Mike Faricy - Russian Roulette

“Where was this office?”

“I might take a minute to try and remember,” she said, glancing at the empty glasses.

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

“She didn’t tell you why she locked up and ran off?” I asked, sitting back down with the next round.

“She didn’t say a thing.”

“Where’d you say this was, again?”

“You’re slick Devil, I didn’t. Right next door to that Russian store. You know the one, on West Seventh?”

I nodded.

“Kerri was always eating that red cabbage, I couldn’t touch it, lord save me, fartin’ like a race horse.”

I gathered she was growing a little more accustomed to me because she only downed a third of the Cosmopolitan.

“Bitch Kerri just ran in, mumbled something about closing the business. Them damn Russians, who can even tell?”

“Russian? She’s French. Isn’t she?” I asked.

“French? You fall for that too, dumb ass? She was always saying that and everyone always believed her, idiots.”

“She’s Russian?”

“That’s what I said. Were you paying attention?”

“What about her sister?”

“Sister?”

“Yeah, Nikki. She said that…”

“That, God Nikki isn’t her sister. Nikki was the only smart one. She ran off after what happened to Mai. You ask me she’s probably long gone from this town.”

“Mai?”

“Yeah, little Mai. She got connected, but they had her ass on the street. Had her turning a dozen tricks a day.” She was back to draining the Cosmopolitan.

“This Mai, was she Asian, small, big boobs, with…”

“Those are fake, Devil, bolt on’s, and are you listening? Why do you think she’s called ‘Little’? It’s not because she’s tall.”

“Did she have a tattoo, a sunburst around her navel?”

“Her bellybutton? Yeah. Gee, Kerri and now little Mai, wow, you are a player, aren’t you, Devil?” She looked at me slyly.

“No not really. But I might have seen Mai just lying around. Has she got a last name, Mai?”

She pushed the empty glass in front of me, downed her shot, and set the empty next to her Cosmopolitan glass.

“You saw her and you want to see her again, right? You can tell me, Devil. I might know her name, I might know lots of what went on there. Maybe all sorts of things I’m not supposed to know. You said you saw her? Little Mai?”

“Yeah, but just for a minute.”

“She good, she’s that fast.”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that, and I don’t really want to see her again.”

Da’nita nodded at the empty glasses. When I returned with a new round I thought she was looking slightly glassy eyed. Her head seemed to wobble for a brief moment.

“So, you were gonna help me get in touch with Kerri and tell me what went on there.”

“You sure you’re not a cop?”

“No, I’m not a cop, honest.”

“It’s against the law to lie about that. You tell me you’re not a cop and you are, you’re not gonna have a leg to stand on in court, Devil.”

“I promise, Da’nita, cross my heart. Believe me the cops are very happy about the fact I’m not one of them.” I traced a small cross over my heart as I took the oath.

She downed a good portion of her drink, slammed the glass harder than she meant to as she put it back down on the table.

“Kerri?”

“What about her? She’s Russian, I know that. I had to sit there and listen to her talking all that yik yak on the phone enough times to know that much. Nikki, she’s not her sister.”

“What’s Nikki’s last name?”

“Nikki? I thought you said you knew? It’s Mathias.”

“So just the same as Kerri?”

“Kerri? Nah, not hardly, her’s was Vucavitch.” She spit out the ‘vitch’ pronunciation. “First name’s actually Karina, Karina Vucavitch, but she always goes by Kerri because it sounds more American.”

“How’d you meet her, Kerri?”

“We danced together a few years back. You might not have guessed it to look at me now, but I was something. They all wanted little Da’nita.”

“You mean stripping?”

“It was way more than that. A girl had to have real talent back then. I was dancing one night, some drunk son of a bitch shoots at someone in the bar, misses, of course, and hits me. Next thing I know, when I wake up I can’t walk and my ass in this damn thing for the rest of my days. Kerri comes out a nowhere, gives me a job answering the phones and all. She contacts the girls. I’m their voice to the public. Hell, most of those girls can barely speak English,” she said sitting up a little straighter in her wheelchair.

“So, it’s an escort service?”

“Gee, really, you think?”

“How’d they get the girls?”

“They were all Russian as far as I know. Even Mai. Nikki too, her name was something like Nikolaevna. She told me once it meant ‘On the side of God.’ I thought that was kind of funny, you know, she being a working girl and all.”

“You ever meet a guy named Leo Tate, or a guy named Dennis Dundee?”

“Some guy named Leo used to come in. He and Kerri never really got on that well. They argued all the time. The arguments seemed to get worse as time went on. To tell you the truth, every time he came in I sort of made myself disappear. I really don’t need any more trouble.”

“What was the problem?”

“I can’t be sure, but if I had to guess I’d say money. They just seemed to argue more and more every time he came in. Then the last time I saw him he slapped Kerri around pretty good. I never saw him after that and then I heard he was killed.”

“How’d you find out?”

“I’ve got my ways, Devil, I’ve got my ways.”

I talked with Da’nita through another Cosmopolitan but didn’t learn much more except that she was slurring her words. I think I left knowing more than when I arrived but I had no idea what it was I knew. If Da’nita Bell was to be believed, I had Kerri and Nikki’s names, knew they weren’t sisters. I also learned that the heart tattoo, DB + DB stood for Da’nita Bell plus Darius Bell. Darius was her son, currently in the middle of doing eighteen months up in Lino Lakes.

I phoned Aaron, and as per usual left a message. I thought he should at least have Kerri’s real name.

I wasted the next day looking for Kerri and got absolutely nowhere. I would have had better luck checking under my living-room couch. In between times I worked on not taking a pain pill. I placed two more calls to Aaron, figuring any more than that would put me into the pest category. He phoned the following day.

“Hey, I got your messages, quit being a pain in the ass. If I had something to tell you I would have called. God forbid I drop any of the fifty or sixty things I’ve got hanging fire to deal with your little bump on the head.”

I wondered if pain in the ass ranked above or below pest but decided not to pursue that line of questioning.

“Well, I just wanted to add some information, keep your investigation moving forward.”

“Such as?”

“Kerri, real name, Karina Vucavitch, nationality believed to be Russian. Nikki Mathias, first name Nikolaevna, also believed to be Russian. Her name means…”

“Means close to God.”

“Actually, on the side of God, I think,” fudging, remembering my source. “How in the hell do you know that?”

“Whatever. Where’d you pick up all this new information, Holmes?”

“A little investigative effort at Boxer’s bar on behalf of your boy. You were right by the way, not a very nice place.”

“You talk to Da’nita Bell there?”

“Yes, I did.”

“You read the paper or listen to the news in the past twenty-four hours?”