Requiem For a Glass Heart (25 page)

The vodka had begun to soothe and calm her, to smooth out her nerves, to make her care less. The vodka and the darkness allowed her to retreat, to withdraw into a womb from which she could see only the lights of the city and none of its wickedness.

She carried time with her into the womb, time on her wrist.

The telephone rang and rang. Then stopped.

T
HE BAR WAS CROWDED WITH PEOPLE HAVING DRINKS AS THEY
waited for their tables in the restaurant. It was a popular place, a place to be seen, hip and up to the minute.

“It’s almost like the old days, the early eighties,” the brunette said, taking the plastic toothpick and olive out of her drink and testing it with a sip and then a big gulp. She knocked the ash off her cigarette and turned around to glare at the guy on the barstool behind her, who had just jabbed her in the small of her back without even noticing.

“You’ve sure had a hell of a month,” her friend said. The women were facing each other, opposite elbows on the bar, their long legs crossed on the high stools, hems to mid-thigh, leaning in to each other to talk.

“Can you believe it? J can’t believe it. Incredible.” She pulled on her cigarette, leaving fresh red on the filter. “Remember a couple of years ago I had this German guy who came into town and was buying property for a not-to-be-identified client, and he paid in full right there on the spot, writing checks on a Brussels bank?”

“From London—the guy was from London and bought a place in the Amberson Towers.”

“Yeah, right. Paid one mil five for that. Slam-bam.”

“God …” Her friend stretched out the word enviously.

“Well, he’s back in town.” The brunette held up her crossed fingers. “And I’m showing him some more toys.”

“Jesus. I wish I had a big one like that—a guy who kept coming back for more.”

The double entendre was unintentional, and when they both realized what she had said, they burst out laughing.

“I’ll tell you what, though,” the brunette said, puffing on her cigarette and then rocking her wrist back, elbow on the bar, talking past the smoke. “That whole thing was a little strange. After this guy bought that Amberson property, he put an English guy in charge of building it out. He wouldn’t use any of the remodeling people on the Amberson’s recommended list, no—used his own people. Had them come in there and line all
the
exterior walls with lead sheeting. Soundproofing. I mean, they just rolled the stuff out like you’re putting on wallpaper. You have any idea how expensive that is?
Way
expensive! Then they put another layer of gyp board on top of that, painted it. New molding. Real slick.” She shook her head.

Her friend tugged at the hem of her skirt, which was working up past expectations, almost up to tutu level. She had the figure for it and didn’t mind the guy four barstools down peeking past his date’s shoulder to take in the creeping hemline. But she didn’t want the damn thing up around her waist either. She smiled at the guy, a kind of oh-so-embarrassed smile, and tugged again.

“Then this client’s a computer freak, too,” the brunette said, picking up a pretzel dusted with cayenne pepper. “So here comes another special crew. Spent a month in there doing some kind of special installations. He’s afraid of ‘hacker intruders,’ so he has special crypto crap put in.” She bit into the pretzel and chewed. “Digital stuff, I don’t know. Same way with the telephones. Everything was very special, very secure, first-rate. Lots-o′-dough is what it was.”

“You ever meet the guy?”

“No way.” She shook her head, sipped her drink to calm her burning taste buds, puffed on her cigarette, and blew smoke up into the smoky air above the bar. “I don’t know of anybody who’s ever met him. Tell you the truth, I don’t think these third-party people have ever met him. It’s like he was Jack Nicholson or somebody. Has all this stuff done in somebody
else’s name, has everything set up the way he likes, then one day he just puts on some sunglasses, drives into the garage, takes the elevator up, and there he is. Hell, he could be living there a year and no one would know it unless somebody just happens to get a glimpse of him coming or going. And this guy, you wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him. I mean, he’s not famous, just rich.” She took another big swig of her drink.

“Then you don’t even really know his name. His lawyers and bankers did all the transactions of the sale. Just his people in London.”

“You got it. That’s right. Listen, there are a lot of people like that coming in here again. All kinds of Arabs. French. Mexicans. Canadians. Germans. Japanese. Things are definitely looking up.”

She paused and looked around, gazing down into the restaurant, frowning. “Jesus, what about our table?”

“I was surprised,” Izvarin said as he strode impatiently along the corridor to the main lobby of the Chateau Touraine. “I thought Valentin would know who was going to be taking the other suite.”

“Maybe he does and just didn’t say anything,” Volkov offered. “That’s the way you handled him.”

“The prick. What did you think about his woman?”

“Very pretty. Good tits.”

“Tits.” Izvarin rolled his eyes.

It was relatively early in the evening, and the lobby of the Touraine was not by any means sparsely populated. But even with the milling guests, the inevitable loiterers waiting amid the splendors, people for whom time seemed at their beck and call as they drank daiquiris and manhattans against a backdrop of ornate
boiserie
, beneath chandeliers, lounging on damask sofas and armchairs—even with all of this, Izvarin had only to turn his lean, elegant frame toward the registration desk for the hotel staff to move in his direction like a school of herring.

“Yes, Mr. Nakhimov?” the young woman said, her blue eyes centered on him, her only wish to accommodate him. He preened inwardly that she knew his name.

“I was wondering if my colleague had arrived yet.”

“Oh, yes indeed. She registered half an hour ago.”

She?! Nakhimov managed to control his face.

“Well, I didn’t make the reservation in her name because I didn’t know which representative the commission was sending,” he said, leading the woman to offer assistance.

“Oh, I see.” She moved to the computer, tapped a few keys; waited a millisecond. She looked up, smiling.

“Ms. Serova. Olya Serova.”

“Wonderful.” Nakhimov beamed.

At the lobby entrance, the ever-watchful doorman had Izvarin’s car waiting for him only moments after he reached the steps of the porte cochere.

He tipped the young man who brought the car and held the door for him, and slipped in behind the wheel. Volkov got in on the passenger side, and the rented black Cadillac motored softly away from the Touraine, through the iron front gates and into the tunnel of dark pines that took them to the open city streets.

“Who the fuck is Olya Serova!” Izvarin blurted suddenly as they cleared the front gates.

“What?”

“Olya Serova! She checked in to the reserved suite.” “A woman?”

“Yes! A woman, yes. You ever heard of her?”

“No. I’ve never heard of Serova,” Volkov said.

“And she changed suites!” Izvarin was livid. “What is Sergei doing? Did he bring
his
woman along too? Imperious bitch, changing suites. I’m going to go up there when we get back and find out what’s going on.”

“I’d think twice about that, Gori,” Volkov said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“We’ve been through this kind of thing before with Sergei—not being told anything, just being sent on a trip, knowing we’ll receive our instructions when it is time to receive them. Sergei does this.”

“Not to me. Not in a long time, anyway.”

“Not to me either. But what are you going to do, tell him you are too important now to be treated this way?” Volkov shrugged. “I am just telling you, if he wanted you to contact her, he would have told you to. I wouldn’t do it.”

“You’re not going to do it,” Izvarin snapped. “I am.”

“Go ahead, then.”

“If this is such an important trip, I don’t know what he’s doing letting his pussy get in the way,” Izvarin went on.

“We’d better get down to business,” Volkov said.

“Shit,” Izvarin swore, and then shut up.

Both men had memorized the route. The first thing they did was to drive somewhat indirectly to their destination, though anyone watching them would not know this, for they did not stop but cruised slowly by without changing their speed or braking to indicate they wanted to look it over. Then they began dry-cleaning.

It took them an hour and a half, not at all an unusual length of time for such a process. First they went through a whole routine of double-backs and turnarounds, going in and out of residential driveways and into dead-end streets. Then they got on the South Loop and drove around the south side of the city to Alemeda, where they turned southwest onto a stretch of street that ran out of the city proper and into the flats—-scattered houses, fields, only a few side roads. It was an excellent place to catch a tail. When they got to one of the most deserted stretches, they pulled off to the side of the road, cut their motor, and got out of the car. Both men leaned on the car and looked up at the sky. They were familiar with light plane surveillance and waited nearly twenty minutes in the quiet absence of traffic, listening to the skies, before getting back into the car and continuing. Finally back in the city, they drove to an upscale residential area not many miles from their hotel and pulled into the parking lot of a health club.

Izvarin waited in the car while Volkov took a black workout bag out of the back seat and walked across the parking lot and into the club. The place was bright, new, and luxurious. Mirrors everywhere, a health bar. Glass walls so that you could see the weight rooms, the racquetball courts, a juice bar, a track, a pool. It was so late there were only a few people scattered throughout the club, two in the weight room, a couple in the juice bar, a lone man swimming laps.

Volkov knew exactly where to go, for this too had been well rehearsed. He walked past the front desk, past the massage room, and into the men’s dressing area. Without hesitating, he moved through a maze of lockered enclosures, past a solitary bather in the showers, and into an enclosure near the back of the men’s section.

He rounded a corner to a dead-end aisle and approached locker 276. He was the only person in the dressing room. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a key. He opened the locker and took out an athletic bag just like the one he was carrying and replaced it with his own. He closed the locker and made sure it locked. Then he picked up the new bag and retraced his steps to the front of the club. The bag was heavy, and he had to strain to walk naturally, so he wouldn’t look like he was lugging it.

Just as he was making his way to the front door, he stopped, turned back a few steps, and walked up to a pay telephone tucked in behind a screen of palms. He put a coin in the slot and dialed a number. He waited and hung up the receiver. Then he put in another quarter and dialed again. His party answered, and he conducted a short conversation, no longer than four minutes.

Without any further diversion, he walked out the front door and back across the parking lot to the black Cadillac.

“You got it?” Izvarin asked as Volkov slammed the door.

“Got it.”

Izvarin started the car. “It took you longer than I thought it would.”

“Yeah, me too, but I stopped twice.”

“What happened?” Izvarin pulled back onto the city streets.

“Some guy stopped me to ask if I had seen someone. I think he was more your type.”

“What was that? Thirty seconds. That’s nothing.”

“Then I saw two women helping each other on these weight machines. They were wearing bright, tight little exercise suits, and one of them was pushing some weights up and down, up and down. She had these great tits.”

“Open the damn bag,” Izvarin snapped.

Volkov grinned and unzipped the bag. “Okay,” he said, looking inside, “we have two TEC-9s with thirty-six-round magazines, two Smith & Wesson 659s. Half a dozen boxes of Black Talons.”

“Well, they got something right,” Izvarin said.

They started back toward the Chateau Touraine, driving in silence for a while. The smell of the oiled munitions intruded in the car, the metallic odors of steel and lead.

“I think Stepanov knew about her,” Izvarin said, picking
up the old thread. “He knew. That’s why he brought his own woman.”

“Stepanov always has a woman, Gori. You know that.”

“But something big is going on here, and I can’t believe he would let one get in the way if he didn’t already know this Serova would be here.”

“Then you think she’s only Sergei’s sleeping partner.”

“What else? I don’t think he’s ready to start turning operations over to women. She pissed me off, but I’m not worried about her. What worries me is that Stepanov knows what’s going on here and I don’t. Why didn’t Sergei inform me about this? What’s the situation here that he can talk to Valentin and not to me?”

Volkov shook his head. “You’re sounding like a jealous old queen, Gori.”

“Screw yourself.”

“Look, you don’t even know what business we have here. If Sergei was clear about anything, it was that we were to do only what we are told to do. Exactly what we are told to do. I don’t know what is going on here either, but I don’t want any part of some harebrained scheme to improvise.”

“Talking to her is hardly an improvisation. My God.”