The Watchmen

20

It was Dimitri Danilov’s idea (“if they’re worried and they’re both Russian that’s what they’ll speak in front of strangers”) to go into the Bay View Avenue house as part of a supposed repair team. There was confirmation from the surveillance vehicles that some genuine electric company vans were already in the Norton Point area and a lot of people were in the streets, Orlenko one of them, talking to neighbors on both sides. He’d hurried inside when a local news television crew had appeared. On the way to Brooklyn in the repair truck that was their necessary cover an enthusiastic professional linesman, Peter Townley, rehearsed Danilov and a bureau electronics technician, Jack Harrison. The technician, a lean-faced would-be stand-up comic, insisted he’d done this sort of thing a dozen times and didn’t need to be told how to appear as if he knew what he was doing, because he did know: All he needed was for them to distract the people so he could get his bugs in “to make the place one great big sound box.”

Townley said to Danilov, “You’re supposed to be my supervisor, OK? I’m doing the work, you’re making sure I do it right. I’ll throw in a lot of technical crap means nothing. If I ask your opinion about something, I’ll keep my left thumb on the piece of equipment or the wire it’s the correct one to choose. How’s that sound?”

“Fine,” said Danilov.

They passed a proper repair truck on West 37th Street, and Danilov spotted the FBI surveillance vehicle parked not in Bay View itself but on the corner of Seagate. In Danilov’s opinion the area wasn’t so much rundown as wind- and sea-swept, fronting on to Gravesend Bay: great in the summer, not so good in winter. He wondered what rent the Trenton company was charging. Arnie Orlenko certainly didn’t appear short of money: according to the LaGuardia taxi driver, he’d dropped a $20 tip on top of the fare.

They parked visibly but some way away from 69, and they didn’t go to it immediately. A man in the first house they called at said he’d already talked to his lawyer and was getting all his appliances checked by an independent firm and intended to sue for any that couldn’t be put right. A woman in the next said what could they expect, so close to all those Coney Island illuminations. It shouldn’t be allowed.

Arnie Orlenko opened the door. He was wearing the same shirt and jeans of his morning arrival but his hair was wet and he was barefoot. There was a heavy smell of cologne. His accent was quite pronounced when he asked what the hell was going on. Danilov, who’d studied linguistics at the university with the original intention of using a natural talent before deciding on a police career, guessed English was a comparatively new language for the man. Danilov easily adopted his supervisory role. It was, he apologized, a major breakdown they didn’t yet know the reason for. Although the power was restored, they needed to check for line faults to prevent it happening again. The whole area had been affected and so far a cause hadn’t been found.

The woman met them in the hallway. She’d changed from the arrival picture. The bulging breasts were straining a halter top that left her midriff bare, and she wore tight, knee-length shorts. Like the man, she was barefoot. The blond hair was a bubbled explosion around a surprisingly freckled, ready-to-smile face. She wasn’t smiling now. She said, “Everything’s gone. The television went bang.”

Danilov decided there was no foreign intonation in the voice. She smelled freshly showered, too. Conscious of the FBI man’s need, he said to Townley, “Maybe we could specifically look at the TV, try to help.”

“You’re the boss, so if it’s all right with you,” said the man. “Right now or shall I look at the boxes first?”

“I can do the boxes,” offered Harrison, on cue. To Orlenko he said, “You want to show me where they are?”

The living room had an odor of a place stale and unused and was untidy, which was useful because Danilov immediately recognized the Cyrillic print of two discarded newspapers as well as the English of that morning’s Chicago Sun Times. As he passed, he saw the Russian newspaper was Moskovsky Vedomosti. He was aware that Orlenko had remained with Harrison. So far there was none of the hoped-for Russian between the man and the woman and after hearing her speak Danilov didn’t expect it.

Townley had the back off one of the largest television sets Danilov had ever seen-much larger than his indulgence at Petrovka-with separate speakers on either side. The woman was leaning across from the other side, showing an appreciative Townley a deep cleavage valley.

Townley unclipped a circuit board and went through the charade of testing it with a power meter. He said, “This could be it.” He allowed himself a cleavage glance and called, “Sir. Sir, can I see you? And Jack …?”

The FBI man, carrying his toolbox, came in just moments after Orlenko. Townley gestured to Harrison with the microchip board and said, “You think this could be it? It doesn’t give a reading.” To Orlenko he said, “You get the set locally or in the city? You might have to go back to them.”

“Rented locally,” said the man.

Harrison almost had his head inside the set. Emerging, he said to Danilov, “Don’t you always say go for the most obvious?”

“Always,” agreed Danilov, following the lead.

“Then why don’t we check the plug fuse?” Harrison shuffled on his knees to the wall socket, dragging his box, and within seconds turned triumphantly holding up a blackened fuse. “And I’ve got another one with me! Why don’t you put the circuit board back, Pete?”

Danilov said, “That’s a helluva set: never seen one that big. Shouldn’t you check for overload?”

“Not a bad idea,” agreed the FBI man. “I’ll do that. Wouldn’t mind you running over the boxes. I think they’re all right but we need to be sure, don’t we?”

“Can you show us?” Danilov asked the hovering Orlenko.

The electrical boxes were in a closet by the stairs, and it was a tight squeeze for two of them, with an attentive Orlenko wedged half in as well, to see what they were doing. Danilov responded to a lot of left-thumb guidance from Townley, who attached a variety of meters to a variety of wires for the needles to rise and fall impressively.

“Looks like Jack did all he had to here,” said Townley. “This where all the boxes are as far as you know?”

“As far as I know,” said Orlenko, looking back in the direction of the living room in which he’d left Harrison. “This going to take long?”

“Gotta be sure,” said Townley. “No point in rushing it and getting it wrong.”

It was fifteen minutes before they returned to the main room overlooking the bay. Neither Harrison nor the women were there, but there were voices from the kitchen. Townley said, “Better see if Jack needs a hand.”

As Orlenko moved to follow, Danilov pointed to the pulled apart Moskovsky / Vedomosti and said, “Foreign, right? What’s the language?”

Orlenko stopped uncertainly, aware Danilov wasn’t going with them. “Russian.” He looked back and forth between Danilov and the kitchen. There was a laugh from the woman.

“You from there!” demanded Danilov, emphasizing the interest. “How long in this country?”

“Coupla years,” said the man.

“Is it as bad as they say it is? Nothing in the shops, lotta crime?”

“It’s better here. What’s your accent?”

“German,” said the linguistically able Danilov, prepared and able to speak it if the other man spoke it, too, and tried to test him. “Came here as a kid but my parents spoke it at home. Useful. Gave me a second language. Your English is good.”

“How much longer you going to be?”

“Almost through now. Always wanted to go to Russia. What part you from?”

“Moscow.” There was an impatience in his voice and he looked again toward the kitchen.

“You think I should go to Moscow? See for myself?”

Orlenko made a half move toward the other voices. “Your choice. What are your guys doing in there?”

“Their job,” said Danilov. “Company don’t like things like this happening. Bad for customer relations.”

“It’s certainly pissed me off.”

The woman led the other two men back into the room, smiling. “Jack fixed the toaster and the stove.”

“Just fuses,” said the bureau technician. “You were lucky.”

“What about bedrooms?” demanded Danilov, wanting to see as much as he could. “Anything electric there? Blankets? TV?”

“TV and it’s OK,” said Harrison. “Mary showed me.”

“I’d better cast an eye over it,” said Danilov, maintaining his supposed role. Everyone trailed behind him, like a tour party, into the kitchen, where he feigned an examination of Harrison’s appliance guidance. There were dirty breakfast plates and two cups in the sink, but Danilov decided the couple still had a lot to learn from Olga. He wondered how far Olga had gotten with her intended divorce settlement. He wasn’t looking forward to returning to Moscow.

“You finished?” Orlenko demanded truculently.

“Not quite,” said Danilov. The suit bag and carry-on were on the unused bed. “You going on a trip?”

“You want to hurry up and get this over with?” insisted Orlenko. “I’m busy.”

“Sorry,” said Danilov. If the woman had been able to speak Russian, there’d have been an exchange by now.

Silently he completed the examination performance and said on the doorstep they were sorry to have troubled them. Orlenko said he was sorry, too, and remained at the door, watching them. They hadn’t intended to leave immediately anyway. They went through a similar charade in three more properties in the avenue, so their van could remain in sight for almost another hour, before Townley summoned a regular relief team and made a show of handing over the check. Orlenko had gone back inside but Danilov was sure the man was watching from behind the net-curtained window.

On their way back into Manhattan Harrison said, “If you guys had spent another five minutes in that closet I’d have had Mary giving me head. Did you ever see tits like that?”

“No,” Townley said. “Should have been cast in stone.”

“What did you get?” asked Danilov, impatient at the relief-in-the-front-line camaraderie.

“A fly farts in that place, we hear it,” promised Harrison. “And a lot more besides …. Hey, we made a great team, the three of us. We should all be in movies-the new Marx Brothers.” He erupted into laughter at his own joke, prodding Danilov. “Get it, you being a Russian. Marx Brothers, like …?”

“I got it,” Danilov said soberly. “It’s very good: very funny.”

Pamela argued essential continuity to have Paul Lambert lead the forensic team, which was enlarged by the inclusion of a D.C. police pathologist, a bald doctor who only just tiptoed beyond being a dwarf and seemed prepared to confront anyone. He had, fortunately, brought nose clips, which everyone was now wearing: having come close to losing her lunch-as well as her credibility in front of men waiting for her to throw up-Pamela would have marked her cross on a ballot paper to elect the man president. The pathologist scarcely had to bend to remove the bullet-split pillow that had been put over Roanne Harding’s face. There were two bullet wounds, one in the center of the forehead, a second that had destroyed her left eye. Both sockets were maggot filled.

Lambert surveyed the room and said, “I’m not happy with this.”

“I shouldn’t think Roanne Harding is, either,” said Pamela. “What’s your point?”

“What do you see?” demanded the scientific examiner.

“Dead woman, maybe sexually violated. Apartment turned over, searching for something ….” She paused. “There is something,” she said.

Lambert called to one of his team, “What’s the count?”

“One,” the fingerprint expert called back. “Hers, I’d guess. No way of getting anything from her, decomposed like that. But her prints are on the personnel file we got from the Pentagon.”

The boyish forensic head raised a warning finger at the approach of the police surgeon and said to the man, “How’s it look to you?”

“Intrusion,” said the pathologist at once. “Guy breaks in to an apartment he thinks is unoccupied, starts to toss it. Girl wakes up, naked. He takes the diversion, rapes her, shoots her through that pillow to deaden the sound. Zips his fly, takes what else he wants. Goes home to watch the Letterman show. I’d have said it was all in a night’s work.”

“Except for what?” pressed Lambert.

“For you guys being here. This should be PD, not bureau. She the girl from the Washington Monument you guys been looking for?”

Pamela didn’t answer. Instead, waving her arm around the destroyed room, she said to Lambert, “This is neat, isn’t it! Tidy trashing?”

Lambert smiled broadly. “Right! It’s my job to go through tossed rooms. This stuff has been put down.”

Pamela said, “Might help if the Watchmen thought we’d bought it.”

“Give us a little time, at least,” agreed Lambert.

She said, “I’ll get the director to talk personally with Commissioner Frost. Have it released as a homicide not connected with us. The surrounding apartments were cleared because the danger was a gas explosion. No one was identifiably Bureau.”

Pamela was aware of Lambert shifting beside her and the doctor looking at her questioningly. She said, “Let’s give it a try, at least!”

The doctor shrugged. “All I’m responsible for are the medical findings.”

“Which are?” pressed Pamela.

“Decomposition has stages,” said the man. “From the maggot samples I’ve taken, forensic entomologists will be able to date the death to within a day or two. I’ve taken vaginal samples but there won’t be any semen left, for DNA. No fingernail debris, either: There aren’t any finger ends.”

“We got a long way to go,” said Lambert, exasperated.

“We always did,” said Pamela. She hoped Lambert would spread the word on how she’d recognized the intended deception.

Jack Harrison most definitely had turned 69 Bay View Avenue, Brooklyn, into a sound box. And just as definitely got a lot more besides. Arnie Orlenko had married Mary in a drive-through ceremony in Las Vegas eighteen months earlier-cajoling from her the actual, traceable month, May, by telling her that he’d arranged his divorce on the anniversary of his wedding to his first wife-and that she and Arnie had been in Chicago for the previous two weeks, seeing import-export business friends of Arnie’s. She hadn’t liked Chicago, her first visit: The wind was too cold, coming off the lake, even in summer. She didn’t like where they lived in Brooklyn for the same reason. They’d move, maybe. Arnie was always talking deals, about moving on. If they did move, she hoped it wouldn’t be to Chicago.

“And she slipped me her number!” declared the ebullient FBI technician. “As if I didn’t have it already.”

“Let’s test,” suggested Cowley, pressing the replay button for what had been recorded during their return journey from Brooklyn.

“Brooklyn’s out, for fuck’s sake! What are you worrying about?” Mary’s voice.

“The day we get back?” Orlenko.

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“I know cops. Can smell cops. They were dumb-assed electricians probably jerking off right now from the memory of the titty show I gave them.”

“What did you tell that guy you were with most of the time?”

“Small talk. Nothing! But if they had been cops, you’d have rung bells with your tight-assed number.”

“Show me exactly where he went! What he did.”

“He fixed the things that broke, for fuck’s sake. Put funny things on wires and stuff, made needles jump.” There was the sound of movement, people walking. “Now what the fuck are you doing!”

“Looking.”

“For what?”

“Won’t find it!” intruded Jack Harrison.

“I don’t know.” Orlenko.

“That’s why he won’t find it,” said Harrison, talking to the ceiling.

The noise of scratching and squeaking, as screws were unscrewed, came loudly into the Manhattan office.

“So!” demanded the woman.

“Looks all right.”

“The fucking trucks are still driving up and down the street, for Christ’s sake! You seen too many movies.”

“What’s the time?”

“Ten after four.”

“I’m going to nap before we go out.”

“You wanna fuck? Fool around a little?”

“I wanna nap.”

“Just offering value for money,” she said.

“Jesus! The waste!” Harrison moaned.

“Las Vegas found the registration,” said Cowley. “Mary’s full name is Mary Jo James. Born in Montana. Orlenko is Arseni Yanovich Orlenko, born-wait for it-in Gorki, June 10, 1958. Job description on the marriage certificate is engineer. Got a match for Mary Jo from a forefinger print on one of the in-flight magazines from the flight. She’s got three convictions for prostitution, two for the larceny of her Johns’ wallets. Served three months in a correctional institute in Billings five years ago. Nothing recorded since then.”

“Time I called Moscow,” said Danilov.

Pavin reminded him that the fingerprint comparison had to be made mechanically and visually, against a named offender, because none of their records was computerized. Having Orlenko’s full name might help, but nothing had shown against any of the Orlenko’s so far checked.

The positive connection came from elsewhere. The Gorki number from which two calls had been made to 69 Bay View Avenue and to which one had been returned was a garage rented by Viktor Nikolaevich Nikov. The Moscow number to which the two other outgoing international calls had been made from Bay View Avenue was to a newly opened restaurant named the Golden Hussar on Pereulok Vorotnikovskij, off the inner ring road. There was no intelligence of its having been adopted by any known organized crime brigade.

“We’ve got our link!” Cowley exclaimed in quiet triumph.

“A link,” cautioned Danilov. “Leading where?”

“To as far as it goes,” said the American.

The sound of renewed movement started in the Bay View clapboard at 5:20 P.M. Orlenko woke up irritable, complained Mary Jo should have called him earlier, and insisted he wasn’t taking the car, even though it was a long way to walk.

“Easier to see if we’re followed, going on foot.”

“For Christ’s sake, how long we going to go on with this shit!”

“Until I say so.”

“Can we go to the Odessa after you get your call? I like the blinis there. And I’m hungry.”

“Maybe.”

Forewarned, Cowley alerted the surveillance van and the agents in the four backup vehicles against any pursuit on foot. Working from the exhibit board map, he moved one car close to the junction with West 37 and Neptune and put another nearer to the Coney Island strip, at the join with Atlantic Avenue. Both vehicles, in constant radio contact with each other as well as with Manhattan, were able to see Orlenko’s constant turning, to check for followers.

The observer in the Atlantic Avenue car said, “From the look of things, Mary Jo’s giving him hell for making her walk.”

There were so many people along Surf Avenue and Riegelmann Boardwalk that there was no risk of Orlenko identifying any pursuit. There was still thirty minutes left of happy hour in the bar that Orlenko headed for so obviously that two agents from the Atlantic Avenue car, now on foot, were able to get in ahead of the Russian. The third man alerted the field teams to the location of the targets, so the surveillance could be rotated, which was an unfortunate professional precaution because it was a topless bar called Bare Necessities.

Orlenko drank beer, Mary Jo vodka martinis, straight up with a twist. They didn’t talk a lot. At precisely 6:25 he left her alone at a table by the stage on which a disinterested girl with a G-string and unmoving, rock-solid breasts was gyrating to “Simply the Best” and walked to the pay phone booth. He went in but didn’t attempt a call. At precisely 6:30 the telephone rang. The observers later reported that he appeared to listen more than he talked. The conversation lasted two minutes and thirty-five seconds. Orlenko didn’t bother to sit when he returned to their table but stood, waiting for his wife to finish her martini. He left his beer unfinished.

In the Manhattan office Cowley said, “It’s a pattern. But of what?”

As he spoke the fax machine began relaying what turned out to be the corporate record material on the Trenton, New Jersey, company that owned 69 Bay View Avenue.

“Here’s more to go with it,” said an agent, taking the sheets as they came off the machine. “Two of the listed directors have got Russian-sounding names.”

Anne Stovey decided to give it one more day before approaching Washington again. They’d probably laughed at her like everyone else. Foul-mouthed her, perhaps, for wasting their time. So what? She’d responded to an all-stations request and she deserved a reply, even if it was to go to hell and stop bothering them. Another written message or a phone call? No hurry. She had twenty-four hours to make up her mind.