Dance With Me (13 page)

The accounting firm’s website looked legit, but though she called the number in their contact details multiple times, she only reached their voicemail. On a hunch, she decided to send an intern to their offices. He had just called to tell her it was another dead end. But she had a new address in Brighton Beach. She was packing up her laptop when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Heard you had some excitement last night,” Peter said.

“You just got in and you know already. Man, the rumor mill is working overtime.” She shook her head.

“I swung by the mailroom. Charlie was practically salivating to tell me.” He looked at her over the top of his glasses. “You all right?”

“I guess Charlie doesn’t see a lot of action down there. I’m fine. Perfect. But I’ve got a wicked craving for cabbage rolls. You in?”

“Well, I’m supposed to file this piece by, oh,” he looked at his watch, “nowish. But I guess I can write it on the way. Only 400 words. Subway suicide gone wrong.”

“Pfft,” Sherry scoffed. “It’ll practically write itself. If Brighton Beach is anything like I remember, WiFi might not be ubiquitous, but I’ll bet we’ll be able the find an old-fashioned internet café.”

“Maybe even one that serves cabbage rolls,” he added with a wink.

“And pyrohi. Haven’t had those in ages.”

It wasn’t a long ride out on the subway, but Peter had his story done and submitted, working through the data connection on his phone while Sherry brought him up to speed on the events of the night before.

“The proofers are going to hate me for that one,” he said as they climbed the steps at Brighton Beach. “It just might be time to admit I need bifocals.”

“You? What are you? Forty?” She nudged him.

“Forty-five next month. And I don’t want any grief from you about it, young whippersnapper.” He gave her a stern look.

“You’ll damn well get it if you call me that again, Grandpa. Even my dad doesn’t use words like that. And he’s sixty.”

As they emerged onto the avenue, her eyes scanned the shops. Many of them had Cyrillic lettering in addition to English. Shostakovich School of Music. Natasha Bread and Bakery. Tatiana Grille. The people on the street had a certain post-iron-curtain look to them as well. Though many were clearly tourists—men with wildly patterned shirts, white trousers and digital cameras with ostentatiously big lenses strung around their necks, women in bright dresses that revealed too much dimpled thigh gesturing with soft-serve cones—their faces were dour and closed, their brows furrowed above their high cheekbones.

“Welcome to Little Odessa,” Peter said. “I’m sure we’ll be able to find your cabbage rolls. But that’s not what we’re here for, is it?” He wriggled his eyebrows at her.

“Well, that’s not the
only
thing we’re here for, but don’t you worry. We won’t be getting on that subway without our carb fix.” She consulted the map on her phone and switched on the GPS.

“Good. Now, what are we looking for?” He peered over her shoulder at the phone.

“Continue on Brighton Beach Avenue. Turn left in one quarter of a mile,” the tinny voice of her GPS said.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head over it. Siri’s in charge.”

“I think that’s actually Siri’s cousin. What is her name anyway?”

“I don’t know if she actually has a name, but I’ve got a few for her, depending on whether she has me taking detours through parking lots and climbing chain-link fences.” She gave him a wry smile.

“Turn right in one hundred feet,” the voice said.

“Mm. Tajikistani kabobs. Maybe we should try those instead.” Peter pointed at a striped awning. A group of men with thick black beards stood outside the shop talking and laughing.

“Meh,” Sherry said. “Too meaty. I heard that Little Odessa was taking on a Central Asian flavor. They’re Muslims, aren’t they, mostly?”

“Getting on fine with the Russian Jews and Orthodox Ukrainians, as far as I know, at least officially.”

“It’s the unofficial that I’m interested in,” Sherry said but she was interrupted by the GPS.

“Turn right now,” it said.

“Is it just me, or does she start to sound more panicked the closer you get to your destination?” Peter asked.

“It’s just you.” She scanned the narrow street of low brick buildings. “Doesn’t really look like the neighborhood for a high-powered accounting firm, does it?”

“Not really.” He tilted his head toward the shops, where old women in kerchiefs and more black-bearded men in white skullcaps passed each other, clutching cheap-looking plastic bags. “But as for knock-off Rolexes, cut-rate international phone cards, and a vast selection of sheep brains, I think we’re set.”

“Continue straight for fifty feet,” the GPS prompted.

“Can’t see what anything here would have to do with a ballet company,” he added as they swerved to avoid a man pushing a dolly stacked high with cartons stamped in bright Cyrillic lettering.

“My thoughts exactly,” she agreed. “But when I went to the address listed on the ABC’s accounting firm’s website, it was occupied by an online, ahem, dating company called Social Lube.”

“Not really.” Peter’s expression was incredulous.

“Really. Trying to out-Tinder Tinder, I think. According to the intern I sent to check it out, the receptionist said the accountants got a lot of mail, though as far as she knew they had never occupied the space. Her boss had given her instructions to forward the mail here.” She stopped in front of a nondescript brick building.

“Your destination is on the right,” the GPS confirmed.

Black Sea Mobile occupied the shop front, but there was a stairwell leading to offices above. Four of them, if the mailboxes were anything to go by. Sherry read the names, or tried to. They were all in Cyrillic. Nothing bearing a passing resemblance to Hatton, Mifflin and Mulder. But when she peered in the tiny glass window of one, she saw the name printed on a thin white envelope.

“Gotcha,” she said. “PXY backwards C is our guy. Come on.” She started up the stairs with Peter close on her heels. “My guess is the people at Social Lube got a visit from some nice Russian gentlemen, maybe the same ones who spoke to me at the Hyatt, and decided it was in their best interest to forward Hatton, Mifflin and Mulders’ mail.”

Peter grabbed her arm. “Jesus, Sherry. Should you even be here? What if your Russian friends are here and decide to make good on their promise?”

She stopped, one foot on the stair above. “I’m in this deep. I may as well put my head under the surface.”

He wedged his way ahead of her, blocking the way. “Yeah. And maybe never come up again. Listen. You go back to that café we saw near the station and order for us. I’ll see what I can find out. I’m great at playing the ignorant tourist. I’ll ask some questions, take some photos, and I’ll meet you back there.”

She hesitated. He was right, she knew. Right now, Sergei and the thugs thought they had her running scared. If they found out she was still working on the story, things could get ugly fast. New York was a big city, but its neighborhoods were like villages. Word would get around.

“Okay,” she said. “Sauerkraut or potato pyrohi with your cabbage rolls?”

“Both. Maggie’s got me on a juice cleanse. Don’t judge.” he said. “Now get the hell out of here.”

Sherry did as she was told, hurrying to the café with her head down and shoulders slumped, suddenly aware of how foolish she’d been to come straight to the lion’s den. Of course, she rationalized, the Sherry the thugs met the night of the benefit looked very different from the one striding down the street in her skinny cargos and combat boots, hair curtaining her face. Unless she literally ran into them, she should be safe.

Having placed her order with the unsmiling tired-eyed woman at the counter of the café, she sat down facing the door. The only other customers were a trio of wrinkled men drinking tea and playing cards. A cloud of eau de mothball hovered around them, occasionally wafting its way over to her. She played with her phone, one eye on the window.

She hadn’t been sitting there long when Peter swung through the door.

“Excuse me, mademoiselle, is zis zeat taken?” His eyebrows wriggled like furry caterpillars.

“What’s that supposed to be? French?” she asked, pushing out the chair across from her with her foot.

He gave a mock pout. “Well, it was good enough for Svetlana.”

“Svetlana? Did you make a friend at Hatton, Mifflin and Mulder?”

“Oceana Trading, you mean? No. I don’t think I was quite blingy enough for young Svetlana.” He slid his phone toward her, the photo stream open. “I did manage to sufficiently annoy her enough to make her leave the office for a few moments, enough for me to take a few photos of her desk, the contents of her drawers and the document open on the laptop.”

“Nice work.” There was real admiration in her voice. “Send them to me. I’ll see what Jim in International has to say about them.” She paused at one, a document that had a crest on it. There was something familiar about it. She had seen it before. But where?

“Your food.” The woman Sherry had placed her order with placed three steaming plates heaped with two kinds of dumplings and tomato-sauced pale green cabbage rolls on the table, along with a dish of thick sour cream and another of horseradish pickled beets.

“Thank you, my good woman.” Peter rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “This looks stupendous.”

“I am not your good woman,” She slapped down a plate and utensils in front of him.

“Oh, of course,” he said, flustered, “I just…”

“But maybe I can be your bad woman.” She flashed a smile that transformed her face, just for an instant. She stood, watching him, unsmiling.

“Um, well, yes.” Peter coughed, his face approaching the color of the beet pickle.

“Is joke,” she said, walking away.

“Very funny,” he called after her.

Sherry snickered, biting into one of the smaller dumplings, releasing a puff of onion-scented vapor. “You seem to have a way with the Baltic ladies, Peter. Should Maggie be worried?”

He rolled his eyes. “Excellent cabbage rolls!” he called to the woman behind the counter.

“Yes,” she agreed, her face blank. Sherry imagined her saying the Russian or Ukrainian version of “well, duh” in her head.

Swallowing the rest of the dumpling, she pushed the phone toward Peter. “Does that mean anything to you? That crest?”

He squinted at it. “I think that’s the double-headed eagle. It’s the symbol the Russian loyalists are using. You know the ones in Eastern Ukraine. Donetsk and Luhansk. The ones who want to separate from the Ukraine and become part of Russia.”

“Right. Like Crimea. Hm. I know I’ve seen it before. Online, I guess. Or on TV. But that’s interesting, it showing up at the same company handling ABC’s money.”

He poked at fork at her. “You thought the missing donations were going to the mob. But what if they are going to fund the conflict in the Ukraine?”

She scrolled back to the shot of the laptop screen and zoomed in. It was in a spreadsheet, in English. “What is this? The Metropolitan Museum. MOMA. ABC is here, too.”

He took it from her. “That looks like a comprehensive list of most of Manhattan’s cultural institutions. And there’s a rather sizable figure beside each of them.”

Sherry felt the blood drain from her face. Her fingers and toes were tingling. Her heart was pounding like it did when Alexi kissed her. “Shit. Peter. Is this as big as I think it is?”

“Does this spreadsheet seem to show that money is being taken from several Manhattan institutions, yes. But it certainly doesn’t show where it’s going.”

“But the crest.”

“On a separate document. Circumstantial evidence at best.”

Taking a bite of her cabbage roll, Sherry thought about it. What Peter said was right. She had to find proof that linked the two documents together, someone or something that would corroborate what she suspected, no, what she knew in her gut.

As if he had read her mind Peter said, “You need a source.”

Chapter Fifteen

“Sherry Wilson-Wong in the flesh.”

Randall’s face lit up when he saw his sister waiting in the lobby of Cranston and Paul Ltd., the entertainment law firm he was interning at. He was wearing a sharp grey suit and five-hundred dollar shoes, but he still looked like a little boy scrubbed up for church to Sherry.

She pulled herself out of the low-slung chair she was sitting in to give him a hug. “God, Randall, you could almost fool someone into thinking you’re a grown-up.”

“I learned from the best.” He pinched her cheek. “Walk and talk?” He held up a manila folder. “I’ve got to bring these docs over to Judge Benson. Don’t let the suit fool you. I’m a freaking glorified messenger boy.”

“Dress for the job you want to have, right?” she said. Randall was heading for the elevator, but she directed him toward the fire stairs.

“In that case, I’m guessing that you’re gunning for the position of homeless person?” He gave her a cheeky smile.

“Cute.” She pushed open the door, holding it for him.

“Ah. Still haven’t gotten over the old elevator phobia, I see.”

“What’s to get over? It’s great exercise, no three-hundred-dollar-a-month gym membership required.” She started down the stairs.

“And with those legs, you need it. Race you to the bottom?”

“What are you, twelve?”

He shrugged. “If you’re too old to handle it, I get it.” Mischief glinted in his brown eyes.

She pushed past him, taking the inside railing. “We’ll see who’s too old. Last one down buys coffee.”

“Get your money ready.”

Their feet clattered on the stairs as they raced for the exit four floors below. Sherry maintained her lead for the first three flights, but as they were rounding the bend to the fourth, her brother overtook her.

“Beat you. Even with you cheating.” He panted, leaning against the exit, his face glowing. She guessed that they’d be in their nineties, shuffling along in walkers, and he would still look like this to her—an Asian Dennis the Menace.

“It’s called a handicap, bro. You wouldn’t pit a featherweight against Muhammad Ali, now, would you?” She pushed past him out into the cool air. “What’s your poison?”

“I like that I’m Muhammad Ali in your analogy. Anything but that Starbucks crap you drink.”

“You get a fancy pair of shoes and an internship to go with it and suddenly you’re too good for an honest brew?”

“That tastes like reheated engine oil? Yes. I got a guy here.” He held open the door of a tiny café, the walls covered in chalk-scrawled blackboard paint. “Jimmy won the Barista Championships in San Fran two years in a row. Here. Pull up a stool.”

Sherry sat down, shaking her head. “The Barista Championships. It gets worse and worse. Soon you’ll be sticking flowers in your beard.”

“One, I’ve never been able to sprout more than three hairs on this chin. And two, not exactly my aesthetic.” He rubbed the scrubby bristles on his chin.

“Spare me.” Sherry rolled her eyes. “Now you’ve got an aesthetic. This is bad.”

“And I’m guessing whatever you’re here to see me about is bad, too.” He caught the eye of the man-bunned barista behind the bar and held up two fingers before turning back to Sherry and giving her a knowing smile.

“What? A big sister can’t drop in to say hi?” She smiled, sheepishly.

“Like you ever have before? Come on, Sherry. This isn’t about going in together on a birthday gift for Mom. You would have just texted me. What’s up?”

She sighed as Man Bun deposited two hourglass shaped contraptions on the table. He and Randall bantered back and forth while Sherry watched the dark liquid drip through the Chemex into the cup below. Between Alexi’s tea and Randall’s fancy single-source fair-trade, she might never get an honest cup of joe.  After the barista had left, she removed the brewing device and stirred a spoonful of grainy brown crystals into her cup.

“It’s Alexi,” she said, feeling a whoosh of relief with the confession.

“Ah, dancer boy. You guys are still a thing?”

“What are you talking about? It’s been, like, three days.”

“Well, he’s not your usual type, is he? No ring, for one.” Randall smirked.

Sherry mimicked his smirk, sarcastically. “Yeah, well. The whole married man racket wasn’t really working for me.”

“No shit. So what’s the deal with the dude with the bulge?”

“Can you possibly pretend that you’re an adult for three minutes? I hope this isn’t how you talk to the clients.”

“You think I’ve even been in the same room with a client? Like I said, glorified messenger boy. Now what’s the deal? I’ve got to be back in five or my boss will have a litter.” He lifted his cup to his nose, sniffing it as if it was a glass of wine before drinking it.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He’s here on a work visa, right? I just want to know what the legal implications are if he’s somehow involved with activity that might not be one hundred percent legal.”

He stared at her. “Are you serious?”

“I’m working on a piece about the ABC. Seems there’s a bit of a discrepancy between the amount of money coming in from donations and the amount of money going out.”

“And your man is involved how?”

“I’m not sure if he is. But I found a shoebox with tens of thousands of dollars in it at his place. And the head choreographer, the guy who brought Alexi over from the Ukraine definitely is. This guy basically owns Alexi. He says jump, Alexi says how high.”

“Literally. Though it’s more like a leap than a jump.”

“Ha. Funny. Can you help or not?”

Randall shook his head. “I don’t know a lot about rights of foreign workers, but I’m pretty sure if he is involved and it comes to light, he’s out on his ass.”

“But what if he’s being coerced? Or doing it unwittingly?”

“You know who you should talk to? Mom. I think her friends in the bridge club all have kids who sat the bar. Remember, she was trying to set you up with one of them?”

“Oh, right.” Sherry made a face. “Kevin or something like that.”

“Yeah. I think he’s an immigration lawyer. He’d know for sure.”

“All right. I’ll call Mom.”

“She’ll cream herself, thinking you’re finally asking her to play matchmaker. Of course, he’s probably married by now. Which works out even better for you.”

“Haha. Told you I’m over the married guys.”

“And right into the possible criminals. Nice.”

She gave him a shove. “All right, fancy man. You’d better get back to the office. Someone might need their shoes polished.”

“Hey,” he said, suddenly serious. “Be careful. If he’s mixed up with the Russian mob or something, it could get ugly for you.”

She brought her hand up to her chest almost unconsciously. The healing scab on her chest seemed to throb in answer. “Yeah. I will. Don’t worry.”

“Thanks for the coffee.” He gave her cheek a quick pinch. “You have to admit it’s better than the swill you drink.” He started for the door.

“I admit nothing,” she called after him. “Twice the price, too. If I’m paying this much for a drink, it should at least have alcohol in it.”

After Randall left, she opened her laptop and started to write. She figured that since she had paid a small fortune for the coffee, she was entitled to take up some space for a while. Though she didn’t have all the facts, she wanted to see what shape the piece was going to take and if she could somehow mold it around Alexi without bringing him into it. But what if he
was
in it? He couldn’t possibly know what he was doing? Could he?

Frank insisted the staff of the paper use the office shared drive when writing a piece for the paper, allowing him access. “What if you get hit by a bus?” he reasoned. “Sure, I care about you, but I got deadlines.” She knew that Frank wouldn’t dream of looking at her work in progress. He was too busy. Plus, he trusted her. Still, each word she wrote gave her a little shiver of nervous anticipation.

As she typed, one thing became clear. She was going to have to have a hard conversation with Alexi. And one way or another, the outcome was not going to be pretty. She wished she had perfected the art of subtle questioning that Peter was the master of. Somehow he got people to talk without them even realizing they were doing it. Where Peter was a hole drilled in a wall and a fiber optic cable inserted, Sherry was a sledgehammer. She got results quicker, but it was never without collateral damage.

Subtle she wasn’t, but in the case of Alexi, Sherry had two tools at her disposal her that Peter didn’t. Food and sex. And she was damn well going to use them.

Closing her laptop, Sherry left a crumpled twenty on the table and headed for the door. First, Chinatown for ingredients, then back to Alexi’s place.