Antenna Syndrome (20 page)

But she didn’t deny she knew Jordan, so I knew my
chip shot had landed on the green.

“Jack used to be a bouncer at the Hustler Club on
Twelfth Avenue. It’s popular with Russians. Isn’t it ironic that
one of Jordan’s campaign promises is to drive the Russian mafia out
of the five boroughs. Whose side are you on?”

“I’m not really interested in politics.”

“Were you introduced to Jordan by a Russian friend?
Do you gather pillow talk and feed it back to the brotherhood so
they know what Jordan’s doing?”

“Nobody needs me for that. The media covers his
campaign.”

“Or have I got it backwards? Maybe you’re a mole,
feeding Jordan false information about the Russian mafia? Set him
up to make accusations he can’t substantiate? Pull the rug out from
under him the week before the election?”

“All these crazy ideas, you should have been a
journalist.”

“Speaking of journalists, why were you at Ron
LeVeen’s place this afternoon?”

Her jaw dropped so far I could see her tonsils. I’d
suspected it was her the moment I’d walked in. She’d been wearing a
black wig at LeVeen’s, and a pair of black slacks with a
high-collared white blouse, so conservatively-attired she wouldn’t
have attracted anyone’s eye.

But here, as soon as she’d opened her mouth, I’d
recognized her voice. No matter how much diction coaching she’d
had, that subtle trace of an accent was still there. I suppose she
told people it was French.

Little wonder she hadn’t recognized me, considering
I’d been wearing the eMask at the time, and had only revealed half
of my face to reassure her. But now that she knew who I was, she
didn’t react very well.

She reached under a pillow and pulled a gun on me.
It was a .25 Beretta Bobcat, a small gun that fit in the palm of
her hand. A mouse gun, but it’d been known to kill people.
Especially at a range of three feet.

Chapter 35

Tatiana squinted at me, making sense of it now.
“That was you at the apartment? You said you were a cop.”

“And you said you’d give me a grand to keep your
name out of it. But as soon as I turned my back, you took the fire
escape.”

She shrugged. “I can’t get mixed up in some murder
investigation.”

“Especially not if you killed him.”

“I didn’t.”

She said it with conviction but I doubted it. LeVeen
had been popped with a small-caliber weapon like her Bobcat. A
ballistics test would confirm my suspicions.

“Why were you there?”

“I was working. I’m not supposed to freelance but
Ron and I go way back.”

“How far back?”

“Before the Blast.”

“Jesus, what were you – a teenager?”

She shrugged. “Ron liked them young.”

“What’d you mean, no freelancing?”

“Look around.” She gestured at the apartment. “You
think I can afford this place?”

“I know it belongs to Harris Jordan. Where’s Jack
fit in?”

“He’s Jordan’s gofer. He was here one day to install
the sound system, and he made a play for me. I didn’t fight him
off. It was just a kick for us.”

“Except it got bigger than that?”

She shrugged. “We get together now and again.”

“Why was Jack here today?”

“The usual. Jordan’s out of town this week. We can’t
always be so sure he won’t show up unannounced.”

“You’re a beautiful young woman. I’m sure you don’t
suffer from loneliness.”

“Just because Jordan pays the rent, you think he
spends real time with me? I’m just stress relief. He doesn’t take
me out in public. And I’m not allowed to see anyone else.”

I heard the bitterness in her voice. Maybe she just
resented her role as a sex toy. Or maybe there was more to it.

“Tell me about Jack,” I said. “He’s in trouble,
isn’t he?”

She shrugged. “He’s been under a lot of
pressure.”

“Because of...?”

“Loan sharks.”

“What’s he got, a drug habit?”

“A system for the horses.”

“Did he have anything to do with Marielle’s ransom
demand?”

“Are you crazy?”

“Probably.” But if Jack owed money to loan sharks,
he’d probably seen Marielle’s disappearance as a unique
opportunity. Even if he did believe she’d run away, he could still
have got some mileage out of it. Since he probably couldn’t admit
his gambling problem to Vivien, or borrow money from Jordan, he’d
resolved it on his own. What better way than to fake a ransom
demand with the help of friends?

That ransom payment had probably gone straight to
the loan shark. But with Vivien out of the house, it had also given
someone opportunity to steal Marielle’s paintings. Maybe Jack’s
time with Tatiana this afternoon had been to establish his
alibi.

I told her my theory.

“Brilliant deduction, Sherlock,” she said. “But if
you’re so smart, how come I’m holding the gun?”

“Did you pull a gun on LeVeen too? Was he
investigating the Russian mafia’s influence on City Hall? Did you
go to his place to kill the story? Or feed him false
information?”

“You know what they say. Two people can keep a
secret so long as one of them is dead.”

“You can trust me.”

“No, I have to shoot you. Even if that means
spending the rest of the night cleaning the rug.”

“Don’t shoot me too hard and maybe I won’t
bleed.”

She laughed, but it had a tinny ring to it, like a
spent slug rattling in a coroner’s stainless steel dish. “Why
couldn’t you have just drunk your martini and saved me the
trouble?” Her voice was steady but edged with irritation.

“I’m just a natural troublemaker.” I took the pack
from the coffee table and lit a cigarette. “Mind if I smoke a last
one for the road?”

Her mouth was set hard and her hand was steady as
she pointed the gun at my face. “Maybe you want to close your
eyes.”

“Don’t forget to take off the safety.”

The gun angled slightly to the right as her thumb
felt for the safety. It was all I needed. I flicked the cigarette
at her face, striking her in the eye. She yelped and I made a swipe
for the gun. It popped once and I felt a bullet go through my
jacket sleeve. I seized her wrist and twisted it hard. The gun fell
to the carpet. I gave her a backhand that made her teeth rattle
like castanets.

She collapsed on the sofa and cried awhile. She
probably felt pretty stupid that I’d disarmed her. I imagined her
jaw hurt too but her tears were probably more for the good life she
saw spiraling down the drain.

I plucked my smoldering cigarette from the carpet
and took a latex glove from my pocket to retrieve the Bobcat. It
was a cute little girlie gun with a silver finish and
mother-of-pearl inlay in the wooden handgrip. I made sure the
safety was on and pocketed it.

I went to the door and made sure it was
double-latched. I poured us each another vodka on the rocks. Under
different circumstances, this might have been pleasant, but I still
had some tough love to dole out.

“What will you do with me?” She drained her vodka,
took an ice cube from her glass and held it against her cheek where
my backhand had raised a welt.

I noted the time on the recorder so I could find
this segment later. I stubbed my cigarette in the ashtray and came
halfway across the sofa until I had her hemmed in the cushions. I
took her glass away and set it on the coffee table.

“I won’t hurt you if you tell me the truth. What’s
going on between you and Jack and your Russian friends? What was
LeVeen’s role in all this?”

“You make it sound like some kind of conspiracy. But
I don’t know…”

I had no time for this. She wouldn’t betray her
employers unless she was scared. But she was Russian, she was
tough, and she didn’t scare easily. So I grabbed her nose and gave
it a violent quarter turn. She screamed like a banshee.

I found a box of tissue and gave it to her. “Why’d
you kill LeVeen? Was he working for Jordan?”

She blew her nose and examined what was in the
tissue. There was a smear of blood, but she’d live. I got the
bottle and poured her another shot. She drained it and gave me a
sullen look but said nothing.

“We can do this all night. By the time I’m finished,
your nose will be upside-down. No one will ever look at you again.”
I closed in, ready to make her scream again if it came to that.

She raised a hand, waving me off.

“LeVeen was sympathetic to Jordan,” she said. “He’d
written positive coverage for his run-up campaign. But Jordan
needed an exposé to drive it home. LeVeen was writing a major
article that would have been pivotal to the election outcome.”

“What was he investigating?”

“Kickbacks. Half of city council is on the take.
LeVeen’s story would have named dozens of city councilors. It would
have provided the police evidence to bring influence-peddling
charges against members of the Russian community. Jordan would have
been portrayed as the best man to fight corruption in the five
boroughs.”

“What evidence?”

“LeVeen had informants. One who worked for the DMV
got his hands on the GPS data for a hundred vehicles of interest.
The cars of city councilors and known members of the
bratva
.”

“Bratva
. The Russian mafia?”

She nodded. “This computer nerd used electronic
VIN-tags to track their movements going back two years. He came up
with a history of meetings – dates, places, times, duration of
proximity – that proves contact between city councilors and members
of the
bratva
. It would have allowed the police to launch
criminal investigations.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Jack told me.”

“And how’d he learn about it?”

“He installed spy software on Jordan’s phone. He’s
been monitoring all his calls.”

“Ironic that he was Jordan’s security manager.”

“Life is full of ironies,” she shrugged. “Shortly
after Jack got back home from visiting me, he intercepted a call on
his cloned phone. LeVeen had called Jordan to say his DMV mole had
just delivered a flash drive with all the GPS data. LeVeen was
going to work on it tomorrow. It was a big story, might take him a
few days to pull it all together.”

“So Jack asked you to get the flash drive from
LeVeen before he could use the data.”

“It would’ve taken him an hour to come in from Long
Island. I was there in fifteen minutes.”

“Why’d Jack want it?”

“He’s in debt to the
bratva
. He wanted to
earn some credit, get ahead of the curve.”

“Or maybe he wanted to destroy it. Was there
anything in the DMV data that might incriminate him?”

“Jack chauffeured for Jordan, and often drove his
Mercedes. He may have been a bagman both coming and going, if you
know what I mean.”

“Both city councilors
and
members of the
bratva
on his route?”

“Maybe.”

“So a police investigation would implicate him
too.”

“Probably. But since he’s not Russian, his silence
wouldn’t be guaranteed. To make sure he didn’t talk, the
bratva
would probably whack him.”

“Maybe you too.”

She seemed not to have thought of that until now.
“Can you protect me?”

“Why should I?”

She unbuttoned her blouse and shrugged it off her
shoulders. I stared for a moment at her spectacular breasts,
catching a whiff of the expensive perfume that radiated off
them.

“Those are very attractive offers, but you’re not
really my type.”

God knows she was beautiful, and if this were a
movie, I could see another man there on the sofa with her,
thrusting away as she drummed her heels on his back. But I was not
that man.

I stood up. She gave me a look, something between
seductive and sullen, I couldn’t tell which, as she pulled her
blouse back on and fastened a couple of buttons.

“Between Jordan and the
bratva
, you can’t
count on anyone’s protection. Buy a one-way plane ticket to a new
life. Copy?”

“Sure. What about my gun?”

“I’ll trade you for the flash drive you took from
LeVeen.”

She hesitated.

“Otherwise I give your gun to the cops and they
match it to the slug in LeVeen’s head.”

“It’s in the bedroom.”

I put on my latex glove and took out the Bobcat to
follow her, just in case there was another gun. She went to a
dresser, opened a jewelry box and took out a blue flash drive the
size of a thumbnail. She dropped it into my waiting hand.

“Have you looked to see what’s on it?”

“No.”

“Thanks.” I pocketed both the drive and the gun as I
headed for the door.

“Hey. You said you’d give me back my gun.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything people tell
you.”

Chapter 36

I retrieved my pistol from Security and took the
elevator down to the garage where I’d left my bike. I now had two
guns, although one of them was a huge liability. The Bobcat was
probably the weapon that had killed LeVeen.

Although I’d been careful not to get my fingerprints
on the gun, I’d probably left prints in LeVeen’s apartment the
first time I’d visited him. Worse, the second time I’d been there
had probably been within minutes of his murder, and I had no alibi
to put me elsewhere at that critical time. People had been jailed
on less circumstantial evidence.

I debated blowing the whistle on Tatiana, but was
afraid of what she might say to the cops. I’d been rough with her
tonight, plus which she’d be desperate to weasel out of her own
predicament. She might tell them she’d walked in on me right after
I’d shot LeVeen in his apartment. That she’d fled and I’d tracked
her down. That I’d beaten her and threatened to kill her if she
talked. Between the he-said/she-said, we’d both be detained and
questioned for days.

And even if the police released us, the
bratva
would be waiting.