City of Ice (32 page)

“Anything for Jim Coates?” Mathers asked after a bit.

“Regulations, sir. You have to use your key. I can’t hand over mail if I don’t recognize the face.”

Mathers displayed his badge.

“Same difference,” the mailman told him.

“I don’t want his mail necessarily. I want to know if he received any.”

The man checked the box. “There’s a postcard and a letter.”

“Who from?”

The man took the mail out. “The postcard’s from Brazil.”

“Who from?” Mathers asked.

“How should I know? I can’t read the signature. Look, I’m not supposed to do this.”

“Every mailman alive reads postcards. In the history of the postal service no mailman has made it through his career without reading postcards.”

The man was older than Mathers, in his forties, made fit by his profession. Under his winter cap gray hair showed at the temples. He took another glance at the card. “It’s nothing. You read it,” he said.

Somebody was traveling in Brazil wishing Jim Coates was there. At first Mathers deciphered the signature as reading, “Me,” but by comparing the letters to others on the page he discerned that the scribble could be deciphered as “Mom.”

“What about the letter? Who’s it from?”

“No return address.”

“Postmark?”

The man checked. “Local.”

“Thanks. I appreciate your help.”

He climbed the stairs to the third floor and knocked on Jim Coates’s door. Footsteps approached, and the youth opened the door, the chainlock in place, peering sleepily through the narrow gap.

“Hi there, Jim. How’re you doing?”

“It’s you.” He unlatched the chain and let him in.

“Glad to see me?” Clearly, the kid had just clambered out of bed. He was wearing jeans which he hadn’t zipped and the black T-shirt he’d probably slept in. He shrugged, yawned, and fastened his pants. “You should be,” the policeman admonished him.

“How come?”

“You don’t know?”

The youth shrugged again. “I heard about Kaplonski,” he admitted.

Mathers strode deeper into the apartment, sizing things up. “That’s right—Kaplonski. Blown to smithereens. Not much left of him. Imagine that, eh?
You go to park your car. Put it in reverse—
kaboom!
Off to kingdom come. All of a sudden you’re ringing the bell at the pearly gates wondering why nobody’s answering.”

The youth was smoothing down his wild hair a bit, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“That was some garage you worked at, Jim. One of your co-workers gets his neck snapped, a meat hook through the heart, your former boss gets a keg of dynamite under his ass. Makes you wonder who’s next.” Mathers ceased his examination of the apartment, nondescript except for the lack of a telephone, and confronted the youth again.

“Good thing I’m out of there.”

“I’d call that an understatement, Jim. Do you have any coffee?”

The request surprised the young man. He had to defog before answering. “Yeah, maybe, I think there’s some left.”

“Could I trouble you? I’ve been running on empty and we’ve got a few things to sort out. Looks to me like you could use a cup yourself. I need you wide awake.”

Mathers followed him into the kitchenette and checked things in there. No phone, a sink full of dishes, and as the young man opened the refrigerator door to take out the cream, he saw that he had food.

“You working, Jim?”

“I got a job, yeah.”

“Great! Mechanic?”

“Naw, tire place. I repair flats, install new tires, stuff like that. It’s good. It’s around cars. I get training and the pay’s okay, it’s all right.”

“I’m happy for you. You should be reasonably well hidden in a garage like that.”

Coates looked at him as he measured out the coffee. “Nobody’s looking for me,” the boy postulated.

“No? You got a phone yet?”

“No, but, there’s no point being stupid about it.”

“I’m glad you’re keeping your head down, Jim. That’s important. I don’t want to scare you, but word on the street is, somebody might be wondering where you are.”

Coates appeared to be waking up by the minute. “Why? I don’t know nothing.”

Mathers performed an extensive grimace and sucked air between his teeth. “That’s the thing, Jim. That’s the point of view that doesn’t wash clean anymore. Truth is, if you knew nothing, then nobody would care about your existence. But people care. Maybe the same people who did what they did to poor Hagop. Old Man Kaplonski didn’t stand in their way either, did he? He probably considered himself a friend of the family. So I’m thinking, either you know something and know what it is but you’re not telling us, or you know something and you haven’t figured out what it could be. Either way, you know something, Jim. The evidence points in that direction.”

Pouring water into the back of the coffee machine, the young man did not seem up to issuing further denials. He was looking a trifle pale.

“I got a call last night from my partner. Wanted me in early. So I’ve been going all morning. Sure could use that coffee. Remember him, Jim? My partner? He gave you a rough ride down at the garage. He had me in early to talk about you. He’s concerned about a few things. Your safety, for starters. He’s also bothered by something else, Jim.”

“What’s that?” Coates was washing out cups.

“We know that Hagop Artinian was up to something. My partner asked the question ‘How did Kaplonski find out?’ I told him I didn’t have a clue. Then he says to me, ‘We know Artinian told somebody else about what he was doing.’ That’s true, he
did that. My partner—do you remember him, Jim?”

“Sure, yeah, Cinq-Mars. I got his card. He’s a famous guy I found out.”

“That’s right, he is. He’s a great cop. Anyhow, my partner is asking these tough questions, you know? Brutal, that early. He had a point though. If Hagop told somebody about what he was doing once, maybe he did it twice. Could’ve been a chronic problem with him, a pattern, talking too much. So my partner was wondering, how come Jim Coates got friendly with Kaplonski all of a sudden?” “I didn’t,” the youth objected.

“Cinq-Mars, my partner, he’s saying things to me like, ‘That boy was put in charge of the garage, all by himself, Christmas week. That’s a lot of responsibility when it’s a hot garage. How come he was trusted? And if he wasn’t trusted, why didn’t they waste him back then?’ Those are good questions, and I didn’t have the answers. Seems like you were in Kaplonski’s good graces.”

The young man just stared back at him. Detective Bill Mathers returned the look. “If he wasn’t trusting you, maybe he was testing you. What do you think about that? Leaving you alone in that garage to face the cops—was it a test? Or maybe he was tying your leg to the can.”

“I don’t get it,” Coates said. “What’re you saying?” “Another thing. You didn’t give Kaplonski much notice, did you? None, in fact. You just left. Tell me, Jim, what’s your mother doing in Brazil?”

“What do you care? She’s on her honeymoon.” “That’s good. I mean, it’s good she’s out of the country. Nice guy?”

“He’s good for her, I think. He got me my job.” “We’ll have to talk to her when she gets back.” “What do you mean?
Why?
” The timbre of his voice broached hysteria.

“I’ll go with you if you like. We have to explain that people might come around looking for you, that she can’t let anybody know where you live or work.”

The youth was panicking now. “Who’s coming after me? I mean—
why?
What did I do? I don’t know nothing.”

“Jim, listen to me. We have to get serious about your protection. You know what that means. You can lie low awhile, but down the road, a new identity maybe, a safe house. Expenses, Jim. For expenses I need authorization. To get that, I want the information at my fingertips, so I can make a case for you with the brass.”

“I don’t know nothing!” Coates burst out. Simultaneously, the coffeemaker gurgled, followed by a hissing noise, and the pot was ready to be poured.

“Nobody’s judging you. Maybe in your shoes, at your age, I would’ve done something similar. Hagop Artinian gets all the credit, the best jobs, the free time off. He’s tight with the boss. Then you find out—because he tells you—that he’s doing this other stuff and—”

“I didn’t give him up—”

“Sure you did, Jim, of course you did, that’s not so hard to figure. You told Kaplonski that his golden boy was really a spy—”

“Oh shit!”

“You’re in it above your shoe tops, aren’t you, Jim? I think that coffee’s ready now.”

“Fuck!”

“I know. Just pour the coffee. Start with that. Keep it together. Then we’ll go in the other room and you can tell me about it.”

“I don’t know nothing.”

“That’s what we call denial, Jim. That’s what we call wishful thinking. You
wish
you didn’t know anything, but you know the identity of that Russian,
don’t you? We call him the Czar. Did you know he killed Hagop? He did. With his bare hands.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“Easy, Jim. Relax. We’ll take care of this. Tell me about him. He must be a powerful man. I mean physically. Is he a big guy, Jim?”

“He’s a freaking giant.”

“That figures, the way he broke Hagop’s neck. You know, between the Hell’s Angels, who blew up Kaplonski, and the freaking Russian giant and his gang, and the Mafia who are probably in on this, too, you sure as hell went out and made yourself the wrong bunch of friends. How old is he, Jim, the man we call the Czar, about?”

His shrug seemed to stem from the incomprehension of youth, equating all persons above a certain age as old. “Forty. Fifty.”

“Sixty?” Mathers asked.

“No. He has a lot of hair, it’s dark.”

“Not bald. Not gray. Height?”

“Six-four, or better.”

“Thin, fat, medium?”

“There’s no stomach on him, he’s in shape. Always wears a suit. Outside he wears a cape.”

The Czar.
This was confirmation. In September, when Cinq-Mars had been with the surveillance team from the Wolverines, even in the heat the man had worn a cape. “Handsome, ugly?”

Another shrug. Mathers finally received his coffee, and he waved off sugar and cream. “Hard-looking, you know. Scary in a way. He looks like a Russian, like one of those hockey players. Like he’s never smiled in his lifetime.”

“Any marks, scars?”

“Yeah. Big one. From behind his ear,” Coates said, and he drew the line under his own jaw, “to the front of his chin.”

“That could be surgical,” Mathers theorized. “That’s the kind of scar they cut for a bypass to open up the main artery.”

“This guy doesn’t look like he’d have a heart problem.”

“You never know. There’s nothing like a coronary bypass to get a man into shape. Did he smoke? Eat greasy foods?”

“I don’t remember him smoking.
No, that’s right!
He came in one time and told Kaplonski to butt his cigar.”

“There you go, you see? The man’s a health fanatic because he’s had a coronary bypass. You see what you can find out when you put your mind to it? Now, Jim, you have to tell me this. Did you give up Hagop to Kaplonski?”

Coates was quiet, staring into his cup.

“We have to have something, Jim, to protect you. If things go bad, we want to be on your side. If Hagop told you something, then you have to tell us. Tell us what you told Kaplonski.”

He seemed disinclined to talk.

“I won’t kid you. Talking to Kaplonski about Hagop was not a good thing. I can see how it happened though, I’m not judging you. Tell me what Hagop said, that’ll put it right.”

“How can anything put it right?” Coates demanded bitterly. He took a sip, and his hand shook and his lower lip trembled. “Hagop’s dead.”

Cinq-Mars had warned his partner to keep the boy on his side, no matter what. Break him down, but no matter what, befriend him.

“You didn’t do it, Jim,” Mathers reminded him in a soft voice. “We both know that. We can’t bring Hagop back, but we can put away his killers.”

Tears welled. His head hung down. When Coates spoke he hesitated, grasping his words, forcing them
from his lips. “I told Kaplonski—Hagop was a snitch.”

Mathers was patient. He coaxed him along. “How did you know that, Jim?”

“He told me. Like you said. He confided in me. I said something to him one time about him being a brownnoser. We were working late. He said he wasn’t no brownnoser. Said he was spying on Kaplonski.”

The youth wiped his eyes with the back of one hand and tried to sip his coffee, lips aquiver.

“Who for, Jim?”

“For the cops. A bigshot cop, he said.”

Mathers stepped down from the stool and stood close to the young man. “He said that?”

“Yeah.”

“He didn’t mention anyone else?”

“Not that time.”

“But another time?”

“He said he had the whole CIA in back of him. I didn’t believe that bullshit.”

Mathers took a couple of deeper breaths. “You tell Kaplonski about that?”

“About the CIA? No. I’d sound like an idiot. About the rest, yeah.”

“When does your mother get back, Jim?”

The young man wiped his nose and eyes on his wrist. “Thursday.”

“Okay, listen to me. We’ll have that talk with her. We’ll work something out so we don’t embarrass you. But start packing. People know where you live. You’ve been receiving mail. We have to stop that. No more mail, Jim. No more letting the world know your whereabouts. All right? You’ve done the right thing, Jim. Don’t talk to your landlord or anything dumb like that. Let me take care of that part. Don’t tell anybody you’re on the go. Just pack.”

“He has a tattoo,” the boy said out of the blue.

“What?”

“I never saw it. He always wore suits. Hagop told me. He said he had a tattoo on his chest in the shape of a star. Hagop said it meant he was one of the godfathers of the Russian federation of gangs, some bullshit. He had all these stories. The CIA. Russian gangs. I thought he was nuts, man. I didn’t believe it.”

“Now you do?”

The boy shrugged. “He talked too much and he’s dead. That’s serious truth.”

Mathers gulped the last of his coffee and gave the young man another pat on the back, then headed out. Cinq-Mars was right. Coates had betrayed Hagop Artinian. That was why he’d run, because of his complicity in murder. That had scared him as much as any idle fear for his own life. Even now he didn’t have a clue about the real danger he had created for himself, all he had was the barest inkling.