It was said that Tikhonov’s remarkable rapid rise as a successful businessman was in large part due to his having served in Russia’s Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, the latest incarnation of the external spying and intelligence-gathering agency formerly known as the KGB. Being closely associated with high-ranking politicians in the Kremlin-powerful ones whom he had worked with in the SVR-did not hurt.
Nikoli Antonov was thirty-seven years old. Born in Russia, he was fluent in his mother tongue, but had no obvious accent due to his early years attending a Helsinki boarding school. He looked Western European, and dressed expensively, favoring custom-tailored dark two-piece suits with a crisp white dress shirt, no tie.
O’Sullivan had told Harris, “Mr. Antonov embodies Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘Speak softly and carry a big a stick.’ He can be quietly ruthless.” And that Antonov had been sent to Philadelphia by Tikhonov to get Lucky Stars up and running, and then was set to do the same in Macao, where Tikhonov was opening a new casino.
“Mr. Antonov,” O’Sullivan went on, “wants to have an acceptable explanation of what happened-and what’s been done about it-when Mr. Tikhonov is made aware of the situation.”
“He doesn’t know?”
O’Sullivan shrugged. “I don’t think so. At least not yet. Mr. Antonov is very selective about what he tells me. He’s good about just letting me do my job on the straight and narrow. And that’s why I wanted to let you in on something-and why I just said you were getting ahead of me.”
Harris raised his eyebrows, wrinkling his forehead.
“You’ve got my undivided attention.”
“As I said, Tony, Mr. Antonov prefers to deliver good news to his boss, such as how a problem was addressed and was no longer a problem.” He glanced up at the image of Hooks smirking at the Winner’s Lounge, then looked at Harris. “I know you have plenty of open cases you’re working. Homicide clearance rate is still about-what? — maybe forty percent?”
Harris nodded. “Sometimes a little bit better.”
“Still better than Camden’s thirty percent, huh?” O’Sullivan grinned, then added, “So if I were you, I wouldn’t put too much effort in this job.”
Silently, Harris, holding his right hand palm up, gestured with his fingers Give me more.
O’Sullivan looked him in the eyes.
“Okay,” he then said, “let’s say, hypothetically of course, that someone with a real motivation found this golden-voiced rapper first, and then recovered the merchandise, or what’s probably left of it, and then made an example of him to others who might think that if a dipshit like Hooks could get away with ripping off a casino, so could they. Go hit the one across the street, or any of the others in Philly or at the Shore.”
Harris narrowed his eyes.
O’Sullivan shrugged, and then said: “Ghetto punks are killing each other every day in this city, and there doesn’t seem to be an end to it.” Then he added, his tone dripping with sarcasm, “I’ve heard there’s even a name for it-Killadelphia?”
Harris pursed his lips, then nodded.
“Yeah. I may have heard that, too,” he said, adding his own sarcasm.
“That may be job security for you,” O’Sullivan said. “But when those ghetto punks bring their shit into my casino. .”
After a moment, Harris said, “Kind of hard to be surprised it happened, no? They built this fancy place with lots of money in the middle of a really rough part of town, not to mention right across the bridge from Camden. That’s like dragging a carcass of raw meat past a pack of starving dogs.”
“Tony, those animals this morning killed a poor bastard just trying to make a living selling watches. And they may have killed a beautiful, innocent young girl.”
After a moment, Tony sighed disgustedly.
“I hear you, Sully. And agree. But-”
“No buts,” O’Sullivan said sharply. “Being a wild dog, particularly a starving one, to use your analogy, usually does not end well.”
Harris raised his eyebrows again.
“That mean what I think it means? You’d be party to that, Sully?”
O’Sullivan shook his head.
“Not only no, Tony-hell no. You should know me better than that. Never. That’s why Mr. Antonov ordered me to give you everything you ask for-copies of the videos, everything-on the level. .”
His voice trailed off as his eyes scanned the room. Then he motioned for Harris to follow him across the room.
“Look, Tony,” he said quietly a moment later, “I’m going to do everything in my power to help you do your job. But that doesn’t mean other gears aren’t turning. I don’t know for a fact that they are-on my mother’s grave, I swear it-but I do know that I cannot control what others do. Just as you can’t.”
“And what do you mean by that?”
“Remember the Frankford Five guys? Shaking down the dealers they were supposed to be arresting? And then that rookie kid walking his Fifteenth District beat actually caught one of the dealers dealing, and when he cuffed him the dealer announced that he was untouchable, and why.”
“Yeah, and then the rookie, trying to do the right thing, told his superior in the Fifteenth.”
“And next thing the kid knows,” O’Sullivan picked back up, “the dirty guys are calling him a gink, and even though no charges stuck, the kid spent every day looking over his shoulder, then finally felt he had to quit the department.”
“I hate that gink term, Sully. The kid wasn’t ratting out those dirty guys. He did the right thing. Those scumbags got lucky that nobody believed the dealers, who kept changing their stories. That’s why no charges stuck, and why they kept their damn badges, not because they weren’t dirty.”
O’Sullivan grunted. “You’re right. Trouble was, the kid still paid the price. But it makes my point, and you and I’ve seen this, that things are not always black and white, not always that right and wrong.”
Harris met his eyes for a long time.
“We go back a long way, Tony. I’m just giving you a friendly heads-up. I’m not saying that I know something is going to happen to this ghetto punk-”
“The hypothetical one?” Harris interrupted.
“-this hypothetical punk,” O’Sullivan went on, “but no one would be surprised if the shooter and everyone else involved suffers the consequences of their actions. And-who knows? — worse comes to worst, you might just get them handed to you on a silver platter. Add one more to the closure rate, you know?”
Harris looked at him for a long moment.
“You understand, Sully,” Harris then said evenly, “that I’m going to have to share this with Matt Payne. And you know he has the personal ear of the white shirts with stars on their shoulders.”
“That’s right-Payne got himself promoted to sergeant, didn’t he? Passed the exam at the top of the list. Super-smart guy. I always thought the bastards who called him a Richie Rich playing cop were just crumbs being petty pricks. His old man and uncle were damn good cops.”
He paused, then went on: “Tony, I fully expected you to send what I told you up the chain-I certainly would do the same in your shoes-but now that I know it’s going to go to the Wyatt Earp of the Main Line, hell, that tells me the odds of this ghetto punk getting his due just got better.”
–
Five minutes later, Sully O’Sullivan, his arms crossed over his chest as he looked up at the security room’s wall of monitors, watched Detective Tony Harris walking through the revolving door and out of the casino.
O’Sullivan was not at all surprised to see Harris holding his cellular phone to his head with his left hand while he cupped his right hand over his mouth so that what he was saying could not be overheard.