Exit Strategy Part 11

Frances rolled her eyes and looked at me. "Bet you've never had that greeting before."

Maggie shooed us into the living room. As with the exterior of the house, one could see that great effort had been made to transform substandard housing into a warm and inviting home. An Oriental carpet, perhaps once worth thousands, now faded and threadbare in places. Jewel-toned pillows adorned an antique sofa and chair set, their upholstery patterns rubbed clean at the edges, their wood trim smooth with wear and shiny with polish.

Unlike at Evelyn's house, these walls bore no artwork. Instead, they were decorated with photographs. Picture frames were everywhere, covering the walls, the end tables, the fireplace mantel, frames of every description, from dime-store plastic to contemporary wood to silver antiques. A lifetime of memories.

"Coffee for Evie," Maggie said. "And you, dear? Coffee? Tea? Cold drink?"

"Coffee's fine, thank you," I said. "Cream or milk, please, whichever you have on hand."

"How polite. Evie, are you taking notes?"

Evelyn opened her mouth, but Maggie vanished before she could respond. I continued to look at the pictures, then zeroed in on an old one propped next to the telephone. In it, two young women grinned before Mount Rushmore. Maggie and Frances. I could tell by the smiles, which hadn't changed in the forty-plus years since the photo had been snapped. Age had favored Frances best. In the old picture, she was severe looking, her features too strong for her youthful face. And Maggie? She'd been jaw-droppingly gorgeous, with blond curls, dimples, flawless skin and a figure that could have body-doubled for Marilyn Monroe.

"A knockout, wasn't she?" Frances said. "Of course, she still is."

"Nice save, darling," Maggie said as she pushed through the kitchen door. "Time has not been kind to this old broad, but it got me what I wanted."

"An early and comfortable retirement," Frances said. "We didn't make a fortune, but we did well enough."

Maggie grinned wickedly and slid her fingers down Frances's arm. "That's not what I meant."

Frances blushed and dropped her eyes like a sixteen-year-old, then quickly grabbed two coffee cups from the tray Maggie had laid on the side table. She leaned forward to hand me one.

"Has Evie told you what we did in the old days?" Frances asked.

I shook my head.

Maggie held up a hand, motioning for Frances to let her explain. "A variation on the oldest and best female confidence scheme in the books. First, you find a lonely rich man...and believe me, all rich men are lonely. Then you send in someone who looks like that." She pointed to her image in the old photo. "She wrangles a private invitation back to his house, and makes sure the doors are left unlocked behind her. While she's busy cooing over c.o.c.ktails, in comes her partner and cleans the place out. Frances could pick a mansion clean in thirty minutes."

Frances grinned. "And Maggie could tease for thirty-five, so it worked out fine."

"Thirty-five? Darling, I could tease for sixty and do no more than peck his cheek."

Frances rolled her eyes. "Sixty? Remember that Swede? In Atlanta? If I hadn't-"

"I'm sure Dee and Evie didn't come to hear us reminisce," Maggie said. "How may we help you ladies?"

"We need to talk to someone who would have been with the Nikolaev family in the seventies. You still keep up with Peter, don't you?"

"We're going down to Florida next month to see him and Chance." She frowned at Frances. "Is it Chance? Or Enrico?"

"Doesn't matter," Frances said. "Since Ivan died, it's a new Chance or Enrico every time we meet him. Eighteen-year-old pool boys. Some men hit a certain age-straight or gay, it doesn't matter-they'll empty their wallets on the first flat stomach that comes along."

"But we don't need to call Peter to find you a Nikolaev contact," Maggie said. "Little Joe is in an old-age home outside Detroit."

"A retirement home?" Evelyn said. "Little Joe is Boris Nikolaev's brother, isn't he?"

"h.e.l.l of a thing to do to your own brother," Frances said. "But Boris never had much use for Joe. Not that I blame him. There was some scandal a couple of years back, Joe flapping his gums when he shouldn't have. Boris shipped him off to a fancy rest home. Joe was never the sharpest tool in the family shed, but if you're looking for someone to talk, he'll talk all right. Problem always was getting him to shut up."

"Will there be a problem getting in to see him?" I asked. "They'll have him under security still, won't they?"

Frances shook her head. "When the family puts someone out to pasture, he's persona non grata. They'll visit him, keep up appearances but, as far as they're concerned, he's out of the business. They won't tell him anything, so there's nothing he can tell anyone else. On current events, that is. The past? Well, no one cares much about the past these days."

Frances searched the Internet for private rest homes in the Detroit suburbs until she found the one that tweaked her memory. Then we took our leave and prepared for a trip to Michigan.

"He's an old man," Evelyn said as she pulled into a mall parking lot. "Flash him some T and A, and he'll tell us everything we want to know."

"Great," I said. "We'll find you a push-up bra and miniskirt."

She pinned me with a look. "After a certain age, all the push-up bras in the world don't help, as you'll discover. With a man like Little Joe, the horseflesh has to be young and it has to be firm."

"Did I mention I don't do Mata Hari?"

"Dee..."

"I'm not pulling some feminist bulls.h.i.t. I can't play the seduction card-I don't have the look for it. When I was on the force, Vice nabbed me once for undercover, stuck me in a microskirt and halter top, put me on the street corner. I looked like the world's only crack ho with a personal trainer."

"We can skip the microskirt."

"And the halter top?"

A sigh. "And the halter top. Let's see what we can find."

I folded my sandwich wrapper into quarters, tucked it into the take-out bag and folded that into a neat square. Then I leaned forward to shake the crumbs from my cleavage. Amazing what they can do with bras these days. Slap together some elastic and some underwire, toss in a couple of gel-filled "contouring pads" and I felt like I should be ticketed for false advertising.

Evelyn had picked out my sweater-a low-cut job that was 50 percent Lycra, 20 percent angora and 100 percent s.k.a.n.ky. She'd completed the ensemble with skintight jeans, ankle boots, red press-on nails and jewelry that clanked when I walked.

Back at her place I'd finished up with hair and makeup. I'd considered Jack's platinum wig choice, but it tweaked the outfit over the line to street wh.o.r.e. So I'd kept on Evelyn's long brown one, borrowed a curling iron and hair-spray, and teased the wig until it looked like what I'd worn for my eighth-grade yearbook photo-a sh.e.l.lacked ode to the era of big hair and heavy metal. Mafia bait. All I needed was a wad of bubble gum and a Jersey accent.

We'd taken turns driving, picked up lunch and arrived at Glory Acres just past three-thirty. The place had once been a home-a real one-occupied, undoubtedly, by a real family. It appeared to have begun life as a two-story Victorian but, like most of us, had spread with age. There was an addition here, a wing there, none of it the same style as the original building. Two skeletons of porch swings were propped against the house, seats and cushions gone. Burlap covered the shrubs and rosebushes. Birdbaths had been emptied and turned upside-down. A house in hibernation.

"I'll talk to him alone first," Evelyn said as we walked up the front steps. "I need to refresh his memory on some...past deeds of mine. So he knows I'm not conning him."

"Maybe you can get him to talk to you, skip my role altogether."

She said nothing, and I had the feeling it wouldn't matter if she could get Little Joe to talk-she'd still bring me in. Testing me. Or showing me who was boss. Probably both. Typical "new partner" bulls.h.i.t. One reason I liked working with Jack-he never pulled this c.r.a.p.

"It might take ten, fifteen minutes, so use the washroom, freshen up." She gave me a once-over. "Put on more lipstick. And pull the sweater down."

"If I pull it down anymore, I'll fall out."

"All the better."

"So what's my story?" I said as I pulled open the front door. "Your niece? Nurse? Tax accountant?"

"For occupation, we'll stick with the truth."

I stopped, the door half open. "Seriously? Dressed like this?"

"He'll love it."

FIFTEEN.

I waited in the atrium. The nurse had said there was a sitting room, but I preferred to stick close to the door, where escape was within sight. The smell is what did it to me, that unforgettable mix of disinfectant, overcooked vegetables and mortality that hits you in the gut and screams "run, while you still can!"

The last time I'd set foot in one of death's holding pens-sorry, "retirement homes"-I'd been thirteen, visiting my great-aunt Anna. The same Aunt Anna who'd sworn she'd die if her kids ever put her in a home. She didn't belong in a retirement home. First, she'd never retired, having run a cake-decorating business right up to the minute her kids stuck the For Sale sign on her front lawn. Second, though she was ninety-one, her brain was as sharp as ever, which was part of the problem. With her body wasting, she needed live-in help and she could be difficult. When the third nurse quit, Aunt Anna's children gave up and put her in a home. Two weeks later, the old woman's prediction came true. She died. There's a moral in there somewhere. I think it's "don't have kids."

Evelyn came to collect me about ten minutes later.

"Now, he knows what you are," she whispered as she steered me down the main hall. "But I didn't give a name. Don't use Dee. That'll be your official name and we don't want him knowing that." She stopped outside a room and grasped the handle. "We could go with-"

"I've got one," I said and pushed open the door.

The door opened into the living room area of a hotel size suite. A couch, a chair, a coffee table and art prints on the wall, all very Holiday Inn, reasonably new, but definitely bargain-bas.e.m.e.nt quality. A decent enough place to spend the night...but the rest of your life? I fought back a shiver.

A man sat in the chair, his back to the door, affording only a view of a liver-spotted bald head. He stood as we came in. I blinked, and hoped my surprise didn't show. He was three inches shorter than me, and I was only wearing one-inch heels. With a name like Little Joe, maybe this doesn't seem surprising, but blatant irony is the favored form of criminal nickname humor. Any guy with the words "tiny" or "little" in his moniker was certain to be six feet plus. Obviously the Nikolaevs didn't share the usual sense of mob humor.

Like many undersized criminals, Little Joe had over-compensated in the weight room. He'd pumped iron for so many years that even now, stuck in a rest home, his biceps would be the envy of a man a quarter his age. He had, however, neglected the lower half of his body, which left him looking like a balloon character squeezed from the bottom, a ma.s.sive chest topping spindly legs. His eyes were sunken brown dots that glittered when he saw me. He smiled, revealing a perfect set of fake pearly whites.

"Is this her?" he asked, his gaze dropping to my chest and staying there.

"Jess," I said, stepping forward and extending my hand. "But my friends call me Jezebel."

He wheezed a laugh. "I bet they do." He vice-gripped my hand. I squeezed back and he fairly licked his lips, eyes never rising above my neckline. "I bet you are very good at your job, no?"

"The best. No one ever complains."

I extricated my hand from his and sashayed to the sofa. Evelyn tried to take the seat beside me, but Little Joe slid into it with the speed of a twenty-year-old.

"Now this, Evelyn, this is how a hitwoman should be," Joe said, waggling a finger at her. "Not dressing up like a man, running around, shooting people. She must be subtle. Use her a.s.sets." A sidelong look at my "a.s.sets." "Yes, this is how it should be."

I wriggled like a praised puppy. Joe sidled closer.

"Evelyn tells me you're a very important man," I said.

My use of the present tense didn't go unnoticed. Joe preened and regaled me with a few glimpses into his former life. As he talked, I was aware of time ticking past, but also knew this wasn't someone who could-or should-be rushed into answering questions. I took my cue from Evelyn, who settled into her chair as if not expecting to rise for a while.

Little Joe was the older brother of Boris Nikolaev, long-time head of the Nikolaev family. To hear Joe tell it, he'd voluntarily abdicated his role as heir because he didn't want the responsibility. My guess was that he'd been pa.s.sed over, like a Fortune 500 CEO's screw-up son-given a big corner office and invited to all the meetings, but never asked to actually do anything.

After about a half-dozen surprisingly boring mob stories, Joe made the segue himself.

"So you girls need help, you come to Little Joe. This is good. I may be old, but I can still help. You said it was about a former a.s.sociate of my family?"

"A man who worked for you. Leon Kozlov."

"Kozlov?" Joe's face screwed up and I expected him to make the connection with the Helter Skelter victims, but instead he said only, "From the seventies?"

"Late seventies, maybe early eighties. He seems to have parted ways with the family. Kicked out, probably. His fortunes didn't exactly improve after he left you."

"Kozlov. Leon Kozlov."

Joe's eyes rolled back, as if searching his mental files. Then he turned his head and spat. Didn't just make the motion. Actually spat. Fortunately, in the opposite direction. He muttered something in Russian. I didn't need to know the language to know it wasn't a compliment.

"The Fomin hit," he muttered. "Sasha Fomin."

Evelyn frowned. "Kozlov was a hitman? I don't think-"

"No, no. Kozlov, he was not a hitman. He was security. A bodyguard. Not for the family, but for our a.s.sociates, people we wanted to protect. Only he didn't do so good a job."

"So this Fomin got whacked on Kozlov's shift?" I said.

Joe squeezed my thigh. My upper thigh. Upper inner thigh, to be precise. I resisted the urge to squirm back into the sofa cushions...or break his fingers.

"Smart girl," he said, kneading my thigh. "I said she was a smart girl, no?"

"How did the hit go down?" Evelyn asked.

"Hit-and-run. Looked like an accident, and this Kozlov tried to tell us that is what it was, but we were not fooled. The Nikolaevs know accidents. Remember that senator? From Texas? Now that, that was genius. First, we-"

"About Kozlov," Evelyn said. "Do you remember anything else about him?"

Joe puckered his lips, obviously displeased with being cut short. I turned toward him, pulling my elbows in to spring my b.r.e.a.s.t.s up closer to the old man's face. His eyes zeroed in on target, lips smoothing in a smile. I inched back before my cleavage caught drool.

"Did you know Kozlov well?" I prompted.

A snort. "As you say, he was not an important man. Not important enough for me to know." He hesitated. "But, if you wish to know more, there was a man who worked for us, was friends with this Kozlov. Volkv. Nicky Volkv."

"Any idea where I'd find him?"

"More than an idea. You will find Mr. Volkv is a guest of the state, serving a life sentence for murder. Like Mr. Kozlov, he did not do so well after he left our organization."

Evelyn found out where Volkv was being held, then she thanked him and rose. "You've been a great help. If there's ever anything I can do for you..."

Little Joe turned his gaze on me. All over me. He grinned and opened his mouth, but I pressed my finger against his lips.

"I don't think you're ready for that," I said. "You look like you still have a lot of good years left ahead of you."