“Who?” She seemed genuinely perplexed. What she didn’t seem was frightened. Cynthia, out in the open, had been more edgy than this. The woman seemed tired, as if she’d run out of gas well back down the road.
“He was one of the boys who worked for Cody Aldred.”
“Cody, yes. He was blond man?”
“Yeah. He was a blond man.”
“Ah. I am sorry for your loss. I did not have opportunity to know him.”
“What happened, Miss Luka . . . What happened at the roadhouse?”
“You are not policeman?”
“No. I drive a cab. Willette used to be a boxer. I used to be a trainer.”
“Like father and son, no?”
Meyers leaned against the jamb. “Not really, no.”
She nodded solemnly. “But you feel you have duty to his memory.”
“Something like that, I suppose.”
“I understand. I even share your sentiment. If you would like a drink, I have vodka in icebox.”
He shook off her invitation. “How’d you end up at the roadhouse?” he wanted to know.
She hissed smoke. “Circumstance. I am wanting to meet a man I’ve heard of, but to do so I find I must first entertain this Cody.”
She didn’t look at him, but off across the room as she spoke. He decided Cynthia was right—something boiled just beneath this dame’s cold surface. She spoke more English than she’d pretended, too. “So you came all the way from Estonia to work for Drozdov?”
Her look stabbed him, but just as quickly she covered herself by leaning down and tapping her cigarette on the ashtray again. “Mr. Drozdov, he promises to help young women to escape Eastern bloc. Promises job. Promises life.”
“You know he’s selling you into prostitution, right?”
Her lips curled. “Oh, yes, I know. I have no illusions.” Again she stared at him. “None. My sister, however, she did not understand this.” This time when she leaned forward, she smashed the gray cigarette into a blob.
Hair prickled on the back of Meyers’s neck. All of a sudden, he knew she’d killed Cody Aldred. Killed all of them. She must have accomplices, must have let someone in—he couldn’t figure it any other way. He also had a pretty good idea what had happened to her sister. Glancing into the doorways again, he tried to figure how it was she’d been left by herself. Maybe her pals couldn’t get near her now. “You know the police are watching your house?”
“What? They mustn’t. They mustn’t interfere!” She got to her feet. She was tall as a coat rack.
Bingo, he thought. He replied, “Interfere with what?”
A buzzer went off beside the kitchen doorway. Meyers saw the metal switch plate on the wall, but the woman walked to it and pushed the black button on the plate before he had time to react. That would be the cops, and they would not be enthusiastic about his presence. In fact, chances were, he was in trouble. “Maybe I will have that vodka,” he said and pushed past her into the kitchen. A big tin icebox stood beside the doorway. He found the vodka on its side in a small compartment directly below the half-melted block of ice. He grabbed it by the neck, hefting it. Just in case.
Footsteps came up the stairs and into the apartment. Meyers leaned back against the kitchen wall, listening. The woman said something and then a man answered, but he wasn’t speaking English. His voice sounded pleasant, even friendly. Not cops, then. He had a pretty good idea who it was instead.
There was a back door to the apartment off the kitchen, and as the voice got louder, coming deeper into the apartment, Meyers crept around the icebox and very cautiously opened the door.
A man was standing there. He and Meyers looked at each other. The man’s hands were deep in his coat pockets, and he smiled as Meyers took this in, said, “How about we go back inside, pally. Nothing down in this alley but rats.”
Meyers nodded and closed the door. When he turned around, two other men stood in the kitchen doorway. He walked back to them, and set the vodka onto the counter next to the fridge.
In the other room a third man, with thick features and a large mustache, stood beside the woman. He beamed at Meyers. “Very nice work on that copper—you have excellent skills,” he said, his accent subtle. “All we had to do was tap him to keep him dreaming a little longer.”
“Sounds like it’s not his night.”
“Indeed. Now, you will please accompany us and Yuliya.”
“Why?” she said sharply. “He’s nobody to do with this. He is wanting to buy my time.”
The man glowered at her. “You know that is a lie, my dear. What casual john eliminates police officers for a trick? Mr. Drozdov will want to hear what he says, as do I, even now.” His eyes slid back to Meyers, who tipped his head as if to say that it was all fine with him. The mustached man held Yuliya Lukachova’s coat for her. Then two of the men led the way out and down the stairs with Meyers and her sandwiched in between.
——
The Packard drove into a loading bay in a warehouse on Front Street. The air reeked of sour refinery, so the wind must have been blowing in from the west. At least it masked the fish stink of the Delaware, which wasn’t more than a quarter mile away past the warehouses. They walked by shredded cardboard cartons, broken pallets, and piles of newspaper that were probably used as packing material. Meyers wondered what they manufactured and shipped out of here.
The first time he’d ever seen Pankrat Drozdov was the night he’d fought Mickey Darren at Convention Hall. It was one of Herman Taylor’s bouts, a clean fight. He’d KO’d Darren in the seventh. At the time he didn’t know he just had three fights left before his inner ear went. That night he had only the memory of a dark-haired man with the face of a shark and an entourage of six, which included a woman on each arm. Drozdov had stood out, as he intended.
The next time was after Kid had thrown his fight. Meyers knew the Russkie had been behind it—some kind of bet had been placed. He supposed he should have credited Drozdov for picking Kid up afterward and giving him the job with Cody. Except Drozdov was the reason Kid needed the job, and the job was the reason Kid was dead.
Drozdov had some gray at his temples now, but he was still lean and hatchet faced. This close to him, Meyers realized it was the eyes that made him like a shark. They were black and empty, eyes that calculated how you were going to taste.
He sat at the end of a large, scarred wooden table surrounded by oak chairs, the kind Meyers remembered from high school. The table had leather straps nailed to the side of it at all four corners. The men sat the woman down beside Drozdov. One of them walked off into the back. The other two flanked her. Meyers wasn’t offered a seat. A new man, nibbling a toothpick, sidled up out of the shadows and stood next to him.
“Well, well,” Drozdov said. “A long time it’s been since Darren went down. How have you been, Gospodin Meyers?”
“Well enough.”
“Vasily here tells me you’ve taken up our cause against the police.” Meyers shrugged. Drozdov leaned forward and took hold of Yuliya’s chin. His fingers closed on her jaw like a vise. “What is it you want with our lovely sister here?”
“Sister?”
Drozdov chuckled. “Oh, not my sister, Meyers.”
The look in her eyes wasn’t just from pain, but fearful recognition. Drozdov was letting her know that he knew everything. He drew his hand back. She reached up to rub her face.
“I was asking her about Kid,” Meyers said. “Because she was with Cody at the roadhouse.”
“You see?” Drozdov waved at Vasily. “A simple explanation. And it’s true. You can tell when someone’s telling the truth, you know?”