“It’s not okay,” I said. “How come it took you so long to tell me where she lived?”
“You didn’t seem interested.”
Inside the tiny studio apartment was a bed, a dresser, a table, a tiny kitchen behind a curtain, a bathroom. It was a furnished room, and all Masha had added were a couple of posters of boy groups she must have liked.
In the closet were her clothes, jumbled together, some on the floor, some stuffed into shelves or on cheap wire hangers. Hard to tell if she’d been messy like a kid or somebody had come here to look through her things.
“Look for her clothes,” Sonny Lippert had said.
“You still didn’t find her clothes, right? The stuff she had on when they killed her?”
“I have four guys working on it,” said Bobo Leven. “I told them to leave the stuff here until we looked at everything.”
I pulled out some shoes, a bag, a jacket. There were expensive things in the girl’s closet. The kind of things I expected Val to wear, or her friends. There was no pink dress, no pink party dress with sparkles on it.
“What was she wearing when she was murdered?”
“Nothing,” said Bobo. “At least nothing when the tape was removed.”
“You think they killed her in the playground, taped her up there?”
“Probably not. Too risky.”
“So what happened to her clothes?”
“We’re looking, like I said. You have some thoughts?” he said.
“Yeah, look for a pink party dress. Let me know.”
Between us we worked over every inch of the place, her clothes, the make-up in the bathroom, a few paperback books, her iPod, a tiny pink address book. I scanned it, there were names of a few friends, city agencies, bars. Bobo said he had seen it, had it copied, put it back. Send me a copy, I said. Nothing in it, he said.
I wanted to get to the envelope Tito Dravic had left me, wanted the résumé he had promised me, and the tape, Masha Panchuk dancing.
“What about this?” Bobo held up a small roll of duct tape he’d found in the bathroom.
“Probably somebody used it for sealing the window when it was cold. Anyhow, it’s black.”
“Yeah, right, this is a fucking waste of time,” he said.
“Get somebody from your station house to go over the place again, okay? In detail.”
“Yes, Artie, of course.”
On the street, Bobo on his phone, I went in to thank Moe and give him my number in case anything came up.
The weather had turned sultry. Humidity clung to my skin. It had been a long day, and now I felt I was fighting the air that was like syrup on my skin, heavy, thick, cloying. Music played out of car windows as guys rolled along Coney Island Avenue. Rap. Rappers call it music. I call it shit.
“I have to go,” I said.
“You don’t get it, do you? You don’t know anything.” He snapped his phone shut.
“What about?”
“These people, Artie.” Bobo was looking to pick a fight with me. I let him talk. “My cousin Viktor was fighting in Chechnya against these assholes. You have any idea what that was like for a Jewish boy from Moscow? If all young soldiers get beat up, all new Jewish soldiers get double beating, one for being Jewish, one for being from Moscow.”
“What’s it got to do with the Chechens?”
“You don’t know shit some of the time, pardon me, Artemy. Over there in the former USSR, they would like to kill all the Jews, except maybe one for each province. You remember that old saying about how every Russian governor always had one Jew for show. A Show Jew, Artie. But you don’t remember,” said Bobo. “You think the guys at my station house feel different?”
“Well, then, fuck them, too. Get over it. I’m not having you alienate half of Brooklyn because you hate Muslims, okay? You zip it up, Bobo.”
“I’m Russian. I’m also Jew. You have a lot of towel-head friends, Artie?” His tone was mild but the words were aggressive.
At the center of this string bean of a kid with his shambling walk, his punk haircut, was a determined, ambitious cop. And angry. He was learning fast. Before long he’d stop taking shit from anybody, including me.
“So, Artie. Here,” he said handing me a card. “I also found this in the apartment. In the medicine cabinet.”
Natasha Club, it said. The best in Russian Women.
“What is it?”
“Mail-order brides, you say, I think. Or whores.”
“There’s something else?” I said to Bobo.
“Yeah, something else. I want to tell you what it was like at home, okay? Caucasians from down there from the Caucasus, they come to Moscow, they take over most of the market stalls, they’re dirty people, and they blow up stuff in Moscow. Apartment buildings. Subway stations. What the fuck are they in Moscow for? And here, now they’re here, in Brooklyn, and how come they make their women wear those bags over their heads?”
I ignored him. He was baiting me and I had no intention of fueling his rage. He could get over it or he could fuck off for all I cared.
“How well did you know the dead girl?” I said.
“I knew Masha a little. She was great dancer. Always twelve guys hanging around for her.”
“Fine. I’m not going to ask how come you didn’t tell me you knew her in the first place or what shit you know about Dacha, the club, just find out who they were, the twelve guys, also the girls she knew. Get me some hard information.”
“Not twelve exactly.”
“I get it. I get it’s not exactly twelve, but however many.” I was impatient. “What else?”
“Once we eat on the boardwalk on Saturday night, a group, seven, eight friends, we just sit out and watch the ocean and talk. Masha was there.”
“Write it down. Send me an e-mail.”
“Artie?”
“Yes?”
“You ever wonder about the m on Masha, the one somebody made with a knife?”
“The lab’s been looking at it all along.”
“You wonder what it stands for? You think it stands for Masha?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“What about Mohammed, what about this guy Moe?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, but he’d planted the seed of doubt into my head where it could take root.
Bobo’s car was at the curb. He unlocked the door.
“I’m on it,” he said, his voice turning chilly. “You don’t have to bust my balls.”
“Very nice car,” I said. “You got it where?”
“My parents.”
“Your parents are doing so well?”
“Fuck you.”
“Give it a break, Bobo. Relax.”
“No, I don’t want to fucking give it a break. My pop opened another dry-cleaning place. Why? You think because my parents are living in Brighton Beach, they’re crooked? Because I’m living at home I’m in on some game, too? I stay there to help out with my mom who has arthritis bad, right? The car was a present, right? It was my birthday present.”
“Forget it.”
“No. Let’s discuss. I take a lot of shit from you, okay, so I learn this way. But some stuff it’s not okay. Not okay that you think I take money in some way unclean, you know? Not all Russians are corrupted bastards,” he said in English and then switched to Russian, his voice very cold and very low. “You think that all of us are just creeps, I know that, Artemy, I know how you think, you always show it to me, one way or the other. You’ve turned into an American, so for you Russians are gangsters or religious nuts, you’ve forgotten your country, and I don’t care about that, but get off my fucking back. I’m not your kid.”
“Calm down,” I said.
“Sure.”
“One more thing, Bobo.”
“Yeah?”
“You slept with her? You slept with Masha? You had something going on?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Standing near my car, I opened the package I had taken from the house in Brighton Beach and found a videotape, and a few sheets of paper. I scanned them, and then yelled for Bobo Leven who was climbing into his car. He shut the door and jogged over to me. I held out a piece of paper. He took it, read it, grunted.