The Final Fabergé (45 page)

“I want to see photos of the woman,” Oxby said. “I suspect she's Viktor's wife.”

“Viktor?”

There was a pause before Oxby answered. “You'll think I am making this up, but it is as true as we are driving to . . . where in bloody hell are we driving to?”

“We're on the Belt Highway on our way to Bay Ridge. You could say Bay Ridge is to Brooklyn what Paddington is to London.”

“About Viktor. I met him in Tashkent, though pity for him, we didn't get to know each other. He ran into a knife I was holding. Blade went through his eye. Killed him.”

“Come off it, Jack. That's Hollywood crap.”

“I couldn't invent a story like that. That's exactly what happened. Viktor had a wife. I haven't seen her, but she's been described as blond and very beautiful. Would that describe the woman you saw in the car this evening?”

Tobias frowned. “I didn't get a good look at her. Blond hair, I think. Her face was—sorry, Jack. I don't have a good ID.”

Both were silent for a moment. Oxby yawned. “Sorry. I got a few hours' sleep on the plane, but I'm on Russian time.” He watched the thick traffic that was moving in both directions. “Where are we?”

“Those are the Rockaways over there, and Coney Island after that. You've heard of Brighton Beach? Just ahead.”

Oxby repeated the name. “That's the name I couldn't remember. The Russian community.”

“An old one, too. They started coming before the Second World War. The Russian mafia operated out of there, and a few of the old boys are still around. But the new ones, they're young and the Beach isn't posh enough for them. This Mike Carson got his start in Brighton Beach.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Bright. Successful. Young. That enough?”

“Is that a cop's description, or one from Alex Tobias?”

“Both. I've been around too long to get tangled up with all the jargon. I think you'll like him.”

“I met his father.”

“When?”

“I'll never forget the date. June 10.”

“St. Petersburg?”

“I told you about Viktor Lysenko. I didn't tell you that a few minutes before he ran into the knife I was holding, Viktor used it to kill Mike Carson's father.”

Tobias turned quickly to Oxby and the car swerved. He straightened. “Holy shit, Jack, what the hell is this all about?”

“It's about this crazy search for an Imperial egg I've been on.” Oxby settled back in his seat and peered ahead to a looming structure, aircraft warning lights flashing high up in its towers. “At the risk of repeating some details I may have passed on to you over the telephone, I shall begin at the beginning.”

And he did. He recounted every essential fact and date commencing with his meeting with Christopher Forbes to the moment Tobias greeted him at Kennedy Airport. The account was succinct and delivered in Oxby's inimitable manner. After he concluded and after a short pause, he pointed to what he recognized as an immense suspension bridge.

“That's quite a bridge, Alex. What's it doing here?”

Tobias didn't hear the question, his mind was still riveted to the story Oxby had related. They drove on, now under a long, sweeping ramp that led up the bridge.

“What's the bridge, Alex?” Oxby repeated. “It's positively monstrous.”

O
nly the coffee from the tray of food had been touched. Deryabin lit a cigarette and pushed aside the cart. He sat facing a television set tuned to a Sunday morning kiddie show. The clock in the VCR read 7:42. Over his boxer shorts he had put on a white terry cloth bathrobe, one that had come courtesy of the Hilton, one that made him look like an over-the-hill light heavyweight. The room was cool, but he was sweating profusely. Simultaneous with the sound of chimes, the door opened and Trivimi Laar entered.

Deryabin rushed toward him. “Did you find him?”

“I haven't been looking,” Trivimi replied. I told you it would be impossible.”

“It's not, goddamn it! Get your ass moving and find the son of a bitch. Call every fucking hotel in the city. He's in one of them.”

“He's not in a hotel.” Galina had joined them. She was wearing the mate to Deryabin's bathrobe, except on her it was as if she had stepped out of an ad for
Victoria's Secret
. She was brushing her hair, her head tilted.

“How do you know?” Deryabin asked.

“Because it's how I feel.” She fixed a cup of coffee and went to the window and looked down to the Sunday morning traffic moving along Sixth Avenue. “When I thought about last night I realized that Oxby planned every detail perfectly. Even to staying where he can't be discovered.”

“All the more reason it was so fucking important for you not to lose him.”

“We saw him get into a taxi. We followed him. Then the police came. What should we do? Shoot them?”

“They took photographs. Damn you, listen to me!” He spun her around causing her coffee to splatter over his bathrobe. “They've got
videos of you.” He grabbed a handful of her hair. “Without your wig. Why did you take it off?”

She pulled free. “I was hot.”

Galina exchanged glances with Trivimi, each waiting to see which way the unpredictable Deryabin would pounce.

Deryabin's wild glare subsided. Slowly his head tilted forward and his shoulders sagged. He said, “I'll accept that you can't find Oxby. But the police followed you to this hotel and now the fucking bastard knows where to find us.” He looked up at the Estonian. “He knows I have the egg with me. Am I right?”

Trivimi nodded. “I phoned him. I said that you had instructed me to confirm that you would take the egg to New York.”

“What did he say?”

“He said it wasn't necessary to call. That he knew.”

Helen Tobias was executive chef and chief executive of 73 86th Street in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge. She had welcomed Oxby with a snack of cold chicken, potato salad, and iced tea, and sent him to bed with one of her brownies and a glass of milk. Helen was the rare, perfect mate for a cop; tolerant of his late night shifts and patient on her lonely weekends. It helped immeasurably that Helen and Alex were each other's best friend and that on their thirtieth anniversary they were able to say “I love you” from their hearts. Their home was typical of the neighborhood; narrow, long, two floors, with a game room in the basement. The house and driveway was crammed into a thirty-foot-wide lot. In the back was a single-car garage, a sundeck, and a garden where Helen raised tomato plants and roses.

They were up early on Sunday morning, though Oxby, still eight hours out of sync, was the first. He saw the
Times
being tossed onto the driveway and took it to the deck and read until Helen came out of the kitchen with an ice-cold glass of fresh orange juice. Ten minutes later she placed a tray with his favorite breakfast on the table. Waffles and Vermont maple syrup with country sausages. Tobias brought his tray and they had breakfast together.

At nine o'clock a black Mercury was in the driveway. Ed Parente, dressed in shorts and a golf shirt, delivered an envelope that contained the photographs taken the previous evening.

“I told my guys to concentrate on the woman.” He smiled. “Take a look and you'll see why I didn't have to tell them twice.”

Two 35mm cameras with long lenses had caught Trivimi Laar and his companion vigorously protesting to the police. Most of the photographs were of a stunning blonde who seemed even more erotically beautiful because of her frustration and anger. The four-by-five prints, nearly forty of them, were sharp and in color.

“They got a video,” Parente said. “Maybe all of five minutes. But it's like a snapshot that moves. Not as good as the photographs.”

Tobias stared long at the blonde. “This is who's chasing you, Jack? I think you should let her catch you.”

“She'd scratch his eyes out,” Helen offered.

“We couldn't develop a hell of a lot of information. There wasn't a violation so we gave them a lot of hot air, and stalled until we got the photographs, then let 'em go. We got their names and saw the rental agreement. Here's a copy of the report we filed. That's about it.”

Oxby took the report and read a two-paragraph account of the incident, as it was officially referred to. “Did you see their passports?”

“They claimed they weren't carrying them, and we didn't have warrants to search.”

Oxby went over each photograph carefully. He knew how to use them, especially when there were more than a few snapshots. It was not uncommon for Oxby to deduce from a photograph that a suspect was left- or right-handed, or had a limp, or was shortsighted.

“She's every bit how my Russian bodyguard described her.” He turned to Helen. “Her name is Galina Lysenko. How old do you suppose she is?”

Helen reviewed the pictures carefully. “Young, of course, but old enough to have some hard edges. Thirty. Thirty-two maybe.”

“Not important,” Oxby said. “Though it's sometimes useful to know how long people like this have been around. How street-smart they might be.”

Oxby looked at Parente. “You tailed them into the city?”

“To the Hilton. Want the room numbers?” Parente was holding a piece of paper.

Tobias reached for it. “I see you haven't lost your connections.” He slipped the paper into his shirt pocket. “You playing golf today?”

“Mass at seven, Tobias at nine, on the tee at 11:26.”

“Should be a great day for it,” Oxby said.

Parente beamed. “Hot, but that's okay. We're playing the Black Course at Bethpage. Took some horse trading to get a starting time.”

“I'm jealous,” Oxby added.

“Next time, maybe.” Parente shook hands, kissed Helen's cheek, and was off.

Helen took away the trays and returned with a hot pot of coffee. “I know you two are going to talk, so here's your coffee before one of you comes asking for it.”

Oxby made a concoction of coffee, milk and spoonfuls of sugar. He stirred it, then sat back. Tobias watched him, amused, waiting for his guest to give the tiniest hint that he had relaxed. It came.

“What are you thinking, Jack?”

“That I'm a bloody damned fool.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because a Russian named Deryabin would like to add me to his casualty list. Not exactly the sort of list I want to be on.”

“You're not in harm's way.”

Oxby sipped his coffee. He selected one of the photographs and flipped it onto the table. “Galina Lysenko is employed by Deryabin. And not as a beautiful empty-headed decoration. Her husband also worked for Deryabin as his enforcer. A hired killer. What do you make of the fact these two were married to each other?”

“That it was more than a coincidence. They were a team?”

“That's what I'm thinking,” Oxby said. “We've got a few facts about Galina that we can use for starters. She's tall, and bloody damned good-looking. Her natural hair color is blond. Age thirty, give or take a couple of years. Mike Carson saw the woman who shot Akimov. How did he describe her?”

“The report quotes him saying she was beautiful—and tall.”

“Who else was shot by a tall woman?”

“Lenny Sulzberger. But he said the woman who shot him was on the heavy side and older. He thought she was at least forty-five.”

“But tall. Right?”

“Right.”

“Then the nurse. The one who put the needle in Akimov and finished him off.”

Tobias nodded. “The male nurse—name is Nick—wheeled Akimov into intensive care. He said the nurse who came on duty that evening was on the heavy side, and spoke with a thick accent. Russian, he
thought, but couldn't be positive. Like Lenny, he said she was in her forties.”

“I'm not concerned about how old these women appeared. Learning to use makeup comes naturally to most women. It's likely Galina had training, and knew how to use stage makeup. Look at that photograph. Scrub the face, broaden the nose, add some lines around the eyes, then put on a plain, gray wig and she's her own mother.”

Tobias nodded. “Add some padding. Easy enough.”

“We've got three witnesses who saw three tall women. Two of the women had gray hair, one was dark. The gray-haired women appeared to be forty or older, and the one with dark hair was young. The older ones spoke with Russian accents. We don't know about the younger one.”

“I might have that covered,” Tobias said. “I got a phone call from one of the Englewood guys who found a uniform shop that sold a nurse's outfit to someone they guessed was Russian. The date matches up with the Akimov death.”