The Big Dirt Nap

tried to imprint the turns and landmarks so I'd be able to get back without her.

'Isn't there a more direct way?' I asked, faintly irritated.

'This is the way Nadia comes. It's the only way I know,' she said.

'All right, we're out of there. Now why is Sergei having his men follow you and why would they have been following me? This can't be about some petty thefts from last year.'

'Vitaly protects Sergei. Sergei is somehow involved with the Mishkins' investors. I don't know how, but the night Nick was killed, I overheard him tell someone on the phone he could make it uncomfortable for people if they didn't find a way to cut him in. Vitaly was at the bar. He also heard what Nick said.' She looked down at her nail- bitten hands and tore off a piece of cuticle. I waited for the other shoe to drop.

'What else?'

'I might have told him Nick had mentioned an older woman. He might have thought I meant you.'

Older woman? When did I join the ranks of older women? I was in my thirties, for Pete's sake. What was I supposed to do, flick my hair and inject the word like into every other sentence?

'Did you tell Vitaly about Lucy's call?'

'I may have,' she said quietly.

And now Nick was dead, my house had been ransaked, and Lucy was missing. But why?

We were on a poorly lit road riddled with enough potholes to make it seem like an obstacle course. 'Oksana, are we getting close?'

'The building up ahead on the left, that's the manager's office. He's never there, and the gate is always open. Just make a left and turn into the park.' So much for a gated community.

Oksana used the word park loosely. In the near dark I could make out rows of similarly shaped trailers reminiscent of overseas shipping containers and vintage diners. Occasionally one would stand out because of its outlandish paint job, or the disemboweled vehicle on the rectangle of outdoor space each tenant had a right to—I tried to remember them as breadcrumbs to help me get out of there after I'd dropped her off.

The only sign of vegetation was a few rows down, an aluminum Christmas tree one of the occupants had placed outside of the trailer, bits of tinsel still attached and fluttering in the early-morning breeze despite the fact that it was mid-March.

'Turn right at that tree.'

I had a feeling if the tree was moved Oksana wouldn't know how to get home any more than she knew how to get there from the casino. It was all done by rote. We pulled up to the double-wide and she got out.

'Look after yourself,' I said.

Twenty-one

I zigzagged out of the trailer park using the landmarks I'd remembered—a peace sign made of minilights, a kids' jungle gym, and finally the aluminum Christmas tree close to the entrance. I used the same strategy when I left the pockmarked road that had led to Oksana's, trying to make my way back to the casino.

It should have been easier as the sun was coming up, but it wasn't. Buildings and things I hadn't seen thirty minutes earlier materialized and made me doubt my route selection. A convenience store came up on the right, a small gray shack that looked like a prefab army building with a blue neon Miller sign I would have remembered. It confirmed that I'd missed my turn. I hung a U-turn to slowly retrace my steps.

Jeez, it was a huge hotel—I could faintly see it in the distance through the morning haze—I just couldn't seem to find the road that led there. I crawled back and stopped two hundred yards ahead of a turn I didn't make, just in time to see a silvery blue sedan take a left and pull onto the long stretch of road that led to the trailer park. I hadn't seen another vehicle since Oksana and I had left the casino and I was startled by the appearance of another car.

I told myself it was probably another waitress or pit boss who'd just finished his shift at the casino. All the same, I killed the lights and rolled into a hidden driveway. If the driver of the other car looked in his rearview mirror all he'd see was a dark bump behind a hemlock tree, not a nervous woman wondering if the two men who'd just driven by were Ukrainian mobsters.

All I could see were shadows. The driver's silhouette was the larger of the two. But that could have been anyone—a woman in a fur coat, a guy in a down jacket—it didn't have to be the Michelin Man. And just because he was on the road to Oksana's place didn't mean he was headed there. But I felt sure it was the men we'd seen at the casino, and they were looking for Oksana, or the two of us.

With the engine turned off all the heat had left the car and I sat there, a chill setting in, wondering what to do next. Do I go back to Oksana's to see if she is okay? What could I do if she wasn't?

Stacy Winters's card was still floating around in the bottom of my bag, but by the time I found it, I'd talked myself out of calling her. What would I say? Two people I didn't see may be visiting a person I barely know?

I started the car slowly, with a KISS. Key, ignition, seatbelt, signal. An old boyfriend told me that when he taught me how to drive and I still thought of it—a lifelong habit started by a boyfriend of a hundred days. By the time I got to signal, I saw the headlights of a car racing toward me. The same car, with the same two passengers. The stocky driver made the turn that I had missed minutes before and luckily he didn't notice the Jeep backing out of the hidden driveway.

Rather than get on the road behind them, I kept my lights off and slowly navigated the rutted dirt road they'd just left until I pulled into the trailer park and found my way back to Oksana's.

When I got there, she was gone.

Twenty-two

'Someone you drove home isn't there? Is that really why you're calling me at this ungodly hour?'

Detective Stacy Winters was lucky I hung up the first time I called, almost two hours earlier.

No one had answered at Oksana's place and repeatedly calling her name before six A.M. got me nothing but angry responses from her neighbors. The loudest was the guy with the peace sign. I drove to the casino, and from there back to Titans, checking the rearview mirror so often I nearly missed the exit for the hotel.

I should have been exhausted but too much information was coming at me all at once and I needed to talk to someone about what, if anything, all of this meant. When I finally broke down and called Winters, I spilled everything I knew about Lucy's disappearance, Oksana's story, the Crawford brothers, and the Ukrainians.

'Look, I know I told you to call me if you thought of anything else, but lots of times we just say that. We don't really think you're going to call us. If we thought you really knew anything about Vigoriti's murder we'd still be questioning you.'

Stacy Winters was in no danger of being burdened with either a warm bedside manner or an insatiable curiosity. Even after I told her about Nick's involvement with the Mishkins and the Crawford brothers.

'Nick was always claiming he knew more than he did,' she said, unimpressed. 'He should have gone into politics. With his looks and shtick he could have been governor. You don't have to be smart, you get all the dates you want, and you get to rub shoulders with big-time criminals—not the small fry Nick usually hung out with.' I could hear her slurp a drink and rustle a few papers in the background.

'Look, you're what? A gardener? Go plant some tulips and leave the police work to the professionals.'

What was her obsession with tulips? Was that the only plant she knew? I was tempted to tell her you don't plant tulips in the spring, but somehow I knew it wouldn't be received as the scathing criticism I meant it to be, so I didn't respond.

'What about my friend Lucy? I haven't spoken to her in two days.'

'I've got friends I haven't heard from in ten years,' she said. Big surprise.

'What was her last message? Two men . . . ? She could have been sending you a joke—Two men walk into a bar.'

'Why would she have called Nick twice?' I said.