Dean Palmer and Iris took a taxi to a shiny new skyscraper of cream-colored marble with brass trim. Right after they exited the taxi, a group of pre-teenage boys started following them.
“Pickpockets,” Palmer whispered to Iris, stepping up their pace.
The building doorman burst onto the sidewalk, swinging a board and yelling at the boys. They scattered, but not before the doorman thwacked one, the board cracking against his leg, knocking him to the ground.
“Good Lord!” Iris cried.
The boy scampered to his feet and escaped before the doorman could swing again.
Palmer tried to explain, “It’s the only thing he can do to keep them away.”
As the doorman held the door for them, Palmer spoke to him in Russian. He grinned modestly in response.
In the lobby, ornate carpets covered the polished marble floor. The building was as quiet as if it were vacant. Iris and Palmer entered an elevator lined with burnished brass. He pressed the button for the fifteenth floor.
“Todd told me that Moscow had been good to him,” Iris remarked. “I guess he wasn’t kidding. Do you have any idea what the rent is on a place like this?”
“Easily five thousand dollars a month.”
“Wow.”
“Todd did well here in a short period of time.”
They exited the elevator and walked down the corridor to the last door on the left. Palmer unlocked it and pushed it open. “The police have already searched the place.”
After crossing a small entryway, they entered a large, airy living room. The corner apartment was spacious with high ceilings and two walls of windows that overlooked the Kremlin, St Basil’s Cathedral, and the Moskva River. An open kitchen and an adjacent dining area were at one end. In the living room was a brick fireplace with a large gold-framed mirror above it. A hallway to the left led to the bedrooms and bathrooms.
The apartment was minimally and coolly furnished with a glass-and-chrome dining-room set, a navy blue leather couch and armchair, and a glass coffee table.
“This doesn’t look like the bachelor pad of a nomadic freelance photographer,” Iris commented. “Todd had a beautiful apartment in Paris, too. He had a knack for making money.”
“Appears so.”
Iris ran her hand across the back of the couch, savoring the soft texture of the leather. “Are you sure his sister doesn’t want any of this?”
“That’s what she told me.”
“Seems like it would be worth her while to have his furniture sold and the money sent to her.” She walked to the coffee table on which a photograph in a silver frame was displayed. She slid her backpack onto the sofa and picked up the photograph, lightly touching the surface with her fingertips and smiling sadly.
She explained to Palmer, who was looking over her shoulder, “It’s a picture of me and Todd in Paris. We were at a party at a friend’s house. He’d found that beret lying around somewhere and put it on my head.”
“The two of you look happy.”
After a long pause, she said, “We were.” She set the photo back on the table.
“What happened?” Palmer scraped back lank strands of hair that drooped onto his forehead. Wearing khaki pants and a navy blue blazer, he looked like Mr. Preppy USA except for the dark circles under his eyes.
“I broke it off.” She shoved her hands into her jeans pockets. “And I broke his heart.”
“Why?”
“Good question. I’ve been searching for the answer myself. I just had to run away. I don’t know if it was too much, too fast—which it was—or if I was spooked by the idea of commitment.” Iris didn’t care that she was revealing secrets to a stranger. She wanted to talk about it. “We were going to get married and I left him standing at the altar in a little chapel in Paris while I packed my bags and took a taxi to the airport. That was five years ago. Part of the reason I came to Moscow was to explain, or try to, anyway. To at least tell him I’m sorry.”
“Did you get the chance?”
“Yes.”
“How did he take it?”
“He was…okay. But I could tell he hadn’t gotten over it.” Iris walked to the window and stood looking at Todd’s newly adopted city. One in a string of cities. She had told herself that it had been the same with her. She was just one of many. That was part of the reason she’d run from him. He had said he was ready to settle down, but the rootlessness that had first attracted her had come to seem too big to tame. But she could have been wrong.
Palmer picked up the photo and handed it to her. “Take it.”
“If things had been different between Todd and me, maybe he wouldn’t have ended up shot full of holes on a Moscow street.”
Palmer touched her arm. “You can’t blame yourself. People make their own choices.”
“I know. But you think of the events that shape your life…If a few things had gone differently for me, I’m not so certain how I would have ended up. I never had a big support net under me and neither did Todd. His mother died in a car accident when he was ten. His father started drinking after that. He was raised by his older sister. He was good at playing the carefree man-about-town role, but there was a sadness to him. I saw it when we were in Paris. I saw it yesterday. I never quite grasped him. He was something of an enigma.”
“Let’s have a look around and get out of here. Go have a drink somewhere.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“If you see anything else you want to take, go ahead.” Palmer walked into the kitchen with Iris following. He began opening cupboards, finding a few dishes and cooking utensils. He glanced at her. She drew down the corners of her mouth and shook her head.
They walked through the living room and down the corridor, entering a small room. Palmer flipped the wall light switch. A red bulb in the middle of the room glowed dimly. A black curtain was pulled over the windows. Jugs of chemicals and packets of photographic paper were stored on shelves against the wall. Shallow plastic trays were side by side along a high table. Photographs were pinned with clothes pegs to cords strung across the room.
“Todd’s darkroom,” Iris commented. She unclasped some of the photographs and looked at them. “I know this building. This is the Club Ukrainiya.”
Palmer took the photograph that she held out to him. “It is, isn’t it? How did you know that?”
“My boyfriend faxed a Business Week article about Nikolai Kosyakov to me at the hotel. So there is a connection between Todd and Kosyakov. Most of these are interior shots. I wonder why he took them and how he got permission.”
She started pulling down the photographs. “I’m taking them.”
Palmer helped her. After they had them all, they went into Todd’s bedroom. The bed was made but the spread was wrinkled and the pillows propped up as if someone had been reclining there.
Iris spotted a large, square portfolio leaning against a wall. She hoisted it onto the bed and unzipped it. It was full of photographs, both loose and mounted. She dropped in the photos of the Club Ukrainiya, zipped it up, and set it by the door. “I’d like to take that.”
From a desk in the corner, Palmer picked up a large photo album. He flipped through the pages. “This looks like samples of his magazine work.”
Iris looked over his shoulder. In the bright light from the window, she got a good look at Palmer’s yellowish complexion for the first time. She had noticed his thinness when she’d first met him. Seeing him now in broad daylight, she wondered whether his sallow complexion and the circles under his eyes were indications that he was ill.
“Good stuff, huh?” He looked up at her and she returned her attention to the album.
“I’ll take that too. I’ll deliver them to his sister. I’m certain she’d want something of Todd’s. Bakersfield is less than a two-hour drive from Los Angeles.” She put the scrapbook inside the portfolio.
“That’s very kind of you, Iris.”
Returning to the desk, she picked up a pad of paper with writing on it. “Looks like he wrote his sister a letter shortly before he was killed. Listen to this:
‘Dear Tracy,
Sorry I haven’t written in a while, but things have been a little chaotic for me lately. What else is new, right? Ha, ha. Moscow’s a great city. I’ve got a great business going with a partner, a Corsican named Enrico Lazare. We buy and sell fine art to the rich people in Moscow. It’s a perfect job for me and we’re making tons of money. I’ll wire you some tomorrow. Don’t try to send it back. It’s the least I can do.
Things are tense for me right now. The Russian Mafia is trying to elbow in on our business. They expect everyone who runs a business to pay protection money. I’ve had an altercation with them. Lazare thinks I’m nuts to live in Moscow. I thought I could handle the heat, but now I’m not so certain.’
“That’s all he wrote.” Iris pulled the letter free from the pad, folded it, and slipped it into her pocket. “He said he was going to wire his sister money. He must have a bank account. That should go to his family.” She started opening the desk drawers and going through them. “I don’t see any bank statements or anything.”
“A lot of people don’t trust Russian banks. Maybe his partner handled their money. But I’ll look into it when I get back to my office.”
“Odd. I can’t see any bills or check stubs or even a phone book.”
Palmer shrugged. “I barely knew the guy.”
The doorbell rang. Palmer glanced at his watch.
“Are you expecting someone?” Iris asked.
He shook his head. “I’ll go see who it is.”
Iris continued rifling through the desk drawers, not finding anything of a personal nature. She walked to the nightstand. On top was an ashtray with a cigarette stubbed out in it. She’d never seen Todd smoke. If he’d picked up the habit, surely he would have taken a puff during the hours they’d spent together the previous afternoon. She tilted the ashtray, rolling the butt to see the brand. “True” was printed on the delicate paper in fine blue lines.
She found an empty envelope in the desk, tapped the butt into it, folded it, and slipped it into her jeans pocket. She heard Palmer and a woman talking in the next room. She cocked her head to listen, but they were speaking in Russian. The woman was laughing now, which Iris found odd under the circumstances.
She entered a big walk-in closet and fingered Todd’s clothing. The garments were understated but expensive. She pushed aside the hangers and searched against the closet’s walls and in the corners. Perplexed, she picked up the portfolio and left the bedroom. From the hallway, she saw Palmer with two young women in the living room. One was admiringly drawing her hand down the length of the couch.
Reaching the darkroom, Iris flipped on the red light and looked around. She scratched her head and took another look, making certain she hadn’t missed anything. She switched off the light and joined Palmer in the living room.
The women both had long, curly black hair and were wearing tight jeans, tight sweaters, boots, and dramatic costume jewelry. Their makeup was too bright. The one who had been fondling the couch was now examining the contents of the kitchen cupboards. The other was sitting on the couch with her hands draped across the back, apparently chuckling at something Palmer had said. She stood when Iris came into the room.
“These are Todd’s friends,” Palmer explained, not introducing them by name.
Iris smiled weakly and nodded at them while she leaned Todd’s portfolio against the side of the couch. The woman who had been sitting moved to shake Iris’s hand. The one in the kitchen came into the room to do the same thing.
Iris noticed that a bed sheet was covering the mirror over the fireplace. “What’s this doing here?” When she raised a corner, the sheet fell away, partially exposing the mirror.
One of the women gasped and then rushed to cover the mirror again. She smiled apologetically at Iris who looked quizzically at Palmer.
He explained. “It’s a superstition. She thinks mirrors are windows into the netherworld and doesn’t want Todd’s spirit to reenter the world of the living through it.”
The women gathered their designer handbags and animatedly spoke to Palmer as they walked to the front door. After shaking his hand, they left.
“Do you need more time here?” he asked Iris, quickly skirting the issue of the two women.
“What did they want?”
He reached to tuck the sheet around the mirror’s edges. “To say good-bye to Todd, I guess.”
“They didn’t seem to be very broken up over his murder. Frankly, they seemed to have come to pick over his bones.”
“Iris, I’ve told you what I know.”
She put the framed photo of herself and Todd inside the portfolio and tossed off a question. “Where’s Todd’s photography equipment?”
Palmer thoughtfully raised his eyebrows. “Good question. Maybe he used a studio.”
“In Paris, he worked out of his apartment. Even if he used a studio, he’d still have darkroom equipment.”
Palmer walked to the door and opened it. “This whole incident has been very strange.”
“And it’s getting stranger.” Iris walked past him and into the corridor. He closed the door behind them.
“I know you didn’t know Todd very well,” Iris began, “but did you ever see him smoke?”
“No. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
Outside, the cab they’d arrived in was still waiting. Saying she was tired, Iris turned down Palmer’s offer of a drink. He instructed the driver to return to the Metropolis Hotel.
Iris gazed out the window, thinking about Todd’s apartment and what she had and hadn’t found there. Suddenly she said, “Todd’s driver, Sasha. His bodyguard. He drove us from the airport. Where is he?”
Palmer took a leather-bound notebook from his inside jacket pocket and slipped out the pen that was encased in it. “Sasha, you say?” He scribbled on the pad. “I’ll look into it.” He wrote a few more notes. “Then there’s the issue of whether Todd had any bank accounts. And what else?”
“Missing photography equipment.”
“Right.” His responses were clipped.
“I doubt you’ll find it, but it should be reported.” Iris absently stroked her neck and then turned to Palmer. The whites of his eyes looked yellow. “A ring. Todd was wearing it on his left pinky finger. It was my class ring. I gave it to Todd in Paris. Do you think you could get it for me?”
Palmer made a note and drew a star by it. “If it wasn’t stolen in the mortuary, I don’t see why I can’t get it for you.”
“He was also wearing a watch. Looked like an antique, gold with a rectangular face.”
Palmer noted that as well.
Iris frowned as a thought occurred to her. “His body.”
“Tracy Fillinger said that Todd talked about being cremated in the event of his death. The mortuary will do that as soon as the police release the body.” He raised an eyebrow, as if coming to an unwelcome conclusion. “I guess we’ll ship the ashes to his sister.”
“Oh, no.” Iris grimaced. “The poor woman.” She shook her head, then touched Palmer’s arm. “I’ll take them to her. I want to go there anyway to give her these things of Todd’s.”
Palmer brightened. “That would be extraordinary, Iris. Tracy was really broken up over Todd’s murder. From what you said, it was just the two of them left. I’m certain that would bring her a lot of comfort.”
“It’s the least I can do.” Iris sighed. “For all the people Todd knew, it seems like he didn’t have many friends.”
“As you said earlier, he was an enigma. He still is.”
The taxi stopped in front of the hotel. Iris handed Todd’s portfolio to a doorman.
“I’ll call you tonight, Iris, just to touch base. Or sooner if I’ve found out anything about your passport.”
Iris waved him off and watched as the taxi turned the corner. She handed the waiting doorman some rubles and asked him in English to take her things to her room and to call her a taxi. He raised his hand and the first taxi waiting in a nearby queue pulled up to the curb next to her.
“Club Ukrainiya,” she told the driver.