Eye of the Beholder

was all they had.

The man takes him into a small room with a round table.

“Skol‘ko?” Leo asks.

“Dvesti.”

Leo nods, turns his back on the man, peels two hundred dollars from his roll, and sets it on the table. The man picks up the money and leads him through the warehouse. Leo doesn’t look at the men working on the cars. He listens to the drumming of his heart. He listens to the blood coursing through his head.

The man opens a large door with a key. Inside, over a dozen women are springing to attention, seated on beat-up couches and chairs. The room is warm. The women-girls, some of them- are scantily dressed, halter tops and hot pants or tiny shorts. Cheap perfume and cigarette smoke fill the air. Some pop music is playing on a small portable stereo.

He surveys them. Some of these girls are teenagers. Most of them have damaged skin, bruises, in one case. Their eyes are dispassionate. Most of them are skinny, though not toned. He finds the one he wants and nods to her.

“Skol‘ko vam let?” Not that he expects her to reveal her true age.

“Dvadcat’ odin,” she says. Twenty-one. That’s a lie, closer to thirty, liar. He asks her for her name, so she can lie again, that’s all they know, lying-

“Dodya,” she answers. He points to her. She’ll be fine.

The room upstairs is small, dim, and dirty. It takes him back yet again. Lefortovo held eight to a cell, and the ceiling was much higher, but the confined feeling is the same.

He thinks of Kat, even pictures her face. He closes his eyes as if that will erase her. When he opens them, this one, “Dodya”-

– He knew a Dodya in Leningrad, a chubby, sad girl, with orange-blond hair, who they teased, made Leo feel sad because he knew what it was like, but he didn’t do anything, let them tease her and make her cry-

Dodya wiggles out of her shorts and removes her top. Her body seems undeveloped; her breasts are flat and her ribs are prominent. She looks at him for direction, but he says nothing, does nothing. She approaches him and reaches for the buckle on his pants.

“Nyet,” he says. Shakes his head slowly.

She steps back. “Ja ne ponimaju.”

But she understands just fine. He uses the back of his hand, to avoid any significant bruising. She falls to the hard floor. Touches her cheek. Looks back up at him for direction.

He unzips his own pants. She watches him, unsure at first if she’s supposed to watch or look away. Soon she understands: She is supposed to watch.

When he’s satisfied, he zips up his pants and draws near to her. He notices that she winces as he approaches her. Also notices that she doesn’t try to move away.

On his way out, he stops at the same room where he first negotiated the deal. The fat guy has his feet up, reading a magazine about automobiles.

“Ja hotel by kupit Dodya,” he says.

The man stares at him a moment, his thick eyebrows meeting in confusion. Then he bursts into laughter. He enjoys the moment, then looks at Leo, a man, he seems to understand, whom he should not regard lightly.

“Skol‘ko?” Leo says. “Odna tysjacha?”

The man grows serious. He thinks about it a moment.

They settle on eight thousand.

I WANDER AROUND THE hospital, holding an ice pack to the back of my head. They say it’s going to be some time while they work on Brandon Mitchum. A plastic surgeon is being called in to sew up the side of his face. Turns out he had a number of other superficial wounds, too, on his torso, but nothing life-threatening.

The cops told me to stick around. I gave them McDermott’s name, and he’s presumably on the way. But they’re letting me wander. Mitchum couldn’t say much by the time the cavalry arrived-he may have been going into shock-but he managed to describe me as the hero, not the villain, in the story.

So I walk outside, enjoying some fresh air and the chance to use my cell phone. First call is to Shelly. We were going to see each other tonight. I assure her I’m no worse for the wear, and, no, there’s no point in her coming to the hospital, I’m just going to be tied up with a bunch of cops who-this part I leave out-aren’t viewing me in the most favorable light right now.

“Lock your doors, baby,” I tell her. “No kidding.”

“What about you?” she says to me.

A natural response, but it gets me to thinking. This guy had his way with me. No doubt, he could have taken me out. But he let me go. Throw in Amalia Calderone in the alley on Monday night, and that’s twice he’s let me live.

You, he said to me, like of all the people in the world, he never expected to see me.

Those letters he’s sent me. I need to see those letters again.

“I love you, Shelly,” I tell her. My heart does a flip, circumstances notwithstanding.

Second call is to Harland Bentley’s cell. He’s out at some restaurant, probably with a new cover girl. I impress upon him the importance of the call, and he says he’ll call me right back.

He does, and I can tell from the traffic sounds that he’s outside now. I give it to him quickly, everything that’s happened. He lets me finish, and then says, “The police want to interview me tomorrow.”

“Harland, did you hear everything I just said?”

Silence. Someone is laying on a horn in a big way in the background. The sound effect feels aOppropriate.

“I heard,” he says.

“Brandon mentioned ‘the father.’ The guy from the photograph almost just killed me. Again. You want to help me out with any of this?” A near-death experience brings out a lot of things, but one of them is not diplomacy, not even for your multimillion-dollar client. Plus, I’m beginning to feel like I was left out on a story back then on one of the murder victims.

“Not over the phone,” he says. “Call me when you’re done there.”

“It could be a while.”

“When you’re done,” he says firmly, “call me.”

McDERMOTT AND STOLETTI show up about five minutes later. The responding officers are there, a man named Wilson and a woman named Esteban. Riley is sitting in a chair down the hallway, holding an ice pack against his head.

Esteban gives them the rundown, the call from dispatch, the response to the building, Riley holding Brandon Mitchum in his arms when they burst in, the things they learned afterward.

“Looks like Riley saved Mitchum’s life,” says Esteban, nodding in his direction.

McDermott looks over at Riley, who sees them but stays where he is. “You believe that?”

“Yeah, I do. The vic, Mr. Mitchum, he was clutching Riley, thanking