Six
Frank drops me on the corner a block from the NOW offices. The morning mist has turned to drizzle, but I don’t mind. I’m one of those people who find walking in the rain to be one of the best ways to cleanse the jumble of my thoughts, sort out the mismatched ideas and see if there are any pairings to be made.
Which reminds me—I’m way behind on laundry.
As I near the restaurant, I pinch my nose, stare straight ahead, and make a dash for the stairs. Even with such precautions, I can smell the aroma of roasting lamb shanks with garlic and rosemary. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that Dmitri installed a fan in the kitchen to blow directly into the stairwell.
By the time I reach the third floor, I’m thinking someone should make a gum, like they do for smokers, for people who need their food cravings taken away. The heroin addicts I pass on the street are always skinny, so maybe we need a line of flavored gums with just enough poppy powder to take away the cravings without making us nodding zombies. The downside to that, of course, is that fewer things lower a woman’s perceived intelligence like chewing gum. Men, on the other hand, can pretend they’re baseball stars.
After letting Stoogan see my face so he can report what a loyal and agreeable employee I am, I head into the morgue and ask Lulu to pull any files she has on Krasnyi Lebed or clippings that mention Red Swan.
Her fingers dance across the keyboard.
“Not much here,” she says when she looks back up. “Nothing under ‘Red Swan’ and only a couple of hits on Lebed. Man keeps a low profile.”
“Pull me what you have.”
“Sure, doll. Only take a minute. This to do with that Classified ad I mentioned?”
“It is.” I smile. “Thanks for that.”
Lulu beams. “I’m not just a pretty face.”
“Preaching to the choir, sister.”
Lulu bursts out laughing as she disappears into the archives to search for printed copies of the material. When she returns, she is holding a slim folder with Krasnyi Lebed’s name on the cover.
Newspapers keep archives of prominent people so that when they die, obituaries are easier to write. The same is true of criminals who are likely to get in trouble with the law again. Nothing beefs up a breaking story on deadline than being able to quickly pull up a background full of previous run-ins and convictions.
I take the folder back to my desk and open it. There are only four clippings inside. Three are related to the case twelve years ago that Frank was involved in. Krasnyi had been charged with importing a shipment container from Novorossiysk, Russia, that contained a limited edition Rolls-Royce Phantom and enough pure heroin to get everyone on the western seaboard high.
Krasnyi was cleared of all charges when initial witnesses, including two undercover cops, recanted their statements about seeing him at the scene. This was despite him being pulled over and arrested six blocks from the docks while sitting in the back seat of the exact same silver Rolls-Royce that was on the shipping manifest.
No wonder Frank is pissed about it.
The fourth clipping is a photo and cutline that shows a younger Krasnyi as a pallbearer at a funeral. The cutline reads:
Following the death of alleged crime boss Alimzhan Izmaylovsky, police sources expect Krasnyi Lebed, right, to quickly take control of organized crime in San Francisco.
A low whistle escapes my lips. The clipping is unusual in that neither the name of the photographer nor the date it ran is printed anywhere on the sheet. I flip the clipping over to see if there’s a date stamp on the back, but it’s blank, too.
Whenever it ran, it was obviously in the days when NOW had a true independent heart and much ballsier staff. There is no way our paper’s lawyer would ever let us run such a potentially libelous cutline today. I admire the cockiness of it.
Returning the folder to the morgue, I stop at the copy machine and make an enlargement of the photo. The faces of the other pallbearers are either out of frame or out of focus, and I wonder if that was the photographer’s decision or the newspaper’s.
I fold the copy and slip it into my back pocket.
“Find what you were looking for?” Lulu asks as I hand her the folder.
I shrug. “Just crumbs, but we keep archives of all our photos, right?”
“Sure.”
“What about the negatives?”
Lulu’s face wrinkles. “We’re meant to, but there are definitely huge gaps. We lost a bunch when the roof leaked that one time, and photographers aren’t always the best at returning negs after they’ve raided the archives for their portfolios, especially before I started here.”
“Could you look up the photo in that last clipping? See if we have any hard copies or, better yet, the negatives? I’d like to find out who the photographer was and if more shots from that funeral are kicking around.”
“What are you hoping to find?”
I shrug again. “You know me. I just pick at the scab until it bleeds.”
Lulu winces. “Cute metaphor.”
“That’s why I’ll never be a famous author; no time for pretty words.”
Lulu laughs. “I’ll see what I can do, but it might take some time. The photo archives aren’t in the computer.”
“Thanks. I’ll check back.”
For my next phone call, I head outside. The closest pay phone is four blocks to the south, but there are some calls I don’t like to make within earshot of nosey reporters. Especially if they’re anything like me.
I turn up my collar against the rain and walk.
His phone is answered on the sixth ring. There’s no greeting, only silence.
“Pinch?” I ask. “You hungry?”
“What do you have in mind?” answers a voice that is so much deeper than you ever expect once you meet him in person.
“I’m thinking a cheeseburger at Pink Bicycle, but I’m also being tempted by a chocolate-chip mint sundae with rainbow sprinkles at Polka Dots.”
“And these two disparate choices hold equal weight in your thoughts?”
“Yeah, I’m craving both, but I can’t eat both, cause I already had a bagel and penis for breakfast. And if carbs went to your boobs, I’d be okay, but they don’t. So … ”
“I don’t want to ask about the penis.”
“Probably for the best. So which do you fancy?”
“Hamburger. Twenty minutes?”
“See you there.”