Undone (49 page)

Unsurprisingly, he was swayed by the prospect of money. “Yeah. Okay. What are your questions?”

“Tell me, Mr. Simkov,” Amanda continued. “How long have you been in our country?”

Simkov glanced at his lawyer, who nodded that he should answer.

“Twenty-seven years.”

“You speak English very well. Would you describe yourself as fluent, or should I get a translator here to make you more comfortable?”

“I am perfect with my English.” His chest puffed out. “I read American books and newspapers all the time.”

“You are from Czechoslovakia,” Amanda said. “Is that correct?”

“I am Czech,” he told her, probably because his country no longer existed. “Why do you ask me questions? I am suing you.
You
should be answering
my
questions.”

“You have to be a United States citizen in order to sue the government.”

Finney piped up, “Mr. Simkov is a legal resident.”

“You took my green card,” Simkov added. “It was in my wallet. I saw you see it.”

“You certainly did.” Amanda opened the folder, and Faith felt her heart leap. “Thank you for that. It saved me some time.” She slipped on her glasses and read from a page in the folder. “‘Green Cards issued between 1979 and 1989, containing no expiration date, must be replaced within 120 days of this notice. Affected lawful permanent residents must file an Application to Replace Lawful Permanent Residence Card, form I-90, in order to replace their current green card or their permanent lawful resident status will be terminated.’” She put the page down. “Does that sound familiar to you, Mr. Simkov?”

Finney held out his hand. “Let me see that.”

Amanda passed him the notice. “Mr. Simkov, I’m afraid Immigration and Naturalization Services has no record of you filing form I-90 to renew your legal status as a resident in this country.”

“Bullshit,” Simkov countered, but his eyes went nervously to his lawyer.

Amanda passed Finney another sheet of paper. “This is a photocopy of Mr. Simkov’s green card. You’ll note there’s no expiration date. He’s in violation of his terms of status. I’m afraid we’ll have to turn him over to the INS.” She smiled sweetly. “I also got a call from Homeland Security this morning. I had no idea Czech-made weapons were falling into the hands of terrorists. Mr. Simkov, I believe you were a metalworker before you came to America?”

“I was a farrier,” he shot back. “I put shoes on horses.”

“Still, you have a specialized knowledge of metal tooling.”

Finney muttered a curse. “You people are unbelievable. You know that?”

Amanda was leaning back in her chair. “I don’t recall from your commercials, Mr. Finney — do you have a subspecialty in immigration law?” She gave a cheery whistle, a pitch-perfect imitation of the jingle on Finney’s television commercials.

“You think you’re going to get away with a beat-down on a technicality? Look at this man.” Finney pointed to his client, and Faith had to concede the lawyer’s point. Simkov’s nose was twisted to the side where the cartilage had been shattered. His right eye was so swollen the lid wouldn’t open more than a slit. Even his ear was damaged; an angry row of stitches bisected the lobe where Will’s fist had split the skin in two.

Finney said, “Your officer beat the shit out of him, and you think that’s okay?” He didn’t expect an answer. “Otik Simkov fled a communist regime and came to this country to start his life all over again from scratch. You think what you’re doing to him now is what the Constitution is all about?”

Amanda had an answer for everything. “The Constitution is for innocent people.”

Finney snapped his briefcase closed. “I’m calling a press conference.”

“I’d be more than happy to tell them how Mr. Simkov made a whore suck him off before he’d let her go up to feed a dying six-month-old baby.” She leaned over the table. “Tell me, Mr. Simkov:

Did you give her a few extra minutes with the child if she swallowed?”

Finney took a second to regroup. “I’m not denying this man is an asshole, but even assholes have rights.”

Amanda gave Simkov an icy smile. “Only if they’re United States citizens.”

“Unbelievable, Amanda.” Finney seemed genuinely disgusted. “This is going to catch up with you one day. You know that, don’t you?”

Amanda was having some kind of staring contest with Simkov, blocking out everything else in the room.

Finney turned his attention to Faith. “Are you all right with this, Officer? Are you okay with your partner beating up a witness?”

Faith wasn’t at all okay with it, but now was not the time to equivocate. “It’s Special Agent, actually. ‘Officer’ is generally what you call patrolmen.”

“This is great. Atlanta’s the new Guantánamo Bay.” He turned back to Simkov. “Otik, don’t let them push you around. You have rights.”

Simkov was still staring at Amanda, as if he thought he could break her somehow. His eyes moved back and forth, reading her resistance. Finally, he gave a tight nod. “Okay. I drop my lawsuit. You make this other stuff go away.”

Finney didn’t want to hear it. “As your lawyer, I am advising you to—”

“You’re not his lawyer anymore,” Amanda interrupted. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Simkov?”

“Correct,” he agreed. He crossed his arms, staring straight ahead.

Finney muttered another curse. “This isn’t over.”

“I think it is,” Amanda told him. She picked up the stack of pages detailing the suit against the city.

Finney cursed her again, adding Faith for good measure, then left the room.

Amanda tossed the lawsuit into the trashcan. Faith listened to the noise the pages made as they fluttered through the air. She was glad that Will was not here, because as much as Faith’s conscience was bothering her over this, Will’s was nearly killing him. Finney was right. Will was getting away with a beat-down thanks to a technicality. If Faith hadn’t been in that hallway yesterday, she might be feeling differently right now.

She summoned the image of Balthazar Lindsey lying in the recycling bin a few feet from his mother’s penthouse apartment and all that came to mind were excuses for Will’s behavior.

“So,” Amanda said. “Shall we assume there’s honor among criminals, Mr. Simkov?”

Simkov nodded appreciatively. “You are a very hard woman.”

Amanda seemed pleased with the assessment, and Faith could see how thrilled she was to be back in an interrogation room again. It probably bored her to death sitting through organizational meetings and looking at budgets and flowcharts all day. No wonder terrorizing Will was her only hobby.

She said, “Tell me about the scam you had going on in the apartments.”

He gave an open-handed shrug. “These rich people are always traveling. Sometimes I rent out the space to someone. They go in. They do a little—” He made a screwing gesture with his hands. “Otik gets a little money. The maid’s in the next day. Everyone is happy.”

Amanda nodded, as if this was a perfectly understandable arrangement. “What happened with Anna Lindsey’s place?”

“I figure, why not cash out? That asshole Mr. Regus in 9A, he knew something was up. He don’t smoke. He come back from one of his business trips and there was a cigarette burn on his carpet. I saw it — barely there. No big deal. But Regus caused some problems.”

“And they fired you.”

“Two-week notice, good referral.” He shrugged again. “I already got another job lined up. Bunch of town houses over near the Phipps Plaza. Twenty-four-hour watch. Very classy place. Me and this other guy, we switch out. He takes days. I take the nights.”

“When did you first notice Anna Lindsey was missing?”

“Always at seven o’clock, she comes down with the baby. Then one day she’s not there. I check my message box where the tenants leave me things, mostly complaints — can’t get a window open, can’t figure out the television, stuff that’s not my job, right? Anyway, there’s a note from Ms. Lindsey saying she’s on vacation for two weeks. I figure she must have left. Usually, they tell me where they go, but maybe she thinks since I won’t be here when she’s back, it don’t matter.”

That jibed with what Anna Lindsey said. Amanda asked, “Is that how she usually communicated with you, through notes?”

He nodded. “She don’t like me. Says I’m sloppy.” His lip curled in disgust. “Made the building buy me a uniform so I look like a monkey. Made me say ‘yes, ma’am’ and ‘no, ma’am’ to her like I’m a child.”

That sounded like the kind of thing their victim profile trended toward.

Faith asked, “How did you know she was gone?”

“I don’t see her come downstairs. Usually, she go to the gym, she go to the store, she take the baby for walks. Wants help getting the stroller in and out of the elevator.” He shrugged. “I think, ‘She must be gone.’”

Amanda said, “So you assumed Ms. Lindsey would be gone for two weeks, which coincided nicely with the date your employment would terminate.”

“Easy peasy,” he agreed.

“Who did you call?”

“This pimp. The dead guy.” For the first time, Simkov seemed to lose a bit of his arrogance. “He’s not so bad. They call him Freddy. I don’t know his real name, but he was always honest with me. Not like some of the others. I tell him two hours, he stay two hours. He pay for the maid. That’s it. Some of the other guys, they get a little pushy — try to negotiate, don’t leave when they’re supposed to. I push back. I don’t call them when an apartment’s available. Freddy, he film a music video up there once. I watch for it on the TV, but I don’t see. Maybe he couldn’t find an agent. Music is a hard business.”

“The party at Anna Lindsey’s got out of hand.” Amanda stated the obvious.

“Yeah, out of hand,” he agreed. “Freddy’s a good guy. I don’t go up there to check on them. Every time I’m in the elevator, someone say, ‘Oh, Mr. Simkov, could you look at this in my apartment.’ ‘Could you water my plants?’ ‘Could you walk my dog?’ Not my job, but they trap you like that, what can you say? ‘Fuck off? No, you can’t. So I stay at my desk, tell them I can’t do anything because my job is to watch the desk, not walk their puppy dogs. Right?”

Amanda said, “That apartment was a mess. It’s hard to believe it got that bad in just a week.”

He shrugged. “These people. They got no respect for nothing. They shit in the corner like dogs. Me, I’m not surprised. They’re all fucking animals, do anything to get the drug in their arm.”

“What about the baby?” Amanda asked.

“The whore — Lola. I thought she was going up there to do some business. Freddy was there. Lola got a soft spot for him. I didn’t know he was dead. Or that they had trashed Ms. Lindsey’s place. Obviously.”

“How often was Lola going up there?”

“I don’t keep up with it. Couple times a day. I figure she get a bump every now and then.” He rubbed his hand under his nose, sniffing — the universal sign for snorting coke. “She not so bad. A good woman brought down by bad circumstance.”

Simkov didn’t seem to realize he was one of the bad circumstances. Faith asked, “Did you see anything unusual in the building over the last two weeks?”

He barely gave her a glance, asking Amanda, “Why is this girl asking me questions?”

Faith had been snubbed before, but she knew this guy needed to be on a short leash. “You want me to get my partner back in here to talk to you?”

He snorted, as if the thought of another beat-down was inconsequential, but he answered Faith’s question. “What do you mean, unusual? It’s Buckhead. Unusual is everywhere.”

Anna Lindsey’s penthouse had probably set her back three million dollars. The woman hardly lived in the ghetto. “Did you see any strangers loitering around?” Faith persisted.

He waved her off. “Strangers everywhere. This is a big city.”

Faith thought about their killer. He had to have access to the building in order to Taser Anna and take her away from the apartment. Simkov obviously wasn’t going to make this easy, so she tried to bluff him. “You know what I’m talking about, Otik. Don’t bullshit me or I’ll have my partner go back to work on your ugly face.”

He shrugged again, but there was something different about the gesture. Faith waited him out, and he finally said, “I go for a smoke sometimes behind the building.”

The fire escape that led to the roof was behind the building. “What did you see?”

“A car,” he said. “Silver, four-door.”

Faith tried to keep her reaction calm. Both the Coldfields and the family from Tennessee had seen a white sedan speeding away from the accident. It had been dusk. Maybe they had mistaken the silver car for white. “Did you get a license plate number?”

He shook his head. “I saw the ladder to the fire escape was unlatched. I went up to the roof.”

“On the ladder?”

“Elevator. I can’t climb that ladder. It’s twenty-three floors. I got a bad knee.”

“What did you see on the roof?”

“There was a soda can there. Someone used it for an ashtray. Lots of butts inside.”

“Where was it?”

“On the ledge of the roof, right by the ladder.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I kicked it off,” he said, giving another one of his shrugs. “Watched it hit the ground. It exploded like—” He put his hands together, then flung them apart. “Pretty spectacular.”

Faith had been behind that building, had searched it top to bottom. “We didn’t find any cigarette butts or a soda can behind the building.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Next day, it was all gone. Someone cleaned it up.”

“And the silver car?”

“Gone, too.”

“You’re sure you didn’t see any suspicious men hanging around the building?”

He blew out a puff of air. “No, lady. I told you. Just the root beer.”

“What root beer?”

“The soda can. It was Doc Peterson’s Root Beer.”

The same as they’d found in the basement of the house behind Olivia Tanner’s.

AS WILL DROVE TO JAKE BERMAN’S HOUSE IN COWETA COUNTY, he debated with himself the level of fury Faith would feel when she found out that he had tricked her. He wasn’t sure which would make her angrier: the outright lie he had told her on the phone about Sam finding the wrong Jake Berman or the fact that Will was going down south to talk to the man on his own. There was no way she would’ve kept her doctor’s appointment if Will had told her that the real Jake Berman was alive and well and living on Lester Drive. She would have insisted on coming along, and Will wouldn’t have been able to come up with a good excuse for her not to, other than that she was pregnant and diabetic and had enough on her plate without having to put herself at risk by interviewing a witness who could very well be a suspect.