Traffyck (27 page)

“I did not mean to trap you. I’m simply doing my job, and you are doing yours.”

“I am supposed to say that,” said Smirnov, looking tired and annoyed.

“You have my deepest apology, Agent Smirnov.”

Smirnov stood and paced back and forth in front of his window as he spoke.

“The symbol, or something roughly like your drawing, has shown up elsewhere. One instance was the murder of a doctor at a Podil female clinic. Another was the bombing of a clinic in Berezovka north of Odessa. In the former case, the symbol was drawn on a stairway using the victim’s blood. These attacks on female clinics and so-called adult bookstores are of great concern. Perhaps a group involved in trafficking has merged with some sort of vigilante organization. We have no evidence of a Mafia connection. And so far, involvement with a religious group is not established. Yet everything is being considered. Any information you provide will be greatly appreciated.”

“Exactly what does an
X
inside a circle mean?” asked Janos.

“I do not know,” said Smirnov. “In the US, abortion clinics have been bombed, and I am concerned Ukraine has spawned an underground group that takes orthodoxy into the realm of the underworld.”

“An Orthodox Mafia?”

Smirnov turned to Janos. “It is a good description. And now we must find out the who, where, and especially the when of the next attack.”

“You want my help?” asked Janos.

“I ask for your cooperation,” said Smirnov.

“What kind of investigations are your men involved in?”

Smirnov shook his head, smiled a wry smile. “You are truly a
private
investigator, Janos Nagy. I tell you everything. You tell me nothing. And for your information, my men, as you call them, are not all men. We also have female investigators. Times have changed. The SBU is not the KGB. In those days, you would be in a basement cell instead of in here.”

Janos took his notebook from the desk and pocketed it. “I appreciate your candor, Agent Smirnov. One fact I can add to the stew is that Mariya Nemeth’s husband, Viktor Patolichev, apparently used the same symbol when referring to the unnamed orphanage in which he was raised. Other than this, Patolichev’s past is obscure.”

“I know you have stayed the night at Mariya Nemeth’s apartment,” said Smirnov. “Therefore, I ask that you reveal any information you may gain.”

“You have my word, Inspector Smirnov.”

“One more request,” said Smirnov. “Please avoid disturbing Father Rogoza.” Smirnov pointed toward the ceiling. “He has contacts above my proletarian position in the SBU.”

“I understand,” said Janos.

When Janos left the building, he looked up and saw there were many floors above the one he had visited. As he drove down Khreshchatik Boulevard, he wondered about the SBU’s relationship with the Moscow Patriarchate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Janos made several turns down side streets. Although he looked in his rearview mirror, he was not worried about being followed by the SBU. He did not even bother looking for the dark blue van that had followed him to SBU headquarters. Soon, without even thinking about it, Janos found himself driving toward Mariya Nemeth’s apartment. On his way, he passed the entrance to the zoo and thought of Mariya as a creature more wild than anything a zoo could hold.

Perhaps Mariya Nemeth was the woman all men were in search of. Perhaps, in her own way, she was the ideal woman. Enticing, yet dangerous. Simply put,
perfect
.

After Janos Nagy was gone, Smirnov stood at his window realizing he had been doing this more frequently. Standing at his window looking down at people, each person with unique goals. Perhaps Anatoly Lyashko, head of the main SBU Directorate for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime, had
his
own agenda … Lyashko, who recently seemed to be living by his own rules and was perhaps a bit too interested in Nagy.

Smirnov wondered if Lyashko had men following Nagy. Lyashko could play his own games out of his upper office without Smirnov knowing. Lyashko could easily direct Smirnov back down the ladder if he wanted. Smirnov knew he must call Lyashko immediately and tell him what Nagy knew about the symbol. If Lyashko found out some other way—and he could, with Nagy flashing the drawing around—there would be another one-sided conversation.

While he punched in the phone number, Smirnov remembered Lyashko saying the Kiev militia agreed to keep the symbol drawn in the doctor’s blood out of the news because it would cause people to worry about religious involvement. As the call was going through, Smirnov thought of his men being watched by Lyashko’s special agents. Insane. The side streets around Mariya Nemeth’s apartment house probably running out of parking spaces. Even the Mafia could be watching if they were back in the trafficking business instead of running their strip clubs.

While the phone rang, Smirnov wondered how much he should tell Lyashko. He wished his old friend Sergei Izrael from National SBU Academy had not told him about the possibility of Janos Nagy’s office being bombed by someone with connections to Father Rogoza. Smirnov felt he knew too much and might let something slip. He needed to be careful while speaking to Lyashko, not to think of Sergei Izrael, with his bushy hair as thick as the hair on a black bear—because secrets shared between them could bring out the wrong words.

But when Lyashko answered the phone in a guttural slur, when he heard Lyashko’s incoherent voice, Smirnov stopped worrying about knowing too much and felt it was time to begin acting on his intuition. It was a turning point. Something was wrong with Lyashko. Smirnov had spoken with him often enough to know this.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

It took two days to find Viktor Patolichev’s old boss. Janos might never have found him if Shved’s militia friends had not helped, saying even though Shved had quit the militia, they respected him and wanted to help find who killed him.

Pavel Uszta, originally from Odessa, had abandoned his Kiev adult video business. Some said he was forced out because of activities that trod on local Mafia territory. Some said he’d been part of the Mafia and quit. There had been an attempt to kill Uszta, which resulted in a poorer life, but one with less chance of his body floating down the Dnepr River. No one knew why Uszta did not simply return to Odessa.

It was Friday morning with much activity at the produce wholesale market. Trucks and vans from Kiev’s restaurants and grocers were filling up with supplies for the weekend. Because of trucks parked in the middle of the street, Janos parked on a cross street, and it took several minutes to reach the address he’d been given. When he arrived, after breathing truck fumes and dodging handcarts, he was forced to dodge a large head of lettuce thrown at him.

Janos asked a boy hauling crates of lettuce on a two wheeler about Pavel Uszta. The next thing he knew, a man looking like the photographs of Uszta, which Shved’s friends had given him, let go with the lettuce from behind a waist-high stack of crates. Janos ran around the crates and chased the man through a narrow warehouse and up to a back room door, which slammed in his face. When he tried the door and found it locked, he was grabbed from behind.

The boy he had asked about Uszta was a tough teenager, bone and muscle, arm clenching Janos’ neck.

He spun around, but the boy hung on.

“Niki?” a voice shouted through the closed door.

“Go, Papa!” shouted the boy, obviously Uszta’s son.

Janos elbowed the boy hard, hot breath and spit showering his neck.

“Niki?”

Janos dropped to his knees, turned, grabbed an ankle, pushed hard on Niki’s knee, tipping the wiry boy off balance. Janos had his pistol out before the boy bounced back.

“Papa!” shouted Niki. “A gun!”

“Wait!” shouted Janos. “Do not bring a gun out here! I simply show it to calm the boy!”

Janos saw several workers looking in from the dock—two of them old yet hardened, Mafia hit men venturing out of retirement—but no one moved toward him when he raised his pistol so they could see it.

“Uszta!” shouted Janos toward the closed door. “I’m neither Mafia nor militia. My name is Janos Nagy! I’m a private investigator! Please come out or let me in! We will talk, and I will leave! Implore your boy not to move! I hate guns, Uszta! They waste energy and life!”

No one moved.

“Uszta, if I were Mafia, would I have fucking walked in here?”

The door opened, and Uszta came out, hands clearly visible. He closed the door gently behind him. Uszta gave in like one who had done this many times, knowing the correct moves to exhibit to a man whose finger is on a trigger. Uszta was in his fifties, bald, a scar on his upper lip attempting to hide behind his bushy moustache. Uszta told his son to put the onlookers back to work and to go to the open front of the market stall and wait.

Janos put his pistol away, and he and Uszta sat on cool crates of lettuce.

To hasten the interview, Janos told Uszta everything he knew about the adult video business and the Mafia and that he knew Uszta had gotten Viktor Patolichev into the business. He told Uszta he was investigating Patolichev’s death and Patolichev’s recent wife, Mariya Nemeth, was his client. He promised Uszta he would not repeat his name during further investigations unless he received permission from Uszta himself.

“Enough, enough!” said Uszta, waving his hand. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything in Patolichev’s past that would make someone want to kill him.”

Uszta shook his head.

“Please, Pavel Uszta. You were his boss, then his partner. Perhaps Patolichev took a fall for you on unfinished Mafia business. Is that it?”

Uszta smiled a nervous smile and pointed to his lip. Then he lifted his shirt and showed the scar of a bullet wound. “I paid in full for my dealings. Viktor Patolichev was not involved. After we severed our ties, he was on his own.”

“What about before you knew him? Did he ever speak of threats to his life? Did he ever speak of nightmares?”

Uszta looked around, shook his head again. “Now you want to speak of nightmares?”

“What else should I speak of?”

“You must be aware of Aleksandr Vasilievich Shved dying in the fire.”

“Of course. He was a good friend. This is part of the reason I took the case.”

“I assumed so,” said Uszta. “Even if you did not know him, I assumed an ex-militiaman would know about Shved.”

“One thing I do know,” said Janos, staring at Uszta. “Shved would never have died in an accidental fire while eyeing sex videos. In fact, I know the opposite to be true. The reason for Shved being there was to investigate something.”

Uszta shook his head slowly. He itched his nose, checked his finger for an unwanted deposit, scratched his head, and looked around the warehouse. “Everyone knows a fire like this is no accident.” Uszta leaned closer. “Very well, I give you everything. This way you will get the fuck out of here, like you say, and I will never hear about this again. Your friend Aleksandr Vasilievich Shved was here several weeks ago. He asked the same questions about Viktor Patolichev. He wanted to know if I knew anything about Patolichev’s childhood.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him what I knew. I told him about the orphanage Patolichev spoke of, and stories of idiotic dreams. I do not understand this interest in dreams, but I told him. Patolichev complained of dreams in which he was in a rowboat with Jesus. Imagine it: Patolichev and Jesus. And in other dreams, he fell out of trains because he said God needed to punish him. Patolichev’s complaints were especially irritating after he had several vodkas. I told Shved the same thing I will tell you. Patolichev obviously had foul experiences at his so-called orphanage. At times, he claimed it was nothing more than a waiting area for trafficking. He said girls would be taken away as soon as they reached so-called maturity, which according to Patolichev, was the age of sixteen. Boys, on the other hand, were worked to the bone until a pervert arrived with cash. Believe what you want, Janos Nagy. Today I have revealed the same fucking information for the third fucking time, and it disgusts me!”

“The third time?” asked Janos.

“Yes,” said Uszta, suddenly looking helpless. “This is why you received the produce market reception. After Shved was here—I think about three days after—two men who refused to identify themselves came and asked what Shved wanted. I told them it was none of their business. The next thing I know, they drag both me and my son into my office and put me on the phone and I am speaking with my daughter, Irina, who is hysterical.”

“They kidnapped your daughter?”

“Yes. Do not ask for their descriptions; I will change them.”

“Wait,” said Janos. “Someone kidnapped your daughter
before
these two men came?”

“Yes. Like you, they claimed not wanting to perform a return visit.”

“Did they harm your daughter?”

“She was very upset, but they released her without a scratch.”

“Did you call the militia?”

Uszta shook his head. “Irina was blindfolded, not a mark on her, and they told her there would be serious trouble if we contacted the militia.”