Bennett Walker interested him for the obvious reasons.
Jim Brody interested him. It had been Brody’s birthday. Had Irina been a gift? Had she given herself freely? Had someone paid her? According to the ME, Irina had been a busy girl giving blow-jobs before her death.
So far, it seemed she had vanished into thin air. Nobody admitted to seeing her leave Players. He didn’t know if she had left in her own vehicle or with one of the men. There had been no sighting of her car anywhere.
It would have helped to know where the after-party had been.
He was guessing it was at Brody’s house, but guesses wouldn’t get him a warrant to search the property.
Elena’s phone call earlier in the evening had sent him back to Players to interview the two valets, but one had split before he got there, and the other one hadn’t been working Saturday night. That kid had told him about seeing Irina Markova with different gentlemen in their cars, but that wasn’t worth much.
He wondered what the other kid might have had to say. If it had been a big revelation, Elena would have just said so when she called. Maybe she thought if he leaned on the valet who had been working that night he would be scared enough to spill his guts.
Landry had taken the kid’s name and phone number. Tried to call. No answer. He would try again in the morning. He was convinced one of Jim Brody’s posse knew something about the girl’s death, but until someone could put her leaving that club-or being seen later on-with one of the self-proclaimed Alibi Club, he had squat.
He had been through Irina’s e-mails, but most of them were in Russian, and he had set them aside until they could get the old priest back to interpret. He had briefly considered the idea of recruiting someone from Magda’s bar to do the job, but he had no doubt he would be lied to six ways from Sunday. If it happened that one Russian had killed another Russian, and the motive was written in Russian in one of those e-mails, no Russian was going to tell him about it.
He had checked the girl’s phone records and discovered that she liked to talk to girlfriends on the phone. Not exactly a revelation. Interestingly, she seemed to have a direct line to some of the wealthiest men in the Palm Beach area.
Popular girl for a horse groom.
Landry thought of the expensive clothes in the girl’s closet. If she hadn’t gotten the money for those clothes from her mobster pal, Kulak, where had she gotten it? Were these guys she knew just generous, or were they clients? Did she have something on one of them? Blackmail made a good motive for murder.
There was probably plenty to be had on Brody and his crowd. Men who gave one another alibis as a hobby had to be guilty of something.
He looked back through the notes he had made in the victim’s apartment, detailing everything he’d seen there. Nothing out of the ordinary. The usual junk mail. A couple of bills. No sexually explicit photographs of Jim Brody naked and trussed up like a turkey in full S amp;M regalia. A coupon for Bed Bath amp; Beyond, a bill from a clinic, and an offer to join a health club.
The bill from the clinic was written in what might as well have been Sanskrit. She was being charged seventy-five dollars for an alphanumeric code.
Landry made a note to himself to call the clinic in the morning. He pulled his reading glasses off and rubbed his hands over his face. Out of gas. Time to call it, get some sleep, come back fresh.
The last thing he wanted to do was answer his phone.
“Landry.”
“Detective Landry, there’s a man here asking to see you.”
The girl at the desk downstairs.
“Who is it?”
“A Mr. Kulak. Alexi Kulak.”
Chapter 30
“Mr. Kulak.” Landry offered his hand, the Russian accepted.
He was a very neat man-neat suit, neat hair, tie perfectly knotted, as Landry’s had been twelve hours ago.
“Detective. I have come to see about Irina Markova,” he said.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Kulak nodded and Landry showed him out the door. “We’ll take my car over to the morgue.”
Neither of them spoke as Landry drove from one parking lot to the next. He buzzed the front door, and the security guard let them in.
As long as he had been at this business, Landry had never quite shaken the creepy feeling of being in the morgue at night. It was too quiet in the halls; the lights were dim. Kulak walked beside him, staring straight ahead, his face blank. The tension in the man’s body was so strong Landry could feel it.
“You can view the body on closed-circuit television-” he started.
“No.”
“All right. Just to prepare you, your niece’s body was submerged in water for some time, and there is some… damage… to her face, from fish and so forth.”
A thick muscle pulsed in Kulak’s jaw, but his expression did not change.
“The medical examiner performed the autopsy last night. You’ll see stitches.”
The jaw muscle pulsed again.
The night attendant led them into the cold room, with its wall of drawers where bodies were filed away like old tax returns. Kulak stood square, his hands in front of him. If he’d had a blindfold and a cigarette, he would have looked like he was waiting for a firing quad. Landry nodded to the attendant.
Kulak jolted at the sight of Irina, as if he’d been hit with a powerful current of electricity. He caught the sound of pain in his throat. His entire body was trembling. Sweat popped on his fore-lead. His facial muscles began to contort.
When he finally pulled his eyes away, Kulak turned, and a terrible, wild animal sound of torment and grief tore out of his chest, -le fell to his knees and held his face in his hands.
The man was considered one of the most ruthless bosses in the south Florida Russian mob. The things he had seen, the things he gad allegedly ordered done to people, were horrific. All of it lone-guaranteed-without batting an eye. That man sat crumbled on the floor, crying silently into his hands.
Even Landry had to feel for him, regardless of how black and mite he preferred to see the world. Grief was a common denominator, crossing all boundaries.
He stood off to the side and left Kulak alone for a few minutes. When Kulak began to gather himself, Landry said, “You’ll have to all in the morning to make arrangements. The ME will release the body as soon as all the autopsy results have come back.”
They walked out of the room, and Kulak sat down on a fake leather chair in the viewing room. Landry took a seat perpendicular to him.
“I have some questions for you,” he said.
Kulak didn’t acknowledge him.
Landry pressed on. “When was the last time you heard from Irina?”
Kulak didn’t respond, just sat staring, devastated.
“Do you know anything about her personal life? Can you tell me about her friends, boyfriends?”
“I am going to kill the man who did this to her,” Kulak said quietly.
Landry didn’t bother to tell him that he would go to prison for it. Frankly, he didn’t blame the guy. If he ruled the world, that was how he would have set it up-so that the loved ones of the victim could go into a room with the perp and not come out until they were through with him.
“Mr. Kulak, do you have any idea who that might be?”
Kulak looked at him with an expression that could have cut through steel. “If I knew that, Detective, I would now be cutting his beating heart from his chest.”
With that, he stood and walked out.
