Firebreak

4

Charov's place was a furnished apartment on Chicago's South Side, near Marquette Park. It was a sprawling dark brick building with a transient air to it, as though no one had ever planned to stay there long. Half the mailboxes and doorbells were unmarked, and many of the rest were handwritten on torn-off pieces of cardboard or strips of masking tape. Two bicycles in the clean but bleak front vestibule were heavily chained to vertical metal pipes, heat risers.

Charov's name was among the missing on mailboxes and doorbells, and Parker had no way to know which apartment was his. He found the super's apartment at the ground floor rear, beyond the staircase, and the second time he knocked the door was opened by a fiftyish very short stout woman in yellow tank top and jeans, barefoot. A lit cigarette was in the corner of her mouth, an unlit one behind her left ear. In her free hand she held a copy of the Star. She gave Parker a sharp suspicious look, decided he was neither a tenant nor a cop, and said, "Yeah?"

"My brother Viktor's supposed to meet me at the airport," Parker told her. He acted bewildered, starting to be worried, not very smart. He held his airline ticket up to show her, saying, "See? I flew in from Albany, Viktor's supposed to meet me, he never showed up."

She frowned at the ticket he was waving. "Whado I care?"

"He lives here! Viktor Charov!"

"Oh," she said, nodding, recognizing the name. "Sure, that's right."

"I had to take a cab in from O'Hare," Parker told her. 'Twenty-three bucks! Viktor never showed up."

"Maybe he's stuck in traffic," she said.

"Maybe it's his heart," Parker suggested. "He had heart trouble once, maybe he's sick."

She made an effort to act concerned. "Did you try calling him?"

"No answer," he told her. "Come with me, open the door, let's see if he's there."

She looked at her newspaper, frowning, not wanting to have to move out of her nest. "My husband's upstairs fixing a sink," she said.

"We'll just take a look," Parker told her, "make sure he isn't there, hurt or something."

She sighed, feeling sorry for herself. "All right, just a minute."

She didn't ask him in, but shut the door, and he waited in the hall until she came out, now wearing sneakers and a lavender cardigan sweater. The cigarette was gone from her mouth, but the other one was still behind her ear. "Come on," she said.

The elevator was old and slow and a little too small. It creaked up the shaft to the fourth floor, and she led the way down a clean gray hall to the third dark brown metal door on the left. "L" it said. The slot for a tenant to slip a card into with his name on it was blank.

She unlocked the door, leaned in, called, "Mr. Charov?" She listened, then turned back, shaking her head. "He isn't here."

"We gotta look," Parker said.

She frowned at him, irritated at how much of her time he was using, and shrugged. "But we don't touch nothing," she said.

They entered a narrow short foyer with a closet on the left, then a small living room with two windows in the opposite wall overlooking the street, and doors open in both side walls. The one on the left led to the bedroom, with a bathroom beyond it, and to the right was the kitchen. All was anonymously furnished by the landlord, with a few stray indications of Charov's tenancy. The rooms were empty.

"Like I said," the woman told him. "Stuck in traffic."

"I'll wait for him," Parker said.

"You can't wait in here," the woman said. "I know, I know, you're his brother, but I still can't let you wait in here. The weather's nice, you can sit on the stoop."

"Fine," Parker said.

They went back to the hall door, Parker first. He held the door open for her to go through, and on the way out pushed the button that unlocked the door.

Guns were stashed in every room, small lightweight .22s, meant to end the argument right away in small rooms like these. They were snapped into clips under chairs, behind the toilet, under the bed.

Twelve thousand dollars in twenties and fifties was rolled into an orange juice concentrate can in the freezer. Inside the lining of the suitcase in the bedroom closet were Russian, Ukraine, and Belarus passports with Charov's face but other names. Under the socks in the top dresser drawer was a manila envelope that had once been mailed to Charov at this address, with a printed return address of Cosmopolitan Beverages in Bayonne, New Jersey; whatever it had originally held, Charov had been using it to hold his papers. There was an American green card, plus documents describing him as an executive employed by Cosmopolitan Beverages, an importer of Russian liquors. Also in the envelope was an open-date Aeroflot ticket, first-class, from New York's JFK to Moscow.

Stuck into the edge of the mirror over the dresser were three color snapshots of what had to be Charov's family, back in Moscow; a pleasant plump wife, three teenage sons, and a large brown-black dog that looked like a mix of German shepherd and wolf, all standing in sunlight in front of a large, comfortable-looking but not gaudy suburban house.

Beside the bed was a telephone with answering machine, its red light blinking the news that it contained two messages. Parker pushed play and the first message was a guttural voice leaving a brisk statement in what was probably Russian. The second, in English, was from somebody who sounded hesitant, nervous, a little scared: "Charov? Are you there? I thought I'd hear from you by now. Everything's okay, isn't it? I'm ready with the money. Just call me. Let me know how things went."

The customer. Too cagy or nervous to leave his name.

Parker played the message again. The voice was almost familiar, almost. He played it a third time, but he wasn't going to get it. Too far in the past, or too little known.

Next to the answering machine was a notepad, with three items written on it:

n.EpOK M.PoaeHWTePH

WILLIS

That last one was in the Roman alphabet because that's what it would say on the mailbox outside Parker's house on the lake. It was the landmark Charov would have looked for.

And the first two names, if they were names? They looked like names. Was one of them the nervous voice on the answering machine? On the phone, here, had Charov written the names of his new employers and the target?

Parker left the guns where they were. He took with him the money, the passports, the manila envelope with everything in it, and the notepad with the names.