“You don’t think we can take him down?”
“There’s no way. Listen, busting Yashin would be perfect. We could get the warrant and nab him ourselves. We wouldn’t have to share the collar with anybody. Going for Bandur will just get us killed.”
“Okay, forget Bandur. Maybe we can get somebody else. Don’t you want to run this up the ladder, see who Yashin can lead us to?”
“No, I don’t. The lieutenant is already all over our asses. We can’t just keep putting him off. We’re way behind on our quota.”
“So what? We can catch up anytime we want.”
“You’ve been saying that for a month now, but we just keep falling further behind. You said we could run this whole operation on our personal time, but we’ve been watching this screen so much I doubt we’ve put in twenty hours of regular work this whole week.”
“Don’t worry about it, Juno. I can handle the lieutenant. He likes me.”
“He’s not going to like you for much longer if we miss our quota for the second month in a row. Listen, Paul, we don’t need to be greedy. This arrest will give us everything we want. You know how much O he’s got in his basement. A haul like that is the kind of thing they always put on the news. Shit, they’ll take vids of the two of us posing next to that stash. They’ll put you on the fast track for a lieutenancy. What more do you want?”
Paul didn’t answer. He turned his gaze back to the papers on the wall. I couldn’t figure out what had gotten into him lately. I didn’t know what he was thinking half the time. I decided to drop it. We’d just wait and see like Paul wanted. We had what we needed on Yashin. There was no rush.
Paul got up. “I’m gonna run out for kebabs. You want anything?”
“Yeah. Set me up with one fish and one liz.”
Paul closed the door behind him. I poured myself a drink and went back to watching the Yashins. Pavel was sulking on his couch. His wife, Gloria, was packing a suitcase, and daughter Natasha was reading in her bedroom. You’d never see any two of them in the same room.
I stayed on F. Pavel Yashin wasn’t doing anything anyway. Natasha sat on the bed, flowery pillows propping her up. The book’s cover was of a tuxedoed man dipping a woman on the dance floor. Natasha twisted her raven hair around her finger, untangling it every couple minutes to turn the page.
She kept checking the clock and returning to the book. Finally, she got up, reading all the while, like a kid reluctant to give up a favorite toy. She finished the page, bookmarked, and stripped off her clothes-petite breasts on svelte physique. She walked into the bathroom.
She came out a few minutes later, naked except for the towel wrapped around her head. She pulled a pair of red sheer panties up over her coffee skin and blow-dried her hair. She was sitting on the bed, using the window as a mirror, unknowingly looking right into the camera, looking right at me. My heart drummed in voyeuristic bliss.
Then she took two dresses out of the closet-one red, one black. Go for the black. Like she heard me, she hung the red dress back up, took the black one off its hanger, and slipped it over her head. The dress hung loose, but clung at all the right curves.
The smell of greasy meat preceded Paul’s entrance. He glanced at the screen. “You watching her again?”
“Yeah. Can’t take my eyes off her.”
Natasha dabbed on just a touch of makeup and pulled a pair of heels out of the closet-black with thin straps.
“She is hot. I’ll give you that, but she sulks too much for me. She looks like a real downer.” He tossed me a kebob.
I unwrapped it from the soggy paper.
Paul took a bite. Sauce dripped down his chin. “Yashin up to anything?”
In response, I licked my fingers and kicked it over to B. He was up out of his seat, pouring himself another drink.
“Where’s the missus?” Paul wanted to know.
“She’s packing. She must be going to stay with her mother again.”
“Again? Shit. Natasha’s going out; Gloria’s going to her mother’s. He’s gonna have another one of his party nights. We won’t learn a damn thing tonight.”
This would be the third time this week. Yashin had a thing for young poon. Once he was home alone, he’d call down to one of the prosty joints and get them sent over two at a time, the younger the better.
I finished off the first kebab. “You want to call it a night?”
“Yeah, we can record it. Scan through it tomorrow.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“You wanna hit the bars?”
“Not tonight, Paul. I’m beat. I just want to have a quiet night.”
“Are you shittin’ me? Since when do you want to stay home?”
“Since tonight.”
We hopped separate cabs. I told my driver to let Paul get out ahead of us then made him turn the cab back. I had him wait three doors down from the Yashin house. No more than a minute later, another cab pulled up. Two women with tall hair sat in the back. After a couple honks, Natasha came out the door and down the walk. She took the front seat.
I made the driver follow them. They stopped in the Old Town Square at a restaurant called Afrie’s-chic and ritzy. The women got out of the cab deliberately, showing plenty of leg. I waited a few, tossed some bills to the driver, and went in.
The place was done up in style. The floors were covered with thick rugs that you sank into as you walked. The chairs were upholstered with monitor hide. Nice. The lighting was dimmed down with candles on the tables, setting the right mood. People dressed in fancy clothes. I looked like a square in my white linens. The maitre d’ pretended not to notice. “Will you be dining tonight, or would you like to go to the bar?”
I scanned the restaurant and didn’t see her. “The bar.”
“Excellent, sir. Let me show you the way.”
I parked on a stool at the bar, ordered house brandy on ice, and checked out the room. I saw the three of them sitting in a round booth. The two tall-haired women were laughing over their drinks. Natasha sat opposite them, watching and smiling when they looked her way. I could see she was too smart for them. They bored her, but she was too polite to let it show.
Natasha sipped at her drink, which was already almost gone. It was some kind of special rainbow-colored drink with pieces of fruit on the rim. I was mesmerized by her. She had the goods-gorgeous, sophisticated, mysterious. I was flying high.
For the first time I noticed the man next to me. What the hell? His forehead was glassed in with three goldfish swimming about. Offworlders would come up with the strangest shit. This place was a big offworlder hangout. At the end of the bar was a super buxom broad with vampire fangs. A table of quintuplet-clones in low-cut sundresses with cat faces-whiskers, fur, and all-giggled at the pumped-up muscle-head miners flexing in front of a mirror. Offworlders looked like models most of the time, but when they went out partying, they’d pull out all the stops, morphing into the freakiest characters. I can’t believe they get off on that shit.
I felt self-conscious in my linens. I was tempted to run home for a change of clothes, but a mental survey of my closet yielded nothing but more of the same. I asked the bartender to bring Natasha a second drink. I watched as he poured, scooped, shook, then blended the drink into a tall glass. He put some fruit on the rim, stabbed it with a straw, gave me a nod, and headed for her table. I picked up my drink and took a swig.
The bartender stopped at her table. The two chatterbugs stopped talking as he gestured in my direction. All three of them looked at me, but I made eye contact with Natasha only. She took the drink and held it up in a silent toast. I toasted back and took a long sip of brandy, hoping it would drown the butterflies in my stomach.
She excused herself and brought her drink with her to the bar. Straight black hair brushed her shoulders as she walked. I picked up the scent of her perfume as she took the barstool next to me.