CHAPTER 42

Alexei called the Frankls the morning after Peter made his surprising offer. Hardly more than a week later, Peter and Louis arranged to visit Alexei’s father. A car came for them at 9:00 the following day and drove them to the shabby Brighton Beach tenement where Alexei’s parents lived, in a Russian enclave. They found the entire family at home. Sophia had listened to Nikolai’s end of the telephone conversation the previous evening and stayed home despite her husband’s objections. If Alexei was in some kind of trouble, she must know about it.

When the buzzer sounded, she looked out the window and saw a driver in a black Lincoln sedan at the curb and two men, one old and one young, at the door to the building. Nikolai buzzed them in, smoking a cigarette nervously, then unbolted the door when they knocked. Sophia’s father played the violin in the next room, unaware that they had visitors. Sophia guessed from their resemblance that they were father and son and, indeed, the older man introduced himself as Peter Frankl and the young man as “my son, Louis Frankl.”

Peter and Louis saw a daybed, neatly made up in a kind of foyer, surrounded with boyish items and a computer on shelves beside the bed and inferred correctly that this had served as Alexei’s room. The foyer led into a larger room that held a worn table and chairs, a sofa, and at one end, kitchen appliances.

“You have another child?” asked Peter, hearing the violin.

“My father,” said Sophia with frigid politeness. The music, however—Bach, Peter noticed—stopped and an old man opened a door to the all-purpose kitchen–sitting room into which the Mikhailovs had invited the Frankls.

“Visitors, Sophia?”

“Yes, Papa. You can play. It doesn’t bother anyone.”

“This is where Alexei gets his talent, then,” said Peter, trying to be pleasant for the sake of Alexei’s mother. He had promised Alexei to do his best to spare her feelings.

“His mother, she used to sing,” said Nikolai in a voice hoarse from cigarettes, and he coughed a hollow, phlegmy smoker’s cough. “She studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and so did Alexei until we came here.”

“What is this about?” asked Sophia.

“Yes, what?” asked Papa.

“Shut up,” said Nikolai. “It doesn’t concern you.”

“Mrs. Mikhailov, my business is with your husband. Wouldn’t you rather step out for a while? It’s nothing you have to worry about.” Peter did not actually believe this, but he had made a promise to Alexei.

“I will stay,” she answered, grim-faced and fearful. Clearly, she knew whom she was married to.

Peter saw that she would not be persuaded to leave and, with a sigh of surrender, turned to Alexei’s father.

“Some years ago, Mr. Mikhailov, you began placing bets on your son’s chess games, and you got substantial winnings from that.”

Louis scanned the faces of Alexei’s three elders: Nikolai scowled, Sophia frowned and looked at her husband, and her father shook his head and muttered something.

“Louis and I are here now at Alexei’s request, because he tried to talk you out of doing that, but he couldn’t. So instead he gave up chess. Now some of his friends are interested in ensuring that he has a chance to pursue chess without interference.”

“But is this against law?” asked Sophia, who grew more and more frightened. “What difference it makes?”

“Your husband has surely broken the law with his betting,” said Peter, “but my major concern is the damage to Alexei’s reputation. People were finding out, and a few began to suspect that the two of them were colluding so that he would lose on purpose sometimes.”

“I do not believe this!” Sophia cried. “Nikolai would never do such thing.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Mikhailov, but it’s true, and we are just here to see that it stops,” said Peter, and he added gently, “Anyway, I wonder if it’s really all that hard to believe.”

“What I do or don’t do is none of your business,” said Nikolai.

“I’m a lawyer,” said Peter, “and I’ve had you investigated. I know already that it would not be hard to get you in trouble for smuggling and maybe gambling, too. I would hate to do that, but you can’t mistreat your son any longer. I’m just here to make a point. If Alexei chooses to play chess again, and you place a bet on the game, we will know it. Believe me, we will know it, just as we already know you’re a middleman for artifacts stolen from churches near St. Petersburg. . . .” Peter, Louis, and the private investigator had had several long, helpful conversations with a man at the Marshall Club, Sergei Ivanovich Petrov, who had known Nikolai well in Petersburg.

“Nonsense. These are legitimate transactions!” shouted Nikolai, but his face was white now.

“You don’t understand, Mr. Mikhailov,” said Peter. “I know already. I’m not asking you to tell me anything or to agree with me about anything. I’m just telling you. It’s over with bets on chess, and I’ll know if you do this again and I’ll have no mercy. I’ve written this all down”—Peter placed a thick, official-looking envelope on the table—“and you want to do everything in your power to make sure you don’t hear from me again. And as for you, Mrs. Mikhailov, I’m sorry for you and your father, and so is your son. I asked your husband to meet me privately, and I had hoped to keep all this from you. But this must stop.”

“Are you supposed to be his friends, then?” said Sophia. “But what are people like you compared to brilliant boy like Alexei? What can you know about helping him?”

“Sophia!” cried the old man.

“Shut up, Sophia,” said Nikolai.

“Mrs. Mikhailov,” said Peter mildly as he and Louis went to the door, “I have to agree with you. He’s an exceptional boy in a lot of ways, and it’s too bad he needs so much help because ordinary people like you and me are all too likely to let him down.”

“Well,” said Louis as they drove home, “did it work or not?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Peter. “He’s just an ordinary sleaze. She was one unpleasant human being, surprisingly. I thought she’d see it more Alexei’s way. I don’t get it.”

“She thought we were looking down on them—on her—and that’s all she cared about. But the grandfather was a good guy,” said Louis. “I was watching him.”

“Maybe that’s why Alexei’s such a good kid,” said Peter. “Maybe the grandfather raised him. Poor old guy. Poor Alexei.”

“Dad, the trouble with Mallory is all because I didn’t turn out so well, you know. She thinks I’m a lowlife or something.”

“Louis, she couldn’t possibly,” Peter protested. But he was guiltily aware that this had been his own opinion of Louis until recently. The thought came into his head that he would never have gotten himself into the mess with the Devereaux Foundation if he hadn’t always felt so disappointed in Louis; he would just have leaned back and watched his son do great things.

“What are you talking about? That’s what you thought, too. Mallory knows me from way back, and I made some bad moves with her. She was actually checking me out at her party, but at that point I thought I wasn’t serious about her and I let her know it. I kept coming on to her, though, so she decided I was some kind of sleaze. I was sort of arrogant.”

“That’s not fatal. You just have to say to her, Mallory . . . and tell her . . . Look, I’m going to be talking to Mallory. She called me, actually.”

“Mallory? About what?”

“About the Devereaux Foundation, I assume.”

They rode in silence until they reached the Brooklyn Bridge, when Louis looked at his father out of the corner of his eye and asked with real curiosity, “Don’t you think Alexei is a great guy, Dad? Compared to Chris Wylie, for example. Don’t you think he’s really, um, a mensch?”

“I’d say he is, yes. I like the way he goes after what he wants, pays the price, and doesn’t complain. And he knows he’s got all that talent, but he’s not a bit inflated. Yeah, he’s got a lot to him.” They viewed the Manhattan skyline thoughtfully.

“Susan really likes him, doesn’t she?” Peter asked Louis.

“I have an idea,” said Louis, “about Alexei.”

Back on Riverside Drive, Louis called Susan, and Peter called Alexei.