The Alibi Man (19 page)

chapter
29

         
LANDRY LOOKED
through the photographs Lisbeth Perkins had taken with her cell phone the night Irina Markova went missing. He had sent the photos from the girl’s phone to his computer, where he had the added advantage of making the pictures large enough to study.

It always bothered him—seeing the victims frozen in time in a happy moment. In that moment, the person had not been thinking they would be dead soon, that someone would end their life with an act of violence. And more often than not, the person who ended their life was someone the victim knew. What a feeling that had to be—to look into a familiar face and see death coming.

Gorgeous girl, he thought absently. The looks of a model, attitude to spare. A girl with a lot of life ahead of her, life she would have lived with intent.

Weiss had taken a print of the photograph showing the guy the Perkins girl said had been bothering Irina that night and headed to Clematis Street, downtown West Palm Beach, to try his luck at getting a name to put to the face.

Felt like a dead end to Landry, but they had to check it out. But he couldn’t see some guy following Irina back to Wellington, to the party at Players, to wherever she had gone after that. Way too much effort. The clubs were packed belly-to-belly on the weekends, full of hot young girls looking for trouble and guys happy to provide it. More likely Brad Something had washed the bad taste of rejection out of his mouth with alcohol and moved on to a more willing piece of ass.

The photos from Jim Brody’s party were much more interesting. There were snaps of Irina doing what appeared to be some kind of hot fertility dance with Mr. Hotshot Barbaro; of her sitting between Jim Brody and Bennett Walker; of her dancing with girlfriends. Either Irina or Lisbeth had held the phone at arm’s length and snapped one of the two of them, side by side, mugging like super-models.

Juan Barbaro interested him. Partly because he was still pissed off at the idea of the guy touching Elena, he admitted, but mostly for legitimate reasons. Professional athletes are notorious for feeling entitled to have anything they want, including women—especially women.

He sent off a couple of e-mail queries to the FBI and to a contact he had at Interpol, requesting any information available on the Spaniard.

Bennett Walker interested him for the obvious reasons.

Jim Brody interested him. It had been Brody’s birthday. Had Irina been a gift? Had she given herself freely? Had someone paid her? According to the ME, Irina had been a busy girl giving blowjobs before her death.

So far, it seemed she had vanished into thin air. Nobody admitted to seeing her leave Players. He didn’t know if she had left in her own vehicle or with one of the men. There had been no sighting of her car anywhere.

It would have helped to know where the after-party had been. He was guessing it was at Brody’s house, but guesses wouldn’t get him a warrant to search the property.

Elena’s phone call earlier in the evening had sent him back to Players to interview the two valets, but one had split before he got there, and the other one hadn’t been working Saturday night. That kid had told him about seeing Irina Markova with different gentlemen in their cars, but that wasn’t worth much.

He wondered what the other kid might have had to say. If it had been a big revelation, Elena would have just said so when she called. Maybe she thought if he leaned on the valet who had been working that night he would be scared enough to spill his guts.

Landry had taken the kid’s name and phone number. Tried to call. No answer. He would try again in the morning. He was convinced one of Jim Brody’s posse knew something about the girl’s death, but until someone could put her leaving that club—or being seen later on—with one of the self-proclaimed Alibi Club, he had squat.

He had been through Irina’s e-mails, but most of them were in Russian, and he had set them aside until they could get the old priest back to interpret. He had briefly considered the idea of recruiting someone from Magda’s bar to do the job, but he had no doubt he would be lied to six ways from Sunday. If it happened that one Russian had killed another Russian, and the motive was written in Russian in one of those e-mails, no Russian was going to tell him about it.

He had checked the girl’s phone records and discovered that she liked to talk to girlfriends on the phone. Not exactly a revelation. Interestingly, she seemed to have a direct line to some of the wealthiest men in the Palm Beach area.

Popular girl for a horse groom.

Landry thought of the expensive clothes in the girl’s closet. If she hadn’t gotten the money for those clothes from her mobster pal, Kulak, where had she gotten it? Were these guys she knew just generous, or were they clients? Did she have something on one of them? Blackmail made a good motive for murder.

There was probably plenty to be had on Brody and his crowd. Men who gave one another alibis as a hobby had to be guilty of something.

He looked back through the notes he had made in the victim’s apartment, detailing everything he’d seen there. Nothing out of the ordinary. The usual junk mail. A couple of bills. No sexually explicit photographs of Jim Brody naked and trussed up like a turkey in full S&M regalia. A coupon for Bed Bath & Beyond, a bill from a clinic, and an offer to join a health club.

The bill from the clinic was written in what might as well have been Sanskrit. She was being charged seventy-five dollars for an alphanumeric code.

Landry made a note to himself to call the clinic in the morning. He pulled his reading glasses off and rubbed his hands over his face. Out of gas. Time to call it, get some sleep, come back fresh.

The last thing he wanted to do was answer his phone.

“Landry.”

“Detective Landry, there’s a man here asking to see you.”

The girl at the desk downstairs.

“Who is it?”

“A Mr. Kulak. Alexi Kulak.”

chapter
30

         
“MR. KULAK.”
Landry offered his hand, the Russian accepted.

He was a very neat man—neat suit, neat hair, tie perfectly knotted, as Landry’s had been twelve hours ago.

“Detective. I have come to see about Irina Markova,” he said.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

Kulak nodded and Landry showed him out the door. “We’ll take my car over to the morgue.”

Neither of them spoke as Landry drove from one parking lot to the next. He buzzed the front door, and the security guard let them in.

As long as he had been at this business, Landry had never quite shaken the creepy feeling of being in the morgue at night. It was too quiet in the halls; the lights were dim. Kulak walked beside him, staring straight ahead, his face blank. The tension in the man’s body was so strong Landry could feel it.

“You can view the body on closed-circuit television—” he started.

“No.”

“All right. Just to prepare you, your niece’s body was submerged in water for some time, and there is some…damage…to her face, from fish and so forth.”

A thick muscle pulsed in Kulak’s jaw, but his expression did not change.

“The medical examiner performed the autopsy last night. You’ll see stitches.”

The jaw muscle pulsed again.

The night attendant led them into the cold room, with its wall of drawers where bodies were filed away like old tax returns. Kulak stood square, his hands in front of him. If he’d had a blindfold and a cigarette, he would have looked like he was waiting for a firing squad. Landry nodded to the attendant.

Kulak jolted at the sight of Irina, as if he’d been hit with a powerful current of electricity. He caught the sound of pain in his throat. His entire body was trembling. Sweat popped on his forehead. His facial muscles began to contort.

When he finally pulled his eyes away, Kulak turned, and a terrible, wild animal sound of torment and grief tore out of his chest. He fell to his knees and held his face in his hands.

The man was considered one of the most ruthless bosses in the South Florida Russian mob. The things he had seen, the things he had allegedly ordered done to people, were horrific. All of it done—guaranteed—without batting an eye. That man sat crumpled on the floor, crying silently into his hands.

Even Landry had to feel for him, regardless of how black and white he preferred to see the world. Grief was a common denominator, crossing all boundaries.

He stood off to the side and left Kulak alone for a few minutes. When Kulak began to gather himself, Landry said, “You’ll have to call in the morning to make arrangements. The ME will release the body as soon as all the autopsy results have come back.”

They walked out of the room, and Kulak sat down on a fake leather chair in the viewing room. Landry took a seat perpendicular to him.

“I have some questions for you,” he said.

Kulak didn’t acknowledge him.

Landry pressed on. “When was the last time you heard from Irina?”

Kulak didn’t respond, just sat staring, devastated.

“Do you know anything about her personal life? Can you tell me about her friends, boyfriends?”

“I am going to kill the man who did this to her,” Kulak said quietly.

Landry didn’t bother to tell him that he would go to prison for it. Frankly, he didn’t blame the guy. If he ruled the world, that was how he would have set it up—so that the loved ones of the victim could go into a room with the perp and not come out until they were through with him.

“Mr. Kulak, do you have any idea who that might be?”

Kulak looked at him with an expression that could have cut through steel. “If I knew that, Detective, I would now be cutting his beating heart from his chest.”

With that, he stood and walked out.

Landry let him go.

chapter
31

         
JEFF CHERRY
had never known one valuable thing in his life until he had taken the job as a valet at Players. He had taken the job because it seemed pretty much like money for nothing and he got to drive cars he otherwise could only have dreamed about. But he had figured out pretty quickly that he could make an extra five or ten bucks off certain customers if he sucked up hard enough, complimented the ladies, offered to do little extras like clean out the ashtrays while the customers were in having dinner.

The more he began to pay attention to the customers, the more the customers expressed their gratitude. Then one night a gentleman slipped him a twenty to turn his head and pretend he hadn’t seen a certain young woman—not his wife—leave with him.

Being an entrepreneurial sort, Jeff had built himself a nice little side business, turning a blind eye to all kinds of things. Then expanding to provide other services, such as getting small amounts of recreational drugs delivered while his clients were in the club.

His success relied on his discretion and on knowing things he shouldn’t have.

Talking with the cops was not on his agenda.

He split as soon as the bitch with the questions and the cell phone was out of sight.

He made a call from his cell phone while sitting in the parking lot of Town Square shopping center on Forest Hill and South Shore.

The client didn’t pick up, of course. None of these people were going to take a call from a valet. He waited for the beep, then blurted it all out.

“Hey, this is Jeff from Players. From the parking lot. So anyway, this woman called the cops and told them I might know something about that dead girl—like who she left with that night. So I split, ’cause I don’t wanna talk to them, but I gotta figure they’re gonna come looking for me. I can’t just get out of Dodge. I have a lucrative business to run, but lying to the cops isn’t a regular service. So I gotta charge extra for that, is what I’m saying. So call me back.”

He left his number and ended the call, out of breath.

Wow. What would that kind of lie be worth? Ten grand? Twenty? It would sort of depend, he thought, on whether or not the client had actually killed that girl. He couldn’t imagine that was what had happened. These people were rich. Rich people didn’t go around killing people. But they wouldn’t want people thinking that maybe they did even if they didn’t, so that was worth a lot.

Fifty grand? More?

And what if the client
had
killed that girl? How freaky would that be?

A hundred grand?

He went over to the gas station and bought himself half a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a quart of chocolate milk, went back to his car, and waited for his phone to ring.