The Final Fabergé (49 page)

Mike Carson walked into his kitchen, a phone crooked to his ear, a mug in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other. He put more coffee in his mug and went back to the living room just as Patsy came through the door he had left open for her.

“Hi, boss,” she said, and put a paper bag on the coffee table.

Mike signaled to her with two fingers, talked another half minute on the phone, then clicked off. He took a sweet roll from the paper bag and bit into it. There was something ritualistic and familiar about the way Mike and Patsy joined each other, as if it happened exactly this way every morning. On every Monday morning at nine o'clock it did.

“You've got a date with the Russians at eleven,” Patsy declared. “Everything copacetic?”

“It's been put off until four.”

“Oh?” It was an utterance that conveyed assorted concerns and at least one question. “Somebody got a problem?”

“Not exactly a problem. More like a strategy.”

“Changing the time is a strategy?”

He took another bite of the roll and sipped on his coffee. He wasn't looking at her, trying, it was becoming obvious, to sort out his thoughts and explain what he was trying to say.

“Two men were here last night. One you know, Alex Tobias. The other from London. Interesting guy named Jack Oxby. With Scotland Yard. ”

“What did they want?”

“Oxby's been in Russia. Brought some news about my family.”

“Good news, I hope?”

“Some good, some bad. It's been so long—” He caught himself. “They asked me to change the time of my meeting with the Russians.”

“Any reason?”

“I'll tell you—but not now.”

Patsy cocked her head and gave one of her I-know-something's-up looks. “Anything I can do?”

He shook his head and said there wasn't. “Unless you want to get me another Danish . . .”

It was getting hot. As in sizzling hot with the thermometer outside the Tobias kitchen reading 97 at 11:45 A.M. The air was heavy and there were no clouds, except for a few to the south that appeared threatening and that might bring a storm if they stayed on track. Alex Tobias saw the clouds. He had turned to the Weather Channel and had seen the satellite pictures. A fast-moving front coming from the southwest would hit the New York metropolitan area between 2:00 and 4:00 P.M. and would be “accompanied by rain, heavy at times with winds expected to gust to 40 miles per hour.” Then it would clear, but would remain hot and humid.

“We don't need a rainstorm, Jack.”

“Know how to stop it?”

Tobias smiled. “You're right. Maybe we can make it work to our advantage.”

“I'll work on it,” Oxby said.

An envelope with the Carson Motors logo printed on the front was delivered to Deryabin's suite at 11:35. Inside was a map with the route from the hotel to Port Newark highlighted in yellow. Trivimi estimated that it would take thirty or forty minutes to make the drive. There was also a note:

The unsigned message was typed on company stationery with Michael Carson's name printed near the top of the sheet. Trivimi handed the map and note to Deryabin, who looked quickly at both,
then stared at the map for several long seconds. He held up the pieces of paper, and as he did, his eyes closed and his face twitched as if every part of him was about to unravel into a horrible rage.

“It's Oxby. He's behind this.” Then he crumpled the papers into a ball and threw it across the room.

Galina retrieved it and separated the pages. She studied the map, then gave it and the note to the Estonian. She went to the door and opened it.

“Where are you going?” Deryabin said.

“To the lobby for something to eat.”

“We've got food. All you want, right there.”

“I want to eat alone.”

Mike Carson went for a drive. Alone. He drove over the GW Bridge and continued on the Cross Bronx Expressway, over the Throgs Neck Bridge, and on to the Long Island Expressway. A left turn would take him to Roslyn and his new dealership, but without hesitation, he turned right and followed familiar highways and streets that eventually led him to a wide parkway that ended in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. He was, in a manner of speaking, home.

He parked and got from his car and began to walk. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and wiped the sweat from his neck with a handkerchief. How long had it been since he had walked on Brighton Beach Avenue? Old memories were difficult to bring into focus because they competed with new memories from the previous evening. The ones put there by Jack Oxby, who had met his father and seen him die. He had put Russia and his family out of his life. Or, thought he had. But it wasn't so. There was the photograph of his father and mother and his grandfather. Now, the knowledge that he was the son of a man who paid a price for a crime he didn't commit. The son of a mother he must discover and love.

At the least he was confused. He was lonely and angry and he felt that he had lost the privilege to have selfish feelings.

He passed the markets with their odors of fish and old food rotting in buckets set out at the curb. The clothes shop with jeans for the family and shoes for infants. Book stalls on the sidewalk and tables heaped with old magazines and paperbacks in Russian and Greek. He stopped
in front of a nightclub that advertised exotic dancers including photographs of a bare-breasted showgirl fresh from her hit appearance in Minsk. He went inside and though it was the lunch hour, it was nearly empty. He sat at a table and ordered a bottle of soda and a salad. It was a room in greens and black with clusters of ceiling lights. At the far end was a small stage festooned with decorations left from last night's anniversary party, the music stands and chairs disarranged as they had been left. A man, a patron or maybe a musician, got onto the stage and tapped life into the microphone. He sat at an electronic keyboard and began to play. He sang a Russian folk song, haunting and sad.

The salad came and Mike ate a little of it, then paid and went back into the heat. Shadows were no longer sharp, but dulled by a hazy sky. He walked to the boardwalk and saw the dark clouds on the southern horizon far across the water of the Atlantic Ocean.

He looked at his watch: 1:50. In a little more than two hours he would meet Oleg Deryabin. The feeling that gnawed inside him was foreign; part of it anger, a part he recognized as fear. It was an alien feeling that he was slowly beginning to recognize as his newfound compulsion to atone for abandoning his family. It was also the feeling of a growing hatred toward the man who had destroyed his family.

He bowed his head. Tears came. They were a purgative, uncomfortable at first. Then they renewed and refreshed him.

“Let's remember that when Mike Carson and Oleg Deryabin last saw each other, Mike was a little boy and his name was Mikhail Vasilyovich Karsalov.”

“Mike's a big boy,” Tobias said. “He'll handle it.”

“I hope he does,” Oxby said. “Until last evening, he might have guessed Deryabin was just another crooked Russian businessman. I gave him a lot to think about.”

“You took the guesswork out of it. Now he knows the bastard's a crook.”

“And much more. That's what I hope he can cope with.”

Tobias smiled. “You're both the playwright and director of this reunion.” The smile faded. “Are you having second thoughts?”

“Not exactly. Except I am getting one of those bloody hunches of mine.”

“What's it telling you?”

“I'm getting mixed signals.”

“What kind?”

“The kind that tell me I should have taken something from that gun collection of yours. Chances are I won't need it. But—”

“I'll have one with me. And look.” He tapped his watch. “It's just two o'clock and I can get Ed Parente to send over a couple of his guys. I like Mike too much to have anything happen to him.”

“No, Alex. Mike Carson's not in any danger. Deryabin doesn't go after people who can put money in his pocket. It's the ones that can expose him that he wants to get rid of.” Oxby tapped his chest. “Like me.”

“It's time,” Deryabin grumbled. “Where's Galina?” Nothing would appease Deryabin short of the sudden appearance of Galina. He opened the door and stormed into the corridor. He went to the elevator, then returned to the room, trailing a stream of Russian obscenities behind him.

“Where is she, you fucking Estonian bastard?”