“No, but-”
“Don’t matter,” he interrupted just before he sent a line up his nose.
Sokolov watched, perplexed, as Jonny leaned right back, his eyes closed. After a moment, the Korean said, “Tell them you have the money.”
Sokolov couldn’t hide his shock. “What?”
“Tell them you have their damn money.” Without looking at Sokolov, Jonny shook his head. “You knew I would help. That’s why you came.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“You can read people fine.” He snorted another line, then wiped his nose and fixed Sokolov with a hard glare.
“Talk to them. Say you have the money. Set up a meet. We’ll take care of the go-jas and get your wife back.” He studied Sokolov for a moment, then asked, “Where are you staying?”
“A small hotel. Downtown.”
“You safe there?”
Sokolov shrugged.
“You stay here,” he told his old teacher. “We have room downstairs. You’ll be safe here. My cousin Ae-Cha will take you down and get you what you need.” He motioned to Green Streaks, bobbing his head in the direction of the door.
Green Streaks got up and unlocked the door. Ae-Cha was still standing there. She stepped in without saying a word. Jonny blurted some orders at her. Ae-Cha nodded quietly, then beckoned for Sokolov to follow.
Sokolov turned to Jonny. “What about Kim-Jee? Don’t you need to ask him?”
“Kim-Jee? He’s out. His girlfriend’s expecting twins. Two girls. Living the dream, isn’t that right?” He snorted derisively.
Sokolov nodded and stepped out, and the door swung shut behind him, drowning out Jonny’s bitter laughter.
We all choose our own paths, thought Sokolov.
Jonny had chosen the power of violence.
He had tried to choose peace.
Until now.
22
Larisa had suggested we meet at J. G. Melon’s, on Seventy-fourth and Third. The restaurant was close to where she lived. I loved the place, and since she’d already had dinner while neither I nor my demure partner had eaten much all day, we snagged a quick table and ordered a couple of Swiss cheese burgers, skins, and Cokes.
“You gonna behave?” I asked Aparo.
He grinned. “Why on earth would you ask that?” He looked pensive for a second, then he subtly raised his arm a bit and leaned his head sideways and took a quick whiff to check himself.
I made a mental note to see if there was anything I could start slipping him that would throttle back his testosterone a couple of notches.
We just about managed to get through our burgers by the time she breezed in. I stood up, caught her eye and waved her over. She threaded her way to our table, put her hand out for a businesslike handshake, and directed a warm “Nice to see you again” at me with a look that lingered a second more than was strictly necessary.
“So what’s going on?” she asked, straight to the point. “You said it was important.”
“Did you catch the news?”
She nodded, then her expression changed into one of surprise as she made the connection. “The shootings in Brooklyn?”
“Yes. Two of the victims were Russians.”
“Oh my God. Not-”
“No, not the Sokolovs. Just a couple of hired guns. I don’t have names yet, but we think they’re part of Yuri Mirminsky’s crew. You know who I’m talking about, right?”
“Of course,” she said, not exactly upbeat about it.
A waitress dropped by, and Larisa hesitated, then ordered a Bloody Mary. Aparo and I stayed with our Cokes.
Aparo unlocked his phone, pulled up a photo from its picture gallery, and showed it to her.
“Do you know this guy?”
She looked at it, then shook her head. “No. Should I?”
He made a hold-on-a-sec gesture as he pulled up another one. “Wait, that was the before shot. This one’s more recent.”
He showed it to her. She flinched-slightly. He’d just shown her two shots of the dead Russian hoodlum: a screen grab from the phone video taken outside Sokolov’s building, the other with a bullet through his forehead.
Larisa gave Aparo a cold stare. “Are you done?”
“Hey, I’m just wondering what the connection is between your dead coworker and a known bratki,” Aparo replied.
“Is there a connection?” she asked coyly. Then she turned to me. “Is this what you asked me here for? Were you hoping to shock me into saying something I shouldn’t and spill all our dirty little secrets?”
I smiled, took a breath, and leaned in. “We’ve got seven dead bodies, Larisa. Eight, counting Yakovlev. Now, that’s a big deal in this city. It’s not something we take lightly. This is going to get noisy. The papers haven’t even got started with Yakovlev, and the minute they hear two of the dead at the motel were bratki…” I gave her a knowing look. “You can imagine the headlines. And the kind of attention you and everyone else at the consulate are going to get hit with.”
She frowned.
“It’s not going to be fun,” I pressed. “And given the protests last week about what’s been going on back in Moscow, I’m sure it’s the kind of publicity you’d rather avoid.”
“So what do you want from me?”
“This is all about Sokolov.”
She looked at me quizzically. “Why do you think the two are connected? The shootings and Yakovlev?”
“Come on,” Aparo said, holding his phone up. “The ‘before’ shot? That was taken outside the Sokolovs’ apartment a few nanoseconds after your buddy took the quick way down.”
She eyed us thoughtfully, like she was wondering how much to say.
“What’s Sokolov involved in?” I pressed.
“I don’t know.”
Even though I doubted that, I really couldn’t tell for sure whether she was being honest with me. I studied her for a second, then I half smiled. Not a warm kind of smile. A smile that said “I know you have to play this game, and I know you know I know that.”
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but whatever it is, it all goes back to Sokolov. It started with him. So we can either wait until this all spins out of control and you’re running around doing damage limitation and rebutting every blogger and nutty conspiracy theory out there… or we can work together to shut it down before it gets even messier. But to do that, I need you to level with me. I need to know what Sokolov was involved in and why all these people are interested in him. I need to know what your ‘third secretary for maritime affairs’”-and yes, I did give her the air quotes-“was doing out at his apartment.”
She flashed me an amused smile and waited while the waitress deposited her Bloody Mary on the table and walked off before leaning in. “‘Third secretary’?” she asked, mimicking my air quotes. “Should I take offense?”
I spread my palms out. “Seriously? ‘Maritime affairs’? ‘Third secretary’? Like we’ve got that many maritime issues that two diplomats aren’t enough to deal with them?”
“We have plenty of outstanding maritime issues,” she countered. “Fishing rights and Arctic exploration and boundary agreements and all kinds of disputes going on all the time. Yakovlev had his arms full.”
“And yet, for some reason, the first thing on his agenda Monday morning was to go to Sokolov’s apartment and get pushed out of his window-which I’m guessing didn’t have anything to do with depleted tuna stocks.”
She eyed me curiously.
“Okay, fine,” I said, in a conciliatory tone. “I know there’s stuff you can’t talk to me about. There’s a lot I can’t talk about either. But I’m telling you this is going to turn into a PR disaster for you. You want to roll with it, fine. You want to head it off and make it go away, then help me out here. Besides, it might be better for you to have us focused on the bad guys than casting our net all over the place.” I flashed her a knowing look. “You never know what else we might drag up.”