Nobody's Child (Georgia Davis Series) (22 page)

W
hen Georgia was still a cop, her boyfriend, Matt, a detective on the force, had come home with one of the strangest stories she’d ever heard. He and his partner, Mike Green, now happily retired and fishing in Wisconsin, were running down a burglary ring at Northbrook Court, an upscale mall on the North Shore. The targets included jewelry and high-end apparel stores as well as a wildly successful electronics store. They were sure it was an inside job—apparently the thieves had keys to the stores—but they didn’t have enough evidence. They’d been brainstorming how to proceed when Green had an idea.

A few hours later Matt found himself with Green in front of a modest ranch house tucked away on a nondescript residential Northbrook street.

“Why are we here?” Matt had asked.

“You’ll see,” Green replied.

Green rang the doorbell. The woman who opened the door was middle-aged and plump and wore enough jewelry on her wrists, fingers, and ears that she jangled when she moved. Her eyes narrowed when she saw them. Matt had the feeling she knew they were police.

“You have appointment?” she said in a thick Slavic accent.

Mike Green nodded. “Tell him it’s Mikhail.”

The woman turned toward a door on one side of the hall and opened it. Matt could see a flight of stairs. He heard her jangle as she took the steps down.

“What’s going on?” Matt said quietly.

Green put his finger to his lips.

The woman returned, beckoned them inside, and closed the front door. Then she threw an imperious wave toward the open door. “You go down.”

They did. She closed that door too. Matt, halfway down the steps, promptly let his hand stray toward his holster, but Mike shook his head. “You’re not gonna need it.”

Georgia interrupted Matt at that point. “What the hell was going on? Where were you?”

“We had entered the throne room of one of the most powerful Mafiya leaders in Chicago.”

“The what?”

“The throne room,” Matt said. “You remember in the
Godfather
, how on the day of his daughter’s wedding, Marlon Brando received people who wanted favors in his office?”

Georgia nodded. “Right. He wasn’t supposed to say no because it was his daughter’s wedding. I always thought that was just Hollywood bullshit.”

“Not really,” Matt said. “This guy saw people in his basement. They called it the throne room. And it kind of looked like one. He sat at one end in a La-Z-Boy recliner, and there were chairs and things set up theater-style in front of him, like he was the pope granting an audience. That’s where he did business.”

“And you were there because…”

“We needed a favor.”

“Huh?”

“We told him we knew he wasn’t behind the burglaries, and—”

“Wait a minute. How did you know that?”

Matt grinned. “We didn’t. But Mike played to his ego.”

Georgia raised her eyebrows.

“He said he was sure the guy wouldn’t have been involved in such an amateur job. That the people who ripped off the stores didn’t even have the brains to fence the stuff in Milwaukee or Minneapolis. That we’d already found a lot of the goods in Chicago. And that it was just a matter of time before we got to the source.”

“Was any of that true?”

“Of course not.”

“But he believed you?”

“Not a word,” Matt went on.

Georgia scowled. “I don’t get it.”

“He knew what we were saying and why we were there. It was a kind of code.”

“In what way?”

“He knew we were getting heat from the village and the mall developers and the chain stores inside the mall. We needed an arrest,” Matt said.

“You told him that?”

“We didn’t have to. He reads the papers. Or someone read them to him. He knew.”

“So what happened?”

“He gave up the guys who did the job.”

“So it
was
him who did the job?”

“Probably.”

“And you let him skate?”

“He was clearly in charge. The boss. Maybe the boss of bosses. The burglaries were penny ante stuff. He knew we needed him to scratch our back, and we all knew we’d have to scratch his somewhere down the road.”

Georgia felt a chill. She knew there was a thin line between lawmakers and lawbreakers, but she’d never thought that applied to the people she worked with every day.

“But…,” she’d stammered, searching for something to say, “I thought the Russians weren’t that well organized, you know, not like the Outfit.”

“They’ve had twenty years to learn,” Matt said. “Anyway, the guy told us he’d done his good deed for the decade…and not to come back.”

“Did you?”

“Nope. And of course, his lead was good. We cracked the case.”

Now Georgia ran her hand up and down her arm. She got up from her desk and went to the window. Another frigid night, the moonless sky threatening to close in and swallow everything on the ground.

After telling her the story, Matt had sworn her to secrecy, and she’d respected that. She hadn’t thought about it at all.

Until this morning.

S
he knew the man in the Beemer last night. Knew him well, in fact—he’d been her last case as a cop. She was investigating the murder of a woman captured on a video surveillance tape. The tape had been brought to her by Ellie Foreman. It wasn’t a snuff film, but it might as well have been. They learned that the victim had been in the clutches of a former lieutenant in the Soviet military. After the USSR collapsed, he sold weapons off a base in Soviet Georgia. When that dried up, he emigrated to the States and ran hookers, drugs, and small arms deals. Eventually he partnered with a prominent Chicago developer, Max Gordon.

His name was Vlad. No last name. Just Vlad. Now, ten years later, he apparently had resurfaced. Running a hooker ring, a baby farm, and an organ transplant business.

Georgia threw off the blankets, got out of bed, and brewed a pot of coffee. She couldn’t take Vlad by herself. He and his men would be well armed and itching for combat. She might be able to get inside, deal with one or two of them, but she would need reinforcements on the way out.

She didn’t want to go to the police—it still wasn’t a solid case for them—too many maybes and what-ifs and too little evidence. If they did decide to get involved, they’d screw it up. Cops were not known for their delicacy. They’d storm the farm with massive firepower; if she was there, Savannah would be caught in the crossfire. She didn’t want to get Jimmy involved, either. Whatever happened would complicate their relationship, assuming they still had a chance for one. She needed outside help. Powerful help.

The coffeepot beeped. She poured a mug, drank half, then showered and dressed. While she was blow-drying her hair, the notion took shape. It was crazy. Even subversive. But it was a way to fight fire with fire.

She stared at the phone. Matt was trying to put his life back together, and she’d promised herself she wouldn’t exploit their relationship. Then she thought of the times he’d exploited her for one thing or another. Of course, she’d let him. She’d hoped that would make him love her more.

She took in a breath. She wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, but her options were limited, and she couldn’t waste time. She punched in Matt’s number.

I
t was noon when she pulled up to the house in Northbrook. A modest redbrick ranch house with a couple of pin oaks in front, their branches now skeletal and scrawny, the place wasn’t showy, and it seemed to fit in with the other homes on the block. Matt was already there, his engine idling. She slid out of the Toyota and walked over.

A dirty leaden overcast hung low, and the February day was bitter. Matt rolled down the window.

“Thanks, Matt. I appreciate this.”

He nodded. They hadn’t seen each other in months, but neither offered the normal pleasantries. “Unless you tell him the whole truth, you know, it’s gonna blow up in your face,” he said.

Matt wasn’t a big man, but he was powerfully built. And wiry. With curly dark hair and almond-shaped eyes that were almost feminine, he still made her catch her breath. He wasn’t wearing his glasses today. Georgia felt a pang. Glasses gentled him, even gave him a sensitive air, unusual for a former cop.

He seemed to know she was appraising him and smiled. That broke the spell. She’d been outed. The case of nerves that had been roiling her gut since she called him returned. “You’re coming in with me, aren’t you?”

“I have to. He won’t see you otherwise. Actually, to be fair, he might not see us at all. We’ll have to get past his bodyguards.”

She nodded.

“One more thing,” he added. “If we do get in, don’t laugh.”

She frowned.

“As I recall, some of—I guess—what you’d call his furnishings are pretty strange. But for God’s sake, when you see them, don’t crack a smile. You’re in the throne room.”

Puzzled, Georgia frowned. Together, they walked up three concrete steps to a small porch. Matt pressed the bell.

A woman who was probably in her sixties but trying for forty opened the door. Wearing an expensive-looking warm-up suit, with perfectly coiffed hair and manicured nails, she had a face on which work had definitely been done. The woman stared at Matt, and a moment later recognition lit her face. This woman was sharp.

“You remember me.” Matt sounded surprised.

The woman dipped her head from side to side: maybe yes, maybe no. Georgia fidgeted. She hated the way some people made that casual gesture in response to a question or comment, as if the answer was ultimately unknowable or not that important to begin with.

Without saying a word the woman stepped back from the door. Behind her were two brawny men, not even bothering to hide their pistols. She nodded to the men and pointed her index finger. She turned away, opened a door, and thumped downstairs.

One of the men growled. “Hands up.”

Matt raised his arms. Georgia followed suit. Each of the men frisked them thoroughly. Then the second man grunted. Georgia lowered her arms.

“It’s the same woman,” Matt said quietly. “It’s got to have been ten years since I saw her.”

“I got it.”

“I guess it doesn’t hurt to be married to a woman with a photographic memory.”

Georgia wondered if that was somehow directed at her. She didn’t have a photographic memory. Then she stopped. She was falling into the same pattern she used to when she was with Matt. Wanting to measure up. Wondering if everything he said was an indirect allusion to her. She shifted again.

The woman came back up and nodded to the guards. One of them opened the door wider. Georgia walked into a stifling house, the heat way too high for February. A few feet away was the open door. The woman gestured toward it.

“You go down.”

Georgia tried to flash the small group a polite smile, but the woman had already turned away.

As soon she descended the steps, Georgia realized she was in a foreign place. The staircase itself was ordinary, its walls paneled in a dark woody color. But the floor of the main room, which stretched the length of the house, was covered with thick shag carpeting. No one had shag carpeting now. It was a cocoa brown, not that different from the paneling covering the walls. The dark, bearish color screamed “man cave.”

As if to complete the surroundings, she spotted a huge Rottweiler at the far end of the room. His brown markings matched the rug and walls. He raised his head, scrutinized Matt and Georgia, sniffed, then lowered it again. Had it not been for a series of track lights on the ceiling that cast a glare over everything, the room would have been gloomy and claustrophobic, and with the dog, even dangerous. And to make it even more threatening, two additional bodyguards hovered at the other end of the room.

But the most bizarre aspects of the man cave hung on the walls, and she soon figured out what Matt had meant earlier. The walls were an homage to singer-songwriter Barry Manilow. A framed autographed poster of Manilow hung on one section of paneling, a framed collection of concert tickets on another. A leather jacket encased in a plastic or glass case hung on another wall, accompanied by an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph of the singer in, presumably, the same jacket. More photos festooned the other walls, some with Manilow’s arm around an elderly man with thick white hair. Georgia bit her lip to avoid a grin. The only section of wall that wasn’t a tribute to the singer was filled with an ornate gold crucifix.

Under the crucifix sat a La-Z-Boy recliner, upholstered in brown leather, with two chairs in front. Reclining in the chair was a big man with a shock of white hair that rivaled Boris Yeltsin’s. Like his wife, he wore an expensive-looking warm-up suit, but his bulged in all the wrong places. The man in the Manilow photos.

He appeared to be a benevolent grandfather until you looked at his hands. Rough and calloused, with stubby fingers, those hands told Georgia he could, and probably did, do all manner of things. At the moment they were folded in his lap, and he was watching Matt and Georgia with sharp eyes that belied his casual pose. Indeed, his presence was so powerful it seemed to blot out the rest of the room. Even the Barry Manilow displays faded into the background. Georgia understood why they called it the throne room.

He pointed an index finger at Matt.

“My wife says you back,” he said in a gravelly and thickly accented voice.

“She has a good memory.”

“I tell you not to.”

“You did. But I’m not here for me. And I’m not a cop anymore.”

He shifted his gaze to Georgia. “You cop?”

She shook her head.

“So why you here?”

Matt gestured toward Georgia. She took a breath. The basement smelled of dog, boiled cabbage, and sweat.

She got to the point. “I think a gang from your part of the world is running a baby ring, trafficking women to get them pregnant and then adopting the babies out.”

T
he Russian mobster’s eyes narrowed. She could hear the bodyguards shift behind her. “Why you care? Not your
beezniss
.” Business.

Georgia gestured to the chair. “May I?”

He shrugged. Georgia figured she had about a minute before he threw them out. Or worse.

She and Matt sat in the chairs in front of the recliner. They weren’t much more than folding chairs, rigid and uncomfortable. Purposely, of course. Make the supplicant uneasy.

“So who run this ring?” the man asked.

Georgia glanced at Matt, then back at him. Was she being played? He had to know. Carefully, she said, “That’s why we’re here. I think it’s someone you know.”

The man raised his hands, palms up. “You think I tell if I do?”

Georgia nodded. “I do.”

He canted his head. “Why I tell you?”

“Because I think he’s cutting into your turf. Again. And you want him out of the way.”

Her comment elicited an intense look. He narrowed his eyes. “Go on.”

Georgia told him about the man who’d been gunned down in Evanston a few weeks earlier. “I kept wondering why it was so public. You know, when you guys don’t get along, bodies turn up in ditches. Or the lake. But this was right out in the open. On an Evanston street.

“After a while I wondered if the guy who was killed was informing for you. That you were running a double?”

“Who you think running this gang?”

She hesitated. Then, “Vlad.”

He blinked and folded his arms. She could sense the bodyguards behind her go on alert. Even the dog picked up his head.

She was on the right track.

“How you know?”

“I saw him.” She told him about the Capron farm. “Look—uh—sir—” She didn’t know what to call him. Neither Matt nor he had told her his name. But his features softened almost imperceptibly at her words. She took it as a good omen. “If I’ve been able to piece together this much, the cops will too, at some point, and they’ll be coming after you, even if you’re not involved.”

The softness vanished, and a suspicious glare came over him. “And you will make
sure
they know.”

She raised her palms, mimicking the same gesture he’d made just a moment ago. Two could play this game. She heard Matt’s sharp intake of breath. She wasn’t sure where her courage was coming from, but she barreled on.

“At the very least there will be a mountain of shit thrown your way. And”—she hesitated—“my sister is mixed up with them.”

He leaned forward. “You sister?”

She nodded and explained the note that had been stuffed in her mailbox, the DNA test she’d done. “She’s pregnant, and she needs my help. I want to get her out. And I’m pretty sure the man who delivered the note was the guy gunned down in Evanston.”

Boris—she decided to call him that, at least to herself—lifted his eyebrows.

“So you go in with
heem
”—he yanked a thumb at Matt—“and get her out.”

“He’s not involved. It’s just me. That’s why I’m here. I need backup. But I don’t want to involve the cops.”

His eyebrows arched higher.

“They’d screw it up. Everyone will end up dead. Including my sister.”

He deigned to give her a slight nod.

“But I can deliver Vlad to you. And if
you
or your
krysha
get involved, you’ll be able to take him out. Consolidate your turf. Maybe even add to your lines of business.”

Boris leaned back, grabbed the handle at the base of the recliner, and pushed it forward until he was sitting upright. Suddenly, he was three feet closer, almost on top of Georgia. She swallowed. If he was trying to intimidate her, he was succeeding. She heard the bodyguards moved closer.

“No baby ring,” he said firmly. “No is steady
beezniss
. Babies is problems. Need to put up women. They cannot work. No drugs. Is too much—how you say—out of pocket. Plus the women, they go crazy. They want escape. Even keep babies. No. Not good
beezniss
.”

It was Georgia’s turn to raise her eyebrows. He knew a lot more than he had let on. Was he already getting a cut? She couldn’t ask; he’d never admit it. She had to use her final card.

“I haven’t told you everything,” she said slowly. “Whoever is running it has an extra business on the side.” She told him about the human transplant organs.

He was quiet. Then he inclined his head, his expression flat. “How you know?”

She shrugged, but his knowing expression indicated she might have given him too much. If Boris was involved in the ring, or knew who was, he might realize what a threat she posed to the operation. She would leave this room a marked woman. She wouldn’t know when or how, but they would come for her.

No. She wouldn’t—she couldn’t—live that way, no matter what the consequences. She figured she had one final shot. She decided to go for broke. “So, sir, or whatever you call yourself. What proof do I have that you’re not part of it?”

He leaned forward in the recliner and stared at her. Shit. She’d blown it. He was going to destroy her. Maybe shoot her right here and now. She held her breath. She sensed Matt doing the same. He must have been shitting his pants.

But then Boris did something totally unexpected. He cracked a smile. “Because you still alive.”

She let his words roll over her, then let out a breath. He was right. She chose her next words carefully. “Does that mean you are not in league with Vlad?”

Boris templed his fingers. “What you think?” Always a strategic move to answer a question with a question.

She glanced at Matt. He nodded. “I think he’s a monster. At least he was ten years ago when I dealt with him.”

Surprise spread across Boris’s face. “What happen ten years ago?”

“You remember when his network fell apart? When Max Gordon was taken down?”

Boris nodded.

“That was me. And another person.”

“You?” He frowned as if he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—believe her. Then he shook his head. “I help finance. I lose much money.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Banks. Skyscraper. Is all fake. I never trust him.”

“I watched Vlad kill his wife. Then jump into the Chicago River. He went back to the Ukraine.”

Boris nodded. “I hear he back.”

“He is.” Georgia was telling him something he already knew. “I saw him.”

The man’s shoulders hunched as if he was about to sigh. “You know, of course, he is worse kind of bad. He play with people. Like cat with mouse before it pounce.”

Georgia nodded. “He may be setting me up.” She explained how she’d been able to find the warehouse, Chad Coe, Zoya, and Claudia Nyquist. “He’s letting me get close to my sister. I’m good, but not that good. He’s setting a trap. He wants revenge.”

Boris kept his mouth shut.

“Just tell me one thing. The man he gunned down in Evanston—he
was
your man, wasn’t he? Vlad was sending you a message. Toying with you, too. Or trying to, right?”

Boris kept his mouth shut, but a calculating, measuring look came over him.

“Look, I want my sister alive. And we both want this bastard gone,” she said. “I can bring you to him. But I need help.”

He didn’t answer.

“Hey, I risked everything to come here. I’ve told you what I know. Please. Give me
something
.”

He gestured to the Manilow jacket on the wall. “Is bad timing. I go show in Vegas. He like my son, you know. I know him for years.”

Georgia glanced over her shoulder at the jacket, then at the crucifix. “Then you know what a crime against nature it is to kill a young woman.”

Boris shifted uncomfortably.

“Here’s what I propose,” she went on. “I will set a time for your men to meet me out at the farm. It will probably be within the next twenty-four hours. I’ll call you—or one of your
krysha
, if you’re at—out of town.” She just couldn’t say the words “at a Barry Manilow concert.”

“I’ll wait for an hour; then I’ll go in. If they don’t hear from me within a few minutes, it means I got in trouble. The likelihood is I’ll be dead, but I don’t matter. I want your men to get my sister out alive.” She paused. “Then do what you want to Vlad.”

“An eye for an eye,” Boris said.

“A sister for a sister.”

Boris didn’t say anything for what seemed like forever. Georgia wondered what he was thinking. Finally, he said, “Here is number you call. When you ready.”

She nodded and handed him a card with her number. “Just in case you need it.” She leaned back in her chair. “So does that mean we have a deal?”

Boris smiled enigmatically. “Maybe yes. Maybe no.”

She gritted her teeth. She’d have to be satisfied with that.