Rasputin's Shadow

35

It hadn’t taken O’Neil long to pull Jonny’s file.

Yaung appeared to have risen through the ranks of his gang at warp speed and now seemed to all but run the entire show. He was still listed at his parents’ address in Murray Hill, but the jacket suggested he spent nearly all his time at his aunt’s restaurant, the Green Dragon, where his cousin Ae-Cha was the hostess. Jonny’s aunt also owned the three apartments above the restaurant, one of which she lived in. The file indicated that Jonny was more likely to be found there than at home, though it also made it clear that in more than three years of on-off investigation, neither vice nor narcotics had been able to make anything stick on anyone in Jonny’s gang. While the Russians used fear and intimidation to keep their bratki loyal, Kkangpae relied on a close-knit family loyalty that was almost impossible to unravel.

As he turned the car off Thirty-third Street, Aparo’s phone rang with the Dragnet theme tune. He made me proud so often. He took the call, said, “Aparo,” listened for a long moment, grunted a couple of “uh-huhs,” then ended the call with a laconic “Got it.”

“Three dead at the docks,” he informed me. “Two Russians. One Korean. The no-necks are covered with ink and the Korean kid had no ID. They’re running all the prints. They also found enough shell casings to suggest a major firefight-10mm, probably from an MP-5; point 338s, that’s a specialist sniper caliber; and some custom nine mils.”

“Jesus. Sounds like Jonny and his friend took on Ivan the Terrible and his goons.” Which was impressive, if foolhardy. “Anything else?”

“An Escalade. Grounded. Its front tire was hit.”

Just to rub it in. He’d faked us using an identical SUV.

I said, “We need to find out how Ivan got away.”

“Maybe the dead sniper had a car?”

“Possibly. They sending the tats to Joukowsky?”

“Yep.”

We parked across the street from the Green Dragon, but made no move to exit the vehicle.

Aparo looked at me. He knew how I got when something was nagging at me.

“Spit it out. I’m hungry.”

“It’s the van. I know it’s stupid, but… none of it makes sense. Sokolov hides it from his wife. Then he takes it to the docks. We’re missing something.” I shook the thought away. “Any sign of it?”

“Kanigher’s pulling up any CCTV and traffic-cam footage he can find around the area. Maybe we’ll pick up a trail.”

It would have to wait. “Okay. Let’s get you some kimchi before you pass out.”

We got out, walked past the ubiquitous bunch of smokers huddled outside the restaurant, and went in.

The place was surprisingly huge. It consisted of one long, high-ceilinged room, dimly lit and elaborately decorated. It felt old and authentic, without the merest soupçon of fusion. Even this late, it was packed with wall-to-wall diners crammed around small tables and an army of waiters and waitresses navigating the narrow aisles between them while ferrying massive platters of food. The clientele was overwhelmingly Asian, young and old, and they all seemed like they were having a good time.

We’d barely been standing there for a few seconds when a young Korean woman wearing a silk dress with a green dragon print on it spread her arms with a welcoming smile.

I smiled back while Aparo and I flashed her our creds.

Her expression soured. “We’ve already had our inspection,” she said, moving me discreetly to one side. “We have a Grade B. Only seventeen points.”

Aparo grinned. “Sweetheart, right now, I’d eat here even if they’d given you a D minus.”

I asked, “You must be Ae-Cha?”

She looked surprised, then nodded cautiously.

“We’d like to talk to Jonny.”

Her expression didn’t alter to acknowledge the name. “Jonny isn’t here. Try him at home.”

Aparo nodded. “We will.”

I gestured deeper into the restaurant, toward the kitchen. “But while we’re here, we’d also like to have a chat with your mother. She in there?”

Ae-Cha fluttered her eyelashes at Aparo. “You look hungry, yes? What would you like? Some Kal-bi? We have a Son-sol-lo. Today’s is with pork and grass carp. The fish is flown in all the way from Seoul.”

Aparo was clearly having some trouble keeping his mind on the investigation, so I stepped in. “We won’t take up much of her time.” I maneuvered around her and headed in.

Aparo smiled at Ae-Cha, shrugged, then continued after me.

The hostess called up after us, “Okay, okay, wait up.”

She led us through the swinging doors and into the kitchen, which was as busy as an iPhone factory the week before a launch. We cut through to the left, where a door led to a dark stairwell.

“Third floor,” she said.

We headed up.

Aparo called it first. “Jonny’s here,” he mumbled. “And definitely not all the way up there.”

I said, “Not a bad poker face though.”

Aparo chortled. “As long as she doesn’t say anything.”

Her face may not have changed, but her voice had lost all its color when she lied. Jonny was in, and he was probably already aware that we were on our way up. A quick call from Ae-Cha would have seen to that.

We hit the first floor with Aparo already out of breath and went for the apartment door off its landing in deliberate contradiction to what we’d just been told. We crept up to it and drew our sidearms, neither of us willing to take a risk with a trigger-happy gangster who’d been in a gun battle only a couple of hours earlier. Regardless of which side he was supposedly playing for.

Aparo checked my readiness, then he knocked.

After a beat, the door opened, revealing a sprightly fifty-year-old Korean woman. She was dressed in a plain navy-blue tunic and cream-colored slacks. Her hair was cropped short. Her face gave the dual impressions both of having seen too much and of having the innate strength to deal with even more.

“Mrs. Yaung. I’m Special Agent Sean Reilly. This is Special Agent Nick Aparo. We’d like to talk to your nephew Jonny.”

“He’s gone to bed. He work very hard today.” Then, almost on autopilot, she added, “He’s a very good boy. Never any trouble.”

Aparo cut in, “Please wake him up.”

Mrs. Yaung peered down at our drawn weapons with a high school principal’s look, then padded down a short hallway and said something in Korean through the door at the end.

We all heard the studied groan from behind it. Aparo caught my eye and we re-holstered our sidearms.

As we waited for Jonny to emerge, we took a quick look around the apartment, which was all but bare except for a top-of-the-range 3D plasma TV and a large statue of the Buddha.

Eventually a tall, slim, black-haired young man appeared. He was dressed in gray track pants and a white T-shirt and his hair looked unkempt. Even if he hadn’t been sleeping, he had certainly put the effort into appearing as if he had been. He said something lightning-fast to his aunt-who immediately disappeared-then casually ran a hand through his hair and slumped down into an armchair, swinging one leg over an arm.

We followed suit, though without the trailing limbs.

“We’re-”

Jonny interrupted before I got any further, “Special Agents Reilly and Aparo, FBI, and I have no idea what you want or why you’re here.”

I opened the betting. “We know you were at the docks. Daphne Sokolov told us.”

He gave us a confused-amused look. “She could have been with any one of us. We all look the same, don’t we? I assume you don’t have me on camera, or we’d be talking at the precinct.”

Aparo raised, “Why would she lie?”

“I didn’t say she lied. I’m suggesting that maybe she is confused. Trauma is well known to have this effect.”

He glanced over at his aunt, who had come back into the room unnoticed. She was holding a tray that had a teapot, cups, and a plate of Korean pastries on it.

“I was here all night. Me and my ee-mo watched a CSI rerun.” He paused, then added, his tone flat and sardonic, “It was the one where someone killed a prostitute.”

He flashed us a grin. I couldn’t fault his sense of humor, but his arrogance was starting to piss me off.

Mrs. Yaung insisted on serving everyone with green tea and a sticky bun. Once the cups and plates had been distributed-Aparo eyeing his bun greedily-I decided it was time to cut to the chase. Mrs. Yaung interjected before I could speak. “Jonny definitely here all night with me. Grissom find killer like always. Neighbor also here for three-player mahjong. You ask him too.”

Aparo asked, “Isn’t mahjong played with four players?”

Jonny smiled. “As I said, you people think us Asians are all the same. We play Korean three-player mahjong. It’s played by the old rules but with one less player. The Chinese don’t like it, but we Koreans, we’re pragmatists. Why wait for a fourth player if you can play with three?”

Mrs. Yaung and her nephew shared a smile while Jonny took a bite of his sticky bun.

Jonny didn’t rush his mouthful, clearly attempting to show that he had nothing to fear from me or the FBI. Aparo had his face buried in his phone.

Finally Jonny swallowed.

I also couldn’t fault their alibi wrangling. Jonny not only had his aunt lying on his behalf, but their neighbor, too. The benefits of being equally feared and loved.

I set my plate down. “Jonny, I have no interest in stress-testing your alibi. As far as I can tell, you were looking out for a friend and his wife. Daphne is alive, most probably thanks to you.” I took a bite of the bun. It tasted like cotton candy. “Can we talk hypothetically?”

Jonny gave the slightest nod of his head and his aunt immediately got up from her chair and left the apartment, quietly closing the door after her.

Jonny pointed at the lacquered table in the center of the room.

“Take out your phones and put them on the table, and we can talk as hypothetically as you like.”

Aparo immediately acquiesced, his other hand already busy with a second bun. Jonny picked up Aparo’s phone and pulled out its battery.

Choking down my natural dislike of being told what to do, I also complied, taking out my cell, sliding off the cover and pulling the battery out. For good measure, I stood, took off my jacket and showed him that I wasn’t wearing a wire either. Reseated, I tried to catch Jonny’s eyes, but he had a frustrating habit of looking away the second eye contact was established-a trick he probably learned after a few successive police interviews.

“So, if you hadn’t been here watching unrealistic lab montages, if you had wanted to help someone who you obviously care about, what might have happened?”

“Sokolov might have told me he had gambling debts, but that would have been bullshit. No way has Sokolov gambled one time in his life. Not with money, anyway.”

Aparo swallowed a mouthful. “Any idea what it was really about?”

“Theoretically?” he asked, smiling.

“Come on, Jonny,” I pressed. “We’re trying to save his life here.”

Eye contact or not, Jonny’s face suddenly took on the unmistakable expression of someone trying to decide whether something was important. “No idea. But he did say he would die for his wife.”

I leaned in. “Sokolov told you that?”

“He told me that he’d swap himself for Daphne. He just wanted her to be safe.”

“When did he say that?”

“When he came over last night.”

“Did he say where he was staying?”

“Some hotel downtown. But he stayed here last night. He looked like he’d been through hell. He was here until he went to get his stupid van.”

I wondered about that. “Tell me about this van.”

“It was weird, man. He insisted we take it to the docks. I didn’t get it. Lousy getaway car if we got into trouble. But he insisted. Said he had some kind of siren in it that would help us. So loud you had to wear earphones. Like for construction workers. He had a couple of them in there and some chunky earplugs for himself so the Russian wouldn’t spot them.”

“A siren?”

“That’s my guess. I never heard it.”

I asked, “Do you know where he went to get it?”

“No idea.”

Aparo asked, “Where’s the van now?”

“After I dropped Mrs. Sokolov outside the precinct, I drove off and dumped the van on Shore, somewhere across from Randall’s Island. I think. It was late and my mind wasn’t on geography.” He shrugged. “It’s probably up on some bricks by now.”

Aparo placed his cup and plate back down on the table and turned to Jonny.

“You haven’t asked us about Jachin Kim.”

Jonny’s expression hardened a touch. I could see he was struggling with what words to use.

Aparo put him out of his misery. “Your friend’s dead.” He gestured at his phone. “They just got a match on his prints.” He paused, studying Jonny. “That’s gotta hurt. Seeing as how you got him killed.”

Aparo really was the master of misdirection. From greedy cop to no-nonsense interrogator in a heartbeat. And he got a reaction.

Jonny sprung up and flipped over the table, sending the pieces of our handhelds scattering to the floor. Then he froze in place, taking control of himself. In a low grumble, he said, “I have no idea what the fuck is going on. Sokolov may seem like a sweet old man, but he’s also a liar. He knows exactly what this is about. He just isn’t talking. Maybe he’s talking now, though. You should find him before that motherfucker cuts him into pieces.”

I stood and calmly collected the pieces of my cell. Aparo did the same.

“Tell us about him. The Russian.”

Jonny described the scene. There wasn’t much he could tell us about what the Russian looked like, but his take on the man’s moves sent a chill down my spine. Jonny wasn’t exactly a wallflower, and yet, despite everything he’d been through, it was pretty clear that even thinking about the Russian gave him the creeps.

We were done here. We got up, but before we headed out, I turned to Jonny. He preempted me.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “And why would I? I wasn’t there, right?”

“Right,” I told him as we walked out.

I SAT IN THE car while Aparo collected his takeout, and one image kept monopolizing my thoughts: the Russian, charging forward, using Sokolov as a shield, firing away relentlessly.

If we ever got to that point again, the guy wouldn’t hesitate to go down fighting, even if the outcome was clear.

Aparo appeared holding a brown paper bag packed with Korean delicacies and climbed in.

“Any sign of the guys?” he asked.

We were waiting for an unmarked with a couple of SSG’s-meaning members of the Bureau’s Special Surveillance Group team-to show up. Front and back of the restaurant, one SSG for each. I wanted to keep an eye on Jonny from here on out. Besides being the only live lead in this mess, he was angry and was probably thinking about some kind of retribution right about then. Which I preferred to avoid. The city didn’t need any more body bags.

I said, “They’re five minutes out.”

Aparo nodded and offered me a Korean dumpling, which I took, the maxim holding true as it always did: never pass up an opportunity to eat while on the job.

As I bit into it, an unremarkable panel van drove by, and it reminded me of Sokolov’s odd move. I wondered why a brainiac like him needed a van. We needed to figure out what his movements had been during the day, and I made a mental note to check with the DMV for a listing of the van in the hopes of finding out where he kept it.