“Got one for you,” he began. “A detective goes into a bar.”
“Yeah?”
“And comes out with a clue.”
“I’m listening.” By reflex, she flipped to a clean page in her Clairefontaine notebook. Feller liked to clown around, but Heat knew he wouldn’t have called unless it mattered. Did it ever.
“There’s kind of a dive spot around the corner from Beauvais’s flophouse. I know it’s early in the day, and all, but I thought I’d go in and see what kicks. So the bartender doesn’t seem to want to talk but wants to at the same time; you’ve seen those types, right?” She had. “So I noticed there were some guys at the bar, chins over their beers, who he may not want to share in front of, so I ask him if he could come outside and give me directions to the BQE. When I get him alone, sure enough, he knows Beauvais from the neighborhood and says one night about a week ago he comes in about last call, acting like he’s drunk, but he’s not. He’s got blood on his shirt, and says he’s been shot.”
“Did you say shot, as in gunshot?”
“One and the same. Beauvais says no 911 call, refuses a trip to the ER, but remembers the barkeep has a friend who’s a doctor.”
“Did you get a name?”
“Already spoke to him. And guess what? He’ll cooperate,” said Randall Feller, keeping his record unassailable as Nikki Heat’s most-esteemed street cop. “I’m heading there to interview him now.”
“I want to be there when you do. I can be there in half an hour.”
“He’s on Cortelyou near East Sixteenth.” He gave her the street number, repeating it for clarity. “Look for the Klaus’s Auto Parts store.”
“The doctor’s next door?”
“Negative. That’s where he works. Ask for Ivan.”
En route to Brooklyn, Heat tried calling Alicia Delamater to give her a chance to clarify her statement that Fabian Beauvais had injured himself with hedge clippers. Or, more to the point, to present Gilbert’s neighbor-mistress an opportunity to recant it and come clean about her lie. She got no ring, just an insta-dump to voice maiclass="underline" “This is Alicia. Away for a while. If it’s urgent, call this number…” Nikki called it and got her attorney.
Vance Hortense of Hortense, Kirkpatrick, and Young sounded like the male version of Siri when you asked your iPhone to do something off the menu. His tone was neutral, dispassionate, and unaccommodating — which, to Heat, might have been a better name for the law firm. “Ms. Delamater has left the country.”
“Where did she go?”
“Somewhere she is out of touch.”
“Did she leave a number where I can reach her?”
“I’m sorry, she didn’t.”
“Are you saying you wouldn’t know how to reach her if you had an emergency?”
“If she checks in, I’ll pass on your request.”
“Do you expect her back soon?”
“I can’t say.”
And won’t, she thought.
“Please, I am not in trouble, I hope,” said Ivan Gogol. His eyes, which were set in meaty lids under a constellation of moles, darted nervously from Heat to Feller. “A man need help, is all, so I help.” His palpable fear in a police interview reminded Nikki of every Cold War-era spy movie Rook addictively Netflixed where the KGB breaks a hapless citizen in two while he confesses to anything they want.
“Let me put you at ease,” Heat said in as reassuring a way as she could. “Your cooperation is quite appreciated. We are not here to investigate you, but simply to hear about your experience with this man.”
He took another look at the photo of Beauvais and nodded, relaxing only slightly in his chair. Under the fluorescent lighting of the cluttered office the auto parts manager had let them use, his beard seemed like a dark blue tattoo beneath his pasty white skin. He had told them he was thirty-eight, but his baldness added twenty years. Or maybe it was the toll of a life spent in paranoia.
Her first question felt obvious but, knowing it was an inherent stressor, she approached it offhandedly. “I was surprised when Detective Feller said to meet you here.”
“This is my work. How I pay my way,” he said. “In St. Petersburg, I left medical academy knowing to be doctor of medicine, yes? But when I come to United States, the, what is it…? The criteria…for doctor license not so easy. In Russia, I would have own clinic. Coming here to be with my wife, surprise. I drive cab or work this. Someday I take board exams and have practice in Brighton Beach.”
“So you aren’t technically a doctor,” said Feller, and Ivan’s eyes started darting again. She jumped in.
“Which makes your service to friends who can’t afford doctors so admirable.” She paused while he took out a cigarette and then put it back in his pocket. “Is that how the man in this picture came to you?”
Gogol recounted the late-night call from the bartender, all the details matching up with Feller’s source. “So I dress and get my satchel to drive to the bar where this man, Fabian, is in the back kitchen. He is in pain and not well.”
Heat asked, “How severe was the wound?” Feller had taken a cue and taken a seat beside the desk to observe.
“The wound itself not life threat. He had stopped own bleeding with compression like this.” Ivan held both palms to his rib cage and pressed. “But skin is very thin at ribs and many nerve endings radiate from spine. Very painful.”
“What kind of bullet was it?” And then she added with anticipation, “Did you keep it?”
“Was no bullet. The wound slice like a cut. Slice, not puncture, you see?” Feeling more in control of things, he tore a blank off a Klaus’s Auto gummed pad and drew an anterior outline of an upper torso. To her surprise, his sketch was precise and expert, neater than some drawings she had seen in autopsy files. He added a slash where the bullet struck Beauvais.
“A graze.”
“That is it, graze. But close to heart. Was lucky man.”
For a while, anyway, she thought. “Did you talk at all?”
“Da. His accent make hard, but yes,” he said in his own variant of English.
“Did he say who shot him?”
Both detectives studied him as he shifted in the seat. “No.” Then Ivan fixed his stare on his little drawing and he fussed with it, smoothing down the page with the side of one hand. The silence unnerved him and he filled it.
“All he tell me was earlier that night somewhere in Hamptons.”
“Did he tell you exactly where?”
“Mm, no.”
“In a bar, a house, in the street?”
“I do not know this.”
Feller joined in. “What town?” All he got was a shrug from the Russian before he went back to fiddling with his sketch, which he then slid to Heat as an offering.
“Help me understand,” she said. “Did he not see who shot him, or did he not say?”
“I did not ask him so many questions as you ask. This is best, I think.”
It struck Nikki that she was getting about as far with him as she had with Alicia Delamater’s lawyer on the drive over. Same obfuscation, the difference being the fear she sensed from Ivan Gogol. Was it his own nature or was it the plight of the immigrant to be ever wary, careful beyond measure? Or was he hiding something? “I want you to know that you can share anything with us without worry.”
In response, he stood. “I must go back to work. I have carburetors to deliver.”
One last try. “Fabian Beauvais was murdered. Whoever did that is still out there.” Nikki watched that sink in as she gave him her business card. “If you remember anything more, call me anytime, day or night. I will help you.” She smiled but he broke eye contact and left the room.
When Heat and Feller stepped out onto the sidewalk, Ivan was waiting by their cars. “When I finished stitching his wound, this Fabian left but came back in. He said there was a car and he waited for it to go. He was very scared. He said he wanted to tell me who did this in case something happened to him. And now you say something did?”