how. “I’m going to make some calls.”
“It’s Sunday. You have home numbers for those people?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t mess around, do you?”
“Not when I’m on the job.” He zipped up his jacket, set his face in a blank expression, and made for his ugly car, the burgundy Crown Vic. I started for mine, when the phone rang.
“Meet me,” said Tolya.
“Soon as I can. What happened?”
“I can’t get hold of this driver you wanted. Asshole should be grateful I give him work. The driver who took Marie Louise home? I’m sick of waiting. But I know where to find him. I’m going myself,” he said. “Unless you meet me.”
I didn’t like the idea of Tolya running around trying to do things himself, or leaning on the guy so hard the evidence would be useless. I knew Tolya kept a gun in his glove compartment.
“I’ll meet you.”
“I’ll pick you up,” he said.
“Not here.”
At the corner of 155th Street, Tolya pulled up. I got into his SUV.
“How’s your head?”
I put my hand on the back of my head. “OK.”
“I still want you to see my doctor.”
“You told me. Where are we going?”
“Washington Heights.”
“Why”
“Because this asshole driver, his name is Pavel, he lives there.”
“I didn’t know there were still Russians up there. I figured it was almost all Latino,” I said, and remembered I’d promised to call Gloria Lopez. I dialed. Her mother answered. “Sorry,” said Mrs. Lopez, “Gloria say to tell you she go out on a date.”
“What is it?” Tolya said.
“Somebody telling me to fuck off,” I said. “I deserved it.” I knew Gloria would get me the information on the pills, though, she was a real pro when it came to work. “So, Tol, there are Russians around here?”
“A few. This guy, the driver, he has a brother with a grocery store, 180th, 182nd Street.”
Tolya broke the speed limit. I ignored it. There wasn’t any traffic on the streets, and we made the twenty-five blocks in ten minutes. Most of the signs were in Spanish. Tolya pulled up outside a small shop that was getting ready to close. Its name out front was in English and Russian.
“Come on,” he said, getting out of the car.
A couple of guys, bundled in North Face jackets, were smoking on the street. One of them was Tolya’s substitute driver. As soon as he saw Tolya jump out of the SUV, the guy, it was Pavel, tossed his smoke into the gutter, fussed with his jacket, and stood up straighter. I thought he might salute.
Adjusting the collar of his enormous black coat, Tolya looked at Pavel and asked, in Russian, why he had not returned his calls. Pavel looked plenty nervous.
“Good evening, Anatoly Anatolyvich,” he said.
“I’ve been looking for you,” said Tolya in a steely autocratic voice. Pavel apologized. He apologized again. The other guy, hearing Tolya’s voice, wandered away into the dark night, cigarette clamped in his teeth.
“Please,” Pavel said. “Please come inside the shop. Maybe you will see something you like.”
The long counters in the shop, the glass cases and shelves, were full of Russian goods-cookies, pastries, chocolate, fish, cheese, cosmetics, folk remedies, Astrakhan hats, Russian dolls, samovars. It was a little brightly lit Russian island in the middle of a vast Hispanic ocean.
Pavel introduced us to his brother-his name was Goga-who was behind the counter. He offered us a drink and produced a bottle of good Georgian wine, and poured it into glasses. We toasted the holidays.
“Good,” said Tolya, somehow decreeing with one word that the getting-to-know-you period, the toasting and smiles, was finished. “What time did you drop the lady off last night?” he said to Pavel.
“The African?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t drop this one at home, no.”
“I told you to take her home.”
Pavel moved backwards, away from Tolya. “After I take you home, I tell her, ‘Okay, lady, I will drop you,’ but one block from her apartment, she says she needs air. I think maybe she is sick.”
“You didn’t wait?”
“It was late. I watch in rear view, see she’s OK. I think she did not go home. I think she turns around to go in other direction.”
“But you’re not sure.”
He hung his head as if expecting a blow, but Tolya didn’t touch him, merely took a fifty from his money clip and handed it over.
“It’s not your fault. Relax.” He sipped his wine, turning to me, speaking English now. “Artyom? What this Pavel says, it helps you?”
“It helps.” I was sorry Marie Louise had not gone home, sorry the evidence against her was piling up, but if she had killed Lionel Hutchison, and Marianna Simonova, I wanted her locked up fast.
I thanked Goga in Russian, thanked him for the drink, and complimented him on his shop. “Great place,” I said and asked about the name. I had seen the sign out front, but I wanted to hear it from him, why he had used it. He’d be proud of it, he’d like me for asking. I might need Goga again, and he was a guy you could easily get to talk to you, like you, look forward to your visits, even. He tried to give me a free bottle of wine. I accepted. I rarely took shit from Russians, but this was different. “So the name?”
He lit up. He was a bald, short, fat man with a weary, cheerful face. He poured some more wine. He told me he had named his shop Tolstoy, for his favorite writer.
I remembered. It was the shop where Marianna Simonova had bought her Christmas presents, her ointments and creams, the wooden dolls, chocolates, the samovar. There had been silver stickers with the name on the packages.
I asked if Simonova was a customer.
“Many, many years,” he said. “Of course. Very good customer.”
“She came lately?”
“Once in a while. Sometimes with friends who help her.”
“Which friends?”
“Black man. Old doctor, I think. She tries to persuade him Russian medicine is best.”
Lionel Hutchison.
“Anything else?”
“Sometimes she stops here to talk to other customers in Russian, about this and that.”
“What’s this and that?”
“Politics? Who can say. She is still believer, believer in Communism, crazy, right? But she is good customer, so I listen politely.”
“Artyom, time to go,” said Tolya, softly now, still in English. “You OK with this, about the African lady, this information from my asshole driver?”
“Yes,” I said. “Fine.” I got the shop owner’s card, and Pavel followed us out to the sidewalk to see us off and into Tolya’s SUV. He looked relieved.
“Where do we go?” said Tolya.
“Drop me at the station house.”
“Which?”
I gave him the address, and before Tolya started the car, he threw off his big black coat-it was warm in the SUV-and revealed that underneath, he was wearing a Santa costume.
