Russian Roulette Read online

  “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.

  Chapter 20

  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?”

  “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.

  Chapter 21

  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 f
rom 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.

  Chapter 22

  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 walk-in 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.

  I entered a slightly larger, windowless office, Kerri’s, I guessed. There wasn’t a thing to suggest the office had actually been occupied by anyone with a personality in the last year. A couple of cords ran across the desk where a computer used to sit. There was a printer on the corner of the desk, still plugged in and on. It meshed with Da’nita’s version of things. Kerri running in, taking about a minute to unplug her computer, push Da’nita out the door, and drive off. The desk revealed nothing of interest as I went through the drawers. I was looking around the room hoping something might jump out at me but nothing did. I was probably frowning when I heard the hallway doorknob jiggle. I could see the shadow of two feet through the crack at the bottom of the door. I quickly turned the office light off, then stood there in total darkness with my hand on my right hip, taking a little comfort from my pistol. The handle jiggled again, then the shadows beneath the door disappeared, and a muttered voice faded down the hallway.

  I remained still for what seemed like four or five hours, probably five minutes in reality. Heart pounding in my ears, willing myself to take normal breaths I eventually made my way in the dark to Da’nita’s desk. I shut down her computer, unplugged it, and walked out the door. I scanned the dismal parking lot for a long minute but didn’t spot anyone sitting in a car and watching. As a matter of fact I didn’t see a living soul. I walked back to my car, checking the reflection in the storefront windows for signs of anyone behind me. I didn’t spot anyone.

  I took a roundabout route home, didn’t notice a tail. Just to play it safe I drove into a pay parking ramp downtown, circled up to the top floor, then drove back out on a side-street exit, still no one behind me.

  Chapter 23

  I can do a lot of things on the computer: write letters, invoice clients, email, download i-tunes, and watch porn. I had no business thinking I could get into the files on Da’nita’s laptop so I took the thing over to Sunnie Einer.

  Sunnie’s done some projects for me over the years. If she had been a guy she had a great name for a gangster, maybe someone who ran with Tony Soprano. Sunnie wasn’t a gangster. She had a doctorate in Education and another one in Computer Science. She was a tenured professor at the University of St. Catherine’s and had a sixteen-year-old son, named Josh, who was driving her nuts. I phoned her enroute.

  “Hey Sunnie, Dev Haskell. You interested in a little project?”

  “Possibly, is it legal?”

  “Sort of,” I hedged. “I can be over in about ten minutes.”

  She gave an audible sigh.

  “Yeah sure, okay. We’ll talk about it when you get here. Can you stay for dinner?”

  “What are you serving?”

  “Like you care, I’ll see you in ten,” she said and hung up.

  I was there in closer to twenty once I stopped and picked up a bottle of wine. As I pulled in I couldn’t help but notice her car, a black Prius, her pride and joy, sporting
a broken headlight and smashed right front-quarter panel.

  “Hey Dev, come on in,” she said opening the door and sounding genuinely glad to see me. She gave me a slight kiss on the check. She wasn’t good looking, she was beautiful and a friend. Oddly, given my history, the friendship was really important and I’d never attempted to try and work the sexual end of things.

  “Gorgeous as always, Sunnie. How are you?”

  The home smelled delicious. There was a bell ringing somewhere.

  “Come on back to the kitchen, my timer’s going off. Lasagna, I’m just taking it out, we’ll eat in about ten minutes, which should give me time for a glass of your wine and you can tell me about this opportunity.” She stressed the word opportunity like it was anything but as she nodded at the laptop under my arm.

  “Now be positive,” I encouraged. “Hey, what happened to your Prius?”

  “Oh God, Mr. Grounded For The Rest of His Life, did that, the little idiot. Only one friend in the car is my rule. Of course five of the little deadbeats are driving out to the Mall of America, Josh doing everything but paying attention. He rammed someone in the parking ramp.”

  “The parking ramp? How’d he do that?”

  “Exactly! You have that wine opened up yet? I could sure use it.”

  Ten minutes later we were at the dining-room table, a contrite Josh seated across from me rolling his eyes as Sunnie carried the pan of lasagna into the room and said,

  “Dev, will you lead us in grace, please?” Not really a request, more of a directive.

  Josh rolled his eyes again.

  I winked back.

  After dinner Josh dutifully cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. As he headed upstairs to his room Sunnie gave a final instruction.

  “No computer, no TV.”

  He gave an exasperated sigh, similar to his mother’s earlier on the phone with me, but had enough sense not to offer further protest. After he’d gone upstairs she said,

  “God, I really want to kill him right now. Is that bad? Do you think they’d catch me?”