Читать книгу The Pretender's Gambit - Alex Archer - Страница 11

Chapter 4

Annja cycled through the items Benyovszky had up for sale on his site. He had a lot of merchandise, most of it was furniture, exercise equipment, clothing and assorted electronics, computers, video-game consoles and DVDs. She also took notes on the storage companies Benyovszky regularly bought defaulted units from, and managed to track the elephant back to a company called Illya’s Storage, which appeared to cater to the Russian neighborhood. Benyovszky had kept good notes, and his nephews had entered all of the information. At least, they had evidently entered a great deal of the details in the database.

Bart was on his cell phone doing background work on Charles Prosch.

“You’re pretty good on that computer, bro.” Sitting on the couch, Demyan smiled at Annja as she worked the keyboard.

Bro? Annja let that pass because Demyan still referred to Officer Falcone as “police chick,” too, and she didn’t intend to become “computer chick.” “I am.”

“You could probably make somebody a good secretary.”

Annja resisted the impulse to show Demyan how much fun a punch in the nose could be. Instead, she tried to ignore him.

Demyan sucked at his teeth and smoothed his mustache with his fingers. “If you want, maybe I can make some calls for you. Check around. See if there are any openings for secretaries. I know a few people. I could hook you up with a sweet job.”

“Thanks. But I already have a job.”

“What?” Demyan grimaced. “You got too much class. You ain’t no police chick.”

“No, I’m not.” Annja looked at the guy, pinning him with her gaze. “Which means I don’t have to play by police rules or be nice when someone says something insulting.”

Demyan broke eye contact and looked away, but only for a moment. Then he found something new to talk about. “You know who might have killed Uncle Maurice, bro?”

“Who?” Annja pulled up the bid page and looked at the other names listed there. Few of them were real names, but Bart and his digital police investigators would be able to track them down and put actual identities to online handles.

“His old cronies. Some of the other guys that were part of the Potato Bag Gang.”

That caught Annja’s attention and she stopped what she was doing. “The Potato Bag Gang? What’s that?”

“Mafia wiseguys.” Demyan touched the side of his nose and winked. “Uncle Maurice was part of the original Russian organized crime guys that came over when communism started going bust.”

Bart put his phone away and crossed the room back over to Annja. “Back in the 1970s, Russian criminals, some of them, first started turning up in Brighton Beach. Those guys tended to be con artists, not hardcases. One of their main schticks was selling antique gold rubles to buyers who thought they were getting a great deal. They told the buyers that they couldn’t get caught with the rubles, couldn’t exchange them to a legitimate market, so they had to sell them at a loss. Only when the victims opened the bags those con artists gave them, they only found potatoes, not rubles. So those guys became known as the Potato Bag Gang.” He grinned. “Don’t tell me I knew something you didn’t.”

“You did, and it’s not that hard to do. History and culture are huge. There’s no way I can know it all.” Some days that bummed Annja, knowing that she couldn’t know everything. She usually distracted herself from that by learning something out of the ordinary. “But I also think the Potato Bag Gang is interesting. I’ll have to look into it at another time. Did you get hold of Prosch?”

Bart shook his head. “Not yet. I left a message, but it’s still early out in Idaho.”

“Idaho? The state of Idaho?” Annja couldn’t remember Idaho even being mentioned on the pages she’d sorted through. “You’re not just saying that because of the Potato Bag Gang.”

Bart grinned. “Yeah. Surprised me, too. Prosch lives in a town in the middle of nowhere named Bonner’s Ferry. The town’s supposed to have like ten thousand people in it. Compared to New York, it’s a ghost town.” He checked the time on his watch. “I’ll call again in the morning.” He looked at Annja. “I can have an officer take you home. Save you some cab fare.”

“What are you going to do?”

“It’s three o’clock. I’ve got a report to file and information to collect, then I need to wait for a decent hour to call Prosch. I’m going to go down to the diner at the corner and camp out. See what turns up.”

“Want company?” Annja wasn’t prepared to let go of the mystery that had been brought into her orbit, and Bart was a friend. It had been a long time since they’d had the excuse to hang out together.

“This isn’t your thing, Annja. I feel bad about asking you to come see what you had to see earlier. I just needed answers if you had them.”

“I’m thinking I could go through Benyovszky’s files and get a better idea of the kind of business he was doing. If that would help.”

Bart hesitated, then smiled. “It would. I don’t want this to be more of an inconvenience than it already is.”

Annja stood. “It won’t be. An inconvenience would be me going home and not being able to sleep because I’m wondering what this is all about. Somebody killed that poor old man for a reason. I’d like to know why.”

“That’s the problem.” Bart’s eyes held a glint of bitter sadness. “Sometimes even when you know the answers, you don’t understand them. People kill each other for the stupidest, most selfish reasons you can imagine.”

Demyan leaned forward to insert himself into the conversation. “I’m telling you, bro, you need to listen to me. It was probably one of them old-time gangsters Uncle Maurice sometimes hung around with.” He leaned back on the couch. “Them guys, they would sit and talk about the old days, and not one of them with two nickels to rub together. They were jealous of the business Uncle Maurice, Yegor and me had going. We were making money, bro, and they wanted some of it. Uncle Maurice said that elephant was the biggest score he’d ever pulled down.”

“Did he tell people about that?” Bart asked.

Demyan shrugged. “Yeah, a few people. Some of those old guys, sure. He wanted them to know when he got a fat score. Liked to rub it in and tell them they should be doing their own business when he was drinking down at The Red Bear Bar.” He paused and rolled his shoulders. “Did you see how much he got for that elephant, bro?”

“I did,” Bart replied.

“So…how much?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

Demyan scowled. “Like I said, Uncle Maurice didn’t tell me and Yegor anything except go empty out this storage unit and bring the stuff here. Put this stuff on the website. Box these things up. Go to the post office with this. That pretty much covered it. He was supposed to be training us, but he didn’t.” He pursed his lips. Evidently the pleasant buzz he’d had earlier was fading. “Never once did he tell me and Yegor that we were doing a good job, you know? He coulda done that. Coulda showed a little appreciation. That wouldn’t have been so hard, bro.”

Bart shook his head in ill-concealed disgust. “The man is dead. He put a roof over your heads and kept the two of you in enough cash to mostly keep you out of trouble. Have some respect.” He headed for the door and Annja fell in behind him.

“Not all the weed we could smoke, bro,” Demyan said softly. “We coulda smoked a lot more weed.”

Annja put a hand on Bart’s shoulder and kept him moving.

Outside in the hall, Bart walked over to Officer Falcone, a young brunette with dark hair and eyes.

“Something I can do for you, Detective?”

“I can do something for you, Officer Falcone.” Bart hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “There are warrants out on those idiots in that apartment.”

“I didn’t know that. We didn’t background them. I was just told they were the dead man’s nephews and we were supposed to hold them for you.”

“Well, I’m telling you now they’ve got warrants out for them. Grab your partner and take those two imbeciles downtown. There’s an FTA on the little one and traffic holds on the big one. That’ll give you guys a couple small collars and a reason to get in out of the cold tonight.”

Falcone smiled. “Thank you, Detective.”

Bart waved the thanks away. “Don’t mention it. Take your time booking those two clowns. I want to be able to find them if I need to for the next forty-eight hours.”

* * *

CALAPEZ SPOONED THE last of the Greek yogurt from the plastic container while Pousao watched the building on the other side of the street. Finished with his meal, he glanced at his watch and discovered it was 4:14 a.m. They had been in the dead man’s apartment for over four hours. The morning coming, they would have to move soon. He could already hear neighbors moving around in the other apartments. Early morning activity, footsteps and snatches of hurried conversation, sounded out in the hallway.

Pousao stood and shifted slightly, then pushed his chin toward the window. “Hey. That woman, Annja Creed, she’s leaving the building with one of the cops.”

Calapez crossed the room and gestured for the binoculars the younger man held. When Calapez had them, he trained his view on to the street, picking up the archaeologist instantly. She stood out in the crowd. She and the detective pushed through the reporters outside the perimeter set up by the police officers.

“Do they have the elephant?” Pousao asked.

“I don’t know.” Feeling more tense now because he knew Sequeira would not accept losing the object, Calapez watched as Annja Creed and the detective entered a small diner.

“They are not going far.” Pousao rotated his head on his shoulders and the effort produced cracks. “What do we do?”

“What we’re doing now. We wait. We watch. Going back to Sequeira without the elephant would not be good business.” Calapez handed the binoculars over to his young associate, then went back to raid the dead man’s refrigerator again. He opened the door and peered inside. Nothing looked good. The deceased obviously didn’t dine in much. Frustrated, he closed the door again. “I will go over to the diner and bring us back something to eat. Maybe I will find out what they are talking about, or where the elephant is. While I am there, you keep watch.”

Pousao nodded and returned to his vigil.

Calapez waited at the door till he heard silence, then let himself out. If the police did not have the elephant, he had to figure out where it had gone—soon.