Genie for Hire (8 page)

“Like I told you, I saw him last night at the Marouschka.
And then he showed up at Sveta’s studio this afternoon and smacked her around,
even though she gave him the digital files he was looking for.”

“He was gone by the time you got there?”

“Yeah. He told Sveta he didn’t believe they were the only
copies, and he wanted more, even though she swears she doesn’t have anything
else. I told her I’d look for some way to get Ovetschkin off her back.
Fortunately he told her he was going out of town, but he was she better have
the files for him by tomorrow.”

“Motherfucker. Somehow I doubt he’s planning to come back.
May have sent the little woman on ahead of him, to get her away from the
boyfriend.”

While Jimmy called his office, Biff opened his laptop and
connected to the free Wi-Fi. He had a contact who was an experienced hacker in
England, and the man had sold Biff a couple of different programs that were
useful when looking for missing persons. The program which tracked flight lists
had an icon shaped like an airplane, which swooped and dove around his monitor
while the search ran. It took nearly a minute for it to discover that Kiril
Ovetschkin had flown from Miami to Managua, Nicaragua that afternoon. There was
no record of a return flight, though that didn’t mean anything.

He looked over at Jimmy, who was still talking. “I want to
know where Ovetschkin went,” he said into the phone.

“Managua,” Biff said.

Jimmy looked at him. And Biff turned the laptop to face him.
Jimmy peered at the screen, and then read off the flight details. There was no
indication that Douschka was on the flight with him, and there was no record of
her flying anywhere else.

He turned back to Biff. “What do you figure Ovetschkin was
doing in Managua? Another arms deal?”

“You’d have to ask Hector Hernandez. That’s out of my
wheelhouse.”

“Jesus, Biff. You mean there’s something you don’t know? I’m
stunned.” Jimmy sat back in the leather armchair. “You’ll let me know if you
find out anything about where Ovetschkin is? I definitely want to talk to him
about this murder.”

“You been to his condo?”

“Nobody home. And no search warrant yet.”

“Bummer.” Biff, however, needed no such formality, and since
he was already so close to the Ovetschkins’ condo, he thought it was worth
paying them a visit.

“I’ll call you, Jimmy,” Biff said, and left the cop
finishing his coffee and making phone calls.

The Odessa was just a block farther down Collins. As he
walked up the steep curving driveway of the glass tower built on top of a
parking garage, he heard a woman complaining in a heavy Russian accent.

“I should not be waiting for my car,” she said. “I am
calling you ten minutes ago.”

“Sorry, ma’am, but we’re short-handed,” he said, holding the
door to a Cadillac Escalade for her. “Usnavy died last night and we haven’t
been able to hire a new guy yet.”

Jimmy had obviously already been there and talked to the
staff.

“Is not my problem,” the woman said, climbing into her SUV.
“Next time, I want car ready. Yes?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The valet closed the door. Biff saw him give
the woman the finger behind his back as she drove away.

Waiting until the valet was busy unloading groceries for an
elderly woman and her Jamaican aide, Biff slipped into the mirrored lobby,
which had been designed to resemble the reception area of the Winter Palace in
St. Petersburg. It was lined with gold columns with Corinthian capitals and
square bases, with a massive chandelier in the center of the room. The floor
was marble, and the room was rimmed with a balustrade around a second-floor
mezzanine. A few hundred years before, during the reign of Catherine the Great,
Biff had attended a ball at the Winter Palace while spying on the Russian army
for Emperor Selim III, and wasn’t impressed with the imitation.

The concierge, a young Haitian woman in a faux-military
uniform, sitting  behind a half-round desk, was involved in a long Creole
conversation about a boy who had cheated on her. Biff waited until she was
rummaging in her desk for a tissue, and walked quickly past her. Once inside
the elevator, he discovered that it required a key card to operate. He opened
his wallet and extracted a plain white card similar to a hotel room key. He
held it between two fingers for a beat of about fifteen seconds. Then he
inserted it in the slot for the 23
^rd
floor.  The number 23
illuminated on the panel and the car began to rise.

He stepped out of the elevator and into a small marble
foyer. The massive double doors ahead of him were locked and dead-bolted. He
focused his third eye on the interior of the apartment, scanning to be sure
there was no one inside. When he was confident that it was empty, he
transformed into a puff of smoke and slid through the tiny gap between the
doors. “So much security, and so easy to breach,” he said when he resumed his
human form.

Ahead of him was a vista of ocean framed by sliding glass
doors that led to a balcony. The furniture had the sleek lines of expensive
Scandinavian design, all blond wood and black leather, with glass coffee and
end tables with sharp edges. He stood there and sniffed the air, surprised to
find so little trace of human habitation. It was as if the apartment had been
professionally cleaned within the last day or two.

He walked slowly around the living room, with his senses
open. Strong emotion often left an impression on the inanimate objects in a
room, even the dust motes that floated in the ar. He had often been able to
intuit when arguments had taken place, when two people had been in love, when
there was fear or apprehension. But this room was strangely empty.

He stepped into the kitchen, where the top of the line
stainless steel appliances looked like they had never been used. Nothing had
been cooked in there for some days, and the garbage can was empty.

Biff began to get irritated by the lack of information to be
found. The only trace of skin cells was one that led from the front door to the
master bedroom, and that appeared to belong to Kiril. As he followed the trail
he sensed the faintest traces of several different perfumes, which confused him
until he followed the scent into the dressing area, where he found bottles of
Ralph Lauren’s Notorious, Joy by Jean Patou, and Fauborg by Hermes. But the
most recent scent was several days old.

The bed had been slept in, the simple black and white
comforter  thrown back. But there was only one body’s impression, and only
Kiril’s skin cells remained.

Biff looked at his watch. He’d been in the apartment for at
least a half hour, and he had no idea when Kiril might return. He had to get
moving.

He turned to the huge walk-in closet. Douschka’s clothes
were a collage of designer labels in small sizes, zeroes and twos, and she
favored very high heels. Her lacy silk underwear came from La Perla, her
accessories from Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Hermes. A few gold rings, necklaces
and bracelets were kept in a jewelry box on the vanity in the dressing area.

The single item out of the ordinary was a frayed polyester
housecoat in a garish floral print, folded and stowed on a high shelf. The
label was in Cyrillic, and from the fabric he could tell it was older than he
knew Douschka herself to be. A souvenir of Russia? A memento of a dead
relative? Surely if Douschka had left for good she would have taken something
with so much meaning with her.

Kiril’s scent was much stronger than his wife’s, and after
prowling the rest of the apartment it was clear to Biff that she had not been
there for a few days.

So where was she? Had Kiril sent her away? On vacation, or
back to Russia? Wherever she had gone, she hadn’t taken much with her; a
complete set of Louis Vuitton luggage was in the master bedroom closet, and
there were no gaps in her wardrobe to indicate clothing taken away.

Biff stood in the middle of the bedroom, opened his third
eye, and tried once again to focus on the emotional frequencies in the room.
Had Douschka and Kiril had argued in the bedroom? Had she left in haste?

There was anger there, certainly. Yet it appeared to be all
one-sided. From the wavelengths, which were mostly masculine, Biff assumed that
Kiril had been the one with the anger. The only emotions Biff could sense from
Douschka had been happy, so if there had been a confrontation with Kiril, it
had happened elsewhere.

Frustrated, Biff left the condo. The elevator responded to
his summons, and he rode it down to the lobby, nodding to the concierge as he
strolled across the marble lobby. Outside, the weather mirrored his mood—it had
turned gray and ugly, and as he drove north on A1A the rain swept in, nearly
horizontal showers that blasted against the car windows. Within minutes the
water began pooling in shallow places along the curbs and where hotel driveways
met the street.

Gale-force winds attacked his tiny car, threatening to push
it across to the next lane. Biff held tight to the steering wheel and plowed
ahead, his focus on driving. The flooding reminded him once again of Farishta.
He had seen her run out into thunderstorms with her arms spread wide open, her
face up to the sky, her hair streaming out behind her, soaking in the rain.

By the time he reached the Aventura Beach Shopping Center,
the wind had eased, but the rain was still heavy. He opened his glove
compartment and pulled out a square of heavy-duty rubber, about two inches on
each side. He balanced it on the top of his head, closed his eyes, and focused
his energy on it.

The rubber grew and stretched, draping itself over him until
it took on the shape of a raincoat, complete with hat, face mask, gloves and
galoshes. He looked something like a beekeeper or an undersea explorer, he
thought, as he clambered out of the Mini Cooper and lumbered across the parking
lot, into the dry safety of his office.

Once inside, he closed his eyes and refocused. While the
square of rubber resumed its original shape he also spelled the tile floor dry
where he had dripped on it. Then with a sigh he sat back down at his computer
with one hand on the lamp for power, and the other on his computer mouse, for information.

Biff had dealt with enough criminals over the centuries to
understand how they thought. He could tell from his few interactions with
Ovetschkin that the man looked at people as either strong or weak; that was a
classic part of the career criminal mentality. Right now, he must see Sveta as
weak. So it was up to Biff to shift the balance of power and make Ovetschkin
fear harming her.

But what was Ovetschkin afraid of? Losing his money? His citizenship?
Being arrested for arms trafficking? Physical attack?

He remembered Ovetschkin’s deference to the man called The
Professor, and how Hector Hernandez had described The Professor as much bigger
than Ovetschkin. How could he invoke The Professor’s power to protect Sveta?
And who was this guy, anyway?

He turned to his computer, but a nickname wasn’t much to go
on. He tried every database he had access to, but he had no luck finding any
information about the man online. Frustrated, he stared down at his desk,
looking for inspiration.

Instead he saw the application from the chiropractor’s
office. He sighed and picked it up, and began running the records checks. By
the end of the day, he had a report together for the doctor. The applicant, a
young woman born in St. Kitts but raised in Fort Lauderdale, had a juvenile
record which had been sealed, and two arrests for disorderly conduct, both of
them involving a woman she suspected of dating her boyfriend. She also had two
traffic tickets for speeding and was in danger of losing her license.

Not the best candidate for a job which gave her access to
sensitive patient data. Sophia was right. Maybe she should be a private eye.
Biff printed up a report and an invoice, but it was too late to deliver it to
Dr. Oppsal.

The rain had stopped and the skies were clear. He drove back
down to Sunny Isles Beach in search of information about The Professor as the
sun dipped over the horizon in a flare of orange and dark blue. He went back to
the Starbucks where he had seen Natasha and her mother, then prowled every
Russian-oriented business he knew. He dropped hints to clerks and even asked
outright questions, but he came up empty-handed everywhere.

He ate dinner at a Russian restaurant in the same shopping
center as the Bolshoi Gym, eavesdropping on every conversation around him, in
Russian and English. The effort was exhausting, and he learned nothing but the useless
aggravations of everyday life, issues that passed through his brain like summer
breezes.

By the time he returned to his townhouse and climbed the
stairs to his bed, he was no closer to any information on The Professor, or any
other way to protect Sveta Pshkov from whatever Kiril Ovetschkin decided to do
to her.

After his fruitless attempts to find a way to protect Sveta,
Biff slept restlessly, and after a run the next morning he returned to his
office. He carried the invoice down to Dr. Oppsal’s office. The waiting room
was full of elderly men and women in Easter-egg colored jogging suits, though
he was sure none of them ever actually jogged. A woman with a high bun of pink
spun-sugar hair was at the window arguing with Sophia. “How can you make two
nine o’clock appointments when the doctor only has one pair of hands?” she
demanded.

Biff slipped the paperwork past her and onto Sophia’s desk,
gave her a two-fingered salute.

“I gotta get my adjustment,” the woman said, as Biff was
backing away. “I’m leaving on a cruise tomorrow morning.”

As he walked back to his office he wondered what was it
about the woman’s statement that had sparked a synapse in his brain to fire.  Cruise?
Cruising? Cruise control? Was someone going on a cruise? Something about a
boat?