'So it is. Ah, well. The dog's name, eh? Let's see, what are the old standbys? Fido, Towser, King.
Rover, that's always a popular favorite, isn't it?'
I thought, shit, she's dead.
'How about Spot? 'Run, Spot, run!' That's not a bad name for a Rhodesian Ridgeback.'
But he would have known that much from the weeks of stalking her.
'The dog's name is Watson.'
'Watson,' I said.
Across the room, the big dog shifted position, pricked up its ears.
Yuri was nodding.
'And the other dog?'
'You want so much,' he said. 'How many dogs do you need?'
I waited.
'She couldn't tell me what breed the other dog was. She was young when it died. They had to put it to sleep, she said. Silly term for it, don't you think? When you kill something you ought to have the courage to call it that. You're not saying anything. Are you still there?'
'I'm still here.'
'I gather it was a mongrel. So many of us are. Now the name's a bit of a problem. It's a Russian word and I may not have it right. How's your Russian, my friend?'
'A little rusty.'
'Rusty's a good name for a dog. Maybe it was Rusty. You're a tough audience, my friend. It's hard to get a laugh out of you.'
'I'm a captive audience,' I said.
'Ah, would that it were so. We could have a very interesting conversation under those circumstances, you and I. Ah, well. Some other time, perhaps.'
'We'll see.'
'Indeed we will. But you want the dog's name, don't you? The dog's dead, my friend. What good is his name? Give a dog a dead name, give a dead dog a bad name—'
I waited.
'I may be saying this wrong. Balalaika.'
'Balalaika,' I said.
'It's supposed to be the name of a musical instrument, or so she tells me. What do you say? Does it strike a chord?'
I looked at Yuri Landau. His nod was unequivocal. On the phone, Ray was saying something or other but the words weren't getting through to me. I felt light-headed, and had to lean against the kitchen counter or I might have fallen.
The girl was alive.
Chapter 19
As soon as I got off the phone with Ray, Yuri fell on me and wrapped me up in a bear hug. 'Balalaika,'
he said, invoking the name as if it were a magic spell. 'She's alive, my Luschka is alive!'
I was still in his embrace when the door opened and the Khourys came in, trailed by Landau's man Dani.
Kenan was carrying an old-fashioned leather satchel with a zipper top, Peter a white plastic shopping bag from Kroger's. 'She's alive,' Yuri told them.
'You spoke with her?'
He shook his head. 'They told me the dog's name. She remembered Balalaika. She's alive.'
I don't know how much sense this made to the Khourys, who had been out on a fund-raising mission when the recognition signals were arranged, but they got the gist of it.
'Now all you need is a million dollars,' Kenan told him.
'Money you can always get.'
'You're right,' Kenan said. 'People don't realize that but it's absolutely true.' He opened the leather
satchel and began taking out stacks of wrapped bills, arranging them in rows on top of the mahogany table. 'You got some good friends, Yuri. Good thing, too, is most of 'em don't believe in banks. People don't realize how much of the country's economy runs on cash. You hear cash, you think drugs, you think gambling.'
'Tip of the iceberg,' Peter said.
'You got it. Don't just think of the rackets. Think dry cleaners, think barbershops, beauty parlors. Any place that handles a lot of cash, so they can keep an extra set of books and skim half the take out from under the IRS.'
