Moonlight Mile Part 21

"Okay," I said. "In case you haven't figured it out, you two are screwed. I saw you grab the computers, but I'm sure you left something behind in the house that'll tie you to all the wonderful fraud and ident.i.ty theft you've been up to. Not to mention the meth dust in the microwave. I'm only half as smart as most cops at this, so let's a.s.sume they'll have you two charged by midday and will be out on the prowl with no-knock warrants by dinnertime."

"You're such a bad bluffer." Helene lit a cigarette.

"You think?" I reached over the backrest, took the cigarette out of her mouth and flicked it out the window past Kenny's face. "I got a four-year-old, you moron. She rides in this car."

"So?"

"So, I don't want her going to the playground smelling like a Newport."

"Touchy, touchy."

I held out my hand to her.

"What?"

"Gimme the pack."

"n.i.g.g.e.r, please."

"Gimme the pack," I repeated.

Kenny sounded weary. "Give it to him, Helene."

She handed over the pack. I slid it into my pocket.

"So," Kenny said, "you got a solution for us?"

"I dunno. Tell me what Kirill Borzakov wants with Amanda."

"Who said he wants Amanda?"

"Yefim did."

"Oh, right."

"So what's Amanda got that they could want?"

"She ripped a load, took it on the run with her."

I made the sound of an NBA buzzer when the shot clock runs out. "Bulls.h.i.+t."

"No, he's serious." Helene, all wide-eyed.

"Get out of my car."

"No, listen."

I reached across Kenny and pushed his door open. "See ya."

"No, really."

"Really. We've got less than two days to trade whatever Amanda's got for Sophie. Now I know you don't give a s.h.i.+t about the life of a teenage girl, but I'm kind of a dinosaur that way, and I do."

"So go to the police."

I nodded as if that made perfect sense. "Testify in open court against the Russian mob." I scratched my chin. "By the time it's safe for my daughter to leave Witness Protection, she'll be fifty-f.u.c.king-five." I looked at Kenny. "No one's going to the cops."

"Can I have my cigarettes back?" Helene said. "Please."

"You going to smoke in my ride?"

"I'll open the door."

I tossed them back over the seat to her.

"So where's this leave us?" Kenny said.

"What I said-we need to make a trade. The more you two d.i.c.k me around on what exactly it is they want from Amanda, the less chance Sophie will be in anything less than three or four pieces by the time Friday rolls around."

"And we told you," Kenny said, "Amanda ripped off their-"

"It's a piece of f.u.c.king jewelry," Helene said. She opened the back door wide and placed one foot on the ground as she lit her cigarette. She blew the smoke out past the door and gave me a look like Satisfied? Satisfied?

"Jewelry."

She nodded as Kenny closed his eyes and rested his head against the seat. "Yeah. Don't ask me what it looks like or how she got it, but she stole this, what, crucifix?"

"Well, it's not a crucifix," Kenny said. " 'Least I don't think so. They keep calling it a 'cross.' " He shrugged. "That's all we know."

"And you don't know how this cross got into her possession?"

Another head shake. "Nope."

"So you have no idea how Amanda might have had the opportunity to put her hands on this cross, or why she was hanging out with the Russian mob. Is that what you're selling?"

"We don't smother her," Helene said.

"What?"

"Amanda," Helene said. "We let her make her own decisions. We're not up her a.s.s all the time. We show her respect as a person."

I looked out the car window for a bit.

After the silence went on a bit too long, Helene said, "What're you thinking?"

I looked over the seat at her. "I'm thinking how I've never had the impulse to hit a woman in my life, but you get me in an Ike Turner frame of mind."

She flicked her cigarette into the parking lot. "Like I haven't heard that before."

"Where. Is. She."

"We. Don't. Know." Helene bulged her eyes at me like a p.i.s.sy twelve-year-old, which, in terms of emotional development, wasn't far off the mark.

"Bulls.h.i.+t."

Kenny said, "Man, I taught that girl how to create new ident.i.ties so tight she could join the CIA. Obviously, she created a few I didn't know about and now she's running around with one of those ident.i.ties. And she's got a flawless f.u.c.king social security card and birth certificate, I a.s.sure you. And once you got those, you can create a ten-year credit history in about four hours. And once you've done that that? s.h.i.+t. The country's one big ATM."

"You told Yefim you were close."

"I woulda told that ice-blood motherf.u.c.ker anything he needed to hear, long as it got him to leave my kitchen."

"So you're not close."

He shook his head.

I looked at Helene in the rearview. She shook her head.

We sat in silence again for a bit.

"Then what good are you?" I said eventually and started the Jeep. "Get out of my car."

I was scheduled to have a beer with Mike Colette, my friend who owned the distribution warehouses. He'd hired me to discover which of his employees was embezzling, and I'd found an answer he wasn't going to like. I thought of canceling the meeting, because I was still a hair shaky from the eight bullets that had been fired in my direction, but we'd agreed to meet in West Roxbury and I was already over on that side of town, so I called his cell and told him I was on my way.

He sat at one of the bar tops by the window at West on Centre and gave me a wave as I came through the door, even though he was the only guy at the tables. He'd been like that since we'd met at UMa.s.s, an earnest, solid guy of entrenched decency. I never met a soul who didn't like him. The logic among our friends was if you didn't like Mike, it said nothing about him but everything about you.

He was a small guy with close-shorn curly black hair and the kind of handshake that you could feel in every bone of your body. He gave it to me when I reached the table and I was so distracted I hadn't prepared for it. I d.a.m.n near ended up on my knees and I was pretty sure carpal tunnel set in immediately.

He pointed at the beer in front of my chair. "Just ordered it for you."

"Thanks, man."

"Get you anything? Appetizer or something?"

"Oh, no, I'm fine."

"Sure? You look a little off, man."

I took a sip of beer. "I had a run-in with some Russians."

He drank from his own frosted mug, his eyes wide. "They're a f.u.c.king menace in the trucking business, man. I mean, not all Russians, but Kirill Borzakov's crew? Whew. Stay away from those guys."

"Too late."

"No s.h.i.+t?" He put his beer on the coaster. "You had a run-in with Borzakov's guys?"

"Yup."

"Kirill's not just a thug, man, he's an out-of-his-f.u.c.king-mind thug. You heard he got another DUI?"

"Yeah, last week."

"Last night night." Mike pushed a folded Herald Herald across the table at me. "And this one beats all." across the table at me. "And this one beats all."

I found it on page 6: " 'Butcher' Borzakov's Bezerko Blowup." He'd taken his Targa into a Danvers car wash. Halfway through the service, he'd apparently become impatient. This was bad news for the car that sat ahead of his in the wash. Kirill rammed it. The car was propelled out of the wash, but the engine of Borzakov's Targa seized up. Police found him in the parking lot, covered in suds as he tried to attack one of the Panamanians who worked the gas pumps with a wiper blade he'd snapped off his own car. He was Tasered and taken to the ground by four staties. He posted first-quarter NBA numbers on the Breathalyzer and the staties also found a half-gram of cocaine in his seat console. It took him all the way to dinnertime to make his bail. In the sidebar, they ran the names of the four men whose deaths he was suspected of ordering this past year.

I folded the paper. "So it's not the fact that he's a killer that should bother me, it's that he's a killer having some kind of psychological meltdown?"

"For starters." He placed an index finger to his nose. "I hear he's dipping into his own supply."

I shrugged. Man, was I sick of this s.h.i.+t.

"Patrick, no offense, but you ever think of doing something else?"

"You're the second person to ask me that today."

"Well, I could be in the market for a new manager after this lunch, and you did work in trucking all through college, if I remember."

I shook it off. "I'm good. Thanks, Mike."

"Never say never," he said. "All I'm saying."

"I appreciate that. Let's talk about your case."

He folded his hands together and leaned into the table.

"Who do you think is embezzling from you?"

"My night manager, Skip Feeney."

"It's not him."

His eyebrows went up.

"I thought it was him, too. And I'm not saying he's a hundred percent trustworthy. My guess is he takes a box off a truck every now and then. If you went to his house you'd probably find stereo equipment that matched missing s.h.i.+pments, that kind of thing. But he's only able to f.u.c.k with the s.h.i.+pping manifests. He's not able to get to invoices. And, Mike, the invoices are the key. In some cases, you're being double- and triple-billed for s.h.i.+pments that don't originate with you and don't arrive at their destinations because they don't exist."

"Okay," he said slowly.

"Someone ordering five pallets of Flowmaster m.u.f.flers. That sound right to you?"

"Yeah, that's about right. We'll sell them all by July, but if we waited until April to order them, the price would be another six, seven percent higher. It's a smart risk, even if it eats a little s.p.a.ce."

"But you've only got four pallets in the warehouse. And the invoice reads 'four.' But the payment was for five. And I checked-they s.h.i.+pped five." I pulled a notepad from my laptop bag and flipped it open. "What can you tell me about Mich.e.l.le McCabe?"

He sat back in his chair, his face drawn.

"She's my accounts-receivable manager. She's the wife of a buddy of mine. A good buddy."