twoinch block of something covered in brown goo with crackers arranged around the edges.
'I hope that didn't come out of the toilet,' I said skeptically.
'This here ain't some possum I scraped up off the highway, Joe Bob. What we got here is a quarter pound a cream cheese with A-1 Sauce. Prime hillbilly cooking.'
'I think I'll pass,' I said.
Broadway came out on the deck, balancing a tray with beers and four glasses he'd found in the kitchen. All this party formality was because it had finally occurred to these two dingbats that Alexa could actually enhance their careers. As if cold beer and cream cheese would zip them right up onto the Lieutenant's List.
After the Heinekens were poured, Alexa opened her briefcase and pulled out some folders.
'This is everything from the Russian organized crime databank on the Odessa mob,' she said. 'The guys who seem to be currently in charge are the Petrovitch brothers. Samoyla and Igor. They're both foreign nationals here on long-term visas. Neither of these guys has a wife or family, but that's pretty standard. Members of the Russian mafia are prohibited by their criminal code from getting married, seeing or talking to relatives, or even working for a living.' 'They're celibate?' I asked, surprised.
'They can have girlfriends, but no children,' she responded. 'They brought a strict thieves' code over from Odessa. It's all pretty desperate stuff. Never work, never marry. Never, under pain of death, give truthful information to police. And my own personal favorite; sit in on trials and convocations and be willing to personally carry out all death sentences.'
'Nice,' I muttered.
'The file on the Petrovitches is mostly a lot of surveillance reports and broken search warrants that never came to anything,' she said, handing it over. 'Every time OCB thinks they have Iggy or Sammy set up for something, and convince a judge to write the paper, the search always turns up zilch.'
I looked at the file. There was no picture of Iggy Petrovitch, but there was a booking picture of his younger brother, Sammy, clipped on the front of his yellow sheet. If this was the guy who threatened Marianna, no wonder she wouldn't talk.
He looked massive and his face was a hideous mask of scar tissue, the result of some horrific disaster. Height and weight were listed in metrics courtesy of some European police agency. For the record, he weighed 127.01 kilograms and was 2.032 meters tall. Somebody else would have to do the math, because I don't get the metric system.
'This guy is right out of a forties horror flick,' I said, showing the shot to Broadway and Perry who nodded, but didn't take the photo. They knew him from the street.
Alexa continued. 'According to the background check from Interpol, Sammy was rumored to have been doing covert incursions and death squad assassinations for some secret branch of the KGB during the Russian war in Afghanistan. Setting bombs in mosques and blowing up buildings. He was driving away from one of his booby traps in Kabul when a Sunni militia man hit his vehicle with an American-made shoulder-fired Stinger. We had some green berets over there advising Afghan warlords. They found him and one of our corpsman patched him up. The world would've been a lot better off if we'd just let him die. Now he's in L. A. and according to our gang squad, Sammy is the Odessa mob's designated hitter here. He's dropped ten or fifteen people since he showed up, only we've never been able to prove it. Down in Russian Town, this guy's like the Black Death. They call him Ebalo. It means The Face.'
'Two questions,' I said. 'If he was a KGB agent with such a dark past, how does U. S. Immigration and Naturalization let him in here? And since the Petrovitches aren't citizens and we suspect them of being Odessa mobsters, why don't we just deport them?'
'Can't deport them if we can't prove they're guilty of anything,' Alexa answered. 'The one time we actually tried, it was squashed by INS in Washington with instructions not to pursue our case.'
She leaned forward, picked up a cracker, and spread some cream cheese on it. Then she put it tentatively, in her mouth and chewed. Everybody watched.
'That's excellent,' she exclaimed.
'Our street Intel puts Iggy and Sammy in L. A. since 'ninety-five,' Broadway said, picking up the story. 'The Petrovitches started out as finger breakers, but were so good at it that within three years, they were promoted to authorities, or brigadiers.'
I must have looked confused so he clarified.
'That's like an enforcer. In 'ninety-eight, these two guys staged a bloody coup and took control of the entire L. A. branch of ROC. When I say, bloody, I mean like in, 'the streets ran red.' Rumor has it that Iggy is the boss. He was also some kind of covert assassin for the KGB during the Soviet Union. He does the thinking, and Sammy, with his ghoul's face, does the wet work. During their coup a few years back, we were pulling dead Reds outta every drainage basin in L. A. But like their code instructs, nobody talked or stepped up. We couldn't prove the Petrovitches were behind the slaughter.'
'Then how can you be certain they did it?' I asked.
'Negative physics,' Broadway said. 'Somebody creates a vacuum and you wait to see who rises. The Petrovitches rose like the cream in a root beer float. After they became pakhans, or supreme bosses of the Odessa mob here, everything quieted down again. They started branching out and taking over legitimate businesses, usually by some kind of threat or extortion.'
We all sat and thought about this while a hoot owl, way up the canyon chanted his mournful cry.
'Okay, I'm gonna jump to a not very tough conclusion,' I finally said.
'Get froggy,' Emdee smiled.
'I've read some gang briefings, and I understand the Russian mob is very big on gas tax scams. But to run them you need to pump gas, and that means you need to own service stations. The Petrovitches couldn't strong- arm Boris Litvenko, so they killed him and forced Marianna to sell the six Texacos. Then Sammy shot Martin Kobb when he started looking into his uncle's death and got too close. A week ago, he gets Andrazack with the same gun. That means Sammy still has that five-forty-five stashed somewhere.'
'Yeah, but how do we find it?' Broadway asked.
I looked over at Alexa. 'You could have Financial Crimes open up a gas tax investigation on Patriot Petroleum, I'll bet a year's pay it's a Petrovitch company. Make the warrant for financial records, but tell the judge to write it as loose as he can. It needs to be served on Sammy's home office as well as his business. Once I get in, I'll push the edges and see if I can find that pistol.'
'I'll do my best,' she said. 'But there's no probable cause. I may not be able to find a judge who will write the paper.'
'In the meantime, give the three of us permission to talk to Stanislov Bambarak,' I said. 'Sammy's an unguided missile, but I bet Bambarak's got big problems with the Petrovitches. The Russians are supposed to be our allies now. Maybe it's time to put that theory to the test.'
Chapter 49
Stanislov Bambarak agreed to meet us at his house in the Valley at nine the following morning. We arrived in Broadway's blue Chevy Caprice and pulled into the driveway of a beautiful California Craftsman house on Moorpark Avenue bordered by beds of colorful red and white impatiens brimming behind well-trimmed hedges.
We rang the doorbell, and a few minutes later heard heavy footsteps coming down the hallway, followed by the sound of latches being thrown. The massive wood door swung open and Stanislov Bambarak greeted us in the threshold, holding a long-necked watering can. A wrinkled Hawaiian shirt and stained khaki shorts draped his mammoth body like a badly pitched tent. Watery brown eyes inventoried us carefully.
'Ah,' he finally said, letting out a gust of breath ripe with the tart smell of breakfast sausage. 'Da vafli zopas.
'Flying assholes,' Perry translated, and smiled. 'You gonna let us in, Stan, or you just gonna stand there and insult us?'
Stanislov stepped aside. Then he held up the watering can and said, 'Been feeding my pretties.' This mystifying remark was delivered in perfect tally-ho English, courtesy of some Black Sea KGB spy school where he'd
