The third man in, p.18
The Third Man In, page 18
I had departed the bar after making my drop and reconnected with Ivan at a table out on the perimeter of the action. We were floating in a sea of soda water. We had the lightest glow on earlier in the evening, but we had flushed it out with mini-bottle after mini-bottle of San Pellegrino. I had cleared our tab earlier, when we made the switch over to water and the switch over to cash and carry. That annoyed the bartender, but Ray let him know that it was okay by him. I wanted to be able to duck out at a moment’s notice. Dubinin’s girlfriend calling it a night was that moment we had to notice.
“Collecting her cheque at 2:30 means our girl Anastasia’s calling it an early night,” I said. And it was. Every girl who lined the bar, members of Her Soon-To-Be Former Sorority, were still in place as she sashayed to the door, fat, leering Germans turning their heads as she passed, their form of a 21-Gun Salute.
Ray had advised his doormen to make sure we made an unmolested departure this night and they did, reluctantly. Even though Ivan went a couple of blocks to pull his wife’s car around, I asked Ray to call us a cab. I told him that Ivan had been into the vodka at a previous stop and I didn’t want Ivan driving drunk.
Marks and I grabbed our jackets at the coat check and then walked out to the street. Once there I grabbed him by him by the arm and pulled him behind a big SUV, putting us out of view of any eyes at the front door of the bar.
“Give me your coat,” I said.
“What?”
“Take it off and give it to me,” I said. “Just humour me. Put mine on. Take my hat and pull it down low. Give me yours. Keep your back to the door.”
“Shadow, what the hell…”
“Look, Marks, there’s gonna be a cab here,” I said. “Get in it, go back to the hotel. No stops, nothing at the hotel bar either. Here’s my room key. Five-oh-one. Go to my room and sit tight. Grab some shut-eye. Just on top of the covers, okay? My other phone is in my computer bag. Charger is on the desk. Plug it in. I’ll call you in the room. I’ll just ask how I’m doin’…”
“What the fuck…”
“I’m gonna say, ‘What’s up, Shadow?’ and I’m going ask you to do something maybe. Maybe nothing happens, okay. Maybe it’s a waste of time. I dunno. I’m gonna say that I’m Lorne Davies. Just call me Lorne.”
“Does Lorne know about this, whatever the fuck it is?”
“Lorne wouldn’t mind,” I said. Of course, he would have. “Anyway, maybe I’m gonna ask you to do something.”
“What?”
“God’s honest truth, I dunno.” I had a rough idea what it might be.
“What gives?” he said. “I’ll freeze in this fuckin’ coat. How do you wear it?”
“Yeah, I could ask the same. Get out of here.”
I was going too fast for Marks to keep up. No shame in that. “Shadow, I’m not doing this unless you fill me in. I mean friends are friends and, well, I thought you were a friend.”
“Look, I just don’t want to be followed out of here. And I won’t be in this goddamn jacket. It’s practically the only thing that you can see in the dark out there.”
“I’m going back to the hotel and you’re not?”
“You got it. No stops?”
A frosty cloud billowed around his head when he sighed.
Ivan honked and flashed the high beams. I walked over to his wife’s car with my flaming red back to the front door. I didn’t peek behind me. That would have been the only thing that could have given me away to any watchers, and they would have been by the door. I was sure it was convincing cover, even more when Ivan mistook me for Kelly when I jogged up to the car.
“What is?”
“Marks is going back by himself. We have a detour.”
“What is detour?”
“A trip.”
“What is?”
“We’re going to follow her.”
I pointed ahead of us. Three idling cars ahead of us a black limo pulled up in front of Anastasia. She waited for the driver to do the gentlemanly thing and he did, throwing it into park, stepping out and around to the passenger-side rear door, opening it while she gently folded herself into the back seat. Thankfully for us in pursuit, the driver was a Big Gesture Kind of Flunky, pulling out the stops for his tip. He did everything but throw his coat down on the curb. Anastasia seemed amused by the show and took her own sweet time. On heels that high in winter, there’s no racing around on unsalted sidewalks.
“Why we do this?”
“Because there is no one else to follow. No guarantees that anything turns up but I can guarantee we’re not going to find Dmitrov just sleeping back at the Marriott.”
Ivan’s head dropped and came to rest against the steering wheel. Once he had given a moment’s thought to his job prospects, he sat back up and slipped the car into gear.
2
I had a bead on Anastasia’s ride. The driver was just as deliberate in traffic. He jerked the brakes, probably uncertain of the route. Through the rear window I could see her pointing out turns. The car didn’t go to the address that Daria had given me. Instead Anastasia hopped out in front of a condo not far from Moscow city centre, another of Dubinin’s properties, as it turned out. Predictably, it was a property that his widow was unaware of.
The driver went through the same routine at the front of the building. No tip was forthcoming, which meant that the ride had been prepaid or was complimentary. A doorman who looked to be in his mid-sixties bowed slightly as Anastasia sashayed by and he eyed her as she made her way to the elevator.
Ivan pulled up directly across the street. It seemed like we had nothing to be concerned about, even if he spotted us. Heavy-lidded and dressed for ceremony in a long double-breasted jacket with a hundred buttons and tassels, the doorman didn’t look like much in the way of security and almost invited the bum rush. Greeters at box stores were more likely to throw a scare into you. That’s what I thought until I saw some guy not on the guest list try to walk through the lobby. The doorman reached into his jacket and pulled out in quick and painful succession an aerosol of pepper spray and a Taser. The trespasser was writhing on the ground. When his eyes cleared, he was staring at the business end of a Nagant M1895 loaded with seven cartridges.
“We leave now.”
“It’ll be alright if you just drive around the block,” I said.
Ivan shot me the Are You Shittin’ Me Look. It passed in a few moments, though. Scouting jobs are so tough to find that a right-minded guy will risk his life once or twice in a night just to get an interview. So Ivan drove around the block and parked down a dark street with a view of the doorman at his station, just out of range of his deteriorating and uncorrected vision.
We waited. And waited.
And nature called. It had to after all the mineral water we had downed. We took turns getting out to piss in a nearby alley. I had filtered so much carbonation that what I didn’t burp out made my urine crackle when it splashed against the wall.
Two hours passed without a sighting of, well, anything. Then, at 5 A.M., we watched the changing of the guard. The little doorman’s shift came to an end and he briefed the guy on the morning shift, a formidable looking neck-head. By my eye, I put him in his thirties and the 250s.
Ivan made a case for the fact that our girl would be asleep and that there was no point in lingering any further, nothing to see.
“Let’s do a couple of walk-bys, on the half hour, and then we’ll go for breakfast,” I said.
We flipped for it. Ivan would go first. One pass of the front door heading north, a turn of the corner, wait five minutes, and retrace steps. I would head off at the bottom of the hour. This was going to be the ultimate fishing expedition: casting into a lake twice, trolling, and trying to land the one big fish that mythically inhabits the bottom reaches and has for years avoided capture.
I heard Ivan’s stomach grumble just before he got out of the car to do the walk-by.
“We eat next?” he said.
“We eat next, yes.”
Breakfast ended up being delayed. I was going to have to order bacon, eggs, and an ice pack. There’d be no going back to the hotel. Not with things so hot.
3
I watched Ivan walk a half block over to the condo building. I went to the internet browser on his iPhone. I signed into my Yahoo account and saw a new email from Polo.
Shadow, I did translation of player’s posts on vk.com. New 1 posted today goes “I play in KHL this year & next year. Is all I want to do in hockey and to play for Russia in Sochi Olympics. I am happy here & there are only lies from USA about playing there. I will never go.” Other posts about same thing. There is nothing about L.A., only glorious stuff about team, country, and Olympics. No goofy stuff at all. Not like teenagers. Guess millionaire teenager is different.
That didn’t sound like the kid who couldn’t stop smiling at the party after we drafted him. That night it seemed like he sensed that L.A. was going to be the ultimate playground and starlets his playmates. I still wasn’t buying the Change-of-Heart Scenario.
Ivan walked by the front door of the condo building and the doorman got out of his seat in the window. Bad sign. Ivan glanced behind. Bad move. The doorman put a bead on Ivan from his desk, stood up, and made a beeline outside. When the doorman shouted, Ivan picked up the pace and didn’t turn around. Not quite red alert. He made the turn around the corner and out of sight of the doorman, who couldn’t abandon his station. Even if he thought Ivan was casing the place, he had to work the gate. For Ivan it was a bullet dodged. He piled into the car and ducked down in his seat. In a few minutes he was able to breathe again.
“You okay, partner?”
“Dah.”
I scrolled further down my emails on the very off chance that Dmitrov had decided to poke his head out of his hole. No such luck. No, the only new item was a notification from Facebook. I had a message from Lanny. I signed on. A green dot beside her name, she was online.
40 minutes ago
Howz Russia? ☺
I decided against telling her about cheating death and all that shit. I didn’t want to turn the smile upside down.
Cold and dark…howz school, team?
Team is good. Working late on a paper due tomorrow
I heard about that player dying, the 1 in St John last yr. So sad
Did U get that other kid I met @ draft? He seemed nice.
Haven’t been able to find Dmitrov. Maybe he’s nice
Would be a helluva lot nicer if he’s sitting here next 2 me w big fat release in his hand
U’ll get him.
Spoken like my biggest fan. My only one.
LOL. U always say that if they want to come they’ll come
What is it you say…later than U want sooner than U think
She was listening after all. I hoped she was taking notes like that in class.
I guarantee he’s coming.
Hope U r right.
If her guarantee was good, I thought, she’s a better judge of character than me.
Is school good? Want 2 see A’s
Not that I was ever remotely an A-student, just an A-class fuck-up.
Bombed a test
Howz that
No sleep. Late-night phone calls. 2 am, 3, 4. Hang-ups. Heavy breathers.
Residence pranks? Not funny
Hardly. Guy with accent. Couldn’t make out what he was saying.
Res phone?
Cell. Too tired to change setting.
Wrong number.
That was how it sounded to me. I told her if it happened again to call campus security, but I added that it was probably a one-off. Still, my heart rate went up twenty beats a minute, just wishing that I had that punk or pervert behind a locked door for five minutes.
I signed off with x’s and o’s for Lanny. I handed Ivan back his iPhone. He was almost cooled off.
“We go, we go,” he said.
“Just a few more minutes,” I said. “That’s all, I swear.”
I hadn’t asked Ivan to do anything more than I would have done. All I was asking him for was one percent more of all the hassle he had already suffered through. I always go with the life lesson that Sarge taught me: it’s the final inch that makes the difference. “On the ice and off, at work and play, wherever you land and whatever you land in,” he has said a thousand times, “One shortcut risked makes the next one easy and the one after that automatic.”
I was going to revisit the idea of shortcuts not taken.
4
I pulled up the hood on Marks’s jacket, opened the passenger-side door, and hit the street at a brisk walk. I looked like a guy who got lost on the way to the ski hill but no matter. I went directly to the south corner of the hundred-yard block the building was on, stood for a minute scoping things out while I pretended to be making a call on a cellphone. “God help me,” I said into my empty hand. No reply.
I started off on a slow walk the length of the block. I threw in an unsubtle stagger, hunched like a question mark. I live by the principle that in real life all acting should be overacting. When I got to the door I bent over at the waist and had a coughing fit, something like the last gasp of a coal miner with black lung. Shrouded by the hood, hacking into my hand, I peeked over my right shoulder. I saw the young doorman laughing.
Then, behind the doorman, the digital sign above the elevator’s door showed a red arrow pointing down. The numbers blurred. 54321. There must have been a ding because the doorman turned to look before the door opened and readied himself to ask the early riser if he or she needed a taxi or any help.
And then Dubinin got off.
It was as if heaven had deadbolted the gate and turned him away and Hell had hung out the No Vacancy sign.
Was that him?
Reason was kicking in after a long absence. It couldn’t be, had to be someone who looked like him.
Yeah, the poured, unfinished concrete walls and the frost on the smoked-glass windows made the scene hazy. And the mirrors that lined the lobby made it seem like a dozen Dubinins had stepped off the elevator, like that part of my frontal cortex had been sliced and diced into thin shards of memory. But at the intersection of all those side views and back views was the real article. The Phoenix rising was nothing, I thought. This guy has been reassembled from thousands of little pieces and looks like he just rolled off the tanning bed.
But it couldn’t be.
Elevator Man said something to the doorman and it drew a laugh. While the doorman bowed his head to look at monitors for security cameras, the guy just passing through ducked what looked like a closet door off the lobby and Exited Stage Right. He wasn’t going to leave through the front door. Mourning citizens would have fainted dead away or worse if they caught a glimpse of the man who was going to be buried later Tuesday. Or at least one that could pass for him.
I staggered out of sight of the doorman at his seat in the lobby and then took off on a dead run for the north corner of the block. Elevator Man was heading out and by the direction he was heading I figured he was leaving the scene either on the north side of the building or out the back on its east face. The air, near minus thirty, was frosting my lungs like a beer glass in a better establishment.
I saw Elevator Man at a distance of forty yards. He exited the building through the service doors. He didn’t have a car, didn’t have a car waiting for him. He was heading in the direction of the Metro. His pace was neither brisk nor leisurely. He pulled on a fur hat untied at the top and reaching down to the nape of his neck. Narrowly framing his face, it cut down his peripheral vision and muffled sound. The hat looked like the one I had seen Dubinin in before. He had shown me the Russian designer label stitched inside, genuine Arkhangelsk mink.
I was able to close in on him until I was twenty yards to the rear.
“I thought you were picking me up at the fuckin’ airport,” I shouted.
Elevator Man stopped dead in his tracks and turned. He glared and then he smiled. Elevator Man was Dubinin.
“I am the wrong man. You are in the wrong place.”
He walked toward me slowly and I closed in likewise and lowered my voice.
“Wrong? I was wrong. I should have fired you when I had a chance. Maybe one kid wouldn’t be dead. Maybe another wouldn’t be missing. Maybe my life would be a shitload easier.”
He could have ignored me and kept walking. He could have broken into a run. He could have done a lot of things. But it was like when he had nearly blinded me and caved in half of my face. He couldn’t skate away without inspecting his handiwork and gloating then. He couldn’t leave me without a taunting valedictory.
“ ‘Fire me’? You are gol’yan, peskari, the smallest fish, not a man. Here you have no power. Like when we are on the ice in those days. ‘Fire me.’ Here this is joke.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“No,” he said. “You must laugh, Shade. I have taken the American money. I have taken money other places too. And I work for many, much bigger than your team, I told you not to take these players. My job is not to bring them to you. My job is to keep them here.”
“Everybody knew you were a dirtbag.”
“One man’s dirt is another man’s gold. In America, dirt. In Russia, gold. Here is good outcome, yes. And this must be good outcome, now, good outcome for Russia…”
