Take Me for a Ride (28 page)

In the meantime, Eric had to get down from this building and go rent or steal a car in order to pick up his crazy boss, who was, inexplicably, at an airport with an unconscious man and a tiger.

Where in the hell did you get food for a tiger? Suddenly Eric remembered the two men who had stepped forward to help him and Natalie when she’d been stuffed into the car—one of them had been a soccer player, Mikhail. The other, Ivan, had owned a restaurant.

Eric fumbled his wallet out of his back pocket and dug out the scrap of paper Ivan had given him. He dialed the telephone number and asked to speak to Ivan.

“I’m ready to take advantage of your hospitality,” he said, after identifying himself. “Can you do a very large take-out order?”

 

McDougal had a taxi drop him off a couple of blocks from Ivan’s restaurant. Cars lined both sides of the street, and he chose a nondescript beige Renault that had seen better days. He wasn’t stealing it, only borrowing it.

His mouth twisted wryly as he fished out his ARTemis-issued set of lock picks, easily opened the door, and had the car running within seconds. He eased out of the tight parking spot and into the street. Within ten minutes he’d pulled in back of Ivan’s restaurant and switched license plates with another car.

Called simply Ivan’s, it was a casual, cheerful little place with scarred wooden tables, mismatched chairs, and a two-sided stone fireplace that kept the patrons toasty on cold nights.

McDougal asked to use the facilities and was directed around a corner and down a cramped hallway. It was a nasty, dark little room furnished with a crapper that had to date to 1950-something and a sink that also shrieked with age at the turn of its rusty taps.

He glanced around quickly for someplace to stash the damned necklace burning a hole in his pocket. If the thugs jumped him before he could get back to the Savoy, it was better that he not have it on him.

There wasn’t much to work with. He wasn’t going to plunge the St. George piece into the gray water in the mop bucket. He didn’t have any duct tape to fasten it under the commode. It wouldn’t be smart to just drop it in the toilet tank.

His eyes went to the dusty window treatment, which surprisingly enough had once been a pretty, floral, padded cornice board. Limp matching curtains still hung under it.

He stepped over to it and peered underneath. Then he dug a small pocketknife out of his trousers, reached up with it, and made an incision. Dust and some crumbly foam rubber fell into his eyes and made him sneeze, but he created a pocket that he could slip the necklace into. Then he tugged the fabric back down and tucked under the edges. Beautiful.

He went to the pocked, pitted mirror over the sink and brushed the particles and dust out of his hair. He washed them down the drain and then cleaned his hands. Now it was time to claim his barbecue.

“You have party?” Ivan asked, handing over three big paper bags of packaged meat, bread, and salads.

McDougal nodded.

“Where is pretty girl? You break up? Give me chance?” Ivan grinned.

“She’s spoken for, buddy. All mine. Sorry.”

“You are not sorry.”

“Well, no,” Eric admitted, grinning back at him. “So how much do I owe you?”

Ivan shrugged and named a sum that was ridiculously low.

Eric gave him double the amount. He sniffed the bags. “Mmmmm.”

“You will like,” Ivan promised.

“I’m sure I will.” The question was, would the tiger?

McDougal’s eyes itched as he drove toward Bykovo Airport. The ripped-off Renault reeked of some cheap floral perfume mingled with stale cigarette smoke and mildew. This combination fought with the tangy, smoky aroma of the barbecue and created a strange miasma of vapors that made him sneeze. He’d rolled down the windows to take deep breaths of the freezing air when his cursed cell phone rang yet again. He sighed and rolled up the windows again as he answered it.

“McDougal!” screamed Sheila out of the clear blue night.

“What?” he said, holding the phone away from his ear. “I didn’t do it. It was a guy dressed up like me.”

“Listen, you have to tell Marty that I’m not screwing around on him!”

“Tell him, McDougal, please! He noticed the diamond bracelet. I lied about it and said it was CZs, but he’s not completely stupid—who knew?—and now he’s threatening to divorce me.”

If not for the very real anguish in her voice, this would have been comical. “So why didn’t you tell him you just bought it?”

“Are you smoking crack, McDougal? Marty is an
accountant
. Me buying a diamond bracelet for myself is much, much worse than selling my body in the town square. That’s grounds for
death
, not divorce.”

“O-kay. So tell him it was only phone sex.”

“I did! He doesn’t believe me. But you’re a witness. Remember? When I thought you were Sid? The bit about the crotchless panties?”

McDougal shuddered. “Sheila, babe, I’m
so
not getting between you and your husband. That comes under the heading of
extremely personal
.”

“Just talk to him, I’m begging you. Here he is.”

“What? No, hell, no, I am
not
—”

“McDougal?” Marty growled.

The tic at the poor little man’s left eye was probably going nuts, making his nerdy little glasses vibrate. He sounded so mad that his straight, limp comb-over strands had gone corkscrew.

“Hi, Marty,” McDougal said, then took a deep breath. “How ya doin’?”

“How do you think I’m doing?” Marty yelled. “My wife’s wearing a diamond bracelet that I didn’t give her, and she’s started up some kind of prostitution thing. Worse, she isn’t paying taxes on her illegal earnings!”

“I’m not a whore,” Sheila yowled in the background. “I told you, it’s only
phone sex
. And I only did it for the jewelry, because you’re so damn cheap!”

McDougal winced and pretended he hadn’t heard her. “Okay, okay, calm down, Marty. Look, I admit the tax thing is bad.”

“Calm down? Are you kidding me? We may have to pay penalties. And
interest
.” He voiced this last word in a squeaky, appalled whisper.

“Did I tell you he was cheap, McDougal?” shouted Sheila, who’d evidently grabbed the phone. “Did I?”

“Lesson in man psychology: You are not making this any better. Quit calling him cheap.”

“I’ll quit calling him cheap when he quits calling me easy.”

If the shoe fits . . .
“Put Marty back on the phone, will you?”

“Fine.” Stomping and rustling ensued.

“Yeah?” Marty barked.

“Look, man. I want you to listen to me. Your wife loves you. She really does. And you’ve got to understand, Sid Thresher is a deranged sexaholic who flirts with anything that moves. I’m sure he started it first.”

“Hmm,” said Marty.

“And Sheila, you know she’s got a smart mouth . . . She replied in kind. And Sid sends women gifts—inappropriate or not, he does—and I’m sure that’s how this all started. You know he sent Gwen a bunch of diamonds, too, don’t you? And I can guarantee
she
never slept with him.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“I’m sure because Gwen never slept with me, either, and it wasn’t for lack of invitation or opportunity.” McDougal coughed, feeling his face flush in the darkness.

“So you really think this is some harmless game?”

“Yeah, man, I do.”

“Sheila says you overheard her one time. That she never said anything very dirty.”

“Er . . . no.” He dragged his hand down his face, steering with his knee for a moment. “Nothing, um, X-rated or anything.”

“You swear?”

McDougal sighed inwardly. Oh, who gave a damn? He was already going to hell. No escaping it. “I swear.”

“If you’re lying to me, I will be happy to put a bug in the ear of the IRS, and you can enjoy an audit.”

“Marty, Marty, Marty. Why would I lie to you, Mart-Man?”

“Okay. But how am I going to pay taxes on that bracelet . . . ?”

McDougal thought fast and came up with a way to save Sheila’s marriage and yet torture her at the same time. He was good that way. “Easy, man. Easy. You just have Sheila clean a few houses on the side until she saves up the money.”

Marty ruminated. “Yeah, maybe that would work . . .”

“Piece of cake. You keep your wife. She keeps her bracelet. Both of you live happily ever after.”

“Okay. Okay, I could see that. Thanks, McDougal. Thanks for helping us through this.”

“No problem. Listen, you give that naughty girl Sheila a kiss for me, ’kay?” In the face of the ensuing silence he clarified, “On the
cheek
.”

 

McDougal’s GPS unit guided him the rest of the way to Bykovo Airport, which was small enough that he found Avy and her group easily, despite her disguise. The stretcher supporting the unconscious man piqued his curiosity, though. Who was he?

Beside Avy, who was dressed as a middle-aged nurse, was a tall man who looked a little like Sigmund Freud.This had to be the notorious Liam James, also in disguise.

And they were also hanging out with a tiger? What in the hell was going on?

As McDougal pulled up and shut off the car’s engine, Avy walked over to greet him, taking note of his bruised face and neck. “Wow. You look like hell.”

“Stop it with the compliments already,” he said. “You’ve looked better yourself, Nurse Ratched.”

Her lips twitched and she fingered the large, faux mole she’d added to her neck. “Why are people shooting at you, McD?”

“Well, it’s like this, Ave: Once you piss off the Russian Mafiya, they want to kill you. I’m a target now.”

“How did you let that happen? They should never have been
aware
of you.”

“How did you become a target for the Greeks, Avy? For chrissakes, it’s not like I registered with these people! I didn’t sign my name on their ‘Please Kill Me’ list.”

“You got involved with the mark,” Avy said flatly. “You’re banging the restoration artist, aren’t you? And they’re after her.”

McDougal clenched his jaw. Then he glanced at Liam deliberately, looked him up and down, before turning his gaze back on Avy. Without saying a word, he’d pointed out that she, too, had gotten involved with her onetime mark.

He opened a rear door of the car and grabbed the take-out bags. When he turned around, a dark red flush had climbed her cheeks.

“Avy,” he said, “you may be my boss, but you have no say in how I live my personal life. Understand?”

“You’re right, McDougal—as long as your personal life stays personal, and doesn’t spill over into your professional one.”

Again, he glanced at Liam, wasting no subtlety.

Avy ignored this, but the color in her cheeks didn’t fade. “Is she here in Moscow? The mark? Are you babysitting her?”

“I’m not babysitting anyone. But yes, she’s here.”

Avy didn’t look pleased, but for once she refrained from comment. His point had hit home. “We need to talk about this necklace you’re chasing.”

“Why? You threw me off the case, remember?”

She shot him a glance that said she wasn’t born yesterday. “There’s evidently a big question about who the legitimate owner of the St. George piece really is.”

“I can tell you that, and it’s not the Russian thugs who consigned it to the care of Luc Ricard Restoration. It’s Tatyana Ciccoli, aka Natalie Rosen’s grandmother. You know Natalie as ‘the mark,’ ” he added by way of explanation.

“Oh, yeah? That man on the stretcher claims to be the owner.”

“And just who is that guy? Why do you have him here?”

Avy fidgeted. “He’s . . . a recovery.”

McDougal stared at her. “What do you mean? Since when have we gotten into bounty hunting? And he doesn’t look like he’s recovering. He looks like shit.”

“Ha-ha. He’s a Nazi war criminal. We’re ‘recovering’ him for the World Court. But here’s the thing: He’s the old man I told you about. The second person who tried to hire us to track down the St. George necklace.”

“Holy . . .” McD stared at her, then turned to look at the Nazi. “Natalie told me that her great-grandfather was murdered in front of his children over that necklace. What’s this man’s name?”

“Weimar von Bruegel. He’s been living as Oleg Litsky in Moscow since about 1949.”

“Von Bruegel,” he repeated. “How old is he?”

“Eighty-two.”

“Jesus, it’s him. Natalie’s grandmother is going to have something to say to this guy; I can promise you that.”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself, McD. We have a major problem: We took on the necklace recovery job for Ricard’s insurance company—”

“Why is that a problem? The policy won’t cover stolen goods. It’s fraudulent and will be declared null and void.”

“It’s a problem,” she said, “because we won’t get paid. Two hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money, and we’ve run up serious expenses here.”

He shook his head. “I don’t care,” he said flatly. “The necklace is going to the old lady. It’s the right thing to do. You can dock my expenses out of my next checks.”

“McDougal, are you asking me or are you telling me this?” she questioned him in steely tones.

He straightened and looked her right in the eye. “I’m telling you, Ave. I’m telling you. You may be the boss, but there is no debate on this one. If you try to pull rank and force me to give that necklace to Hiscox, then you’ll have my resignation as soon as the words are out of your mouth.”

Avy gave him a long, evaluative stare through her ugly makeup. Then she nodded, and the corners of her mouth turned up unexpectedly. “You’re all right, McDougal.”

He squinted at her. “Yeah?” he said sarcastically. “Good to know that, Ave. Because, being the shy and insecure type, I wasn’t sure.”

She grinned. “You’re all right,” she repeated. “And you’re also in love with the mark.”