Touch of the White Tiger (8 page)

“Enjoy your meal, gentlemen,” Yevgeny said brightly. “I have business to attend.”

Marco watched with a bizarre mixture of admiration and sadness as the boy-turned-man strutted out of the room. Then he turned on Gorky, gripping the edge of the black-and-red-lacquer table. “What did you show him?”

The aging mobster shoved a large piece of steak tartare in his mouth with an overturned fork, and chewed forcefully as he considered Marco’s question. With a thick head of straight silver hair, a silver mustache, quick eyes of blue steel and a firm, narrow waist, he looked like a sleek machine of vengeance. Yet with broad shoulders, a booming, warm laugh and hands as big as paws, he also had an earthy “old world” air that distracted most people from his lethal reality.

“Sit down, Marik, and have some steak tartare.”

Marco knew he’d have to eat something to appease him, so he sat to Gorky’s left in the seat opposite of where Yevgeny had been. Silently, servants appeared from nowhere to remove the dirty dishes and gave Marco a plate of raw ground steak and au gratin potatoes. Salad consisted of a sprig of parsley.

Marco pronged a mouthful of the meat with silverware that he happened to know had been a gift to Czar Nicholas and Alexandra from his aunt, Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna, Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Marco took a small bite and turned a scowl to Gorky.

“All right, all right! You want to know what I showed Yevgeny,” the older man said with resignation. He reached into his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a small master projector and set it on the table. A thirteen-inch screen rose from the table a few feet away, and when Gorky touched a projector button, an image of three dead naked men dangling from a tree appeared.

“What?” he said with minor irritation. “That’s not it. That
was from Chechnya. My brothers. I finally had to do the bastards in when they fought me on the uranium deal. That’s what I get for not updating this equipment.”

Marco tried to swallow the bite of bloodred meat, but looking at the bulging eyes and tongues of Gorky’s brothers dried his throat. He reached for ice water and guzzled.

Gorky punched up another file and a photo of one of his
sgarristas
appeared, a thin man, deathly pale, smiling bravely in a hospital gown.

“Who’s that?”

Gorky exhaled irritably. “Not who I wanted to show you. How do you work these damn things? That was one of my men. He accidentally stepped in front of a new weapon we’ve recently developed and got himself shot full of an unhealthy dose of radiation. He died nine months later from leukemia.”

It grated on Marco’s firm but tattered belief in law and order to know that Gorky considered him so ethically compromised that Gorky could admit any heinous crime or illegal arms trade without fear that Marco would arrest him. But that was all part of Marco’s strategy in their ongoing chess game. Besides, even the police chief had been unable to make charges stick to the slippery R.M.O. leader. Though corrupt—even evil—Gorky was practically a Chicago institution.

Marco nodded. He and Angel had almost been the victims of such a weapon. “What do you call those weapons? Radioarts. Radiation artillery.”

“That’s right. Ah, here we are.” He rasped out a rusty chuckle when a vision of red and blue appeared on the screen.

At first it appeared to be some sort of modern art, an eddy of blueberry and cherry swirls. Though Gorky had one of the greatest art collections in the world, he wouldn’t bother to show it off now.

Marco looked closer, and his chest tightened with recog
nition. He felt like barfing up the food he’d finally managed to swallow.

“You remember Rayenko,” Gorky said lightly.

Rayenko had been Gorky’s right-hand man twenty years ago. Part consigliere and part monster, Rayenko was being groomed to take over the reins of the R.M.O. when he was brutally murdered.

“This is the last known picture of my former
vice president
,” Gorky said, smiling at the euphemism. “This isn’t very flattering. He was wearing a blue wind jacket. After more than fifty stabs to the chest, his heart looked like your steak tartare, and his genitals…Well, they went AWOL. The pool of blood between his legs is all that’s left there. But the hands and feet and head are still attached. The police were curious about that. Not the usual R.M.O.
MO
, as it were.”

Marco reached for his goblet of wine and drank as if it were water. There was a reason for this. He had to remain cool.

“You always had to do things your own way, didn’t you, Marik?” Gorky asked penetratingly, as if after all these years he still couldn’t figure out what made Marco tick. “You had to castrate Rayenko and stab him in the heart. Dismemberment wasn’t good enough for you.”

“Did you show this picture to Yevgeny?” Marco said through stiff lips.

Gorky smiled almost gleefully and nodded. “Yes, I did.”

Marco winced and slowly exhaled a tight breath of air. Until now, this had been a secret only Marco and Gorky had shared. “What did he say?”

“I think he was impressed. He should be. It was one of the few times in your life that you acted decisively. Your only mistake was walking away from the R.M.O. after you had checked the king. You butchered Rayenko and then
retired
from the
organizatsia
. How stupid could you have been.”

Marco studied his wine goblet. Why was Gorky rehashing the past?

“But I lured you back into the spiderweb in time, didn’t I? It only took fifteen years. I hope you haven’t forgotten who you work for,” the old man said at last, revealing his motives. “I thought I’d better remind you how far back we go. Just because I haven’t called you into conference for two years doesn’t mean I don’t still own your soul.”

“What do you want from me? I told Sasha to tell you that Mayor Alvarez has decided to let you off the hook for now.”

“Yes, yes,” Gorky said impatiently. “I’m not worried about the mayor’s posse. He’ll be voted out of office long before he can do any harm to me. And I know you’ve done your best to infiltrate the police department.”

“Then why am I here?”

Gorky leaned back in his chair. He dusted his mustache with his napkin and threw it on his plate, smiling like the cat about to eat the canary.

“Because I want to talk about Angel Baker.”

Coup d’amour

I
rose at the crack of dawn and called Melvin Goldman, a freelance private investigator who lived in Skokie with his identical twin brother Marvin. I used Mel on occasion to help me stake out targets.

“Hi, Mel, this is Angel,” I said in a groggy monotone. I sat cradling my first cup of coffee of the day as if it were the holy grail. It pretty much was, considering my caffeine dependence. “Are you up?”

“Of course I’m up!” Mel boomed cheerfully.

I cringed. How could Mel have more energy than I? He was a sixty-something, potbellied elf of a man. What little gray hair he possessed wreathed the back of his head from ear to ear like the last strip of grass in an Arizona drought.

“What is it, doll?” he continued. “You in trouble?”

“I take it you don’t watch the news.”

“I only download the
Tribune
crossword puzzles. I’m almost done with this morning’s. Hey, what was the name of that Jimmy Stewart movie with the invisible rabbit?”

“I can’t believe you just asked me that.”

“It’s 24 down on the puzzle. Six letters. The clue is—hard-to-see hare.”

“I know the answer but I’m having a brain freeze.” I slurped more coffee, waiting for the kick.

“You’re the movie buff, doll.”

“Hold on.” I shuffled from the kitchen into the living room. My complimentary wheelchair-bound compubot was still where I’d left him the night before, still looking out for trouble on the street below. “Hey, Jimmy, don’t you ever sleep?”

“No,” he drawled, raising the binoculars for a closer look at the stalwart collection of media types who still hadn’t given up on their stakeout. “Sleep isn’t part of my program.”

“What was the name of the movie you did—or should I say your prototype did—with the rabbit?”

“Harvey,”
he replied, still preoccupied with his assigned task. “The film came out in 1950. My co-star, Josephine Hale, won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. I didn’t do
Rear Window
until four years later.”

I recognized a monologue when I heard one and quietly walked back to the kitchen while he chattered away. I shared the movie trivia with Mel, but when he asked me about 42 across, I cut him off. “Mel, I have some urgent business.”

“Why didn’t you say so, doll?”

I quickly explained my predicament and asked him to dig around and find out which bank employee gave some as-yet-to-be-identified bad guy access to my safety box. I offered to pay double if Marvin could help him speed up the search.

Mel responded with a long pause, followed by an even longer whistle of amazement.

“You in?” I asked.

“I’m in.”

“Thanks.”

“Thank you!”

“For what? I haven’t paid you yet.”

“Listening to your troubles just gave me the answer to 42 across,” he said. “Eight letters meaning “Pile of Kimchee.”

“And that would be….?”

“Deep shit.”

I hung up and allowed that little morsel of enlightenment to penetrate my brain, along with the caffeine. I collected my thoughts about my case, then made a series of calls—to Hank, Jr., to my expensive and capable new lawyer who I needed to meet with and who said he’d look into Lola’s status with the police. I also called Harriet Gross, who said Lin was in good hands and relatively good spirits. Harriet said she couldn’t be more specific until after my case was settled.

Finally, I called several of my colleagues in the retribution business and told them to shake down every possible informant with any ties to the Mongolian Mob. They readily agreed, eager to find Roy’s real killer. I needed as much support as I could get investigating this case, and I seriously doubted that Capone would admit his murderous deeds to me. My goal was twofold. I had to prove my innocence and find out who committed the murders just in case more were planned.

My fellow retributionists, normally somewhat competitive and territorial, quickly offered to track down evidence. I gratefully accepted the help and suggested that we organize a citywide CRS meeting for later in the day. My spectacular debacle threatened the very future of our profession, and we needed to staunch the flow of bad publicity.

I made a few phone calls to set the wheels in motion, then called Roy Leibman’s widow to see if I could stop by and pay my respects, and she said I could come immediately, so I dressed.

The heat had broken. In fact, I noticed a touch of cool in the air. I wasn’t ready for fall, much less winter, but God rarely consulted me on such issues. I dressed in a red spandex tank top and tight black pants. I threw on my red high-top running shoes, as I was quite certain I’d have to outrun the media, literally, to get out my front door.

After dusting my cheeks with powder and smudging my lips with a pinky-red gloss, I faced my full-length mirror and flexed my arm muscles. I was stronger than the average woman, but still looked petite no matter what I did to try to enhance my size. If I didn’t get back to my daily wushu workouts with Mike, I’d be in trouble.

I was just about to walk out the door to the stairwell when Lola burst in, carrying an armload of boxes from Needless Markups.

“Yoo-hoo!” she croaked. Emphysema from years of smoking made her sound like she’d had second thoughts on a sex-change operation before the surgery but after testosterone therapy.

“Lola!” I shouted, genuinely happy to see her, which was saying a lot. “Thank God you’re home safe and sound.”

I couldn’t see her behind the boxes until she dumped them into Jimmy’s lap. “Here, honey, take these, whoever you are.”

The compubot clutched at the clothing boxes so they wouldn’t slide off his lap.

“You went shopping?” I asked, incredulous.

“Yeah, and I got a makeover, too. What do you think?”

She did a little pirouette, which looked kitschy, rather than cute, as one might expect when a sixty-year-old ex-con with
enormous breasts, no rear end and size seven feet stuffed into size six stiletto heels tried to imitate Audrey Hepburn. Lola wore a glittering, tight-fitting lamé gown that shouldn’t be allowed out of a closet before nightfall.

“I don’t understand.” I literally scratched my head. “Where did you get the money? Where did you get the time?”

“Oh, I talked my way out of the police station yesterday.”

“What have you been doing since then?”

“Shopping.”

“Shopping!”

“And,” she said, her blue shadowed eyelids going wide, “I was on the news!”

“What! Oh, my God. Tell me that didn’t happen.”

Lola sashayed over to the couch, sitting. “You’re not the only one, missy, who gets attention from the media.”

“This is not about attention!” I wanted to pull my hair out, but I took a deep breath. “Tell me, Lola, and start from the beginning, why you were on television.”

“Turn on the TV and see for yourself. Channel 3042.”

I ordered the omnisystem to power up the digivision and gripped the back of my love seat for strength. If my mother had said a word to the media about my psychic abilities, I’d throttle her. When the news program appeared in midair in the middle of the room, a commercial for ReOrgy was playing.

ReOrgy was a member of a new class of pharmaceuticals that guaranteed multiple orgasms for women. I hated seeing ads for these intimate products on television. So I took some satisfaction when some women had filed a class-action lawsuit against ReOrgy, claiming they could no longer control where or when they had an orgasm. That would pose a problem if you were, say, in a church. Talk about the second coming. Or third. Or fourth.

“Damned commercials,” I muttered. “What exactly did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything about your case, honey. I know better than that. But when some reporter stuck a microphone in my face and asked me about Lin, I couldn’t help but tell them exactly what I thought of the foster-care system.”

My jaw dropped open. “But what did you
say?
”

“I told them it sucked the big one.”

I covered my eyes with both hands, shaking my head. Only a month ago Lola blithely declared that I had turned out great in spite of eleven years in foster care, as losing a mother was an everyday occurrence and even good for your development. I was just about to let her have it when the news popped on the screen.

I quickly forgot about Lola when I recognized Marco’s square jaw and olive complexion. The camera cut to a tight shot, and his dark, bedroom eyes, now serious and squinting, came into focus. He was answering a question posed by a reporter.

“Sound. Louder!” I commanded, and his voice, a confident burl, filled the room.

“—run by vigilantes,” Marco said. “The Fraternal Order of City Police has long been against the retribution profession, if you can call it that.”

“That’s not it,” Lola complained. “Turn it off.”

“Be quiet.” I waved at her frantically. “I’m trying to hear.”

“Detective Marco, do you think the double homicide at the Cloisters will have any affect on the popularity of Certified Retribution Specialists?”

“I certainly hope so,” Marco replied. “There’s no better argument for the dissolution of the CRS business than this horrific crime. It’s time these self-appointed retributionists went out and got real jobs and left fighting crime to the police. My committee will be meeting with legislators soon to discuss this very matter.”

“Thank you, Detective.” The reporter reappeared and
looked directly into the camera lens. “We’ll continue to update the story as it develops.”

“Television,” I practically snarled. “Off!” The images dissolved into thin air, leaving us in stunned silence.

“Detective Marco,” Lola repeated. “Was that
your
Detective Marco?”

“Not mine,” I said bitterly. “Not anymore.”

“Why, that bastard just hung you out to dry, honey.”

“I know that!” I shouted. “God, Lola, you never know when to keep your mouth shut.”

“Don’t get mad at me. He’s the one who just stabbed you in the back. I’m telling you, honey, you can never trust a cop. I didn’t say anything at first because you liked him. But this just proves what I’ve known all along. You can’t trust cops.”

I wanted to argue with her, but the pain pounding in my chest was quickly spreading to the rest of my body. Uncharacteristically, I
wanted
to be alone, as Greta Garbo had so beautifully put it. I marched to my bedroom, slammed the door, and flung myself on my bed.

Trust me
, Marco had said.
Trust me
. The bastard! The bloody, manipulative bastard!

I pounded the bed with a fist and punched my pillow. I didn’t hear Lola open the door. I didn’t realize she’d come in until the bed sank lower. I looked up at her through a glaze of fury.

“Don’t get mad, honey,” she said with all the confidence of a sage. “Get even.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Get even with the bastard. If he’s not being honest with you, you have to find out what he’s up to.”

“How?”

Lola raised one of her clownishly penciled orange eyebrows. “Don’t tell me you’re still denying your own abilities.”

I rolled over on my back. “You want me to psychically spy on him?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“Right now I’m too angry to see anything in a crystal ball but red.”

“I understand. You’re upset. So I’ll just have to do it for you.”

I was hesitant to use the family psychic powers on Marco. It made me feel like a Peeping Tom. But Lola was right. If Marco was playing fast and loose with me, I needed to know about it so I could protect myself.

“You really would do that for me?” I asked. I’d never before asked her, or allowed her, to read my fortune. Only recently had I come to realize that she really was psychic, and not a con-artist fortune-teller as I’d always thought. It was hard for me to eat this much crow in one sitting.

“Sure, honey.” She winked and smiled broadly. “That’s what moms are for.”

It didn’t take much for Lola to get a vision going. She’d been doing it for years. Though she had always done her sessions in a darkened parlor in her Rogers Park apartment, the velvet curtains and candlelight were mostly for show. She was capable of having visions in broad daylight. Generally speaking, the less light the easier it was to see the images that formed in the scrying ball. But they came fast and furious, daylight notwithstanding, as Lola hovered over her crystal ball at my kitchen table.

She described visions of Marco in Little Venice and at the Crypt. Lola didn’t know she was describing P.S. #1, but I recognized the scenery she described. She said nothing earth-shattering until she screamed and covered her mouth. Used to her histrionics, I didn’t make too much of it until I noticed her hands actually trembled. A fissure of cold wiggled down my spine.

“What is it, Lola? What did you see?”

“A…a…body.” She swallowed with difficulty and forced herself to put her hands back on the smooth, glass ball. She winced, as if it actually hurt, but continued like the pro she was. “Someone has been stabbed in the heart. His killer is…castrating him. The victim is pleading for mercy, but the man with the knife is stabbing him over and over again.”

I moved to the edge of my seat. “Who is it? Is it Marco?”

“I can’t quite see the face.” She regarded me warily. “Are you sure Marco’s a cop?”

“Yes.”
And a whole lot more
, I silently added. “Okay, let’s move on to something else.”

When she looked at me, puzzled, I replied, brusquely, “That murder doesn’t have anything to do with me.” And I prayed it didn’t have anything to do with Marco. Either way, I couldn’t trust something that important to my mother’s psychic powers. If I didn’t have the guts to pursue it myself, I wasn’t ready to know. “I’ve changed my mind about Marco. He’s beside the point. I have to prove my innocence. Can you see anything about what happened to Roy Leibman before he was killed?”

She turned back to the ball and muttered a lot of oohs and ahs and ahas. Finally, I snapped. “What? Tell me.”

She pulled her hands away and folded them neatly. “I saw many things, Angel dear, and most of them made no sense to me, but one thing is clear. There’s a woman behind these murders. And she’s heartless.”