David Duffy - Last to Fold

I found some tape and resealed the box. Maybe Eva wouldn’t notice—if she did come back. No one else would care. I stopped long enough to say a silent prayer for the dead. They wouldn’t hear it. They’d never know how they’d been used either. On the way out, I grabbed Ratko’s copy of Travels with My Aunt . A long time since I read it, and he didn’t need it anymore.

“Jackpot!” Foos said.

“Whattaya got?”

“Ratko’s database. Forty-two million potential bank accounts—along with the code for the laundry. We could go into business tomorrow.”

“Victoria wouldn’t like that. Neither would Lachko. How much money are they moving? Can you tell?”

“More than fifty mil a month, but they’re still ramping up, adding accounts, increasing the flow. May was twenty-two percent higher than April, which was up twenty-one percent over March. Classic early growth curve. Sky’s the limit, with that many names to work with.”

“Let’s see.”

He spun the computer screen around. The columns were all the same as the ones that had given me a headache last Thursday. Now they showed bank names and branch locations, account names and numbers and dollar amounts moving in and out. Overseas deposits and withdrawals were shown in local currencies. The sheer volume of transactions made it complicated, but the underlying program was decidedly simple.

“Gotta hand it to him. Helluva operation,” Foos said.

“No wonder Lachko wants it back so bad.”

“You already gave him half of it. You gonna give him the other?”

“I’m thinking to sell it. About time the Barsukovs started to spread the wealth.”

Foos raised a bushy eyebrow. “What’s Victoria going to say about that?”

“She’s not my minder.”

“That’s not what you said yesterday. And the lipstick on your neck suggests different.”

I put a finger to my skin, where she’d snuggled when we’d said good-bye. It came away purplish red. “I’m doing this partly for her. Can you bug the database the way you did Ratko’s computer?”

“I’ll attribute the stupidity of that question to your impaired mental condition.”

“Okay. What about the other hard drive?”

“That one’s your department.”

“Why?”

“It’s in Russian.”

My ribs had started to ache, but I did my best to ignore them as I took a cab to Second and Eighth. The street was much as I’d found it before. All kinds of people going about their lives. I stopped at a bank to buy a roll of nickels before watching Slav House from the opposite sidewalk for about ten minutes. Nobody came or went. That was good for my purposes. The mattress salesman emerged from his store, smoked a cigarette, and went back inside without noticing me.

I crossed the street and pulled open the metal door. The same big guard sat on a stool in front of the turnstile.

“Yeah?” he said.

I put my hands in my pockets and moved toward him.

“You’ve been in a fight,” he said, rising off his stool. “Looking for another?”

I hit him across the face with my right hand wrapped around the nickels. He fell over the stool with a crash. He pulled himself halfway up, and I hit him again. This time he stayed down.

I stood back against the wall under the one-way window until the steel door opened and a hand holding a gun poked out. Colt .45. I hit the door with my shoulder, which made everything hurt, but not as much as the other guy’s wrist. Bones cracked as he shrieked in pain. The gun clattered to the floor. I kicked it away and pulled open the door. The short, greasy-haired guy Gina had described held his damaged wrist, the hand hanging as if no longer connected, his face twisted in agony. I grabbed his shirt and yanked him into two hard jabs with the nickels. Teeth dropped to the floor. I let go of the shirt and the rest of him fell on top. He didn’t move.

Ten minutes later, I blinked as I stepped into the sunlight, holding Eva by the hand. Slav House consisted of a large meeting room, three smaller classrooms, and a couple of conference rooms and some offices. I found her in one of the latter, asleep on a cot. There were three large safes against the wall, all locked, presumably where they kept the cash. I gave the place a quick once-over before waking her, but it yielded nothing. She didn’t seem surprised or resist when I asked her to come with me. She wasn’t stoned, as far as I could tell, just exhausted.

“Please,” she said, “not h… h… home.”

“My office.”

“Okay.”

The cab was crossing Delancey Street when the cell phone buzzed.

Lachko said, “You have a fucking death wish, shit-sucker. You’d be a dead man, if you were a man at all. As it is, you’ll be a dead nonevent no one will remember. By midnight.”

“I have the database. I have the code.”

A long silence. I pictured him in his all-white office, struggling to bring his temper under control. “Bring them to me. You and your faggot-fucking son can live.”

“We’re both going to live, Lachko—on my terms. That’s where we start the negotiation. I can see how this works now. You moved fifty-two million in May. Not bad. June’s on track for over sixty. You going to throw all that away?”

Another silence. “What the fuck do you want?”

“I’ll call when I’m ready to talk.”

I closed the phone before he could respond. I expected him to call back, if only to throw more insults, but the phone stayed strangely silent. Eva was looking at me, blue eyes wide.

“Your father can be a very angry man,” I said.

She closed her eyes and scrunched up her face, shaking her head. The eyes opened again, just as wide. “He’s n… n… not my f… father,” she whispered.

I tried to get Eva to explain that confession, but she didn’t speak another word for the rest of the cab ride, despite my questions and coaxing. She stared straight ahead, as if she’d retreated into her own world where no one could follow. She kept the same stare as I paid the driver and led her through the lobby, into the elevator, and through the server farm. It took Pig Pen to break the spell.

“Hello, Russky. Hello, cutie. Hot number!”

Eva’s head spun. “Wh… wha…”

“Eva, meet Pig Pen. Pig Pen, this is Eva. Be polite.”

“Cutie. Hot number!”

Eva looked at Pig Pen, back at me, then back at the parrot. “He t… talks?”

“A lot more than he should.” Foos taught him the “Cutie, hot number” routine to impress his dates, which, to my surprise, it never fails to do.

Eva approached the door of his office-cage. “Hello, P… P… Pig P… Pen.”

“Hello, cutie. Pizza?”

She looked back at me, unsure.

“Don’t pay attention to his pizza pleas. He hits on everyone.”

“I’ll get you pizza,” she said.

“Hot number! Hot number!”

Foos was banging on his keyboard. “Who’s that?”

“The Mulholland girl.”

He hauled his bulk to the door. Eva was still outside Pig Pen’s cage. The parrot was hanging on the mesh, talking up close and personal.

“Looks like he’s got a new friend,” he said. “She staying?”

“Not sure. She’s used up Ratko’s hideaways and doesn’t want to go home.”

The phone rang, and Foos answered. He listened a minute and held the receiver out to me, mouthpiece covered. “Victoria. Not a happy camper.”

“Y’all told me your business with Mulholland has nothing to do with my case.”

“That’s true.”

“Then what the hell is he doing in Brighton Beach?”

“Are you sure?”

“He got out of a car at Barsukov’s place a few minutes ago.”