The Body of David Hayes (18 page)

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?”

“I think I’d like to keep my job.” With that, LaMoia popped open the door and headed toward the building.

As they approached through a light drizzle, Boldt said, “Seventeen million reasons for lying to us, don’t forget.”

“You think?” LaMoia asked, wondering if the embezzlement trail led to this rusting building.

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

LaMoia knocked and they entered a small office area containing a pair of ancient gunmetal-gray steel desks loosely shaped into an L, a woman receptionist in her late forties with big hair and red nails, some whiteboards on the wall scribbled with colorful reminders, and four large color posters, all showing busty women with pink tongues. Caviar ads, but oddly targeting readers of
Playboy
. The receptionist called through on the telephone. Boldt could hear an extension ring out back.

“Silicon Valley,” LaMoia said, pointing to one of the girly posters, a nearly naked black woman barely out of her teens working a jackhammer on a city street. The implants grafted to her chest accounted for LaMoia’s comment. She wore a yellow hard hat that bore the American flag. The words above her read: “If it smells fishy…”The jackhammer aimed into the seam of a superimposed can of caviar, beneath which it read: “… you’re in the right place—Svengrad, Beluga Negro.”

They were admitted into a cool warehouse that smelled
sour with fish. Their escort was a well-dressed, darkly complected man in his early thirties with a fairly thick accent. Not Alekseevich, according to the sheet in Boldt’s inside coat pocket.

Steel mesh shelving was crowded with carefully arranged cardboard boxes. The shiny gray concrete floor was marked with bright yellow lane lines courtesy of OSHA, while overhead mercury vapor lights lent human skin a sickly green tinge. To Boldt’s disappointment, the warehouse was quiet, void of human activity.

“It isn’t every day we get a visit from Seattle’s finest,” their escort said.

He had the right lingo and had done a good job of wearing down the edges of his accent, all of which told Boldt he’d probably been in the States for some time. The nice suit was somewhat unexpected though not surprising, given Beth LaRossa’s description of the two who had pressured her husband. The man led them across the warehouse floor to a glass box of an office from where a muffled recording of a soprano’s voice carried. Boldt liked opera.

Their escort opened the door for them but did not enter himself.

The office reminded Boldt of his own—a space within a space, and little more. It was a place of business, heaped with paperwork. The man behind the desk was broad-shouldered with pinprick black eyes, a barroom nose, and a salt-and-pepper beard, carefully trimmed. He too wore a dark, tailored suit, but a pair of more workmanlike, rubber-soled black shoes revealed themselves from below the large, leather-top desk, a piece of furniture incongruously out of place. Boldt knew better than to automatically assume
this man was Svengrad. A manager perhaps. An employee.

Fan lines edged his eyes as he rose and introduced himself. “General Yasmani Svengrad.” He made no offer for them to sit down, and remained standing himself. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’ve lost something.”

Boldt picked up a trace of British in his speech. The man sucked air between his two front teeth—either a tic or an attempt to fight a painful tooth. Boldt felt taken aback and slightly intimidated, not an easy feat. Svengrad was a perfectly proportioned, enormous man. He stood six foot four or five, with hands like baseball mitts. But where some men looked big, Svengrad’s proportions confused the eye. A trompe l’oeil of a man, like someone from
Alice in Wonderland
.

But it was more than the personage. Prior to coming here, Boldt had taken what little had been passed him in the men’s room and had dug first into S&G Imports and then into its notorious owner, quickly reading up on the man courtesy of the Internet. The picture that unfolded explained OC’s desire to turn an employee as a state’s witness and catalog the steady flow of information that resulted. Yasmani Svengrad would not fall easily.

A decorated naval officer, Svengrad had proved himself a shrewd politician as well. With the collapse of the former Soviet Union, Svengrad had unexpectedly transferred to oversee naval operations in the Caspian Sea, considered an undesirable posting without political clout. It was only later his true motivations had been recognized. As the senior military officer in charge of the Caspian, he had seized control of its waters and filled a power void as management of the Caspian slipped from Mother Russia’s firm grasp.
With no fewer than five newly formed governments claiming rights to the Caspian and her all-important sturgeon, Svengrad brutalized his way to dominance, quickly owning the Caspian’s lucrative, multimillion-dollar caviar business. Svengrad’s friends back in Moscow allowed this, even encouraged it, as poachers nearly ended the caviar trade by slaughtering immature fish for their famous eggs and pushing the sturgeon toward extinction. No doubt, Svengrad made sure his friends in Moscow both ate and lived well for allowing a monopoly that continued to this day. From what he’d read, Boldt considered Svengrad both a man of vision and one unafraid of using force to get what he wanted. Many a poacher vessel had been “lost at sea” during the early years of Svengrad’s power grab.

He’d settled in the United States seven years earlier and had been granted citizenship not twelve months ago, a discovery that made Boldt suspect either the intervention of diplomats or the exchange of hard cash. Svengrad had nonetheless never personally been arrested, had never spent a single night in so much as a drunk tank. Most such “Teflon thugs” found themselves targets of federal or state undercover investigations at some point, and as far as Boldt could determine, Svengrad’s time had now come.

Boldt played it carefully. They came without a warrant, and he kept this firmly in mind—if asked to leave they would be obliged to do so. “Lost something? We’re just a pair of public servants doing a favor for INS.”

“A Seattle Police Department lieutenant and sergeant doing a favor for INS?” So the man knew how to read. He handed back the credentials, still not offering them chairs.

“You don’t think our captain, doing a favor for the feds, is going to send a
detective
to see you, do you?” He could
see that Svengrad actually considered this, though not for long.

“How long do we keep this up?” Svengrad asked.

Boldt threw his hands out in an inquisitive gesture that asked,
How should I know?

“If you have business here, state it,” Svengrad said. “Or should I play along? What can I do for INS, gentlemen?” He asked this in a schoolgirl voice that instead of comical, Boldt found threatening. “Remind me: Don’t you need a subpoena, a writ, a warrant? Should I call a lawyer?”

“Why so jumpy?”

“We’re here informally,” LaMoia said, jumping into the fray.

“You are at that,” said the man wearing the designer suit as he looked them over. “Do you press those yourself, or send them out?”

LaMoia’s infamous blue jeans finally took a direct hit; if Boldt hadn’t been working to understand, and possibly undermine Svengrad, he might have celebrated the moment.

Boldt calmly removed Malina Alekseevich’s INS sheet and placed it in front of Svengrad. “You’re listed as the employer of record.”

“As I should be,” Svengrad said, not batting an eyelash. “Were that I was.”

Boldt thought he was actually doing OC a favor by making Alekseevich into a suspect, and therefore above consideration as a double agent. Never mind that entities like OC and Special Operations and the INS liked to run control on their civilian informants; Boldt didn’t see much harm coming of this.

Svengrad continued, “Malina’s a hard worker. A good
man. He might even have avoided being laid off if Fish and Wildlife had played fair.”

“Laid off?” LaMoia inquired.

Boldt paled.
Played fair? Fish and Wildlife?
Depending on when Alekseevich had indeed been laid off his job, they had little or no way to connect Svengrad to the tortures of Hayes and Foreman, even if Alekseevich were responsible. Svengrad would simply claim that, unemployed, Alekseevich had resorted to his old ways. More’s the pity. Boldt quickly looked for a bridge that might keep himself and LaMoia in the room long enough to stir the pot. He didn’t see anything obvious.

“He
drives
for us, or did, before layoffs,” Svengrad answered LaMoia. “He has not gone and gotten a parking ticket or something, has he?” The man grinned smugly. “Date of termination—because that’s the next thing you’re going to ask, yes? Ninety-three days. You may ask the Fish and Wildlife Department.” He met Boldt’s surprise. “Not INS, Fish and Wildlife. They will tell same date.”

“Ninety-two days,” Boldt said, misquoting him. “You track all employees with such enthusiasm, or is Alekseevich special to you?”

“Ninety
-three
days, Lieutenant. We, our caviar, is under a lockdown. Forbidden from making business. Big mix-up on government’s part. And yes, I
do
keep track. Certainly. When this affects one’s livelihood, one keeps count of such things.”

“A lockdown,” Boldt repeated, spinning on his heels to look once again at the quiet warehouse behind them. Svengrad’s explanation fit the human emptiness of the place.

Svengrad flipped through a Rolodex and fixed on a card. “We have the same address—for the home of Alekseevich—
as does INS.” He handed Boldt back the sheet of paper. “Have a nice day, Lieutenant.”

“You said we were missing something,” Boldt said.

“My mistake. Fedor will show you out.”

“Something, or some
one?”

Most people shrank some from a cop’s gaze. Not this man. Svengrad fixed his attention onto Boldt and asked, “You like dirty movies, Lieutenant?”

It wasn’t often that Boldt had to contain himself from striking out at a man.

Svengrad said, “I find them quite a turn-on myself. The home movies on the Internet are the best. Crude lighting. The women always trying too hard to look sexy. The men trying to look hard. Much better than cheap porn, don’t you think? Gives reality TV a new meaning.” He added, “But to answer your question, no: something, not someone.”

Boldt asked, “Do you get these films off the Internet, or do you have the
originals?”

“I have my sources,” Svengrad said. “Mature women are the best, don’t you think? They know what they want—what it takes for them—and they aren’t afraid to say so.”

Boldt’s stomach squirted some bile into his esophagus. He coughed through the burning and swallowed it down. He’d have bloody stool if he continued to keep this tension inside: ulcers the size of golf balls.

“Where would I get such a home movie?”

LaMoia shifted on his heels, uncomfortable. He whispered, “Sarge.”

Boldt did not so much as look in his direction. “John,” Boldt said, still eye-to-eye with Svengrad. “Ask the guy out there for a cigarette, would you please?”

LaMoia withdrew from the room, though reluctantly. Once he was on the other side of the glass his attention remained on Svengrad and Boldt, as did the attention of Svengrad’s man.

“You like caviar?” Svengrad asked Boldt, ignoring Boldt’s inquiry. He swept his arm to encompass the warehouse.