An hour later, Nana Mama’s kitchen was smelling outrageously good as she and Ali stir-fried the stuffing for the rolls. My cell phone rang.
It was Ned Mahoney.
“Alex?” he said before I could greet him. “You alone?”
“Give me a minute,” I said, and I hit mute. “I have to take this.”
“Dinner’s at seven,” my grandmother said. “Bree said she’d be here by then.”
I went down to my office and shut the door behind me.
“Okay, I’m good,” I said.
“We’ve got a new potential suspect in Senator Walker’s murder case.”
Mahoney went on to describe Viktor Kasimov, a Russian businessman closely allied with the Kremlin. Kasimov acted as an envoy between Washington and Moscow from time to time. Back-channel stuff carried out under a diplomatic passport.
“He’s also a degenerate, a hypocrite, and possibly a rapist.”
Ned said that Kasimov had been a suspect in a string of rapes in the United States and Europe, starting during his graduate years at UCLA. Kasimov was smart, cunning, and unafraid to use cash and lawyers to shut women up, and he used the diplomatic passport to keep himself out of the hands of authorities.
Kasimov was also believed to be a liaison between Moscow and factions in the Middle East who were looking for an arms deal, an accusation he had emphatically denied.
“He’s slippery,” Mahoney said. “Half the time he lives out on a yacht in international waters where he can’t be arrested or detained. Two weeks ago, he made a mistake. After a night of partying in Mexico City, he flew on a private jet to Los Angeles. Guess who was waiting for him.”
“I can’t answer that.”
“California state troopers, the California state attorney general, and Senator Betsy Walker. Seems the last time Kasimov was in town, he forcibly raped Senator Walker’s best friend’s daughter after giving her a date-rape drug.”
I said nothing.
“He squealed diplomatic immunity, but he ended up in LA County Jail. He spent almost a week in there until his army of attorneys paid for by the Russians got some state judge to grant him a two-million-dollar bail.”
“There’s an idiot savant born every minute.”
“You know it. Kasimov came up with a check for the whole nut. No bondsman. But here’s the thing. He left jail seriously pissed off at Betsy Walker. He said that in Russia, she’d be in jail or shot.”
“In that same Russia, he should have his balls chopped off,” I said.
“You’re probably right,” Mahoney said.
“So, let me guess. He skipped bail on the full two million?”
“That’s the thing, Alex. He hasn’t left the country.”
“No surveillance post-release?”
“Sure,” he said. “Kasimov and a small entourage flew domestic charter from LA to DC last week. He had a meeting at the Russian embassy and took a suite at the Mandarin Oriental. He hasn’t been seen outside since. Six days. His people claim he’s fighting a nasty flu he picked up in jail courtesy of Senator Walker.”
“He’s not wearing an ankle bracelet?”
“Not a stipulation of bail.”
“An even more savant judge.”
“Or more corrupt.”
“You think Kasimov was angry enough at Betsy Walker to have killed her?”
“Or have her killed? Yes. That’s the word I’m getting. And there’s another thing.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s a hell of a marksman with rifle and pistol. He came in eleventh overall at the last Olympic Games.”
“Was he in town when Betsy Walker died?”
“He was indeed.”
“Then I think we need to talk with him sooner rather than later.”
“Meet me at the Mandarin in an hour?”
I looked at my watch. It was 6:20.
“Ali and Nana are making a special dinner, and I know Bree would like to be there. Better make it two.”