For a man who made his living from engorged appetites, Siggy Rostov’s own hungers were strictly managed things, at least at breakfast. He had a plate of egg whites before him, a pitcher of ice water with lemon slices in it, black coffee, toast that looked like baked gravel, and half a grapefruit. This lavish spread was served up on bone china, laid out on white linen, and set on a table in a stone courtyard, beneath the shade of a coral tree whose flowers were colorless and shriveled.
By early afternoon every table in the courtyard—in the whole restaurant—would be full, and by evening the line of cars for valet parking would jam traffic on Sunset. But just then, at seven on Wednesday morning, La Bouche d’Or was empty save for Siggy, his kitchen staff, his soldiers and lieutenants, and a queue of petitioners waiting at the edge of the courtyard. Sutter and I were at the end of the line.
According to Sutter, Siggy held court like this every Wednesday and Friday, at one of the several trendy eateries he owned on the Westside. Sutter thought it better that I go to Siggy than wait for his goons to come to me, and more prudent if he came along, and we’d been waiting for nearly an hour. The men ahead of us were a motley bunch, of various ages, colors, nationalities, and styles of dress, but they had in common a grim, resigned expression, as if they were waiting for lab results and bracing for bad news. They approached Siggy tentatively, and made their pitches in low, stumbling tones.
Siggy seemed to pay them no attention, but his number one, a dark man who sat beside him and had a face like a toad and a body like a sprung sofa, would nod and consult a laptop. On rare occasions the dark toad would glance at Siggy, who would look up momentarily from his iPad, though no words passed between them. Then the toad would speak, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in English, always softly, and the petitioner would move off. Some men looked more frightened as they departed, others just looked numb. I had yet to see anyone who looked pleased.
Siggy himself looked rather like his breakfast—pale, lean, and flinty. He was in his fifties, with close-cropped white hair, a gaunt, gray face, and eyes the color of overcast. He had an angular frame, and strong, bony hands like white machines. His shirt was white with gray stripes, and expensive-looking, and his wristwatch was a weighty chunk of steel that looked like a spare part from the Large Hadron Collider. Besides the watch, there was a bandage on the back of one of his hands, and a whiter patch on the white skin of the other. There were more white patches on his face—on his chin and on his right cheek. Sutter saw me looking at them.
“Looks like tattoo removal,” I said.
Sutter nodded. “Siggy’s campaign to get respectable. The restaurants are another part of it.”
One of Siggy’s guys—the same one who’d frisked us at the door—shot us a dirty look and grunted some Russian.
“No talking in line,” Sutter said, chuckling. “It’s like seeing the pope, only it’s not his ring we’re supposed to kiss.”
Siggy’s guy was about to say something else but stopped. The toad was standing, beckoning. The other petitioners had gone; it was our turn. Sutter crossed the courtyard and I followed, my heart pounding.
Siggy Rostov set aside his iPad, sipped his coffee, and said something softly to the toad, who shook his head and moved off. Siggy looked at Sutter.
“The very careful soldier,” Siggy said. “So very picky about the work he takes. I still regret not hiring you sometimes. Also I regret leaving you aboveground.” His voice was deep, and his speech was deliberate but without accent.
Sutter laughed. “You do fine without me, Siggy, better than fine. You’re aces.”
“I lost men I shouldn’t have—men I wouldn’t have lost if you’d been there.”
Sutter shrugged. “Should’ve, could’ve, might’ve—you never know how things work out. I would’ve held you back.”
Siggy looked at me. “But you’re not so very picky now, eh? This who you’re working for?”
“This is Dr. Knox—”
Siggy cut him off. “I know who he is.”
“He’s a buddy of mine. From Africa.”
Siggy pursed his lips and nodded. “He doesn’t look African.” He turned to me. “And you, Dr. Knox, what makes you fuck with my livelihood?”
“I wasn’t trying to do anything to your—”
“You weren’t trying—like that means something. You go around asking about my lost property—threatening my associates, scaring my fucking customers, giving my men a hard time. You—”
“To be fair, Siggy,” Sutter cut in, “it was me who gave your boys a hard time.”
“So they tell me,” Siggy said, and he looked behind us.
There were voices, and the two men from the clinic alley stepped into the courtyard. Cornrows wore a blue French soccer jersey today. Tats wore the same ill-fitting pinstriped pants and pink shirt as he had in the alley. He gave Sutter a mad-dog stare, said something in Russian, and spit at Sutter’s feet. Some of Siggy’s men laughed.
Sutter smiled. “Speak of the devil.”
Siggy smiled too. “These two would’ve been to see you the next day if I let them, but I told them to wait. They don’t like it on the leash.”
“Maybe they’d like muzzles better,” Sutter said.
Tats spit again and growled something and grabbed his own crotch.
Sutter replied in rapid Russian, and the only words I caught were tvoyu mat. Whatever it meant, it was more than enough for Tats, who turned a volcanic shade, lowered his head, and charged.
It happened quickly, in a fluid, twisting instant—like a pennant snapping, or a wave breaking—and it was oddly muffled, so that the only sounds were fast, shuffling steps, an explosive breath, a grunt, a gasp of pain, and then a meaty thud. And then Tats was on his back on the other side of the courtyard, his nose pulped, his right wrist, elbow, and shoulder all grossly dislocated. And Sutter somehow had a gun in his hand, a shiny automatic that he pointed at Siggy.
A smile flickered on Siggy’s lips, and he shook his head. He looked over at his number one. “We stopped patting people down? Too much work, mudak?”
Sutter put the gun up and let the clip drop from the grip to the courtyard stones. Then he worked the slide and ejected a shell. “Not his fault. I took it off your boy as he went past.”
“Asshole,” Siggy said, though I wasn’t sure to whom. He looked at me. “Enough with this fucking dinner theatre. You understand that if I want to hurt you I can. And I will—even if your friend here pushes my overhead up. He knows I’ll pay the price, yes? So you tell me why I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’m not interested in interfering with your business. I’m just looking for the girl—Elena.”
Siggy’s eyes grew colder. “The girl is my business, doctor.”
“I didn’t know that when I started looking for her.”
“Finding out didn’t stop you.”
I took a deep breath. “She has a child—a little boy. He—”
“Maybe she has five kids. Maybe she has an old babushka too, and ten cats and a blind goat—I don’t give a shit. She owes me and she’s got to work it off.”
“How much does she owe you?” I asked, and I heard Sutter sigh wearily.
“She comes off the boat owing me forty grand for travel expenses.”
I nodded. “Forty thousand,” I said. “Forty thousand is—”
“Forty is not the number,” Siggy said. “Forty is what she owed me off the boat. There’s interest on that, which for the three months she’s here comes to another five, and room and board on top of that, which is another fifteen—which, let me tell you, is a fucking bargain for West Hollywood.”
“Sixty thousand, then.”
“Which might’ve been the number, if she hadn’t beat the shit out of one of my best customers, who—by the way—is close personal friends with half the fucking city council.”
Sutter cleared his throat. “So what is the number, Siggy?”
“The fact that there’s a number at all—the fact I’m willing to think about not putting her down, and this doctor too, is because I know you, Sutter. Because we’ve got some history, and you’ve got a little credit with me.”
“And I appreciate it, I really do. What’s the number?”
“Seventy-five.”
Sutter laughed. “Seventy-five thousand? You’re—”
“It’s seventy-five now. How long it stays that way—does it go up tomorrow, does it go away altogether—nobody knows.”
Sutter tossed the empty automatic on the table. “A number like that—it takes time,” he said.
“Take all the time you want. My guys won’t stop looking, and if they find her first, then I guess they save you some cash.”