lethargy.
“I’m not sure,” Hannibal said. “I think some bad men may be after her.”
“Are you the police?”
“No ma’am. I was working with her husband, but he’s been hurt and I’m just a little worried about her. May I come in?”
She teetered on the edge of decision, looking to Hannibal for help. He did so by saying nothing more, just smiling and working at not being threatening in any way. Old Country women were predictable in some ways. She could be defensive, she could even be aggressive when she had to be, but she could not be rude. She had no choice but to invite him in.
Hannibal was startled by the similarity between this apartment and the home of Mother Washington, the black woman who was a pillar of his own community. As in Mother Washington’s modest house, the passage of time had dulled the paint and faded the wallpaper, but otherwise the apartment was immaculate. All the furniture was overstuffed and reupholstered more than once, in the kind of eclectic decor that comes from collecting pieces one at a time at bargain prices. There was no portrait of Jesus, but a large crucifix dominated one wall in the living room and he could see a similar one in the kitchen.
“Would you like some tea?” Mrs. Mikhailov asked, falling into her usual hostess role.
“I appreciate the offer,” Hannibal said, “But I really should make this quick. I think I need to find Renata soon, before whoever went after her husband goes after her. He’s still in the hospital but she hasn’t visited him. That’s why I wonder if she’s OK.”
Mrs. Mikhailov said, “Well, I haven’t seen her in months.” But her eyes wandered down and to the right, and Hannibal was gratified to meet one person after so many days who was not a born liar.
“Oh, but I’ll bet you’ve kept her room for her, just in case she comes home.” He walked deeper into the apartment with the woman following him. If she was like most women living alone, the open door led to her own bedroom. The closed door had to be Renata’s room. He walked in before his hostess could object. He was standing in the middle of the room by the time she spoke.
“You can’t go in there. It’s private,” she said, but it was a weak protest.
Standing in the center of the room, he looked around slowly. Instead of the expected musty smell of an unused room, he was surprised by a faint smoky odor. Surprised, because the room wasn’t merely neat, it was spotless. Too bad. If Mrs. Mikhailov weren’t such a good housekeeper, small clues wouldn’t be so obvious.
The ashtray beside the bed had been dumped, but not washed out. The ash at the bottom was not loose but ground in from someone stubbing out a cigarette. The bed was made and the pillow had been fluffed up. Hannibal bent to sniff the pillow. The odor of Renata’s Marlboro or Winston was still there in the pillow. Two stray red hairs clung to the pillowcase. He carefully lifted the longer hair, using his first two fingers as tweezers, and stood up straight. His eyes continued to roam the room.
“So, she was here last night. Are you saying she didn’t tell you where she was going?”
When Mrs. Mikhailov stayed silent, Hannibal decided to try the photo on her. He wanted to know if she recognized Dani Gana or Viktoriya, but before he could actually ask anything her face twisted into a mask of hate.
“It is him. You’re here for that monster, Boris Tolstaya.” Then she turned away as if she was looking for someplace to spit.
“No ma’am. I don’t know this man. In fact, for all I know he could be the source of the danger. What can you tell me about Boris?”
Mrs. Mikhailov didn’t look like she was quite ready to trust him, but he had at least found a subject she was willing to talk about. The rage bubbling up out of her was thick and heavy.
“I can tell you that he is an evil, despicable man. I can tell you that he seduced my poor Renata with money and power and stole her away from Benjamin.”
“Benjamin? Ben Cochran? I’m sorry, I thought it was the other way around.”
Mrs. Mikhailov shook her head and looked at her feet. “Benjamin loved her, would do anything for her. But this monster stole her away. Somehow, Benjamin got her back. And now you see the result. Boris has found them, poor Benjamin is in the hospital and Renata has run off in fear. She would not tell me where she was going. She was trying to protect me.”
Hannibal could understand why Renata would not have told her mother that her return to the man she loved had come about through the turn of a card. And her assumption that Boris had hurt Ben made sense too. If Renata’s plan had worked, there would have been an interesting irony in them getting money from Boris for helping him find Dani who appeared at this point to be his traitorous partner. All of that moved Boris up on the list of suspects for any of the murders.
“Ma’am, if I can’t find Renata maybe I can make things safer for her,” he said. “If you know where I can find Boris Tolstaya, maybe I can convince him to leave her alone.”
“You would face this man?” she asked, looking into Hannibal’s eyes. “He is powerful and dangerous. You don’t know.”
“Ma’am, these people don’t scare me. I deal with his kind all the time. Just help me get face to face with him.”
Hannibal felt as if the entire neighborhood was staring at him as he returned to Rissik’s car, but in fact he knew that only one old woman might be watching through one of the big windows. He got in, but couldn’t stop looking around.
“So, a lead on Renata Tolstaya?” Rissik asked.
“Not really, but she did give me some dirt on Boris Tolstaya. Apparently he and his partner, one Ivan Uspensky, own a securities firm and do a lot of money laundering for the Red Mafiya.”
“Yeah, Boris is a real bad guy,” Rissik said, starting the car. “You ought to steer clear.”
“You know about this guy?” It was more a demand than a question.
Rissik was unruffled. “The FBI has an open file on him. He and Renata are under investigation for income tax evasion.”
“And you didn’t tell me any of this why?”
“Look, this is a genuine bad guy,” Rissik said. He looked at Hannibal with an expression that Hannibal didn’t recognize. “Do you know that the Red Mafiya scares the FBI more than the Italians, the Colombians, the Yakuza, anybody? Heroin smuggling, weapons trafficking, mass extortion. These guys, Tolstaya and Uspensky, apparently set up here in the Dulles Corridor to funnel the cash flowing down from the casinos in Jersey and up from the strip clubs in Miami Beach.”
“Yeah? So? Am I supposed to be scared or something?”
Rissik gripped the wheel with both hands as he eased through traffic. “See, that’s why I don’t tell you this stuff. Because you are a knucklehead. You’re always stepping in some shit. I mean, you see the shit lying right there on the sidewalk, right there, and you step in it anyway.”
Now Hannibal thought he recognized the expression on Rissik’s face. “I’ll be damned. You’re for real. You’re worried about me. I’m touched, Chief, I really am, but you know I have to follow this lead. If this is all about Tolstaya getting ripped off, the bodies are going to keep dropping until he either recovers the cash or he lands in jail. The way I see it, Viktoriya Petrova will never be safe unless I make one or the other happen. And the next step is to get face to face with Ivan Uspensky and see what he says about the Russian mob and his old buddy Boris.”
“You know I can’t back you up on this,” Rissik said.
“Don’t sweat it,” Hannibal said. “I know where I can get some backup.”
27
Like Silicone Valley in Southern California, the Dulles Technology Corridor is not so much a location as a concept. Hannibal had heard the terms “netplex” and 'high tech colossus' in reference to the area, but to him it was simply a commercial zone out by the airport.
