The Devil's Garden (19 page)

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Authors: Richard Montanari

BOOK: The Devil's Garden
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“Let’s go.”
TWENTY
A
leks stood in the hallway on the second floor. On the walls were enlarged photographs of Michael and Abigail Roman and their two adopted daughters. One had them standing on a beach somewhere, tall sawgrass tufting through the sand all around them. Another had them all looking down into the lens, as if the photographer was in a hole of some sort. Yet another, when the girls were quite small, showed them standing between Abigail and Michael, against a brick wall. The girls barely came up to the adults’ knees, and the photo was cut off at the parents’ waists. It was clearly meant to be amusing, to show scale. The girls were much taller now. It made Aleks consider how much time had passed since he had ridden down to the Keskkülas’ farm that dark night, how much time had passed since the midwife had found him and told him that Elena had gone into labor early.
He stood in the doorway to their room. There were two beds. The walls were pastel pink; the windows and doors had white trim. The furniture in the room – a nightstand between the beds, a low dresser, a pair of desks – were all white as well. The room was tidy, considering the occupants were four-year-old girls. There was the odd toy on the bed, a sweater folded on one of the desks. Beyond these things, the room was arranged with a casual precision.
In the far corner was a table with four little chairs, a table bearing place settings for three.
The room smelled of powders and fruity shampoo. On the walls were posters and drawings. The posters were of someone called Dora the Explorer. The drawings were of Valentines and shamrocks and Easter eggs.
He crossed the room, opened one of the drawers in the dresser. In it were neatly folded little T-shirts, rolled socks in shockingly bright colors. The second drawer held small plastic purses, folded nylon knapsacks, and two pairs of white gloves.
Aleks reached into the drawer, held the gloves in his hand, closed his eyes, felt their presence within him, saw the women . . .
. . . standing by the river, eternal, caught in that ephemeral beauty that knew neither youth nor age . . . at their feet the clear water runs . . . the ceaseless cycles of life. He sits on the nearby hill, flute in hand, his pride boundless. As everything around them is birthed and dies, generations flitting by in seconds, they remain the same. Above them, a light in the deep violet sky. Olga, never seen, always present . . .
T
HE MASTER BEDROOM
on the second floor overlooked the front of the house. It was tastefully, if not expensively decorated. A four-poster bed, a dresser with an LCD flat-screen TV on it, an exercise bike in the corner. This room was not quite as tidy as the girls’ room. It had the look and feel of people who lived their lives in a hurry.
Aleks went through the drawers. It seemed Abigail had control of the top three drawers in the dresser; Michael the bottom two.
The closet was packed with suits, shirts, skirts, dresses on wooden hangers. The shelves were crowded with boxes containing folded sweaters and vests. The top shelf held a box full of photos and memorabilia. Aleks removed the box, placed it on the bed.
He flipped through a pair of photo albums – Michael and Abigail at their wedding, their honeymoon, at Christmas and birthday parties. The second photo album was dedicated to the girls. On the first page was a large photo of Anna and Marya in a crib, in what looked like a doctor’s office. They were no more than a few months old. Aleks tried to recall this time in his life, the first year or so after the girls had been stolen from him. The fury he felt was never far from the surface. The rest of the album was of the girls on the beach, the girls in the backyard, the girls on their tricycles.
At the bottom of the box was a scrapbook of sorts. Near the back of the book he found a series of articles about Michael. The longest article – indeed a cover story – was from
New York
magazine, dated five years earlier. The title on the front:
A QUEENS PROSECUTOR ESCAPES DEATH TO PUT GANGSTERS AWAY
Aleks flipped to the table of contents, scanned it, then turned to the article. On the left-hand page was another photograph of Michael Roman, this time leaning against a car on a New York side street. Aleks began to read. The lead was typical fluff, but it was in the fifth paragraph that Aleks found something that fascinated him, something he had never expected.
Mr Roman, 30, has served as an assistant district attorney in Queens County for five years. Born in Astoria, he is no stranger to the world of street violence. When Roman was just nine years old, his parents, Peeter and Johanna, were murdered in a botched robbery of their shop, a specialty bakery called Pikk Street on Ditmars Boulevard.
A graduate of St John’s Law School, Roman came to work for the Queens County DA’s office in 1999, and since that time has prosecuted a number of high-profile cases.
Aleks’s eyes skimmed down the page.
Investigators believe the car bombing was the work of the Patrescu brothers in an attempt to delay the trial. Incredibly, in the blast that destroyed half a city block, Mr Roman received just a few minor wounds.
Aleks looked at the photograph of the bombing. The car was a charred shell; the building behind it was all but rubble. It reminded him of many of the city streets in Grozny. It was truly stunning that the man had not been killed. A miracle.
And that’s when it occurred to him. The man who had taken care of Anna and Marya all these years, the man whom his daughters called Daddy, was just like him. Michael Roman had faced the devil and walked away unharmed.
Michael Roman, too, was deathless.
TWENTY-ONE
I
n the backyard, Abby talked to the girls. She saw the fear in their eyes, but she did her best to allay it. The young man stood at the back of the property, smoking a cigarette. The one who called himself Aleks – the one who claimed to be Charlotte and Emily’s biological father – was still in the house. Abby could not see him, but she could all but feel his predator’s cold eyes on her.
For the moment, the girls still looked concerned, but not nearly as frightened as they had before. “Everything is okay, guys. There’s no reason to be scared.” Abby wished she knew this to be true. “Okay?”
The girls nodded.
“Are we going to Britanny’s house?” Emily asked.
Brittany Salcer was a babysitter two streets over. She also babysat for her own sister’s twin boys, who were just over three years old. “Not today honey.”
“But why?”
“The boys have a cold. Brittany doesn’t want you guys getting sick.”
“Are you going to the hospital?”
The hospital was in fact the Hudson Medical Clinic, an urgent-care facility on Dowling Street. When they had moved from the city Abby had tried to hang onto her job as an ER nurse at Downtown Hospital, but the commute – an hour each way, not to mention the expense – was killing them. Her work at the clinic was not nearly as challenging, but she had fallen into a rhythm there. Throat cultures, lacerations, flu shots, skinned knees – what the job lacked in challenge it more than made up for in satisfaction.
“No,” she said. “Not today.”
Abby suddenly saw movement to her left. She noticed that the young man at the back of the yard noticed as well. A flash of bright red in the woods behind the house.
Abby glanced over. Zoe Meisner was walking through the woods, down by the creek. Her golden Lab Shasta was following a scent. Abby saw the dog stop, glance up the hill, nose high in the air. Was he picking up the scent of the young man? Of Kolya? In a flash the dog came bounding up the hill, churning leaves, kicking dirt, vaulting over logs. Zoe called to Shasta, but the dog did not heed her.
Zoe – she of the outrageously bright floral gardening smocks and even more outrageous floral perfume – noticed Abby and the girls and waved. Abby lifted a hand to wave back, but stopped herself. If she acknowledged Zoe, maybe the woman would take it as a reason to walk up the hill for an over-the-fence hen session. On the other hand, if Abby didn’t acknowledge her, she might come over to see why. Abby waved back.
A few seconds later Zoe started to walk through the woods, up the hill, to the Roman house.
Shasta was already romping with the girls.
Abby saw the young man at the back of the yard toss his cigarette, stand a little straighter. His eyes flicked from the big dog, to the woman walking up the hill, back. He unbuttoned his jacket.
Inside the house, the curtains parted.
No, Abby thought.
No
.
TWENTY-TWO
J
oseph Harkov’s apartment was a third floor walk-up on Twenty-First Avenue, near Steinway. According to the report, Joseph Harkov worked night shift at the MTA station at Broadway and 46th Street.
Michael and Tommy stood across the street in a Super Deli, watching the entrance. Michael had met Joseph Harkov twice, but that had been a few years ago, and only in passing. He wasn’t sure he would remember the man if he saw him.
At just after one, Joseph Harkov walked out of the front door. Michael pegged him instantly. He looked like a younger version of his father and had already taken on the old man’s bent posture, although he was probably only in his forties. He waited at a bus stop on the corner for fifteen minutes or so, every so often dabbing his eyes with a tissue, then boarded a bus.
Michael and Tommy waited five minutes. Joseph Harkov did not return. They crossed the street, and entered the building.
The hallways smelled of frying foods, disinfectant, room deodorizers. The sound of soap operas poured out of more than one room.
Tommy Christiano had developed his techniques of breaking and entering as a street kid in Brooklyn. He perfected them as an undercover officer in the 84th Precinct before taking night law classes at CUNY.
Within seconds, they were inside.
V
IKTOR
H
ARKOV’S BEDROOM
spoke of age and despair and loneliness. It contained a chipped mahogany dresser and a single bed with rumpled, soiled sheets. On top of the dresser were a pair of framed photographs, nail clippers, a pair of uncancelled postage stamps, cut from envelopes. The closet contained three suits, all an identical featureless gray. There was one pair of shoes, recently resoled. On the floor were a stack of folded, plastic dry-cleaning bags. Viktor was a saver. Michael’s mother had been the same way. Even something like a dry-cleaner bag had some worth.
“Mickey.”
Tommy Christiano was the only person who called him Mickey, the only person allowed. And he only called him that when something was important.
Michael went out into the living room. Tommy had the bottom drawer in the kitchen open. In it was a rubber-banded stack of 3.5 inch floppy disks, and a small stack of what were either CDs, or DVDs.
“Look.” Tommy held up three of the floppies. They were coded by year. The third disk was labeled
TAYEMNYY
2005. “Any idea what this means?”
“I think it means ‘private’ in Russian. Maybe Ukrainian.”
“Private files?”
“I don’t know.”
Tommy looked at his watch. Michael followed suit. They’d been in the apartment more than ten minutes. Every minute they lingered put them in jeopardy of getting caught.
Tommy glanced at the old computer in the corner of the living room. “You know how to make a copy of one of these?” he asked.
Michael hadn’t worked with floppy disks for a few years, but he figured it would come back to him once he got in front of the computer. “Yeah.”
Tommy handed him the 2005 disk, and a blank. Michael crossed the living room, sat down in the old desk chair in front of the computer. A puff of dust rose into the air as he sat down. He turned on the monitor, pressed the ON button on the old Gateway desktop. The boot-up process seemed to take forever. As the screens scrolled by, Michael realized he had not seen DOS prompts in a long time.
As he waited, Tommy walked over to the window overlooking 21st Avenue. He parted the curtains an inch or so.
When the screen finally reached the desktop, Michael inserted the disk. Moments later, he clicked on the file that read
TAYEMNYY
. The file opened – launching a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet program. Michael’s eye scanned the data. His heart began to race. It was a list of adoptions from 2005. The list was only six entries long. Michael knew that Viktor Harkov brokered dozens of adoptions each year. This was a separate list. A private list. This was a list of people who had adopted illegally. He scrolled down.
There. He saw it.
Michael and Abigail Roman
. So there
was
a record, a record separate from the legal record.

Mickey
,” Tommy said.
Michael looked up. “What?”
“Powell just pulled up across the street.”
Michael pushed the blank floppy into the 3.5 drive. He heard the hard drive turn, heard the disk click into place. Each click was a beat of his heart.
“She just got out of the car,” Tommy said. “She’s headed this way. Fontova’s with her.”
Michael watched the progress bar move glacially to the right. It seemed to take forever.
Tommy tiptoed across the room, put his ear to the door.
“Let’s go,” he whispered.
“It’s not done yet.”
“Just take it then,” Tommy said. “Let’s
go
.”
Michael looked at the remaining disks in the drawer. He wondered what data was contained on them. Were there back-up files of the disk he was trying to copy? This was more than simple breaking and entering, he thought. Making a copy was one thing – no one would ever know – but taking the actual disk was a felony. They were stealing someone’s personal data.
There was no time for debate. He popped the disk from the drive, then unplugged the computer. It shut down with a loud whirring sound, one Michael was sure could be heard from the hallway.

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