Firebreak

10

They had a late dinner, and a good night together, and in the morning breakfast in the room, during which Claire said, "I found a woman who reads Russian. Well, she is Russian."

"Good."

"She's a partner at a furrier in midtown."

"Not one I ever visited, I hope," he said.

She laughed, saying, "No, I'm sure it's all right. She came over from Russia since the breakup, it's a big family in the fur business over there, sable exporting, they decided to get into this end of the trade three years ago."

"You're buying something from her," Parker suggested.

"Of course." Claire shrugged. "Why else would she talk to me?"

* * *

Madame Irina was a short pouter pigeon of a woman, in a tight black pantsuit and cotton boll white hair. A pair of harlequin glasses that hung from a gold chain around her neck rested on the shelf of her chest. Her black slippers whispered on the thick black wool of the carpet.

The room was smallish, luxuriously Spartan, with neutral gray walls and a low white ceiling. Low maroon armchairs and sofas made three conversation areas around oval glass coffee tables on which glossy magazines were carefully arranged, like a line of shingles on a roof, as though this were the waiting room for an interplanetary cruise line. Three very tall mannequins in corners, with faces of foreign disdain, wore rich long fur coats.

To the right, a plate-glass window showed an efficient cream office with four employees, all of whom kept glancing this way. The glass would be bulletproof. The valuable stock would be beyond the other door, gray, almost invisible, set into the wall opposite the entrance.

The entrance itself, here on the third floor of this building on Madison Avenue, was a simple airlock-style. They had come out of the elevator, to be eye-balled by the people in the office, who had a second plate-glass window on that side for the purpose. Claire had spoken to a microphone, a polite metallic voice had said, "Of course, Mrs. Willis, come in," and the buzzer had sounded, letting them through a windowed door into a square gray cubicle with another windowed door straight ahead. The door behind them had gently but forcefully snicked itself shut, as Madame Irina had come smiling across the showroom, moving very like a pouter pigeon who has decided, as a whim, to walk just for today.

Parker was certain this inner door wouldn't be openable if he were to keep the first one from shutting, which he didn't do. Madame Irina let them in, door number two shut itself behind them, and here they were.

Parker wasn't here for work, but his response was automatic. He saw it would take two men and a woman to do the job, and he thought Noelle Kay Braselle would do the woman very well. Of course, now that he'd been here with Claire, neither of the men could be him. It was just an instinctive reaction.

"Madame Irina, my husband Charles."

"How do you do, Mr. Charles." Her accent was lilting, seeming more French than Russian. In fact, she wasn't the Russian he'd expected. Her manner was coolly highbred, as though the entire Bolshevik interlude had been no more than unpleasant weekend guests who'd overstayed their welcome. The Russia she came from still had czars.

There was a little discussion between the two women about the three coats Claire had decided to choose among, and then Madame Irina made a murmuring phone call while standing at her gray plastic block desk. Hanging up the gray receiver, she said, 'They'll bring them right out. And Mr. Charles has some names for me to look at?"

"Yes, show them, Charles."

The story was that Charles Willis, a shoe manufacturer with a strong export business, had been told in-directly of a couple of Americans who might be useful in helping him expand his business into the western segments of the old Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the origin of the tip was a Russian who only spoke Russian and only used Cyrillic, so Charles Willis couldn't read the names and therefore didn't know if these were people he already knew or would find it useful to look up. Fortunately, Charles Willis's business was profitable enough so that his wife was buying fur coats from Madame Irina, who could be very helpful in translating these two names.

All of that had been explained by Claire on her previous visit, so all Parker had to do now was take from his jacket pocket the slip of paper with the names on it and hand it over, just as the near-invisible door at the back of the room opened and three models strutted in, wearing the coats.

It was now Parker's job to turn away from Madame Irina and look with interest at the coats, while the models turned and stepped in front of Claire, smiling in a blank way at her, not acknowledging the existence of the husband for a second.

That one's too dark," she decided.

"If you say so."

"Charles? Do you think this one's too long?"

"Try it on yourself," he said.

"You're right."

The model swirled out of the coat, showing the plain black spaghetti-strap dress beneath, and helped Claire put it on, gesturing toward the full-length mirror on the side wall, as Madame Irina said, 'Yes, Mr. Charles, these are Americans."

He gave her the kind of attention Claire was giving the coats. "Which Americans?"

She held the sheet up to show him.

n.EpoK M.Poaehwteph

"This first one," she said, touching it, "is the initial P. Then the last name is B-R-O-K. But I think here it would be B-R-O-C-K."

Brock. Paul Brock. Parker had thought he'd never hear from Paul Brock again. The last time he'd seen the man, Parker had shot him and he lay on his back, unable to move, moaning for an ambulance, at the foot of the basement stairs he'd fallen down.

Parker pointed at the other name. "Would that be Rosenstein? Matt Rosenstein?"

"Rosenstein, yes," she said, smiling, pleased with them both. "And the initial is M. So you would know these people."

"Oh, yes, I know them," Parker said. "And the Russian was right. They're going to be very useful to me."

"I think this one," Claire said. She pirouetted, showing off for him and the mirror. Seeing his face in the mirror, she smiled and said, "I think we're both getting what we want."