Genie for Hire (3 page)

Bodybuilders worked at gyms, he thought, sitting back in his
chair. Many Russians worked out at the Bolshoi Gym on Collins Avenue near the
Ovetschkins’ condo; perhaps he could get a lead there. He changed into a pair
of sweat pants and a sleeveless muscle shirt, the tribal tattoos around his
biceps shining in the artificial light of the office. He switched his black
satin slippers for a pair of white socks and Nike cross-trainers, and donned
aviator-style sunglasses and a Marlins ball cap.

He flipped the top down of his Mini Cooper convertible and
headed east, crossing the interstate and then turning south at US 1. To get to
Collins Avenue he had to turn left at the causeway, where he got stuck behind a
line of tourists and snowbirds on their way to Miami Beach. He used the time he
waited to consider the thief’s motives.

Why steal a set of digital photos of a woman in sex poses?
To sell to a magazine? To use for blackmail? The crook was Russian, and so were
the Ovetschkins. Did he know them? Have a secret crush on Douschka and want the
pictures for his own enjoyment? Had the purloiner stolen the files in order to
extort money from Kiril, or create some kind of hold over him?

The light changed and Biff turned onto the causeway, which
soared past the side of Aventura Mall and gave him a quick glimpse of sunlight
shimmering on the blue, green and purple ocean before it dipped back down to
ground level. Such a beautiful day, he thought. A day to be sunbathing, or goldbricking
with a tropical drink, not crawling in traffic.

European tourists in skimpy bathing suits headed toward the
beach carrying lounge chairs, and fashionable mothers pushed strollers or
watched their children cavort at the playground. The new condo towers gleamed
in the morning sun, and Biff wondered how many of those luxury beachfront
apartments were occupied, and how many were on the rolls of distressed
properties repossessed by mortgage companies.

The gym was located at the back of one of the ubiquitous
U-shaped shopping centers along Collins Avenue, and it seemed like every
parking spot was taken. He found one by waiting for a young woman to unload a
shopping cart full of groceries into her monstrous SUV. Once everything was
loaded, she took an inordinate amount of time adjusting her mirrors, fastening
her seat belt, and probably calling everyone in her cell phone address book
before backing out.

He walked across the lot as the sun beat down on him. Through
the tall glass windows of the gym, he saw women in an aerobics class, jumping
up and down like deranged kangaroos. He slipped past the fit young Russian
woman at the registration desk while she was issuing a credit to a customer
because a spinning class had been cancelled, and walked to the locker room.

The smell hit him as he pushed open the swinging door.
Sweat, festering workout clothes, clashing soaps, too much cologne and the
pine-scented cleanser used to disinfect the showers. He stepped to the side and
began the slow, tedious process of isolating and then ignoring each scent. As
he did, he surveyed the crowd.

Though it was mid-morning, the room was busy, with buff
twenty-something men who probably worked the late shift at bars and restaurants
sharing space with elderly men whose stomachs sagged with the weight of too
much vodka and honey cake. The predominant language was Russian, and Biff
identified accents from Vladivostok, Moscow and Georgia as he stowed his bag in
a locker.

“
Proshhat
!” a heavyset, older man said, pushing
roughly past him. It was hardly worth saying excuse me, Biff thought, if you
were going to be rude. The man was as hairy as a bear, and he glared at Biff,
as if challenging him to complain. Biff ignored him; sometimes humans were just
assholes.

Biff closed the locker and walked out to the main floor. Most
of the space was taken up with exercise equipment that reminded him, all too
uncomfortably, of medieval torture devices. He chose a set of free weights along
one wall, adjusted the number of disks on the bar, then lay down on the bench
and began lifting.

It was simple and mindless, and left his brain free to focus
on the environment around him. He was sure that the thief had been there, and
recently; he smelled the same combination of fancy Italian scent with the tang
of a circumcised, steroid-using bodybuilder of Russian origin.

But that was as far as he could get. The man wasn’t in the
building, and without a name to attach to the scent, he was stymied. As he
lifted, a pair of young guys speaking in Russian stepped up to the weights
beside him, and he eavesdropped on their conversation.

“So, Yuri, you are coming to Marouschka tonight?” the
slimmer one asked, lying on his back on the weight bench. He had a wispy
mustache and hair that hung too low over his ears.

“Is there a party?” Yuri asked, assuming the spotter
position behind his friend.

“Only the best one this month,” his friend replied. “All the
guys from the gym will be there, with the prettiest Russian girls in town.” He
grasped the weight bar with his gloved hands. “I want to get lucky. You can be
my wing man.”

Yuri was the better-looking of the two, with a slightly
crooked nose that gave character to his young, unlined face. Biff could see
that he was the one the girls would flock to, and his friend could pick up
Yuri’s discards.

Yuri made a Russian pun on the word “wing,” and Biff forced
himself not to laugh and betray his understanding of the language. As the young
man on the bench went through his repetitions, he and his friend continued a
rowdy discussion of the party, the girls expected, and what could happen, all
in obscene slang.

Biff noted the details of the event. It was the best lead he
was likely to find at the gym, since the burglar wasn’t there and Biff still
had no name to attach to him. He did not shower after his workout; his body did
not sweat, and besides, the water would scald his skin.

From the gym, he walked across the parking lot to Moscow
Video and sniffed up and down the aisles. No luck. There was no trace of the
man at Lula Kebab, where Biff ate a couple of pierogies, nor at Kalinka, where
he nibbled on smoked herring snacks. Either the thief was so Americanized he
lived off McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, or he had a wife who did all the cooking
and shopping.

Because he couldn’t resist, Biff stopped at the Crimean Sea
bakery on Collins Avenue and treated himself to a
kartoshka
, a
chocolate-covered pastry that looked like a potato. He thought perhaps the man
he was looking for had been in the bakery, but at least a week or more before.

His last stop was the newsstand, in the retail center in the
middle of Sunny Isles Boulevard. The shelves were stocked with papers from all
over the world, from Helsinki to Hong Kong and Dublin to Darwin, as well as
Pravda,
The Chechen Times
, and
Epigraph
, from Novosibirsk, as well as a
number of other Russian papers. He browsed the shelves, picking up a selection
of papers from places he’d lived in the past. He could read and understand most
languages, at least those with Indo-European roots. He’d never bothered with
the tribal languages of South America or the Far East, and Basque left him at
sea.

His favorites were the Indo-Iranian and Slavic languages,
from Sanskrit and Pashto to Slovak and Serbian. He was always hungry for news
in those dialects, and the store fed his habit. He placed a hefty stack of
newsprint on the counter, exchanging a couple of pleasantries in Russian with
the elderly woman who gave him his change.

Back in the Mini Cooper, he called the Ovetschkins again,
but got the same recording. He drove north a few blocks on Collins to the
Starbucks, where he ordered a venti raspberry mocha and relaxed in one of the
overstuffed chairs with his pile of newspapers, his ears attuned to any Russian
he could overhear.

He had chosen to begin with the bodybuilder, ignoring for as
long as he could the traces of Farishta’s presence he had felt behind Sveta’s
studio. There was no trace of her anywhere in Sunny Isles Beach, and he began
to wonder if perhaps he’d imagined that energy signature. He hadn’t sensed her
presence at the shopping center; he was sure he would have recognized her, even
after so many years had passed. But somehow she was connected to the thief; he
was sure of it.

It was time to think about her again, after he had worked so
hard to push away her memory. And the first thing he had to do was figure out
where she had been for the last twenty years, and what might have brought her
back to Florida. He began thumbing through the papers he had purchased. The last
time he had news of Farishta, she was in Bosaso, in northern Somalia, a port
city on the Gulf of Aden. As he read the accounts of piracy arising from that
area, he saw Farishta’s hand. Strange waterspouts, unexpected windstorms, boats
capsizing and riches mysteriously disappearing.

He was reading an
International Herald Tribune
article when he heard a woman’s voice, speaking Russian. She was a  beautiful teenager,
with perfect skin and flat auburn hair trimmed in wings that reminded him of
the sails of a ship. As she waited to order her coffee, she complained to her
mother in Russian with a heavy American accent. “But I need a new dress for the
party tonight. Daddy would give me the money for something pretty.”

“Your father is too busy to be bothered with your dresses,
Natasha.” The older woman stepped up to the counter and ordered a tall chai
tea. In Russian, she asked her daughter, “What do you want, little one?”

“I am not little!” Natasha said in English, and stamped her
tiny foot, clad in jewel-trimmed sandals with improbably high heels.

“A grande caramel Frappuccino,” the older woman said.

“I want a venti! With extra caramel.”

Natasha’s mother sighed. “Venti.” She paid with a gold
Starbucks card and walked toward the pick-up counter, the girl trailing behind
her, complaining once more in Russian.

Biff assumed they were talking about the party at the
Marouschka restaurant, just up A1A in Hallandale Beach, and so he continued to
eavesdrop. Natasha was a tiresome brat, a spoiled Russian-American princess, and
he toyed with the impulse to flick a finger and snap her heel, sending her
sprawling to the slate floor. But he needed to know whatever he could about the
party at the Marouschka.

“We have an hour before our appointment at the salon,”
Natasha continued. “Please, Mommy? We could go to Flirt and see what they have.
It’s right here in the shopping center. You wouldn’t even have to drive
anywhere.”

Biff was grateful when her mother gave in. “But if I buy you
a new dress, you must promise you will not be alone with any boys tonight. And
not with that Igor Laskin, either.”

“Mommy!” Natasha said. “I’m a good girl! And Igor isn’t my
boyfriend or anything.”

“And that is why you bought him that expensive cologne?
Because he is just a friend?”

“It wasn’t that expensive,” Natasha pouted. “I bought it at
the duty free in Milan, remember? The saleswoman said that Acqua di Parma was
the best. And Daddy always says we should have the best.”

Acqua di Parma was the cologne the thief wore. Was Igor
Laskin the name of the man who stole the photographs from Sveta? Who was he,
and why would he have done so?

The barista called their drinks, and the girl grabbed them
both, leading her mother toward the door. Biff considered following them, but
instead he opened his laptop and logged on to the Internet.

Igor Laskin was nearly as anonymous as the Ovetschkins. Biff
could find nothing more than a speeding ticket on the man. He was born in Sebastopol,
a Crimean sea port in the Ukraine, and brought to Sunny Isles Beach as an
infant. He graduated from North Miami Beach High – and then dropped off the
radar. There was not even a head shot on line that he could reliably attach to
the name.

He closed his computer and went back to the newspaper
article. Bosaso, Somalia, had all the hallmarks of a place that would attract
Farishta: it was hot, it was near the water, and it was full of trouble. Just
like south Florida.

But what had drawn her from that remote port here? And why
the hell hadn’t she come to see him? Didn’t she love him anymore?

Shortly before eleven that evening, Biff woke from a brief
nap, stretched, and considered his plan. He would go to the Russian restaurant
and identify the thief, either this Igor Laskin or some other man. He would not
confront the man there; instead he’d track him down the next day, in private,
and threaten him, if necessary, to regain Sveta’s files. She could hand them
over to Mr. Ovetschkin, and Biff would type out his final invoice. Another case
closed, another satisfied customer.

Marouschka’s unassuming storefront, in a shopping center
anchored by a Publix and a discount store, belied the opulent interior of the
restaurant. From the doorway Biff saw paneled columns, gold chandeliers, and
stage curtains that looked like they’d been lifted from the Moscow Opera.

A young Russian woman with a blond beehive and breasts even
bigger than Sveta’s was taking names at the front door. Quiet as a wisp of
smoke, he slipped past her and walked into the restaurant. Tables clustered
around the edges of the room, but the center had been cleared for the party,
and fifty-some people stood there in small groups, laughing and talking in
Russian.

A hostess passed him, holding a tray of vodka glasses. She
was dressed as if she’d just stepped out of Czar Nicholas’s court, with a
pomaded white wig, a red low-necked gown decorated in gold brocade, and long
white gloves with pearl buttons.

Biff took a glass from her tray, and she smiled
flirtatiously, curtsied and moved on. It was easy to distinguish the help from
the patrons, though all were Russian; the servers were in period costumes like
the hostess, while the guests dressed in flashy Italian couture, the women in
tight, slinky dresses, the men in dark suits and colorful ties.