The sound of an engine starting spun Cochran around toward the house. A black Mercedes had pulled out of the garage and was idling in front of the house. When the driver got out, all Hannibal could see was dark skin and a dark suit. The driver went to the door, walked a woman to the passenger side, and opened the car door for her. Then the man walked around to the other side of the car. As the driver was about to open the car door, Hannibal heard a click beside him.
“Got it,” Cochran said. At the other end of the driveway, the driver’s head snapped up. He had heard the camera. The thin eyebrows on that dark face pushed together and Hannibal felt a wave of hate roll downhill. Still unseen, he walked a few feet down the street and crossed, keeping his pace casual.
Cochran, on the other hand, giggled in a high-pitched voice and yanked at his own car’s door handle. He placed the camera on the passenger seat, got in, and slammed the door.
Cochran and his car were slow. He got it started and was just pulling into the street when the Mercedes roared down the driveway. Cochran yanked the wheel to the right but not fast enough. The right quarter panel of Gana’s Mercedes creased the little Saturn, cracking a headlight and forcing it over against the curb. Both drivers jumped out of their vehicles, but Cochran held a camera while Gana held a knife.
3
Hannibal wasn’t sure what he expected from his first good look at Dani Gana, but this was not it. Black marble eyes were set deep in a polished teak face, only a bit darker than Hannibal’s, with features that reminded him of a Lebanese neighbor he once had. Black, straight hair lay facing forward and hanging over the edge of his forehead. Rage widened his eyes, clean whites showing around the marbles.
Gana was not a big man but his shoulders were wide and his hands were big enough to make the folding fighting knife look smaller than Hannibal knew it was. When he spoke, he surprised Hannibal again. His voice dipped to an unexpected register, below baritone but not quite bass.
“Is it worth dying for?”
Cochran looked perplexed until Gana nodded at the camera. Cochran looked from the camera to the wide blade and back again. Cochran held the camera out away from his body. Gana snatched it with his left hand, held it high over his head, and slammed it down to the street. The snapping of plastic and the crackle of glass breaking dominated the street for a moment. Gana nudged the remains of the camera over behind his front tire. Then he took two purposeful steps toward Cochran. Hannibal touched his automatic and prepared to stop the action from going any further.
The passenger side window lowered, and a warm, accented voice said, “Darling, it is not worth it.”
The rage flew from Gana’s face as he turned to the car. All Hannibal could see inside was hair, black and shiny as a raven’s wings, flowing in a cascade of curls halfway down a woman’s back. This would be Viktoriya Petrova, Hannibal assumed. Her voice had been enough to break Gana’s rage. In a moment he would become more aware of his surroundings.
Hannibal turned and walked away at a casual pace. Behind him, he heard low conversation between Gana and Viktoriya, then Gana’s door opened and closed. He heard the Mercedes pull away in the opposite direction. He heard the finality of the camera being crushed under the tires. And he heard Cochran mutter a single profane epithet before he too drove away.
Hannibal continued without a backward glance. When he reached the corner, he crossed to the side on which Gana lived. Only then did he look up the block, but both the Saturn and the Mercedes were gone. He continued to the next corner, turned again, and found himself in front of a long winding flight of stone steps. He started up them, between waves of purple, blue, and white flowers growing out of an evergreen plant. Daffodils scattered among the ground cover nodded their yellow heads at him as he passed.
A broad patio ahead held a wrought iron table and chairs where two people sat separated by a large French press coffee maker and a pair of cups. The woman was in her forties, with hair cut in a trim bob that left a thick slice of hair to hang at an angle between her eyes. It was the same ink black as the woman in the Mercedes. This would be Raisa Petrova.
The man facing her had come to breakfast in a gray wool suit. Hannibal picked up his musky fragrance from three feet away. He was wearing too much cologne and too much eyebrow, and he looked at Hannibal the way a deer watches a wolf trot into view. Hannibal tried to defuse his discomfort with a smile, but the woman turned a dazzler on him that put his own smile to shame.
“Can I help you, young man?”
Those were the woman’s words, but they sounded just like “would you like to come to bed with me?” Hannibal stopped ten feet away and tried to take them both in with his greeting.
“Good morning, Mrs. Petrova. Good morning, sir. I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Hannibal Jones and I was hoping to have a few words with you about Mr. Dani Gana.”
“Please, come sit,” Raisa said without even a beat of hesitation. “Yakov was just leaving.”
Judging by his face, Yakov was unaware of his plans to depart until that moment, but he was a gentleman. He stood. Raisa offered her hand and he kissed it. Then he nodded toward Hannibal and stepped past him down the winding stairs toward the street. It was too late to apologize to him so Hannibal again turned to Raisa.
“I really didn’t intend to interrupt your morning, ma’am.”
She waved his words away. “Relax, young man. Yakov Sidorov is my physician, not my lover, although I’m sure he would want it otherwise. Besides, I think Aleksandr Ivanovich sent him to spy on me. Now come, sit, and tell me what you want to know about Dani.”
Hannibal continued to stand. “You know Ivanovich?”
“I will not discuss it further unless you sit.” She poured from the press into her cup, picked up Sidorov’s cup and stepped into the house. When she rose, Hannibal could see that she had a reasonable shape hidden inside her flower print dress. She returned in seconds with a clean cup which she also filled from the press. Hannibal understood the law of house rules. He sat opposite her, in the chair still warm from Sidorov’s expectations. He sipped the black liquid in his cup, realizing too late that it was tea.
“You are good,” Raisa said in what Hannibal identifed only as an Old World accent. “You didn’t flinch. Tea is better for you than that coffee you Americans drink all day.”
“It’s good and strong,” Hanibal said, “but tea doesn’t give you the aroma like coffee does. Now, you know Ivanovich?”
Raisa smiled and made a show of pulling a cigarette from a silver case. “Of course, dear boy. He has been sniffing around my Viktoriya for years. Ever since my dear husband, God rest his soul, brought him into that ugly business he was in.”
She paused, holding the cigarette out, until Hannibal noticed the small box of matches on the table. He struck one, freeing the sharp scent of sulfur. She ignored it as she leaned in, drew a lungful of smoke, and let it carry her words out.
“He is a violent boy who does the dirtiest work for gangsters. But when Vitoriya saw Dani, she realized what a good man looks like.”
Hannibal blinked away the smoke. Raisa was starting to sound like a bad imitation of Shirley MacLaine. Was it the accent the actress had used in Madame Sousatzka or the attitude from Steel Magnolias that gave him that impression? He turned his gaze back down the path while he gathered his thoughts.
“You like the flowers, young man? Those are periwinkles.”
“ Periwinkle was a color in my crayon box when I was a kid,” Hannibal said, “but that color didn’t match any of these. And just how much do you know about this good man Dani Gana? How did he come to be so wealthy?”