EIGHTY-THREE

ON the chilly East Side street, Franco laid out the cold, hard facts.

“Matt’s been arrested. We scooped him up at the Village Blend.”

“We?”

“Yeah.” Franco paused. “I had no idea it was going to happen. Endicott and Plesky ordered me to come with them, and things turned pretty ugly.”

“Matt wasn’t hurt, was he?”

“No, but he resisted arrest when Endicott demanded that I cuff him—”

“Oh, Franco, no!”

“Yeah, I felt pretty bad, Coffee Lady. All I could think about was Joy and how heartbroken she’s going to be when she hears about this. And, of course, your ex-husband wasn’t too happy about it, either.” Franco paused. “In the process, he struck a police officer. Matt could be charged with assault. He could go to jail for that alone.”

“Is the officer okay?”

“I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

“Matt hit you?!”

“Couldn’t be helped—and I have to admit your ex packs quite a wallop.”

“What’s next?”

“I’m calling from the precinct bathroom. When I leave this stall, it’s back to the interrogation room where they’re holding him. I don’t know what Endicott has up his sleeve, but I’ll keep you in the loop.”

Franco ended the call, and I found myself staring at the restaurant’s purple twilight awning and pondering my next move. Red was dead, Anya in a coma, and now Matt was under arrest.

Enough with the verbal sparring, I decided. It was time to shoot from the hip.

Boris once told me that Russians had two faces, a public one, and another that was secret. That certainly fit Barbara Baum. Despite her public face as a kindly old lady who baked cake, there was a snarling Baba Yaga lurking behind the façade.

But I can be formidable, too—especially when my family is threatened.

My mind made up, I marched back to our table.

*   *   *

“THERE’S our girl,” Babka said when I sat down. “Now what were we talking about?”

“Keys,” I said. “Like the keys you hand out to pretty girls and beautiful women. Those special key necklaces that get them admission into your private club downstairs.”

In a flash, the jovial Babka was gone, a serious, sharp-eyed Baba Yaga in her place.

“Honey, I don’t know what you’re talking—”

“No more lies. Rozalina Krasny is dead, murdered. Anya has been drugged, and Madame’s son, Matt, was arrested this afternoon for both crimes.”

“Heavens!” Madame cried.

“I’m sorry you have to hear the news this way,” I told Madame, “but Barbara needs to hear it, too. An innocent man, the son of your friend, is being framed for crimes connected to the club downstairs.”

“You’re wrong,” Babka insisted.

“Am I? Anya had a key. So did Red.”

“You’re wrong about the club, Clare.”

“I saw the rooms of Silver, Diamond, and Gold, right out of The Secret Ball, Anya’s favorite fairy tale. Was that your intent? To create a fantasy for hungry men and willing women?”

Babka shook her head. “I started the club to help all the poor, pretty girls who worked for me as waitresses, and the lonely women who came to my restaurant for a meal. You’re a businesswoman, Clare, you know the score.”

Babka touched my arm. “You can only do so much charity before you’re broke. My girls hit me up for money all the time. ‘I can’t pay my rent. I need this, my kid needs that.’ For a while, I was a soft touch, but things got so bad I had to start saying no. That’s when I got the idea to introduce the pretty girls to fat cats who were good at making money—but not so smart about meeting women.”

“Like a dating service,” Madame put in.

“An exclusive dating service. The club started small and got bigger. Madame knows—she was a member once.”

I did a double take.

“Don’t look so shocked, dear. I wasn’t searching for a sugar daddy or even a rich husband. Remember, I’d lost Matt’s father far too soon, and that tragic affair with the police detective left me bereft. I was lonely. The continental men at the club were quite accomplished and interesting.”

“Eventually Blanche met Pierre,” Babka added. “I was there that day. It was like lightning. He was instantly smitten.”

I gawked at Madame. “But you told me a friend introduced you to your second husband.”

“A white lie,” Madame confessed. “A friend convinced me to join the club, and that’s how I met Pierre.”

“But the gambling,” I pressed. “Surely that’s criminal.”

Babka shrugged. “I brought in overseas investors. You know how it goes. They sold me on the ‘casino school’ idea. There’s nothing technically illegal about it, and we have a certain amount of protection, given our clientele and connections.”

“I guessed as much when I saw the deputy police commissioner down there.”

“Really, Clare, it’s just a matchmaking club, and I keep things on the up-and-up. I even have a lawyer who works hard to protect my members.”

“Harrison Van Loon?”

“Oh, you are good,” Babka replied. “Yeah, that’s my guy.”

I got the picture real fast. Like Hansel and Gretel’s witch, Babka used eye candy to lure men in, but many of them must have gotten burned because she made sure to bring in a legal eagle to pass out guarantees, in the form of flame-retardant prenuptial agreements.

But I still had a problem with Babka’s story.

“If Van Loon is supposed to look out for your girls, how did Anya get stuck paying off Russian mobsters in Brighton Beach?”

I waited for an outraged reaction, but Babka didn’t appear upset in the least by this line of questioning.

“They’re not mobsters,” she calmly told me. “Not technically anyway. These men are more like facilitators. They live in America, but they have ties to the government in Russia. Anya was paying them to get her mother out of jail.”

“Jail?”

“Anya’s mother is an artist and political dissident. She spoke up for human rights, a little too loudly as it turned out. She was imprisoned under the same crackdown that snared other artists.”

I remembered my talk with Boris. “Like the rock group Pussy Riot?”

Babka nodded. “The facilitators in Brighton Beach have done this before. It’s a lengthy process, getting individuals freed from custody over there, and it’s costly. Anya needed money fast. Her friend Rozalina sponsored Anya, and she quickly attracted a big catch sugar daddy—”

“Dwayne Galloway, the former New York Giant.”

“I thought Anya was doing well, but then she was assaulted on a modeling job by some pig who was not a member of our club.” Now Babka’s eyes flashed with fury. “I don’t tolerate that sort of behavior and the men downstairs know it. The ones who don’t get a reminder from my staff.”

I thought about the helpful waiter who intervened between me and that masher in the Silver Room and realized he’d stepped in to help me for a very good reason. As part of Barbara’s staff, he’d been taught to police bad behavior.

“If you want to know the details, you’ll have to speak with Anya’s lawyer. Lucky for you, Harrison Van Loon is having lunch right here in the restaurant.”

“Point the way,” I said, rising.