FEELS LIKE a lifetime ago, but Marsha Flager and I went for a spin back in the day, when I was still a patrol officer. That was before I met Valerie and before she met her husband and popped out three kids. Somewhere between the first and second bundles of joy, I think it was, she lost her taste for the street.
“What are you havin’?” I ask her.
“Nah, I hit my limit. Got an early day tomorrow.”
“Someone stole a credit card or something?” I wink at her. I understand her move to Financial Crimes. She majored in finance in college, thought she’d do something in that field until she got a yearning for police work and thought, what the hell, put in for the Academy. Turned out she liked the street, had a real talent for it. Misses it, too, even now, but every time she’d roll out on a shift, she told me the other day, when I first called her for help, all she could think about was her children growing up without their mother.
More or less exactly what Carla said to me last night in the ambulance.
“It was good to hear from you,” she says. “Even if it was work. Doesn’t just have to be work, y’know.”
I look at her. She’s looking at me. I remember that come-hither expression. It’s what got me the first time. Four or five times, actually, before I got transferred and it petered out. She liked to do it in the back of patrol cars, hot and sweaty, legs up in the air.
“Divorced,” she says, showing me a finger without a ring.
“Ah, I didn’t know. Sorry to hear.”
“It’s okay. He’s good to the kids. We’re making it work. Just—y’know, you wanna grab a drink sometime, I might answer the phone.” Giving me an out in case I’m not interested. I might be, but not right now.
“Okay, so listen up,” Marsha says to me. “This isn’t a joke, this guy. I didn’t dig all that deep outside of the financial filings, which is what you needed me for. But I saw enough. And what I saw, well…” She nods toward the manila envelope in my hand. “The KB in KB Investors Group is a Ukrainian named Kostyantin Boholyubov.”
“That’s a mouthful.”
“Yeah, nobody can pronounce it. They call him Boho for short.”
That’s what Valerie called him, in her attorney notes. Boho.
“This guy ran the Ukraine secret police for a decade after the Soviet Union fell,” she says. “Supported the government, suppressed opposition. Surveillance, interrogations, torture, rape rooms. Had a militia that terrorized the country. Kinda guys who don’t knock before they come in. Kinda guys make people disappear, and nobody asks why, or they’re next. Amnesty International practically opened up a satellite office in Kiev to complain about him and his thugs.”
“And I’ll bet nothing stuck.”
“Not really, no. And now he’s gone legit. On paper, at least. Has his hands in a lotta stuff. Real estate, for one. Also runs a steel export company. Ships it to a lotta places, including America.”
I wonder if there’s more than steel on those ships. “That must be why Nathan Stofer squeezed him out of the Stratton Tower project,” I say.
She turns, gives me a look. “He didn’t squeeze nobody outta nuthin’.”
“No, huh?”
“KB Investors was one of the largest investors in the Stratton Tower,” she says. “Boho made millions.”
“No shit. So the untimely death of Mr. Stofer—”
“Was pretty friggin’ timely for General Boholyubov,” she says.
“Okay, thanks, Marsh.”
She touches my arm. “This guy keeps a personal security detail, Billy. When the secret police was broken up, he hired most of them. This guy doesn’t have a sense of humor. So you’re gonna step into his world? I’d bring body armor and a SWAT team.”