Mike Faricy - Russian Roulette

“Hunh?”

“Da’nita Bell’s dead. Hit and run about a block away from Boxer’s. Apparently she left the place shit faced, nothing unusual there, got hit crossing the street. No witnesses, pizza-delivery guy spotted her under a parked car sometime after midnight. Her wheelchair was all smashed up about twenty feet further down the street. When did you last see her?”

“I think it must have been around six thirty or so. Actually, when I phoned you I was on my way home after talking with her. Whatever time that call came in, I had left her maybe five or ten minutes before that.”

“You shouldn’t phone while you’re driving.”

Aaron’s joke was lost on me, I was working the odds in my head of a hit and run not being related to my conversation with Da’nita, not having something to do with Kerri and Nikki. The odds seemed about one in a million.

“You there?” Aaron asked.

“What? Yeah. No idea who hit her?”

“Does the term hit and run mean anything? No, no idea. They got some paint chips off her wheelchair. They’ll analyze them, maybe get a color if not a vehicle type. That should only take about twelve months before the results get back to us.”

“You working it?”

“No, thank God. I got enough stuff not going anywhere. I don’t need that headache.”

“Aaron, I’ll bet you lunch it was a dark blue vehicle, and if you could find Nikki Mathias you’d have a good chance of getting your hands on the driver.”

“I’ll pass it on. We should probably talk but I’m up to my ass in alligators right now. Stay in touch, okay.”

“Yeah, hey can you run Karina Vucavitch through your computer see what comes up. I, hello, Aaron, you there? Hello?” he’d already hung up.

I thought about Da’nita Bell. Was she killed because she talked to me? Because she worked with Kerri? Did she know more than she’d told me? I thought maybe I could start to get some answers at the deli Da’nita mentioned, and check the escort office while I was there. Who knew, maybe Kerri might even be there, sitting back with her feet up on the desk, just waiting for me to show up so she could help get all these nagging questions off my chest.

The Moscow Deli was located in a fifties-era strip mall constructed of singularly unmemorable beige brick. Despite the fact it was a bright, sunny afternoon the neon sign outside the door was on. The “M” in the sign was out and the red letters read “oscow Deli”. All the storefronts opened on to a cracked sidewalk beneath a rusty sheet-metal canopy. The view from inside the deli was of a sparsely filled parking lot, with just a hint of faded white lines and more than a few potholes. The traffic on the street raced past constantly. Rarely did a vehicle risk venturing into the parking lot.

Inside there was virtually nothing I recognized on the shelves. All the shelf labels and canned goods were in Russian. There was a pungent smell of fish, cooked cabbage with maybe some body odor thrown in the mix. The man behind the meat counter looked like he could have been a distant cousin of Leonid Brezhnev. Stocky, ruddy cheeks, a day-old beard, salt-and-pepper hair combed straight back accenting his prominent widow’s peak. He sized me up through bloodshot eyes set beneath heavy eyebrows and a forehead that looked about a half inch high and six inches thick. His plastic nametag read Tibor.

“How’s it going?” I smiled, hoping to thaw some of the icy greeting.

“Mrumph,” he grunted in my general direction, then sniffled.

My attempt at charm didn’t seem to work, he just blinked his bloodshot eyes at me, expression unreadable.

“You’re Tibor, yes?” I said reading his nametag and using my best “I’m a good guy” smile.

I watched him process my question. You could almost hear the rusty wheels beginning to turn inside his thick skull. Eventually he gave a slight nod, probably wondering how I knew.

“Karina Vucavitch said you’d help me if I needed to get in touch with her. I’m trying to return some things of hers. Can you tell me where I can find her?”

That got a reaction, but not the one I’d hoped for.

“I no know Kerri,” he said, then folded fairly heavy arms across his chest, sniffled again. He had a blurry blue tattoo on his right forearm, an anchor, three lines of Russian scrawled beneath, all in Cyrillic script. His hands were chapped pink, with scared knuckles, the right hand missing most of the ring finger. The hands looked like they’d be able to form pretty solid fists, not for the first time.

“Well, you know she goes by Kerri, so you must know her. Where can I find her? I’ve been doing some work for her. I found someone she was looking for.”

Another blink and vague look.

“Okay, look, have her give me a call. I’ve got information for her. Get it, information?” I raised my eyebrows, nodded, wishing I knew the Russian for asshole.

He waved me off with his three-fingered right hand, shaking his head like he couldn’t be bothered anymore, and began to shovel ground rat or something into a section of the refrigerated counter, mumbling in Russian all the while.

“When you talk to her, pal, give her this card and have her call me.” I pulled a business card out of my wallet, wrote “call me” on the back with my pen and left it on the meat counter. “Nice chatting with you,” I said and headed for the door.

Once outside I looked around for the escort office Da’nita had said it was right next door. I found it, actually two doors down. There was a grimy hallway with a series of fairly solid office doors numbered 1–9. No name on the doors but a roster of tenants just inside the entrance listed number 5 as the office for Lee-Dee. That seemed close enough.

Number 5 was locked and from what I could tell there was no noise coming from the other side. The hallway had a drop ceiling and I was sure the wall rose just a few inches above the ceiling, not that I intended to climb. I walked out to my car, made a show of driving off for my new pal Tibor, then parked around the corner. I grabbed my pick set out of the glove compartment and strolled back. I was inside the office in under three minutes.

The room was dark, windowless, and smelled of Kerri’s perfume. I hit the light switch and an overhead fluorescent above a plastic ceiling panel flickered on. I relocked the door then headed to the gray desk four feet inside the office. A laptop with a screen saver of fireworks bouncing around sat on the desk. I moved the mouse, and the screen came to life. It looked like an appointment calendar, numerical codes in date blocks. I printed the page.

My thought was to navigate around the computer and find out where Kerri was, where Nikki was hiding, who took a shot at me, and who ran over Da’nita Bell? I learned I wasn’t going to get very far without passwords. There was a rolodex on the desktop, next to that a coffee mug with maybe an inch of coffee and an oily slick on the top. Nuclear red lipstick lined the edge of the coffee mug. Two semi-clean mugs sat in a desk drawer along with a box of Tampax, a pack of cigarettes and seventy-five cents. I pocketed the three quarters.

There were no file cabinets, no files, no checks, nothing. Which I guessed meant just about everything was done electronically. I noticed there wasn’t an office chair, and I remember Da’nita complaining that Kerri rolled her out into the hall and left her to sit there. It made sense that this was Da’nita’s desk. There were two other doors off the room.

The first door I opened was a small walkin closet, nothing of interest unless you were looking for the coffeepot, which I turned off. A metal shelf, the only other occupant in the closet, held four reams of paper for a printer. I turned the light off in the front office and opened the second door.