Mistress

Chapter 45

Detective Ellis Burk drums his fingers on the steering wheel of his sedan. He says to me, “This story gets odder and odder the more you tell me.”

And he doesn’t know the half of it. I decided to leave out my trip to Jonathan Liu’s house last night. The cops can find out about his death on their own.

“Alexander Kutuzov.” Ellis nods. “I think I’ve heard of him.”

“Diana was sensitive about her relationship with him. That must mean something.”

“According to your friend Anne Brennan.”

“Right. According to Anne.”

“So I’m working on a secondhand account of how someone thinks someone else felt about something. That’s not exactly a rock-solid lead, Ben.”

“That’s why you’re an investigator, Ellis. Last time I checked, you follow up on leads. Does any of that sound familiar?”

“For cases I’m working on? Sure it does.” He looks over at me. “But this ain’t my case, partner. You’ll recall the CIA took it away from us local crime fighters. Does that sound familiar?”

Ellis is a good man. He could have told me to jump in a lake when I asked him to accompany me today. He’d have every right and every reason to. But something has raised his antennae, and Ellis is one of those cops who’s more concerned about right and wrong than he is about technicalities like jurisdictional boundaries.

Or maybe he just took one look at me and took pity on me. I’m sure I must look terrible. I peeked at myself in the mirror this morning and I looked like a character in a Tim Burton movie. And I’m not thinking clearly anymore. I’m seeing shadows where there are none, hearing footsteps that don’t exist. I need help.

“I owe you one, man,” I say.

“You’re damn right you do.” When I don’t answer, Ellis glances at me. “We’ll check this guy out, Ben. Don’t worry.”

We drive to 5th Street in Dupont Circle, where AK Collectibles is located. It sits in the middle of the block, just as Anne Brennan said it did. Inside, the place is like a rich person’s study, with soft lighting and dark oak bookshelves, some chocolate brown leather chairs, every book covered in a protective sheath. There is classical music playing overhead and a dour gentleman looking over his glasses at us from the cash register.

Ellis flashes his badge and tells the guy he wants to talk to Alexander Kutuzov. You’d think he’d asked for a meeting with Santa Claus or the tooth fairy from the salesman’s reaction. He picks up a phone and whispers into it.

We loiter for a few minutes. I nod to a locked glass case containing a three-volume set of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I had a tutor, also named Jane, who liked the author so much she went to Jane Austen conventions where everyone dressed up like characters from her novels. I wish I liked anything that much. I wish my right leg hadn’t been torn up when I wiped out on the bike last night.

Also, I wish people weren’t trying to kill me.

I didn’t see the movie, but I loved Keira Knightley in Domino, where she played a bounty hunter. Very hot.

“What’s the damage?” I ask the guy behind the counter, motioning toward the glass case containing the Jane Austen books.

He looks over his glasses at me again. “Volume two has some tearing in the rear flyleaf, and we made some small repairs to a couple of the pages in volume three.”

“No. I meant, how much does this cost?”

“Ah. You are looking at a first edition from 1813.”

Look, if you don’t want to tell me, just say so.

“Sixty thousand,” says a man who appears from a door behind the counter. His accent is heavy on the Russian. He is middle-aged, bald, and dressed in a black suit, black shirt, and black tie. His neck is the size of a tree trunk, and his face looks like it was cut out of a rock formation.

“Sixty thousand what?” I ask. “Rubles?”

The man seems amused at my naïveté. “You must not be a collector.” He looks at Ellis. “Now, Officer-”

“Detective.”

“Yes, Detective. Mr. Kutuzov is not here, obviously. Though I believe he is in the States at the moment, but I cannot tell you this with certainty.”

“But you know how to get hold of him,” Ellis says. Ellis hands his card over the counter.

Knightley was also good in one of those Pirates of the Caribbean movies and one of the Star Wars prequels.

The man takes Ellis’s card and gives him another card. Ellis takes it and reads it, as do I. It’s a card for a lawyer named Edgar Griffin, from Griffin and Weaver.

“That’s too bad,” says Ellis. “I was hoping to just have a quick chat with Mr. Kutuzov and then move along. But if you’re involving lawyers, then maybe we’ll have to take him to the police station for questioning. It makes the whole thing more antagonistic.”

“Antagonistic.” The Russian allows a brief smile. “I thought in America you were not punished for requesting the assistance of counsel.”

“You know a lot about our system for a guy who sells used books for a living,” I say. It isn’t really my place to chime in, but this guy doesn’t know that I’m a reporter and not a cop. Maybe Ellis and I can be a team, like on Castle, except I’m not a crime novelist and Ellis isn’t a hot brunette, last time I looked.

Ellis says, “Tell Mr. Kutuzov, or his lawyer, that if I don’t hear from him soon, I’m going to come looking for him again, and it won’t be as enjoyable as this visit.”

The man stares at Ellis with a flare in his eyes, but he ultimately relents. “As you wish,” he says. “I shall pass on your inquiry.”

“Please do that.”

We’re back in the car a minute later. “Well, that didn’t take long,” says Ellis. “We’re barely in the door and the guy’s already lawyered up.” He looks at me. “It’s a start, Ben. We’ve shaken the tree. Now let’s see what falls out.”