Cold As Ice: Novel (A Kristen Conner Mystery Book 3) (10 page)

Reynolds starts to stand, looking at his watch again. That breaks my reverie.

“I got a few questions before you roll,” I say, all business.

“Gotta keep it quick,” he says.

“Yes sir,” I salute. He wants to protest but I hit my first question before he can say anything. “Why was Frank Nelson on an FBI watch list?”

“You remember all that media junk on the NSA listening in on domestic phone conversations?” he asks back.

“I’m not a news junkie but sure, I remember.”

“What are your thoughts on it?” he asks.

“I guess I haven’t given it much thought.”

“You should,” he says. “It’s a big deal. And both sides of the debate are one hundred percent correct. In this case, score one for the NSA. Some algorithms in the computers out in Nevada started noticing that Mr. Nelson was talking to some nasty people who don’t have the best interests of the United States in mind.”

“Middle East?”

“Close enough.”

“Who?”

“Russians.”

“Russians? Like Putin?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. What we do know for sure is that Nelson was working a deal with some Russian-American mobsters. The Red Mafiya. At least entertaining a deal. Once the judge signs off on our California warrants we’ll know more. We’re tearing apart the place where he was staying. We might find what we need in New York City, but I’m guessing he didn’t travel with the smoking gun.”

“I thought the Russian mafia in America was made up of Eastern Bloc dissidents and are anti-Russian government.”

“That was the assumption for years. We still haven’t completely figured out who works with who and who is connected to who back home—and this is twenty-five years after the breakup of the Soviet Union. It’s a tight knit family. A lot of the gangsters are ex-KGB and Putin is ex-KGB and it’s no secret that Putin has dreams of reassembling all or a big part of the old Soviet Empire. Ukraine is just the start. So some old enemies—or distant cousins—may have been reconnected, even if informally.”

“What kind of deal was Nelson working?”

“He got degrees in molecular biology from Case Western in Cleveland, where he grew up, and Stanford. He was a research scientist early in his career but ended up on the management side of
biomedicine. He’s earned and lost a few fortunes with a couple biotech companies. He is primary shareholder in his own company, PathoGen. Anything else I say is speculative, off the record, and absolutely confidential.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” I say with a salute.

He arches his eyebrows and shakes his head at me.

“And I’m having this conversation with you so you can be a smart ass?” he asks.

“My sincere apologies.” I agree, I’m being juvenile. “So what does PathoGen do?”

He stops glaring and continues, “They’ve sold a couple of patents to pharmaceuticals, but nothing has monetized like planned. The company is in serious financial trouble. We think he’s got something in the lab that he was trying to sell to the Russians to feather his own nest.”

“Why would Russian mobsters buy something Nelson can’t sell to a pharmaceutical company? Are the bad guys planning to cure a Third World disease?”

“There’s a pretty simple rule of thumb when it comes to biotech,” Austin says. “Anything strong enough to cure is strong enough to kill, in proportionate measure. He was working on an Ebola vaccine but we suspect he discovered a better delivery system in the process.”

Anything strong enough to cure is strong enough to kill, in proportionate measure.
I need to remember that. I’ve never had a way with words. Maybe I can throw that into a conversation sometime with inconceivable, which this whole conversation has become now that the word Ebola has been used.

Austin is looking at his watch, which means he’s desperate to get away from me and join the meeting. He’s looking at me like I would have been looking at my mom if we had talked face-to-face. Yep, he’s preoccupied. And seriously uninterested in me.

“Listen, I got to get in there, Kristen. In the morning I’ll be on a plane to California to turn the PathoGen offices in Redwood Shores
upside down. But I need to make sure I’m up to speed on what happened here before leaving town.”

He’ll be on a military jet to California and I’ll be on a flight back to Chicago; my love life in a nutshell. I can’t help but wonder again if I made a mistake when I turned down an offer to work for the FBI and decided to stay with Chicago PD. This is big stuff. I hate not being back in that conference room.

I look at my own watch. I’m running out of time if I want to get back to Chicago tonight. I have to roll, too.

Reynolds and I stand up and walk toward the front door, putting on our coats.

“Why don’t you stay over another night?” Reynolds asks. “Let me take you to dinner at Peter Luger’s, the best steak house in America.”

No hug, but he does know my prodigious and legendary appetite.

“I’m getting chewed out by the boss. Zaworski is back and I’m in a little trouble. I’ve got to get back.”

“Well, we need to figure another time to sit down and talk. We really do need to talk.”

“About?”

“A lot of things . . . but now isn’t a good time.”

He looks at his watch yet again and pushes the door open. We walk out. I stay in the doorway out of the wind. He steps on the sidewalk and I watch him pull his coat up to cover his neck and face.

“Catch you later Special Agent Reynolds.”

I wasn’t trying to be dramatic but my tone stops him from stepping off the curb and jaywalking through a break in the traffic to the front door of the precinct. He walks back over and gives me a peck on the cheek.

“We gotta talk,” he says one more time over his shoulder.

We gotta talk? That sounds ominous, same as Zaworski saying there are things I’m not going to burden you with. We gotta talk. What
does that mean? If he’s calling it quits, I don’t blame him. How do I feel about that?

I’m standing on the street, still soaked in blood, feeling sorry for myself. I never did get that hug. Just get moving, I tell myself.

Time to get back to the hotel and pack. I look at my phone. Two missed calls from Klarissa. She wants to know what the heck is going on with my stuff cluttering the room, I’m sure. I’ve got to call her back. I am incredulous that I’ve missed another call from Don as well. Something must be up for my partner to call all weekend and on a Sunday afternoon. He’s probably going to clue me in on what Zaworski didn’t want to burden me with.

The screen lights up and I see a New York number.

“Conner,” I answer.

13

“SO THINGS DIDN’T go as planned this morning. That happens. But why are you here in my home, Medved? What makes you think you can come here?”

“I found something that I thought you might want to see, Pakhan.”

“Then you take it to Pasha. Pasha brings it to me if he feels I should see it. You know how we work. You are never to come to my home. Med, are you listening? Look at me.”

The Bear looked up. “Pasha wouldn’t listen.”

Aleksei Genken was about to dismiss him with a nod to his bodyguard but paused. He traced the scar under his right eye, a physical habit that helped him think. Genken was longtime Pakhan of New York City, which made him the most powerful Russian Mafiya boss in the United States, the greatest among equals. You don’t hold power in a Russian
bratva
through trust. It came through knowledge. So he kept at least two spies in each of the cells that reported to him to make sure his brigadiers weren’t skimming from his profits or planning a coup d’état.

“Show me.”

Medved handed him a folded sheet of paper. Genken opened it and read the words and numbers carefully. The long string of numbers meant nothing. But the note underneath did.
Password to deposit $25,000,000!!!

“What is this Med?”

“It is something Pasha wanted.”

“Why didn’t you give it to him?”

Med wasn’t sure how to word it.

“Just say it, Medved.”

“When things didn’t go as planned, he got very mad. He took my Ilsa.”

Genken looked at the Bear and thought.

“Where does he have Ilsa?”

“I think maybe at his office. Maybe at a warehouse he has in Queens.”

“In Queens?”

“Yes,” Med answered. “Pasha was very angry with me and he was hurting Ilsa. This had nothing to do with her.”

“It is not good for a man to hurt a woman.
Kazhdyy chelovek imeyet mat’.
”

Medved nodded.
Every man has a mother.
He loved his mother very much. And Ilsa almost as much.

“A man should protect his woman, too, Med,” Genken said.

“I would die a million deaths for my Ilsa, but I can’t defend what is no longer alive.”

Genken nodded. What was going on? He first assumed it was a low level operation gone wrong. But $25 million indicated an operation that was a lot bigger than anything Pasha had ever worked on— and much bigger than Pasha would do without his full knowledge. Unless . . .

“Where did this come from, Med?”

“The man on the news had it. His name is Frank Nelson. He was murdered by somebody in Central Park.”

“Somebody?” Genken asked.

Med could barely breathe.

“Tell me more,” the Pakhan ordered.

“He was the man I was to bring to Pasha. It is the paper that Pasha really wanted. That’s what he asked me about.”

“Did you give him the numbers?”

“No,” Med said, hanging his head. “He took Ilsa.”

Genken thought. He knew nothing of this. He was certain Med had screwed up something Pasha was working on. But what? More importantly, why wasn’t he informed?

Pasha? He was youngest and boldest of his brigadiers. Genken wouldn’t show it, but Pasha was also his favorite. He was undoubtedly ambitious. That was a good thing and a bad thing. How had he got involved in a deal that involved that sum of money? Who was backing him? And who was this man he was making a deal with? And why don’t I know about any of this?

No doubt. This was a coup. Pasha was the edge of the sword that others were wielding. Probably Moscow ready to assert more control, something Genken had not let happen in his years as Pakhan. He remembered Soviet rule too well.

The problem in Genken’s line of business was there was no safe retirement or succession plan. At seventy-three, he was feeling his mortality. He was tired of following the part of the
vory v zakone
code that demanded he forsake all relatives and family for the apparatchik. Genken would like to tend his garden and play with his grandchildren. He liked that scene in the first Godfather movie where Don Corleone had a stroke or a heart attack or whatever while playing with his grand-kid. Not the heart attack. The family time. He couldn’t show love to his family or it would put them in danger as a lever against him.

He felt the jagged scar tissue beneath his eye. He had sewn up the bullet wound himself.

None of his men inside Boyarov’s camp had reported anything unusual with Pasha. But in addition to being bold, Pasha was smart. He had figured out who Genken’s spies were and paid them off. The two men did not have much time to live. Pasha maybe had a little longer. There were things Genken wanted to learn from him. His like for the young man aside, he knew just how to make him talk.

Too bad. No question in Genken’s mind Pasha would have taken
his place as Pakhan. But it was obvious from the sheet of paper in front of him that Pasha wasn’t willing to wait for him to die, but had already begun his move to grab power. Genken frowned. The Americans had a saying about athletes when they got a little bit older: “He’s lost a step.” Unfortunately, it seemed to be true of him at this moment.

He looked at the big man in front of him, shifting his balance uncomfortably from foot to foot. Medved was a loud oaf that drank too much. He was too unreliable to move up the hierarchy from anything other than a foot soldier. Genkin would never trust the Bear with anything important. So why was Pasha using him for such a big deal?

He pursed his lips and shrugged. It was obvious. Pasha planned to knock off Medved after he finished his assignment.

“Medved, I have been rude. Sit. Sit. I’ll have someone bring you a cup of coffee—or maybe you need a glass of vodka?”

The Bear nodded.

“Which?”

“A small vodka might be good right now.”

Genken got up from his desk, walked to a sideboard, and poured a large measure of iced vodka in a crystal tumbler. He brought it over to the man who was trembling with nervousness.

“Relax, Medved. We’re going to talk. But first I need you to answer a couple of questions. Then maybe I will have you do something for me.”

“Yes Pakhan.”

“Drink, Med. Then tell me everything. Leave nothing out. If you tell me everything you will live. If you lie to me I will know. And you will die.”

Medved was warmed by the fiery clear liquid and the hope of life. When they tell you, “I will know,” is it true? Do men like the Pakhan have special powers of discernment? Or is it just a bluff?

“Conner, we didn’t get off to a great start and I want to apologize,” Barnes says.

We shake hands.

“No problem, Tommy, you were just doing your job.”

“Thanks. Listen, I’m glad I caught you before you left the area.”

We’re in the lobby of the 54th Street Precinct. If he’d called me a minute later I would have already been in a cab to the Sheraton on 6th Avenue.

“So what do you need, Tommy?”

“Don’t punch me, but I need you take your clothes off.”

I glare and he laughs.

“You think I’m kidding,” he says, “but you know it’s true. Everything you’re wearing needs to go to the lab and get checked into the evidence box.”

I shake my head. What a day. And unfortunately he’s right.

“You didn’t hear it from me,” he says, “but we’ve not done right by you. You know the drill. No way should you still be soaked in someone else’s blood. Way off protocol for a potential biohazard. If you want to file a grievance, have at it. It wasn’t my call so no skin off my back.”

“I’ll think about that,” I say, wondering if I can get the NYPD to replace my gear. “But just in case you haven’t noticed, it’s still under ten degrees out there and I didn’t bring a change of clothes.”

He smiles real big at that. Funny guy. Do I put him in a hammerlock now or later?

“Any suggestions?” I ask with all the patience I can muster.

“Don’t get worked up, Conner. We’ve got you covered—literally.”

I don’t smile and he continues, “I’ll walk you back to the squad room. A couple of the girls have found a spare uniform and coat that might fit you. Don’t worry about sending them back—they’re compliments of the friendly NYPD. One of the girls will bag your clothes, you can grab a shower, change, and get on your way. Who knows, you might hook another whale today.”

The girls? One of the girls? I’m in New York City, the center of US culture, and I’m hearing this. I really don’t get caught up in political correctness or worry about whether my gender is being disrespected— except when it really is—but if Tommy Barnes wants to improve his career track he’s going to have to work on his language and attitudes.

“I appreciate it, Tommy. Why aren’t you in the meeting?”

“Same reason as you. They didn’t need me when the Feds showed up. It’s their show now.”

“Are you still working the murder?”

“Nominally, yes. I’m not sure they actually care about the murder at this point.”

“But we do and that’s why they pay us the big bucks.”

“No argument on that point, Kirsten.”

Kirsten? Do I even try to correct him? Nah.

“Let’s get this over with, Tommy.”

I’m suddenly very tired. The only thing on my mind is the promise of a warm shower.