“That signature you’re looking for would come back for a CI,” civilian informant, “that’s currently working a case for us. No way anyone’s going to give him up for you and yours.”
“No one but you.”
“But me,” she confessed. “My sister’s stepson.” Here it comes, Boldt thought. Olson had the favor ready at hand. “He’s on the buying end of a drug deal in the backseat of a car when the skel riding passenger decides to pull a piece and blow away a corner dealer. Car’s pulled over and everyone in the car is charged with manslaughter except the shooter, who wins himself a capital murder charge. My nephew’s a good kid. Wrong place, wrong time. Drugs. He deserves a bad rap, maybe some time, but not the manslaughter.”
Boldt actually knew of the case. He promised to look into it, to do his best.
“That’s all I ask.”
“Done.”
“This CI is planted deep. It’s a joint effort in-house with Special Ops. U.S. Attorney’s Office and INS are even in on it. But this signature you described… I know for a fact he’s into manicures,” she said, meaning the extraction of fingernails. “The Rope, that’s news to me.” She meant the use of Rohypnol. “So maybe it just skews to him but isn’t him. I can’t say. That will be Malvone’s justification in not sharing him with you-if you ever bring it back onto us. The Rope is not part of his gig, not on his sheet. They can withhold him from you for this reason. But the tape and the manicures-that’s him, for sure.”
“The case?”
“These guys are into everything, Lieutenant. We’re talking fraud, smuggling, black market retail. Money exchange. Money laundering. Anything and everything to do with a buck. No drugs, no prostitution, nothing for Narcotics or Vice. But racketeering? Shit, Lieutenant, this guy-the boss, I’m talking about, not the CI-when they wrote the definition for racketeering, they had him in mind. They run a fucking empire. This guy is the fucking Brando of the Russian immigrant community. And he’s Dangerous, capital D. That would be another reason they wouldn’t steer you into this: It’s a fucking one-way street to the graveyard to mess with these people. Our guy, our plant, he’s a gold mine. Constantly funneling information. Reliable, bankable, good information. Compromising him would be a serious setback. We’re picking up foreign networks, massive laundering. The mother lode. That’s how I know you’ll never get him out of us.”
A crashing sound as someone banged into the door expecting it to open. This was followed by a sharp knocking. “What the fuck?!” came the complaint.
“A name?” Boldt asked, his heart dancing in his chest. The Russian community, she’d said. Russian cigarettes from the ash found at Foreman’s torture. A Russian name on a partial print from Bernie Lofgrin. Click, click, click, went the pieces. He loved this job.
She lowered her voice so that even Boldt could barely hear her above the rush of water into the stained sink. “Yasmani Svengrad. The Sturgeon General.”
“Sturgeon General,” Boldt clarified the irregularity.
“He imports caviar. Or did… ”
“Let me guess,” Boldt said. “S &G Imports.”
She leaned back, impressed. “Well… yeah.”
More banging on the door. Boldt shouted for the guy to cool it. He said to Olson, “Your CI. He’s called Malina Alekseevich.”
Her lips parted in surprise. She had nice teeth.
“How’d you know that?”
“He’s sloppy,” Boldt answered.
He told her to take a stall and lock the door. He’d knock on the bathroom door when the coast was clear.
Boldt then unlocked the main door to a disgruntled detective who quickly changed his attitude in the presence of a lieutenant. Boldt hovered by the water fountain in the hall until this detective left the men’s room. Boldt knocked, and Olson slipped into the hall, walking quickly away, never looking back.
The mother lode, she’d said. And that was how Boldt thought of it.
Most of Seattle’s former canneries and icehouses, the brick boathouses and sail-making workshops, had long since been razed and replaced with co-op housing, restaurants, or tourist traps. A few structures remained, some rusted, some crumbling, the majority along the northern shore of Lake Union’s ship canal, the last salty smell and briny taste of a history that would never return. Computer chips had replaced tins of smoked salmon; software, for soft-shelled crabs. Boldt rode in the passenger seat of John LaMoia’s Jetta as LaMoia turned down an alley. The southernmost boundary of Ballard was a seawall containing the canal and the seagull-white-stained wooden pilings supporting it. The empty lanes of litter-encrusted blacktop running between vacant buildings were reminiscent of the tumbleweeded streets of the Old West. The wind that rose off the water whispered like sirens in Boldt’s ear.
“That’s the place.” LaMoia pointed out a set of barely legible numerals above a rust-red door on the side of a corrugated-steel building with a tin roof.
Boldt removed his department-issue Glock, a weapon that had replaced the Beretta 9mm two years earlier. He checked out the gun, an uncharacteristic act.
LaMoia had spent the ride over going on and on about his terrorism seminar, part of a continuing education course, once again expressing his concern over the devices believed to be in terrorists’ hands. Nearing the end of the course, he had one last session late afternoon that he described as a “field trip” to watch demonstrations of some of the explosives and triggering devices. “But the weirdest weapon puts out something called Electromagnetic Pulse, EMP.” LaMoia’s enthusiasm could make anything sound interesting.
“You tried to explain this before,” Boldt interrupted. He was interested in technology only if it fit his own needs-he didn’t need to try to understand everything that was out there. He dumped water on LaMoia’s flames before suffering an explanation of EMP. Thankfully the water rolled off LaMoia’s back.
“Liz was sleeping with this guy David Hayes,” Boldt said. “Six years ago, when it all fell apart on me? That was Hayes. There’s a videotape. A sex tape. This guy, Svengrad, may have it. So if that comes up in the discussion, that’s why. I don’t want you looking surprised.”
LaMoia sighed, glancing away uncomfortably.
“You’re allowed to be surprised now.”
“I am.”
“It would be nice to keep it off the Internet, off the evening news, out of the bank’s next board meeting.”
“I imagine it would.”
“And you might think that’s why we’re here.”
“I might.”
“It isn’t. We’re here to bring Alekseevich in for questioning. We have a partial-never mind that it’s inadmissible.”
“Doesn’t bother me.”
“We not only have a Russian brand of cigarette but, as it turns out, S &G, Svengrad’s company, has the exclusive import contract for the entire West Coast. What we want, what we need, is to put a pack of those cigarettes into Alekseevich’s pocket. That, and the partial, give him to us.”
“He might come voluntarily.”
“Right,” Boldt said with a snort. “That’s a strong possibility.”
“If things go south in there?”
“No matter how badly this goes, we talk our way out. We walk out. The people behind this-and maybe that’s Svengrad-have gone to great lengths to avoid class A felony charges. That speaks volumes, I think. They’re not going to hassle two cops. They’re extremely careful. We do our job. We grab up Alekseevich if he’s in there, and we leave.”
“Not my style,” LaMoia said. “I’d rather shoot it out.”
Despite the various burdens weighing on Boldt’s shoulders he found room to laugh.
“You’re a bundle of laughs, Sarge.”
“That’s what they say.”
“No… that’s not what they say.”
Boldt flashed him a look. “Then what do they say?”