading across the wall. “Quite a story.”

“Mr. Berman—I mean Adam—the other Mr. Berman,” began Angelo haltingly. “Adam’s worried about the asteroid movie getting off schedule.”

The smile disappeared, leaving in its wake a suddenly small mouth pursing its lips. The wall seemed to move as Harry’s eyes shifted, glancing first to his left, then his right.

“A man might have been murdered,” he said solemnly. “While working for this company. We have a responsibility to that man’s family. Did he have a family, Angelo?”

“A daughter,” replied Angelo. “He had a daughter. I understand he was a widower, so the child is being taken by her aunt and uncle.”

Harry shook his head sadly, giving the impression the entire room was shaking in an earthquake.

“He was part of our family,” he intoned. “The Empire Films family.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We need to set things right.”

“But we don’t know if there was a crime committed,” protested Angelo, wondering if he sounded as unconvincing through the speakers.

The brown eyes hardened. “Then we must find out, Angelo.”

“But the schedule—”

Harry cut him off, a giant hand appearing and then vanishing from the screen. Angelo felt like he’d almost been swatted.

“Damn the schedule,” said Harry. “The integrity of this company is at stake, Angelo. That’s more important than any movie.” A wry smile spread across the screen. “Even one of my brother’s asteroid movies.”

“Whatever you say, sir.”

“Harry.”

“Okay, Harry.”

“I understand there is a detective.”

“Yeah,” said Angelo. “Grace hired him.”

“But he works for us.”

Angelo shrugged. “I told Grace to explain the ground rules to him—you know, when working on one of our productions.”

“Good,” said Harry, the giant face moving up and down. Angelo started to feel queasy, made a mental note to take Dramamine before his next visit. This fucking office was like an Imax theater.

“Take care of him, Angelo.”

Angelo shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, Harry.”

“And Angelo?” One foot-long eyebrow rose higher than the other.

“Sir?”

“Don’t forget who you work for.”

“I won’t,” said Angelo, careful not to look directly at the camera.

Chapter Thirteen

“He looks like a pretzel.”

The man in the oven had his legs twisted behind his back and over his head, his arms bent to force his hands between his knees. The death grimace was so severe it looked as if he were about to laugh, his predicament unbearably funny. His back was broken just above the pelvis so he could fit into the oven. If there were yoga classes in hell, this is what they would look like.

“He looks like a Goddamn pretzel,” repeated Vincent.

“That’s the idea,” said Beau wearily. It was six o’clock in the morning. Beau rubbed his eyes and looked forlornly at the empty coffee cup in his hand.

Vincent pulled a pair of latex gloves from his coat pocket and stepped closer to the oven. He was wearing a gray double-breasted suit with a yellow tie and shiny black loafers. He looked like someone who got up early and enjoyed it, even on the weekends. Beau suspected he’d been awake when they got the call and had already eaten a complete breakfast.

“Who did you say this guy was?” Vincent asked.

“Pete Pirelli, also known as Pete the Pretzel. That’s the joke, Vinnie. Why just kill the man when you can twist him into a knot and stuff him into an industrial oven at a bakery? And here I was, beginning to think you had a sense of humor.”

Beau’s voice echoed faintly around the huge expanse of the bakery. The building was a converted warehouse in a neighborhood that had been nothing but warehouses until a few years ago, when the Internet boom pushed out the manufacturing companies to make room for residential lofts costing two million dollars and trendy restaurants serving fifty-dollar plates. Now the lofts cost less than half what they were built for and most of the restaurants were gone, but the manufacturing and warehouses were gone for good. The bakery was one of the few original buildings left.

Two uniformed policemen milled about near the entrance while two others marked off the area around the ovens. Each oven was six feet wide and maybe two feet high, able to handle everything from pizza to pretzels. The lingering stench in the air smelled like neither.

Vincent wrinkled his nose and frowned as he peered inside the oven. “And why was he called Pete the Pretzel?”

“The fuck should I know, Vinnie?” said Beau testily. “Maybe he ate ’em by the bag full. Maybe he was double-jointed. You never know with these mob assholes.”

“So he was one of Frank Alessi’s guys?”

“Yeah, Pete was a bagman. Made deliveries, took payoffs from the protection racket. Not very high on the Mafioso food chain.”

“Drugs?” Vincent pulled a pencil from his jacket pocket and poked tentatively at the corpse’s cheek.

“Oh yeah,” replied Beau. “Frank’s operation is pretty big for a small city—loan sharking, extortion, some construction—but drugs are definitely a staple. Poor Pete would have followed the traffic here in town, made deliveries here and there.”

“So this was Freddie Wang’s handiwork?”

Beau nodded. “I’d say it was payback for the zoo—why else would you kill a mug like Pete?”

Vincent rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re in the middle of a war over the drug trade.”

Beau shrugged. “Seems that way to me.”

“Swell.”

“Maybe we can let the scumbags kill each other,” said Beau. “Go back home and get some sleep.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Yeah, but I ’spect the captain might frown upon that sort of laissez faire attitude.”

Vincent raised his eyebrows. “Did you say laissez faire?”

Beau scowled at Vincent. “What—you didn’t think a brother could speak French?”

“Do you speak French?”

“Fuck no,” replied Beau. “Don’t know why anyone speaks French, do you?”

“They speak it at the Olympics.”

“I thought the Olympics were Greek.”

“I think the French bought them out.”

“Another mystery,” said Beau. “I can say croissant and laissez faire just fine, and that seems to cover about every situation I can think of. Around here it helps to know a little Spanish, some Chinese—but French? Let’s be serious.”

“Then why’d you get so defensive when I asked?” demanded Vincent.

“Just fuckin’ with you, Vinnie. You got to learn to relax, especially at this hour.”

“I get up at five every day—mornings are the best part of the day.”

“I knew it,” said Beau, shaking his head sadly. “You’re a morning person, that’s your problem. You know what the best time of the day is, Vinnie? Night—that’s the best part of the day.”

“That’s Homicide. As soon as the body goes down, you get up.”

“Never should’ve left Narcotics.”

“Maybe we could ask Frank Alessi and Freddie Wang to kill each other after dinner.”

“Then I’d be a happy man.”

A uniformed officer walked over and mumbled a few words to Beau before handing him a phone. Beau listened for a few seconds, then put his hand over the mouthpiece.

“How long you think we gonna be here?” he asked Vincent.

“Depends when the ME shows up, as usual. Why?”

“We got another appointment,” replied Beau. He moved his hand and spoke rapidly into the phone. “Fine. Stay there, and we’ll meet you in an hour. That’s right, an hour. And I want you to make a phone call for me.” He grabbed a card from his wallet, read the number, and hung up, handing the phone back to the uniform.

“Who was that?” asked Vincent.

“Johnson,” replied Beau. “Remember how that lady producer said the studio put the crew in corporate housing at Golden Gateway Apartments?”

“What about it?”

“The signed warrant came back, and Johnson tossed the dead guy’s room.”

“He found something?” asked Vincent, disbelief evident in his tone. Neither of them expected anything to come from the search, a bullshit favor for a nonexistent case.

“About ten kilos of heroin.”

“Jesus.”

“Never should have left Narcotics,” said Beau.