Only the coffee from the tray of food had been touched. Deryabin lit a cigarette and pushed aside the cart. He sat facing a television set tuned to a Sunday morning kiddie show. The clock in the VCR read 7:42. Over his boxer shorts he had put on a white terry cloth bathrobe, one that had come courtesy of the Hilton, one that made him look like an over-the-hill light heavyweight. The room was cool, but he was sweating profusely. Simultaneous with the sound of chimes, the door opened and Trivimi Laar entered.
Deryabin rushed toward him. “Did you find him?”
“I haven’t been looking,” Trivimi replied. I told you it would be impossible.”
“It’s not, goddamn it! Get your ass moving and find the son of a bitch. Call every fucking hotel in the city. He’s in one of them.”
“He’s not in a hotel.” Galina had joined them. She was wearing the mate to Deryabin’s bathrobe, except on her it was as if she had stepped out of an ad for Victoria’s Secret. She was brushing her hair, her head tilted.
“How do you know?” Deryabin asked.
“Because it’s how I feel.” She fixed a cup of coffee and went to the window and looked down to the Sunday morning traffic moving along Sixth Avenue. “When I thought about last night I realized that Oxby planned every detail perfectly. Even to staying where he can’t be discovered.”
“All the more reason it was so fucking important for you not to lose him.”
“We saw him get into a taxi. We followed him. Then the police came. What should we do? Shoot them?”
“They took photographs. Damn you, listen to me!” He spun her around causing her coffee to splatter over his bathrobe. “They’ve got videos of you.” He grabbed a handful of her hair. “Without your wig. Why did you take it off?”
She pulled free. “I was hot.”
Galina exchanged glances with Trivimi, each waiting to see which way the unpredictable Deryabin would pounce.
Deryabin’s wild glare subsided. Slowly his head tilted forward and his shoulders sagged. He said, “I’ll accept that you can’t find Oxby. But the police followed you to this hotel and now the fucking bastard knows where to find us.” He looked up at the Estonian. “He knows I have the egg with me. Am I right?”
Trivimi nodded. “I phoned him. I said that you had instructed me to confirm that you would take the egg to New York.”
“What did he say?”
“He said it wasn’t necessary to call. That he knew.”
Helen Tobias was executive chef and chief executive of 73 86th Street in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge. She had welcomed Oxby with a snack of cold chicken, potato salad, and iced tea, and sent him to bed with one of her brownies and a glass of milk. Helen was the rare, perfect mate for a cop; tolerant of his late night shifts and patient on her lonely weekends. It helped immeasurably that Helen and Alex were each other’s best friend and that on their thirtieth anniversary they were able to say “I love you” from their hearts. Their home was typical of the neighborhood; narrow, long, two floors, with a game room in the basement. The house and driveway was crammed into a thirty-foot-wide lot. In the back was a single-car garage, a sundeck, and a garden where Helen raised tomato plants and roses.
They were up early on Sunday morning, though Oxby, still eight hours out of sync, was the first. He saw the Times being tossed onto the driveway and took it to the deck and read until Helen came out of the kitchen with an ice-cold glass of fresh orange juice. Ten minutes later she placed a tray with his favorite breakfast on the table. Waffles and Vermont maple syrup with country sausages. Tobias brought his tray and they had breakfast together.
At nine o’clock a black Mercury was in the driveway. Ed Parente, dressed in shorts and a golf shirt, delivered an envelope that contained the photographs taken the previous evening.
“I told my guys to concentrate on the woman.” He smiled. “Take a look and you’ll see why I didn’t have to tell them twice.”
Two 35mm cameras with long lenses had caught Trivimi Laar and his companion vigorously protesting to the police. Most of the photographs were of a stunning blonde who seemed even more erotically beautiful because of her frustration and anger. The four-by-five prints, nearly forty of them, were sharp and in color.
“They got a video,” Parente said. “Maybe all of five minutes. But it’s like a snapshot that moves. Not as good as the photographs.”
Tobias stared long at the blonde. “This is who’s chasing you, Jack? I think you should let her catch you.”
“She’d scratch his eyes out,” Helen offered.
“We couldn’t develop a hell of a lot of information. There wasn’t a violation so we gave them a lot of hot air, and stalled until we got the photographs, then let ’em go. We got their names and saw the rental agreement. Here’s a copy of the report we filed. That’s about it.”
Oxby took the report and read a two-paragraph account of the incident, as it was officially referred to. “Did you see their passports?”
“They claimed they weren’t carrying them, and we didn’t have warrants to search.”
Oxby went over each photograph carefully. He knew how to use them, especially when there were more than a few snapshots. It was not uncommon for Oxby to deduce from a photograph that a suspect was left- or right-handed, or had a limp, or was shortsighted.
“She’s every bit how my Russian bodyguard described her.” He turned to Helen. “Her name is Galina Lysenko. How old do you suppose she is?”
Helen reviewed the pictures carefully. “Young, of course, but old enough to have some hard edges. Thirty. Thirty-two maybe.”
“Not important,” Oxby said. “Though it’s sometimes useful to know how long people like this have been around. How street-smart they might be.”
Oxby looked at Parente. “You tailed them into the city?”
“To the Hilton. Want the room numbers?” Parente was holding a piece of paper.
Tobias reached for it. “I see you haven’t lost your connections.” He slipped the paper into his shirt pocket. “You playing golf today?”
“Mass at seven, Tobias at nine, on the tee at 11:26.”
“Should be a great day for it,” Oxby said.
Parente beamed. “Hot, but that’s okay. We’re playing the Black Course at Bethpage. Took some horse trading to get a starting time.”
“I’m jealous,” Oxby added.
“Next time, maybe.” Parente shook hands, kissed Helen’s cheek, and was off.
Helen took away the trays and returned with a hot pot of coffee. “I know you two are going to talk, so here’s your coffee before one of you comes asking for it.”
Oxby made a concoction of coffee, milk and spoonfuls of sugar. He stirred it, then sat back. Tobias watched him, amused, waiting for his guest to give the tiniest hint that he had relaxed. It came.
“What are you thinking, Jack?”
“That I’m a bloody damned fool.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because a Russian named Deryabin would like to add me to his casualty list. Not exactly the sort of list I want to be on.”
“You’re not in harm’s way.”
Oxby sipped his coffee. He selected one of the photographs and flipped it onto the table. “Galina Lysenko is employed by Deryabin. And not as a beautiful empty-headed decoration. Her husband also worked for Deryabin as his enforcer. A hired killer. What do you make of the fact these two were married to each other?”
“That it was more than a coincidence. They were a team?”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Oxby said. “We’ve got a few facts about Galina that we can use for starters. She’s tall, and bloody damned good-looking. Her natural hair color is blond. Age thirty, give or take a couple of years. Mike Carson saw the woman who shot Akimov. How did he describe her?”
“The report quotes him saying she was beautiful—and tall.”
“Who else was shot by a tall woman?”
“Lenny Sulzberger. But he said the woman who shot him was on the heavy side and older. He thought she was at least forty-five.”
“But tall. Right?”
“Right.”
“Then the nurse. The one who put the needle in Akimov and finished him off.”
Tobias nodded. “The male nurse—name is Nick—wheeled Akimov into intensive care. He said the nurse who came on duty that evening was on the heavy side, and spoke with a thick accent. Russian, he thought, but couldn’t be positive. Like Lenny, he said she was in her forties.”
“I’m not concerned about how old these women appeared. Learning to use makeup comes naturally to most women. It’s likely Galina had training, and knew how to use stage makeup. Look at that photograph. Scrub the face, broaden the nose, add some lines around the eyes, then put on a plain, gray wig and she’s her own mother.”
Tobias nodded. “Add some padding. Easy enough.”
“We’ve got three witnesses who saw three tall women. Two of the women had gray hair, one was dark. The gray-haired women appeared to be forty or older, and the one with dark hair was young. The older ones spoke with Russian accents. We don’t know about the younger one.”
“I might have that covered,” Tobias said. “I got a phone call from one of the Englewood guys who found a uniform shop that sold a nurse’s outfit to someone they guessed was Russian. The date matches up with the Akimov death.”
“Will you be able to show the photographs to Mike’s salespeople tomorrow?” Oxby asked.
“If I don’t, someone will. And I want Mike Carson to see them,” Tobias said.
“That’s even more important. How soon can you arrange a meeting?”
“I’ve got his private phone number, and he insisted that I call when something urgent came along.”
Oxby twirled the spoon in his coffee. “Do we dare call him Sunday morning?”
Tobias rose. “Worst that can happen is we talk to a machine.”
Tobias went into his house and returned with a phone. He dialed, expecting to hear a recorded message, but was surprised. “Hello Mike, it’s Alex Tobias. This a bad time?”
Mike was just leaving his apartment. He was meeting bigwigs from General Motors for brunch. They were taking him to a Yankee game, the pleasure part of new contract negotiations. But he could meet later, at seven, in his apartment.
“Suppose, Alex, that Mike and the uniform people are able to match Galina’s photographs with the woman each one saw a few weeks ago. What could you do with that information?”
“I suppose I could get a warrant. But we couldn’t keep her long.”
“Even if they saw Galina in a lineup and made a positive identification?”
“Mike said the woman who shot Akimov had dark hair. In these photographs, Galina has blond hair. Beyond that we don’t have the weapon, we don’t have a corroborating witness, and I doubt if we’ve got a motive. Besides, I don’t know who has the energy to prosecute. There’s even a jurisdictional snag because Akimov was wounded in Nassau County, New York, and, technically, was killed in Bergen County, New Jersey. Lenny Sulzberger would give his left testicle to find the woman who shot him, but I doubt if he can make a positive identification.”
Oxby was rubbing his chin, absorbing the unique reality of the quandary Tobias faced.
Tobias said, “I answered your question, now you answer mine. What will you do if Mike identifies Galina?”
“First off, it won’t matter if he can or cannot identify her. As far as I’m concerned, Galina shot Akimov, administered the needle to finish him, then shot Sulzberger. But I don’t have to arrest her and bring charges against her. In keeping with the adage that it is wise to know thine enemy, I shall proceed on the basis that Galina Lysenko is as dangerous as she is young and beautiful.”
“But you still want to see Mike Carson?”
“Bloody damn right! I’ve looked forward to meeting him ever since that terrible hour I spent with his father in Tashkent.”
“You’ll get your chance this evening.”
“Another question, Alex. Where’s the knife that was used on the football player?”
“Tagged and bagged and in a locked file.”
“Any prints?”
Tobias shook his head. “The handle was gnarled and rough. Not good for prints, but great for grip.”
“Describe it.”
Tobias did, in detail. “I know something about knives, and this one was handmade for a single purpose. If Dennis LeGrande had been carrying less fat, he’d have been killed.”
“Dennis LeGrande?
“Ex–football player. Works for Mike.”
“Have you talked to him?”
Tobias nodded. “Poor witness. He remembered the yelling and screaming, then he was stabbed and he says everything went blank until he woke up in the ambulance.”
“An identical knife was used to kill Mike Carson’s father,” Oxby said. He got up and went to the railing that surrounded the deck. He leaned against it, his arms crossed over his chest. “Alex, I sometimes think I’m living in a crazy, foolish dream.”
“I’ll tell you straight out, you’re not dreaming.”
“Then help me understand a few facts that need to be dealt with. I’ll start with Oleg Deryabin. Deryabin ordered the death of three men for fear one of them would spill the beans to Mike and explain how Deryabin cheated his father out of an extremely valuable Fabergé Imperial egg. And far more tragic, how his father paid a horrible price for a crime that Deryabin committed.”
“That’s a good start,” Tobias said helpfully.
“Then, incredibly, Deryabin comes to New York to enter into a partnership with the very son of the man he destroyed.”
“I’ve seen a lot of slime in this business, but that’s as repulsive as it gets,” Tobias said.
“That single, defiant action explains the man. You might define him either by the absence of a single redeeming virtue, or the presence of a hundred heinous character defects. I prefer to list his evil defects, it reminds me who I’m dealing with.”
“Which leads me to ask where you figure in the equation.”
“Obviously, where I chose to fit, not where Oleg Deryabin wishes. He didn’t plan on my entering into his world, but chance put me there, and now both of us are dealing with the consequences.”
“You have the advantage. He doesn’t know where to find you. Are you going to call him?”
“I have some thoughts about a meeting with Deryabin and I’d like Mike to arrange it.”
“And the Fabergé egg?”
“It’s very strange about the egg, I know he has it with him because I got an alleged anonymous phone call just hours before leaving Petersburg. Deryabin, or his sidekick, Trivimi Laar, got someone who spoke flawless English to tell me Deryabin would take the egg to New York with him. I suppose Deryabin figured it would be a good time to test the market and see what price it might bring. And he knows I might have a buyer for it.”
Oxby gave Tobias one of his knowing glances. “If there was the tiniest suggestion that he possessed a redeeming quality, I might guess that he’s brought it along as a peace offering to Mike Carson.”
