David Duffy - In for a Ruble

“You sure you don’t want to get out of here? I’ll take you. You just tell me where.”

Her eyes followed mine, stopped on the bathroom door for not long enough, then swung back to me.

“I need it. Please.”

The motel manager didn’t add much to Cindy’s story. He didn’t want to add anything until I placed a used syringe on the counter and told him my next stop was the Newburgh police if he didn’t rearrange his attitude.

A man had rented the room by phone, one night, under the name Brian Murphy, from New York City. The kid had collected the key and paid the bill in cash. The manager didn’t see the girl, or if he did, he wasn’t saying.

“We get a lot of folks through here, bud. None of them want to be remembered. We do ’em that favor.”

If it wasn’t the truth, it was a damned good lie.

I returned to the Potemkin’s heater and thought about how far I wanted to take this. I’d been hired for one job, and I had the answer to that—at least the pieces. Nosferatu had placed the bug. Coryell was his agent. No doubt in my mind he was the man the cleaners had described. Nosferatu worked for Konychev. Konychev knew Leitz. Leitz wanted a name. That was enough to secure my fee and the Malevich. But I didn’t have the connections. What was Nosferatu after? What did he have on Coryell? Why had Coryell sold out his brother-in-law? What did Thomas have on Coryell? And what was Leitz’s multimillionaire son up to? The last question was none of my affair, but I’ve always found it hard to walk away from anomalies like that.

What the hell? Nothing to lose, except maybe my client, and I was all but done with him anyway. I dialed the number of Andras Leitz’s cell phone.

“This is Andras.” A pleasant-sounding voice, slightly high in pitch, counterbalanced by low volume.

“My name’s Turbo. I work with Foos. I’m doing a job for your dad and I have a question for you.”

I waited while he processed that. “Dad didn’t say anything about you calling.”

“I didn’t tell him I planned to.”

I waited some more.

“What’s the name of Foos’s parakeet?” he asked.

“Always good to be sure,” I said. “It’s a parrot, as you know. Pig Pen. He calls me Russky. He flunked charm school, which you also know if you’ve met him.”

He laughed, relaxed. “That’s for sure. He calls me Whiz Kid.”

“At least that’s complimentary.”

“It’s embarrassing. Especially around Foos. You said you have a question. Sorry to rush. I’ve got class in a few minutes.”

“I’ll be quick. The job I’m working on has to do with your dad’s office security. I don’t know that much about computers, your father’s in meetings all day, and Foos isn’t around, or I’d ask him. Is your home networked through the Leitz Ahead system?”

“That’s right.”

“So if someone’s online at your house, they’re inside the network, inside the firewall.”

“Sure. Why?”

“Foos thought he spotted traces of unusual activity. I was trying to think about where it could have originated.”

I expected a few moments of silence then a feeble lie. That’s what I got.

“I do all my work here at Gibbet, on the school’s network.”

“Sure.” Except during vacations and breaks. I was willing to bet he got straight As in math.

“Tell me one more thing, and I’ll let you go.” I think I heard him sigh with relief. “When was the last time you talked to your uncle Walter?”

Relief morphed to apprehension, maybe fear. “Why?”

“Nobody’s heard from him. You’ve been trying to reach him.”

“How do you know that?” Definitely fear now.

I kept my voice pleasantly conversational and nonthreatening. “I know a lot of things, more than I want to, actually. You were at the Black Horse Motor Inn in Newburgh Saturday night. You tried calling your uncle three times. Was he supposed to meet you there?”

He took a long time before he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My class…” He tried to keep his voice calm and level, but I could feel the stress through the atmosphere.

“Uncle Thomas says you’re all good at sweeping stuff under the rug, and I think each of you has stuff you don’t want anyone else to know about. You seem to.”

Another silence. I let him simmer.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, maybe Irina does. She was there too, right, at the Black Horse?”

When the odds are four to one in your favor, it’s no surprise that you win the bet.

“NO!”

“Hey, don’t get excited. I was just going to give her a call. She could’ve heard from your uncle.”

“STAY AWAY FROM HER! YOU HEAR ME? STAY AWAY! THIS CONVERSATION IS OVER.”

He broke the connection.

I dialed Irina’s cell phone. He got there first, or she just didn’t answer. I was sent to voicemail. I didn’t bother with a message. She’d see I called, discuss it with him (or maybe not), and decide whether to answer when I called again.

The heater blew warm air, too warm. I got out and walked around the windy parking lot. I’d accomplished what I knew I would. Drawing myself in deeper. But I was no closer to the link I was looking for—Andras-Irina-Coryell to Nosferatu. I got back in the Potemkin and pointed the bow south toward the city.

I tried Irina from the Bronx and was mildly surprised when she answered.

“Andras tell you about me?” I asked without introduction.

“You’re Russian.”

She’d done some homework, quickly. “That’s right.”

“Where?”

“Moscow mainly, but I’ve lived all over. New York now.”

“Cheka?”

Definitely doing some checking. She had the means and connections.

“That’s right, First Chief Directorate, if you’re interested.”

“Chekists are pigs.”

“That what you tell your stepfather?”

She didn’t pause—or bite. “I only wanted to hear your voice, so I can avoid it if I hear it again. I have nothing to say.”

She had plenty of presence for her age, no question about that, even over the phone.

“Hold on. I don’t want anything to do with you or Andras. Your bank accounts are your business.”

I meant to freeze her and I did. I could hear soft breathing, the breaths were shorter than a minute ago.

“I only want to know about Andras’s uncle Walter. What happened at the Black Horse?”

“What do you know about that?”

The question came fast, accusation wrapped in nerves. I’d pricked the tough-girl veneer. But only slightly, she asked what not how ?

Maintain the ascendancy. They teach you that in Cheka Interrogation 101. They didn’t train you specifically to interrogate seventeen-year-olds, but anyone, of any age, could be in the chair. My mother found that out. What had she been asked? What had she answered? Beria chuckled in the background.

“You and Andras were supposed to meet Uncle Walter at the Black Horse. He didn’t show. What happened?”

She laughed. “You’re not as clever as you think you are. I don’t know anything about any Black Horse. Any more questions, Cheka pig?”

She understood ascendancy as well as I did.

“Let’s talk about those bank accounts.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Lot of money for a couple of teenagers.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Twenty-two million is a lot of money to make up. But like I said, I’m really interested in Uncle Walter.”

“Be careful, Chekist pig. You know what happens to Chekists who make mistakes.”

She cut me off. The girl was tough and smart—and experienced, much more so than she should have been. Jenny Leitz had picked up on it, but she hadn’t grasped the full degree. Irina had played our short interrogation like an expert. Not that surprising, perhaps, her father and stepfather were top oligarchs. She’d been learning at the feet of experts since she was a baby. She and Andras were doubtless comparing notes. I still couldn’t see what any of this had to do with the bugging of Leitz’s computers.