The Body of David Hayes

NINETEEN

BOLDT’S CELL PHONE, PLUGGED IN and recharging, cut a shrill tone through the bedroom’s darkness at exactly 2 A.M. Liz stopped snoring and sat up as if hearing a fire alarm, still in a dream state. “The kids?” she asked Boldt, who was already out of bed. Then she remembered the state of affairs, sank back to her pillow, and said, “Oh,” as she realized it was only another of his late-night summonses. Another part of the same nightmare.

A woman’s voice said into Boldt’s ear, “He’ll talk to you and your guy, but only you and your guy. No wires. No tricks. Half hour from now-two-thirty. He’ll give you ten minutes, tops. Nothing on the record.” She named the location-the Pink Lady-a strip joint on First Avenue. “If there’s no objection, we’ll see you there.”

After some struggle, he identified the voice as that of Maddie Olson. He said, “No objection.” Both he and LaMoia could reach the club within fifteen minutes. She disconnected the call without ceremony.

Boldt dialed John. He felt tempted to go it alone, but LaMoia was street-smart, willing to play tough off the books, and handy to have around as backup. He had to consider the possibility, however remote, that Olson was leading him into a trap.

Matthews answered and passed the phone to LaMoia, and from somewhere inside Boldt came the need to look across through the gray haze of a dark bedroom and see his wife’s head on the pillow. The sight pleased him, and it occurred to him that he didn’t harbor any hatred or resentment for her affair with Hayes, at least not at that moment. He worried over the videotape, and what it would do to Miles and Sarah if their teachers, and the parents of their friends, saw pieces of it on the evening news. There were no secrets for anyone in public service, especially a veteran Homicide cop whom so many would love to see knocked off his pedestal. But something about dragging Hayes from that abandoned building, about placing him in the motel under the watchful eye of Bobbie Gaynes, had lessened the mystique surrounding the man. Bloodied and beaten down, Hayes had struck him as a sad excuse, a pitiful kid gone bad.

“But, Sarge,” LaMoia whined, “a downtown strip joint? How about someplace a little less distracting?”

Boldt marveled that even just wakened, LaMoia not only had his sarcasm intact, but was willing to say such a thing in front of Matthews.

“Fifteen minutes.” Boldt hung up without dignifying that with a response.

The Pink Lady seethed neon lighting and loud music, a sweet-and-sour smell of male excitement and cheap cologne mixed with the tang of salt-rimmed margaritas. It was nineteen-year-old girls, not women, in negligees serving drinks, and another up onstage, naked and with a shaved pubis, rubbing herself against a stainless steel pole and trying to look anything but pained to be there.

Maddie Olson wore a tailored black leather coat and a turtleneck that flattered her. Her jeans hugged her bottom, the seam running up her crack, and Boldt was surprised when LaMoia didn’t trip on a small step, because he hadn’t taken his eyes off their hostess. They were led to a red leather corner booth with a large Formica table anchored to the floor. Alekseevich looked about nineteen himself. He wore a nice suit, probably paid for by Svengrad, dark gray, but he’d lost the tie for the after-hours entertainment. He wore a gold chain around his furry neck that, if real, was worth several months of Boldt’s salary. He held a Proletarskie-the smoking gun-and had large hands with clean nails but several cuts and bruises. His razor couldn’t keep up; there was a shadow across his cheeks and down his neck. He used gel in his short hair and a tooth whitener. But it was the outright contempt in his blue eyes that struck Boldt first. He looked disgusted to be in their company.

“Thanks,” Boldt said, adopting an unusual opening to this particular chess match.

Alekseevich’s face softened some. Just a kid under there somewhere.

“You like baseball?” Boldt asked.

“Football. Soccer,” he corrected himself, having used the European term first. “MLS,” he said. “I follow Colorado, but Seattle’s trying to get an expansion team.”

“My boy plays soccer,” Boldt said.

“And piano,” Alekseevich said, turning Boldt’s stomach. “Pretty good, your boy.”

Stepping in to cover Boldt’s shock at this knowledge of his son, LaMoia asked, “Who holds your passport, Malina? You or the detective, here?”

The man’s face burned.

LaMoia said, “The lieutenant has a little tit for tat. You understand tit for tat? Not tit for twat. You gotta pull your mind out of the gutter for a moment, maybe stop letting your eyes drift over my shoulder at Beaver Cleaver, because you’re going to want to pay attention here.”

Alekseevich tried to look bored and disinterested, but LaMoia had gotten to him. Boldt said, “I need some information from you. There’s not time to verify it, so I’ll have to take your word. If I get your word, if I like the information, then I’m going to give you a heads-up that will save everyone a lot of trouble. If I read you wrong, you don’t get the information.”

The man checked his watch. “Seven minutes.”

LaMoia said, “Go on, be like that, tough guy.” He shook his head. “Pulling fingernails off people who can’t fight back. The shit does not work like that here. The lieutenant here has some good juice to give you, and you keep playing like you don’t give a fuck, then we’re outta here, and that’s that.”

“You’re the tough one, is that it? Good cop, bad cop?” Again, Alekseevich feigned boredom.

“You don’t even want to go there,” LaMoia said, leveling a gaze on the man that could have frozen water. “Tonight, we’re both bad.” With LaMoia you got what you saw, and at that moment he was all testosterone and adrenaline.

Alekseevich offered a mock shiver.

LaMoia had the last word with a subtle grin that maybe only Boldt understood, but one that left no doubt that if he let the two go at it out back, LaMoia would prevail. A street fighter with an absurd amount of confidence and a tolerance for pain, LaMoia was not to be messed with. Alekseevich directed his attention away from LaMoia and focused on Boldt, and yet he held the unsure expression of a little old lady on the sidewalk gravely concerned about the approaching mutt, unleashed and with its ears back.

A waitress showed up to take their orders. She wore a sheer, translucent nightgown tied around her waist with a purple ribbon. Her breasts were high and small, her nipples dark as chocolate, and her pubic hair shaved low and narrow, like a Mohawk. LaMoia took it all in, since her chest was at his head height due to the raised booth. He ordered a domestic beer. The girl took the rest of the order-for Boldt, a ginger ale, for Olson an iced tea-and then reminded LaMoia that she and all the wait staff were available for lap dances. She made it sound like a bank teller reminding a customer of home loans. Alekseevich tried to win her attention, but she was impressed by LaMoia and didn’t give the Russian the time of day. Boldt loved the look on the Russian’s face as the girl went to get the drinks.

“So,” Alekseevich said to Boldt, “you were saying?”

“No. I was asking,” Boldt corrected. “A certain individual-and to humor me, let’s just say that individual is you, and that I can prove it-assaulted a man named David Hayes, and later, a state Bureau of Criminal Investigation officer by the name of Foreman. Tonight we got word that a man named Paul Geiser lost a few fingernails, and that Foreman was on the list again as well.”

Alekseevich shook his head in denial and looked to Olson for help. “What is this?” His indignant tone fell falsely flat.

Olson said, “This is you talking to them. This is me buying you a break, and risking my assignment to do it. You’re supposed to be the wise guy, right? So wise up.”

“I’m not asking if you did those assaults,” Boldt said. “I know you did. What Detective Olson knows is that regardless of your arrangement with other law enforcement, I now have enough evidence to arrest you for those crimes.”

Alekseevich tried to look as if this didn’t surprise him or upset him, but an actor he wasn’t.

“What I need to know is if you did David Hayes night before last. And I urge you to think real clearly on this matter. In terms of your discussions with Foreman and Geiser, I want it verbatim if possible. Word for word,” Boldt explained, in case his vocabulary went over the other’s head. “What I’m offering you, and Detective Olson and her colleagues, is the chance to keep this little charade of yours going. This snitching of yours for the government.” Olson looked troubled. Boldt said, “I have two options. One, as I mentioned, is to arrest you. The second, less ideal for you, is to tell Svengrad who his mole is and let him discuss this with you directly.”

The waitress returned with the drinks and practically put her breast into LaMoia’s face while leaning over the table. Boldt waited for her to leave. The ginger ale smelled of dishwasher soap and tasted flat. He pushed it aside.

“It lays out pretty simple,” Boldt continued. “So why don’t you start talking right now.”

“Five minutes,” LaMoia said, turning Alekseevich’s own arrogance back onto him.

The room’s shifting neon lights threw red across their table. Alekseevich’s skin took on a crimson tone, nearly matching the leather.

Boldt looked at his watch and said, “Four minutes.” He then met eyes with the Russian. “You’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

Alekseevich looked over at Olson as if maybe she could fix this. Boldt hated to burn her goodwill, as it had gotten him to this point, but for him it came to Liz against Alekseevich, and that made it no contest. Olson sat back in the red leather, heaved a sigh of disgust, and said, “Start talking.”

“Call them,” Alekseevich instructed Olson.

She looked across at Boldt, her anger building. Boldt shook his head. She told the man next to her, “I can’t.”

“Call them,” he repeated.

“This meeting isn’t happening,” Boldt reminded. “Not in her world, not in ours. So how can she make a call? She’d have to acknowledge arranging the meeting, and she’s not willing to do that. Neither are we. By the time she places the call, we’re out of here, and you’re left with either arrest or Svengrad.”

Alekseevich’s blue eyes jumped between the three, his indifference losing some of its starch.

“Care for an extension?” LaMoia asked.

Boldt pulled out his detective’s notebook and a pen, in an act of overt confidence.

Alekseevich began his debriefing, “I do what I am told. I am immune as long as I give report.”

“Immunity,” Olson provided for Boldt and LaMoia.

“Not from us,” Boldt repeated.

“We’re running out of time, here,” LaMoia reminded.

Boldt took a risk. “Let’s do it this way. I’ll fill in the blanks and you’ll stop me when I’m wrong.”

Behind them some patrons cheered. Boldt didn’t want to know why, but he briefly could imagine it was for him, given the choice he’d just offered Alekseevich.

Alekseevich pursed his lips and nodded slightly. Olson pulled out a narrow pad of notepaper, versions of which were in both LaMoia’s and Boldt’s coat pockets. Birds of a feather, he thought. LaMoia signaled the waitress, accomplishing what the Russian had failed to do. He ordered a vodka on the rocks for their subject.

Boldt translated what he’d brought in his head as questions into statements, and carefully laid them out like a card dealer turning over cards in a poker game. Both he and LaMoia looked for “tells”-tics or mannerisms indicating the suspect’s knowledge of events, or his reluctance or unwillingness to share. Few were practiced enough not to involuntarily reveal something of their inner workings. Alekseevich had a language to overcome, the late hour, the few drinks he’d already consumed. Boldt worked him slowly, focusing almost entirely on Paul Geiser and Danny Foreman. Alekseevich tried to mask his curiosity-he’d clearly been expecting questions about David Hayes.

“Foreman’s on Svengrad’s payroll,” Boldt stated for the man, about halfway into his laundry list.

“No.” Alekseevich was working through the vodka a little quickly, a tell that revealed his discomfort.

The answer surprised Boldt. It had seemed the most obvious explanation. “You know this, or you’re guessing?” But when Olson shook her head, he realized he’d asked a question, not made a statement.

“Hayes disappearing. You tried Geiser, thinking he was behind it, and got it wrong. Geiser gave you Foreman.”

“Yes.”

This reminded him of the game Twenty Questions that he’d played as a kid on long car rides with his parents. Thinking of his parents made him think of his sister, and thoughts of his sister made him think of his children. He didn’t like doing business this way, but he stayed with it because Olson wasn’t objecting. He stated, “Foreman threatened Svengrad. Extorted him for Hayes’s return.”

“I not know about that,” Alekseevich said, breaking away from his monosyllabic answers-an extremely good sign that he was either growing more comfortable with the process or was becoming more drunk.

LaMoia looked ready to say something, thought better of it, and whispered into Boldt’s ear. Boldt felt bad about using his friend, about not revealing the bigger game he had planned, but only he and Liz could later be held responsible. He wasn’t dragging LaMoia into the consequences of what he had planned. He believed Liz’s safety depended on this secret.

“You found Foreman,” Boldt stated. “Tonight, I mean.”

“Yes. Geiser was persuaded to make a phone call for us. Foreman took the bait.”

“Foreman gave you the location of the warehouse-where to find Hayes. And your guys pursued it.”

“Yes.”

“Who tortured Hayes out at the cabin, if not you?”

“Not me,” Alekseevich confirmed. “I don’t know who.”

“Someone else you work with?”

“No. It would have been me,” the man said, indirectly confirming he’d done the others.

Regardless of gaining some clarity, Boldt felt pushed more deeply into the labyrinth rather than finding a clear way out. He then asked the question that LaMoia had posed to him, converting it into a statement. “Paul Geiser is on Svengrad’s payroll.”

Alekseevich hesitated, looking over at Olson.

She said, “You’re dipping into privileged territory, Lieutenant.”

“It’s not privileged because it’s not on the record, Detective.”

She nodded back to Alekseevich.

“Perhaps,” the Russian said.

“That’s not good enough.”

“It is best I can do. I have seen this man, Geiser, only but once, out at the Whidbey house.” Alekseevich was slowly working away from plain answers, and Olson, to her credit, was making no attempt to stop him.

Boldt asked Olson about the Whidbey house and she informed him this was the Svengrad residence, a palatial estate on the southwest shore of Whidbey Island.

Boldt said, “Geiser was supposed to help get the injunction lifted-get Svengrad’s caviar out of federal impound.”

The man shrugged. “I do not know.”

Olson explained, “Malina happened to see Geiser in a hall over at the U.S. Attorney’s Office during a grand jury prep. It was a fluke-a dedicated elevator stopped and opened on the wrong floor. Malina looks out and recognizes Geiser from seeing him at Svengrad’s estate. We never connected the dots any further than you just did, assuming the meeting had something to do with the caviar, but we’ve been careful to shelter ourselves from the prosecuting attorney’s office. That’s why we’re dealing with the U.S. Attorney’s Office instead-because of this thing.”

This turned Boldt’s world upside down. He now believed that for the past several hours he’d had Foreman’s and Geiser’s roles reversed. None of this fully ruled out that Hayes had been hidden by Foreman as part of a cooperative deal between the state’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Geiser’s office, as Foreman had told Liz. It seemed entirely possible that the two agencies might have discovered Alekseevich’s informant status and wanted to protect the “ownership” of the Hayes case by keeping Alekseevich all to themselves. Turf wars could make monsters out of a common investigation.

Even if it proved true that Geiser had taken a bribe, or was still on Svengrad’s payroll, it might involve nothing more than working on Hayes’s parole and the injunction on the caviar. Svengrad’s knuckle man wasn’t going to have the answers to these deeper questions. The bottom line was that Boldt could trust neither Foreman nor Geiser. He knew Svengrad was seeking answers to some of the same questions that he had, meaning the race for the money still seemed to be on, which kept Liz squarely in it. This both excited and terrified him.

“Does Svengrad plan to kidnap my wife?” Boldt asked. The big man shrugged, and Boldt accepted the answer, believing Svengrad unlikely to include his subordinates in his long-term plans. It didn’t confirm or deny the possibility.

“The comment about my son and his playing piano,” Boldt said, distracted from his intended line of questioning. “Is Svengrad willing to play that card? My children? A police officer’s children?” Boldt felt a bubble in his throat. Olson tensed; this was clearly news to her. LaMoia looked unruffled, but Boldt could feel his concern like heat.

“Not me,” Alekseevich said. “I not harm children. This man from bank? The one with heart problem? This was not me.”

He meant Tony LaRossa and the abduction of LaRossa’s family.

Boldt pushed, “But Svengrad is willing to play that card.”

Alekseevich stared across the table and took a long sip of the vodka, draining it.

“Answer the question,” Olson told him more vehemently than anything she’d said yet.

But Alekseevich already had answered the question, whether she’d picked up on it or not. That cocksure silence of his spoke loud and clear.

“What now?” Alekseevich asked, never breaking eye contact with Boldt.

That was Boldt’s question as well.