Altar of Bones (36 page)

I
T WAS
the casbah. Literally, in the sense that
THE CASBAH
was written in purple neon script above the front door.

It was a theme nightclub, Zoe supposed, and the theme was glaringly obvious. The building was built like a mosque, decorated with Moorish-like tiles and mosaics. It had no windows, just an iron-banded wooden door framed on each side by a pair of green neon palm trees.

The door had no handle that Zoe could see, just a grilled spy hole set dead center and at eye level. Ry pressed a buzzer, and a moment later the spy hole shot open, then closed.

Then the door itself was flung wide, and Zoe expected to see a guy in a fez or maybe a belly dancer in harem pants. But instead a woman of a “certain age” stepped across the threshold and into the green light cast by the neon palms. She looked straight out of the 1930s, a chanteuse with straight, bobbed black hair and dramatic cheekbones, a black pencil skirt, a red silk blouse, and a long ivory cigarette holder pinched delicately between two fingers.

“Ry
lushka
?” she said, in Russian roughened by too much bad vodka. “I do not see or hear from you in two years, now suddenly you are banging on my door? You must be in big, bad trouble.”

“B
UT THEN WHEN
are you not in trouble?” the woman said, switching to English so thick Zoe was afraid she would choke on it. She held up the hand with the cigarette before Ry could answer. “No, better to say nothing,
lapushka
, tell me nothing. That way I can keep my—what is it you Americans call it? My ‘plausible deniability.’ “

“We thought we’d drop by for supper,” Ry said, and turned to Zoe. “Madame Blotski makes the best borscht west of the Urals.”

“He lies.” The woman smiled at Zoe, but the dark eyes narrowed and looked her up and down, as if sizing up a potential rival. “I cannot even boil a potato without burning it. But there is always the takeout, no? So come in, come in.” She stepped aside and waved the cigarette at the open door. “But no
Madame
Blotski. You must call me Anya.”

“
Ochen priatna
. Nice to meet you. I’m Zoe—”

“
Nyet, nyet
. Say no more. Plausible deniability, remember? How nice, though, that you speak Russian. And how polite of you to let me know of this accomplishment, before I gave myself the red face by letting slip a little insult here, a little indiscretion there, thinking you were—what is the word you Americans say? Clueless. Ry
lushka
, wherever did you find this girl?”

“I fished her out of the Seine.”

“Hunh. You make the little joke. Still, she does have the look of the drowned
krysa
about her. Never mind, I have bathing facilities, and for that she should be thankful. And for why are we all still out here on the stoop? What if someone is to see you and starts to shoot?”

Zoe looked nervously up and down the street. She didn’t want to bring trouble down on this woman. “Thank you, Madame Blotski, but maybe we should—”

“Anya,” Ry cut in, “likes to pretend she is living inside a John Le Carré novel. If you told her we had the KGB hot on our trail, it would make her day.”

Madame Blotski laughed. “Listen to yourself, Ry
lushka
. It is you who must always be playing at the good guys, bad guys.”

Zoe looked at Ry. Earlier, when she’d woken up thickheaded and nauseated after he’d shot her with that tranq gun, she’d thought he was one of the bad guys. She didn’t think that anymore, but she knew there were still a lot of things he wasn’t telling her.

Then again, she hadn’t told him everything either.
Remember, trust no one. No one
, her grandmother had warned. Zoe had been the Keeper for barely forty-eight hours, and already she was contemplating breaking rule number one.

Anya Blotski was laughing as she took Ry’s arm and pulled him inside, leaving Zoe to follow. Anya leaned into him and her breast brushed his arm. A clue, Zoe thought, as bright as the neon palms outside the front door, that the two of them had a history, and she smiled to herself at the thought.

Z
OE LOOKED AROUND
at the potted palms, art deco stenciling, and the gilt on the cobalt blue walls and thought Humphrey Bogart would have felt right at home.

They wended their way through wicker chairs and small, round tables with crisp, white cloths, each table with its own little red-shaded lamp and onyx ashtray. Then crossed a small parquet dance floor in front of a slightly raised stage that was already set up for a jazz band, with the instruments out of their cases, the sheet music on the stands. Zoe didn’t see any musicians, though; in fact there wasn’t a soul in the place. But then it was early; things probably didn’t get hopping here until after midnight.

Anya Blotski led them through a swinging door in the back, down a short hall to another door, which she opened with a key. “This is the singer’s dressing room, but since I am the singer, I say you may use it. Please to make yourselves at home. That chest over there is really a refrigerator—clever, no? And there is vodka inside. Meanwhile, I go send for takeout.” She brushed Zoe’s cheek with a cool, dry hand. “Poor darling. You looked half-starved and blue with the cold.” Then Anya left on a cloud of Opium perfume.

The dressing room reeked of it. In here, Zoe saw, the decor was faux Turkish harem. The wooden floor was laid with overlapping Turkish rugs, the mirror above the dressing table was gilded, and there was a chaise longue loaded with beaded, fringed pillows. A samovar burbled on a nearby table.

“I should be doing the dance of the seven veils,” Zoe said.

Ry came up to her and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “You okay? You looked really wiped.”

She smiled, but she took a step back. She’d felt his touch all the
way to her toes, and she didn’t want to go there. She’d be a fool to go there.

“Apart from my insides feeling scrambled for an omelet, I’m fine. Only next time you go to steal us a getaway vehicle, would you mind staying away from the pizza bikes?”

His eyes crinkled up at the corners. “I could go for something classy, like a Beamer.”

“As long as it’s not silver. If I see another silver Beamer, I might just jump back into the Seine.”

“Isn’t your mother’s Beamer silver?”

“Thank you for making my point.”

He laughed as he went to the table with the samovar. She watched him pour tea into a pair of tall, curved Russian glasses, then place two sugar cubes on the little lips meant for that purpose. How did a guy named O’Malley come to speak better Russian than she did? And he’d played the part of a
vor
so well, he’d even fooled her mother, a
pakhan
in the Russian mafia. No way could he have picked that up in DEA school. There was simply too much she didn’t know about him—she’d be nuts to trust him. Okay, so he’d saved her butt multiple times today, but still …

She walked to the chaise and collapsed. The strap of her satchel cut into her shoulder. Her eyes felt gritty, and every bone in her body felt pulverized. Her stomach was now so empty, its growls were echoing.

She ran her fingers through her hair and they came away sticky. She couldn’t for the life of her … Then she remembered the wedding cake Ry had plowed into on their mad dash through the streets of Paris.

Ry turned around with the tea glasses in his hand and must have caught her smiling because he said, “What? You’re sitting there grinning like an idiot.”

She laughed. “I was remembering the looks on those two guys’ faces when you drove through their wedding cake. That was some wild ride you took me on, O’Malley. I thought—”

She was interrupted by a knock on the door, and Madame Blotski came in bearing a tray with silverware, glasses, and a half dozen white takeout cartons.

“From Igor’s deli,” the woman said. “We have chicken
tabaka
and pickled cabbage, and
kotleta
, which he promised to me is stuffed with lamb, not horse, so you need not to worry. The bread is pumpernickel. You like?”

“We do,” Ry said.
“Spasibo.”

Zoe’s mouth was suddenly so full of water, she was afraid she’d actually start drooling. “It smells wonderful.
Spasibo
.”

“You are most welcome. And, please, help yourselves to the vodka.” The woman set the tray on the chest that doubled as a refrigerator, brushed Ry’s cheek this time, and said, “Eat, eat. Meanwhile, I take hint you are too polite to give me and give you kids some privacy.”

Zoe waited until the door had shut behind her, then she looked at Ry and they shared a smile. “Us ‘kids’? What
is
this place, anyway?”

“The Casbah? It’s a nightclub that was started by some White Russian émigrés way back before World War Two, although it’s changed hands several times since then, obviously. Anya was a singer in a Moscow nightclub when the Soviet Union collapsed. She emigrated here and bought this place.”

Probably with a little
mafiya
seed money, Zoe thought, but she was too hungry to pursue the subject, even if it were any of her business. As she started to reach for a steaming carton that smelled of potato soup, she caught sight of the condition of her hands and shuddered.

A
S
Z
OE CAME
out of the bathroom, she saw that Ry had his back to her and was talking on his cell phone. She heard him say, “Yes,
pakhan
. No,
pakhan
,” before he flipped the phone closed.

“You were talking to my mother,” she said, suddenly feeling so sick that if she’d had any food in her stomach, she would have vomited.

Ry turned to face her, tucking the phone into his back pocket. “She thinks I’m working for her, remember? If I don’t check in every day, she’s going to get suspicious.”

“What—” Zoe’s voice broke, and she had to clear her throat. “What did you tell her?”

“That some guy tried to kill you last night, but I saved your life and now you trust me.”

“Is that what you think? That I trust you now?”

“I don’t know, Zoe. You tell me.” He heaved a sigh, thrusting his fingers through his hair. “Look, we need to talk.”

“I’d rather eat.”

“We’ll talk, then we’ll eat. You need to sit down, though. You look dead on your feet.”

Zoe could feel her anger and mistrust slipping away. She was almost too tired to care anymore, and besides, he was right about Anna Larina. Her mother was going to get suspicious if he didn’t call in.

She went over to the chaise while he pulled up a chair whose arms were carved to look like serpents and sat down facing her.

“Tell me about the altar of bones,” he said.

Zoe said nothing, just looked at him. His face was tight with strain and fatigue, but then he’d been the one whipping the motorbike in and out through cutthroat traffic, flower markets, and shopping galleries, while she’d just been along for the ride. And he’d gotten even less sleep last night than she had. She remembered him talking about having to hold her propped up under hot water so she wouldn’t die from hypothermia.

“I was thinking maybe we could arm wrestle to see who has to go first,” she said.

He blinked, looked at her dumbfounded a moment, then laughed. “You are the wackiest woman I’ve ever met in my life.”