Domino (The Domino Trilogy) (31 page)

“
Rostovich is Ukrainian.”

“Russian, Ukrainian, same difference.”

Not if you ask Peter,
I thought, but figured that wouldn’t add anything to the conversation. “So you hung out as teens, then. What originally drew you to one another?”

“We were both interested in art,” Darling replied. His tone softened and he seemed to relax a bit. “Peter liked to draw and take pictures with an old Polaroid camera. I was more of a connoisseur. I was a student at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and wrote an arts column for the paper. Peter was a dropout who basically spent all his time wandering around the city drawing and taking pictures, and engaging in his side businesses. I
met him hanging around the neighborhood and then profiled him for a story I wrote on New York teens who were leading unconventional lives. We just sort of hit it off from there.”

“So you’ve stayed in touch for all of these years, then? Tell me a bit about that.”

“We stayed in touch off and on. Not always, but we managed to connect at least once a year. Peter’s work took him off to a lot of exotic places, and sometimes he just likes to disappear and be unconnected. Though he has a large circle of acquaintances, he doesn’t have many close friends. He’s a loner. It’s part of his personality, and also a big part of his creative process.”

“Would you consider yourself one of Peter’s close friends, then?”

A pause. “I did once. I’m not sure I do anymore.”

“Why?”

Another pause, longer this time. “Because I no longer feel that I can trust him.”

“Go on.”

He heaved a sigh that blew static across the phone lines. “Once upon a time, Peter Rostovich was one of the very few truly authentic people I ever met,” Darling said, which surprised me. “Even back when we were kids, he lived life entirely on his own terms, and refused to let anyone else dictate what decisions he made or what path he chose. He was true to himself, always. And because of that, I knew I could rely on his honesty. He wasn’t forthcoming like most people I knew, he held a lot back---but what he did give you was always solid gold genuine. I respected that. Still do. But I don’t respect what happened at my gallery last week. Not at all.”

“Would you say the, ahem, incident was out of character for
Rostovich then?”

“Yes. Completely out of character. Peter never loses control of anything. Everything he does has a distinct purpose. That’s why I don’t believe him when he says those two models did what they did entirely on their own.”

“I see. So you really believe that the, ahem, public sex act was planned?”

“I do.”

So now we were getting somewhere. This was plenty juicy, and in more ways than one---assuming I could actually print it in a family newspaper publication. “And what makes you think that? Besides Rostovich’s past history of honesty, I mean.”

“Because it’s classic Peter. He’s always been about pulling stunts, ever since we were kids. This was
just another stunt, he did it for attention. Only it brought attention to the wrong person. Namely, me.”

“How is the incident going to cost you and your gallery?”

“Well, it got us shut down, obviously. I’ll have to pay a fine. And I won’t be able to court buyers for the works. I was really depending on this show to turn the gallery’s fortunes around. Cleveland’s economy isn’t exactly very good at the moment, and the art scene here is practically nonexistent.”
That led me to another question I’d been antsy to ask. “Why open an art gallery in Cleveland in the first place? You’re from New York, what drew you out here?”

“That’s kind of a long story.”

I wasn’t letting him off the hook. “So tell it. I’ve got all day.”

“Aren’t you the girl that Peter tied up at the opening and then passed out?”

Oh, so he was trying to take control of the interview now. He must have been taking media-handling lessons from Peter. “Why is that relevant to our conversation?”

“Just answer the question. I won’t give you the information you’re looking for unless you do.”

“Fair enough. I was indeed tied up by Mr. Rostovich and I did indeed pass out at the opening. But that has no bearing on how I’m approaching my story. I’m a professional.”

“I find that extremely hard to believe.”

That jolted me. Just like Peter had, Richard Darling was taking control of the interview and making it about me instead of him. But I humored him, because I thought it might help me get the information I was really after. “Why do you say that?”

“Because Peter
Rostovich doesn’t take that kind of interest in just any woman, let alone a woman he’s just met.”

“Oh? Do you know a lot about Mr.
Rostovich’s personal life, then?”

“More than most.”

“Tell me what you know.” I wanted to know for myself even more than I did for the article.

“Peter is a man of unusual tastes,” Darling said. I heard classical music switch on in the background, and the whistle of a teakettle. Both good signs---it meant he was settling in for what would hopefully be a long and productive interview. But I wasn’t sure I’d want to know what he had to say.
“I’m guessing you’ve already found out more about just what those tastes are on your own. Am I right?”

My stomach did a little flip-flop. “What exactly are you implying?”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Peter Rostovich over the years, it’s that whenever he goes directly for something----especially if that something is a woman----it means he wants it, wants it badly, and will do anything to possess it.”

I really did not appreciate being referred to as an
it
, but for the sake of reporting I let it go. “I see. And what does he typically do to possess these, ahem,
things
that he wants?”

“Well, I think what he did to you at the gallery opening is a prime example. He makes it impossible to escape.”

I mulled that over for a moment. “So you’re saying he’s done this sort of thing many times?”

“Not exactly. Honestly, I was very surprised when I saw that he’d captured you with the cable ties, for lack of a better term. I’ve never seen him do anything quite so literally before. No, usually when
Rostovich wants control over someone or something, he uses a much more subtle approach. But it’s just as effective as what he did to you. Trust me.”

Aha. And now I knew we were getting to the crux of what made
Rostovich tick. “Give me an example of what you mean.”

“Many years ago, when I was still in college and just getting my career off the ground, Peter did me a favor. A rather large favor. Ever since then, he’s used that to great effect whenever he wants something from me.”

“Such as?”

“It was two things, really. One, I was in the spring semester of my senior year at Sarah Lawrence. My
grandparents had fallen on hard times and found they couldn’t pay for my last semester. Sarah Lawrence is a very expensive college, one of the most expensive in the country. I was facing the very real possibility of dropping out of school with one semester to go, which would have jeopardized any chance I had of finding a job on graduation. I’d been hoping to get an assistant curatorship at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but that wasn’t looking promising at the time. My grandparents bounced my tuition check and my trust fund allowance dried up in the same month, and I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from. On a whim, I called Peter up. I hadn’t spoken to him in almost a year because he’d been travelling. But he got right back to me. And he bailed me out.”

“How so?”

“He paid my tuition bill, sent me some money to tide me over, and set me up with a part-time job at a gallery in Brooklyn that went full-time after I graduated. And I did end up eventually getting a position with MOMA thanks to Peter’s connections, too.”

“Was the money a loan or a gift?”

“It was technically a gift, but it came with strings attached.”
“Such as?”

Darling had a coughing fit then. The classical music in the background dipped in volume, and I heard the glugging of a teakettle being emptied. “Sorry, I seem to be coming down with something,” he sputtered once the coughing stopped. “Been a rough couple of days.”

“That’s fine. But you didn’t answer my question.”

A pause. He was struggling with this, I knew.
“Ever since Peter took care of what we came to call ‘the little snag,’ from time to time he called on me to help him with various things.” I noticed then that Darling’s voice had taken on a different tone. Softer, and yet edgier at the same time. “Things mostly not related to his art, but his business dealings.”

“What sort of business dealings, exactly? I’ve tried getting that information out of Peter, but he’s always been very sketchy about it.”

“Peter engages in a kind of international finance that very few people understand,” Darling replied. “I don’t entirely understand it myself. Many immigrant communities, especially those from the former Soviet Union, avoid using banks. Instead they move money back and forth around the planet in rather unconventional ways. One way they do it is by moving cash around through couriers. Another way is by using cash to purchase something on one end of a transaction, moving those goods to the other end of the transaction, where those goods are sold, then the cash is handed over to whoever requested it. Peter calls those alternative wire transfers.”

“It sounds a lot like money laundering.”

“I know it does, but it’s really not. It’s perfectly legal as long as certain criteria are met. But sometimes whether those criteria were met came into question, and that’s where Peter would use me and my skills to help him.”

“Go on.”

“Quite frequently, the merchandise being moved in these alternative wire transfers was fine art,” Darling explained. “Peter would bring me in to appraise the art and ensure it was genuine.  Sometimes it wasn’t. There were a few transactions where people on the Russian and Ukrainian side of things tried to pull fast ones on the people on the other end.”

“What happened then?”

“I’m not privy to how those people were handled,” was his rather evasive reply. “I just authenticated the goods. But I can assure you, whoever tried to do that suffered severe consequences.”

“Up to and including death?”

“I wouldn’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised, either.”

“Were you paid for your services?”
“Not always. Most of the time I did it as a personal favor to Peter. I did owe him that, and more.”

“I see.”
As juicy as all of this was, it still seemed way too innocent. “Were there any other types of transactions that you were involved in?”

“Yes, a few.”

“Tell me about those.”

Another coughing fit. “This is where it gets sort of sticky,” he said once he regained control of his voice, which by now had gone downright raspy. “Some of these other transactions weren’t exactly on the up and up. While technically legal, I wouldn’t call them ethical.”

“Oh?”

He cleared his throat several times. “Are you familiar with the Russian mail-order bride industry?”

I cringed. “I know about it in concept. Can’t say I have any personal experience with it, though.”

“Well,
again, it’s a legal industry as long as certain criteria are met, though the Department of Homeland Security and immigration officials watch it very closely. Peter sometimes had me look into some of the, ahem,
shipments
---for lack of a better term---that customers ordered via a mail-order marriage broker based in Queens.”

“Shipments? You mean women?”
“Yes. In order to be compliant under U.S. immigration and human-trafficking laws, mail-order brides must be met first by the interested U.S. citizens in their home countries, so a relationship can be established before they are brought here for marriage. The mail-order customers choose their desired brides from photographs in books or online, then begin a correspondence, then eventually fly over to Moscow or Kiev or Sevastopol or wherever their desired ladies happen to live. They have to meet overseas, and have documentation that they’ve met and made marriage arrangements that are then filed with the immigration department for approval, otherwise the U.S. authorities won’t let those women into the country.  That’s how it’s all supposed to work on paper, anyway. But---“

“But it doesn’t always, does it?”

“You’re right, it doesn’t. Sometimes the women who were actually shipped over didn’t match the photographs and documents sent over with them. Sometimes the so-called same woman was sent over with the same documents ten or more times. These women weren’t there to get married, they were sent over for other purposes. Peter asked me to evaluate whether the women who actually arrived matched the photos the marriage brokers and the immigration authorities had on file.”

“Who was the client that Peter had you do this for?”

“That’s the thing---I never knew. I didn’t know if he was doing it for the marriage broker, for the shipper, or for the government. He’d never say. It was my job to evaluate the women versus the photographs. I found than as much as ninety percent of the time, they didn’t match, and made my reports accordingly. But I never knew what Peter---or his client ---did with that information. Nor do I know what happened to the women who were essentially being shipped over here illegally. But Peter was very deeply involved in the whole process. It always bothered me, but I didn’t have any hard evidence he was doing anything wrong. He may have actually been doing something right, but with Peter it can be hard to tell sometimes.”