Джеймс Паттерсон - The Midwife Murders

One of the NYPD detectives smiles at me and nods toward a cubicle that has four walls and an actual door. “That’s Detective Blumenthal’s office,” the detective says.

“Fancy digs,” I say.

“It’s good to be the king,” the detective says.

I smile, but I’m thinking, How good can it be? Shiny suits from Men’s Wearhouse, Trader Joe’s wraps for lunch, an office made out of rented partitions, and, most of all, kidnappings and an attempted murder case that seems to be nearly impossible to solve.

Blumenthal’s office door is wide open. It’s a relatively small space with a ridiculously large cluttered desk, a filing cabinet stuffed to overflowing with paper, and the world’s largest collection of used disposable coffee cups.

“I love what you’ve done with the place,” I say.

“It’s better than what we had before,” he says. Then without waiting a moment he says, “Look, you wanted to help out, and now we’ve got a really smart plan for you to help with.”

There goes my blood pressure. Simmering to boiling.

“Do you mean that this is a really smart plan, as opposed to my plan, the dumb plan?” I ask.

“That’s exactly what I mean.” A pause. “Now, may I go on?”

Leon Blumenthal is shameless. Yeah, he may look sort of handsome in that shiny suit, but nonetheless, he remains a shameless, sarcastic bully. And already I’m predicting that within three minutes we’ll be screaming at each other.

Some other woman would have stormed out of the crappy little office already. But that’s not me. I won’t give Blumenthal the satisfaction. Plus I really want to be a part of this.

“Yeah, go on,” I say, and I hope he doesn’t notice the smoke coming out of my ears.

“But first, here’s what went down before we came up with this. Myself and another detective went out to Queens to see your informant, Patrik Kovac.”

“Who was the detective you brought?”

“Bobby Cilia, he’s a good guy. You don’t know him.”

“Isn’t he the detective who followed up with Sarkar and Dr. Whall about who told who to leave the operating room?”

“Yeah, but how about for now I finish briefing you.”

I nod. I like the word briefing . It sounds so official. Blumenthal continues.

“Anyway, Patrik Kovac totally cold-shoulders us. Bobby and I ask questions. Patrik just keeps saying, ‘You are confusing me perhaps with another man.’ I tell him what you told me. I tell him that I was the first-responding detective when his daughter was attacked and her baby stolen, and I can tell by the way Patrik looks away from us and the way he stutters and stammers all over the place, well, I can tell he’s either bullshitting us or just totally afraid to cooperate.”

I nod. I say nothing. Sure enough, Blumenthal starts to say what I’ve been thinking.

“It’s possible that …” he begins. He hesitates and begins again, “It’s possible that …” He is reluctant to admit that he did something wrong.

I just can’t help myself. I help him finish his sentence. “You mean that it’s just possible the Russian mob got to Patrik Kovac and scared the shit out of him before you got it together to reach out to him.”

Blumenthal snaps his index finger at me and nods. “Exactly,” he says. “But hold on, Sherlock. On the surface of it, it seems that our interview with Patrik Kovac didn’t come to anything. But Cilia and I did get something good, something we could use.”

Again, I can’t help but interrupt. “I bet I know. You got some helpful info from the woman at Immaculate Conception, the mother over there who had her baby stolen.”

“Son of a bitch, Lucy Ryuan, you are smarter than a person needs to be.”

I don’t tell Blumenthal that this is the exact phrase my mother often used when I was a precocious kid. Only when my mom said it, she would smile and say, “You are smarter than a person needs to be, you annoying little pug-nose brat.”

Blumenthal is sounding like a coach at halftime. He’s enthused, intense, and angry, all at the same time.

“The mother of the kidnapped baby is named Hannah Neal. You can imagine what a mess she was. Eighteen years old. Heartbroken, just heartbroken. The tears, the screaming. It was grim. Sad. Really unbelievably sad.”

“Yes, I can imagine that,” I say.

“But we did get some good stuff from Ms. Neal. It turns out that she dealt with a guy who had a stupid name. At least the name was straight from Central Casting. Fyodor Orlov. Sorta like the names on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. You know, the villains, Boris and Natasha.”

“Jesus, Detective. What year were you born?” I say. “Rocky and Bullwinkle?”

He ignores me and keeps going. “Anyway, Hannah is in the exact same situ as Katra. Hannah Neal is just eighteen. Pregnant. The baby’s father disappears. A friend tells her about Orlov. Just like with the Kovac girl. Orlov and Hannah meet … Oh, and by the way, the first time Hannah meets with Orlov, he’s with a woman, and before they even talk, the woman gives Hannah Neal a pregnancy test, the kind you do yourself.”

“The kind you do yourself?” I say. “I didn’t think the woman showed up with an ultrasound machine.”

I know that Blumenthal is telling me this to remind me that a pregnancy test would be the first thing I would’ve had to do if I’d shown up posing as a pregnant woman.

Blumenthal ignores my sarcasm and starts talking again. “At first we thought Hannah Neal had a pretty decent description of the man and woman. So we had her sit with a department sketch guy, but nothing came of it. The more changes she told the artist to make, the more Hannah said it didn’t look like the guy. Finally, we gave up on that.

“But here’s what we do have: not just Orlov’s name and description … This is the best … Hannah Neal talked with Fyodor Orlov by cell phone. So now we have his cell phone number.”

“And that helps how exactly? Are you going to arrest him with a text message?”

Blumenthal once again ignores my witty line. He says, “Maybe you’re not as smart as a person needs to be.”

“Leave the insult humor to the professional comics, Detective.”

Blumenthal smiles slightly, then he picks up his cell, punches a button, and says, “Bobby, get over here. I’ve got Lucy Ryuan with me.”

Thirty seconds later a skinny young guy practically runs into Blumenthal’s office. He’s going to be someone else capable of making my blood boil. I can tell. This kid is just too damned enthusiastic for my taste. Cilia and Blumenthal together may just cause me to explode.

“Lucy, Bobby. Bobby, Lucy,” says Blumenthal. Then Blumenthal adds, “Brief Ms. Ryuan on what we want her to do.”

Okay. I’m ready to hear this.

CHAPTER 46

ASSISTANT DETECTIVE BOBBY CILIA sits on the edge of Blumenthal’s desk. He twists his skinny body so that he is able to face both his boss and myself.

Bobby isn’t just skinny, blond, and young. He’s skinny, blond, young, and good-looking. And he seems pretty happy about it all. I don’t know why I should find this annoying. But of course I do.

“So here’s the deal,” Bobby says, tossing that longish blond hair back as if he were in a shampoo commercial. “Have you ever done any acting, Ms. Ryuan?”

Before I can come up with a wiseass answer, Blumenthal says, “Never start a presentation with a question, Cilia. Get right into it.”

“We want to set up a phone call between Orlov and you,” Cilia says. “You’re going to tell him who you are … who you really are … a senior midwife at Gramatan University Hospital.”

“Yeah,” I say in an I-sort-of-understand-it tone. “Go on.”