The blue-eyed man drove us back across the river on the Cleveland Memorial Shoreway and then turned onto Lake Avenue. A few decades earlier, some of the city’s most expensive homes stood on Lake Avenue. Now the rich were moving to the suburbs, but there were still some beautiful houses on the street. We turned into the driveway of one of them, a massive Victorian structure.
“One of Mr. Belov’s homes,” the blue-eyed man said. One of them. The place probably cost more than I’d make in ten years, and it was a lakeside retreat for Belov.
We got out of the car, and now the bearded man had his gun out again. He waved it at the side door of the home.
“Go inside.”
I opened the door and stepped inside with Joe and the Russians right behind me. We were on a small landing. A set of four steps led up to the kitchen, and another set of steps led down to a closed door.
“Down,” the bearded man said.
I went down and opened that door, too. This room had been remodeled into a basement office. There was a black desk with a glass top, a glass coffee table, a small bar with a bottle of Scotch, a big-screen television, and several black office chairs. The bearded man pushed me down into one of the chairs. A small man with a gray mustache sat behind the desk. He wore a white shirt with a maroon tie, and his face was lined with deep creases and dark circles under his brown eyes. It gave him a weary expression. If you passed him on the street you might have guessed he was a bookkeeper for some small-time company, a guy who had been commuting to work in the same office for forty years and was hoping to retire to a two-bedroom house in Parma.
“Here they are, Mr. Belov,” the bearded man said. He stepped behind the desk and set our guns on the floor near Belov’s feet. The blue-eyed man leaned against the wall, his hand maybe six inches from the butt of his gun.
“Which one of you is Mr. Pritchard?” Belov said. His voice was soft, but it had a hard edge, as if it might easily turn into a bellow.
“That’s me,” Joe said.
Belov nodded slightly. “You have interesting ways of trying to reach me, sir.”
“I didn’t know the best way to go about it. I hope you weren’t offended.”
“Not at all. And my maid appreciated the fifty dollars.”
I looked at Joe. “You gave the maid fifty dollars?”
“And a note,” he said. “She promised she’d see that it reached Mr. Belov. He called me shortly thereafter.”
So much for Joe’s vast underworld contacts.
“And who are you?” Belov said, turning his flat brown eyes to me.
“Lincoln Perry,” I said. “I’m his partner.”
He held the stare for a moment, then lifted his hand and pointed at the bearded man. “This is Alexander.” The point switched to the blue-eyed man. “And this is Thor. Thor is quite a volatile, dangerous man. You would be well advised not to upset him.”
I looked over my shoulder at Thor, and his glacier-ice eyes stared at the wall in front of him, appearing not to see me. I was sure he wouldn’t miss any movement in the room, though. I believed Belov when he said Thor was dangerous.
“Now that we have all been introduced, we can begin,” Belov said, as if he were preparing to open a seminar on the opportunities of purchasing a time-share condominium. His hands lay on the surface of the desk, fingertips pressed against the glass but palms arched slightly, as if he were playing a piano. Now he tapped his hands softly on the glass and stared at us.
“You said you had a tape I would be interested in seeing.”
“That’s right,” Joe said. “I’m sure you’ll be interested.”
“And you want something in exchange for this tape,” Belov said, still tapping on the glass. It was not a question.
“Yes,” Joe said.
“What is that?”
Joe nodded at me.
“There’s a woman and a little girl who have information that could be damaging to people in your organization,” I said.
“My organization,” he echoed.
“Yes. These people have tried to kill them already, and I’m afraid they will probably try again. We would like your help in seeing that does not happen.”
His eyes never left mine. “I do not know anything of a woman and a little girl.”
“No,” I said, “you probably don’t. But some of your associates do. It is your associates that we’re concerned about, sir.”
“And what has the woman done to cause these problems?”
“She hasn’t done anything,” I said. “Her husband was a private investigator, like us. He caught something on videotape that people didn’t want to be seen. Your associates discovered this, and now they want the tape. They also want to kill the woman, because they think she’s seen the tape. She hasn’t seen it.”
“And her husband? This investigator?”
“He’s dead.”
He stopped tapping his hands on the glass, and the abrupt lack of movement seemed to suggest an impending eruption, like the brief pause when a fuse has stopped burning but the charge hasn’t exploded.
“What is on the tape?”
I looked at Joe, then back at Belov. “Information about your son’s death.”
“What information?”
“Will you see that the woman and girl are not harmed?”
“What information?” he repeated as if I had not spoken. He was more intense now, though, and behind me Thor had come off the wall and was standing upright. The comment about Belov’s son had gotten their attention, all right.
“There’s a man named Jeremiah Hubbard,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve heard of him. This woman’s husband was working for Hubbard, trying to come up with blackmail material to use in a property acquisition. The property they were interested in was The River Wild, a strip bar that I understand belongs to you.”
He didn’t say anything but motioned with his hand for me to continue.
“Your son was murdered. Probably inside of The River Wild, because we believe that was where this investigator was using surveillance cameras. We have the tape of your son’s murder.”
He leaned back in the chair and looked at Thor, then at me. His expression hadn’t changed, but his breathing was quicker.
“You have the tape.”
“Yes.” I took it from my pocket and set it on the desk.
Belov handed it to Alexander, and he slipped the tape inside a VCR that was mounted above the television. Belov turned his chair so he was facing the screen, and Alexander pressed play. We all watched as the blue screen came up, and then it disappeared as the room came into view. Beside me, Joe was leaning forward, watching intently. I’d forgotten he hadn’t seen the tape before.
We watched the entire thing in silence: the laughter at the table, the shooting, the body removal, and the cleanup work. Belov never said a word, and neither did anyone else. He never turned, just sat where he was, staring directly at the screen, never reacting to what he saw there. When the tape returned to the blue screen, Alexander reached over and shut the television off. He moved cautiously, as if afraid any action might enrage Belov.
For a long time, Belov remained staring at the blank television screen. When he finally spoke, his back was still to us.
“The woman and the girl. What are their names?”
“Julie and Betsy Weston,” I said. “The father was Wayne Weston. You’ve probably heard a lot about them on the news recently.”
“And Mr. Weston is dead?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who killed him?”
“No. It might have been the men on that tape; it might have been someone working for Jeremiah Hubbard. We’re not sure.”