Chapter 5
BOGDAN
The man outside the costume shop was standing behind Luka Zaitsev three nights ago.
I set my sandwich down on its paper and pull Klim's phone closer.
In the photograph, the man leans against a parked car with his arms folded.
There's a second man behind the wheel. Neither is looking at the phone that caught them.
Their attention is on the shop window across the street, where a black witch hat hangs above a row of brightly colored masks.
“How long?”
“About half an hour. I sent someone ahead of me to check the street. He recognized the passenger.”
So do I. He stood to Luka's left during our meeting, staring at my office as though he expected to be given part of it. The driver stayed downstairs that night. Klim points him out in another photograph taken when he lowered his window.
Two of Luka's men, outside a costume shop on a Tuesday afternoon.
“Put someone at the front and the delivery entrance,” I say. “Now. Don't let those two near the women.”
Klim makes the call beside my desk.
Beyond the office window, a truck backs into one of Depot One's loading bays.
Its warning beeps carry through the wired glass, followed by the heavy knock of the trailer meeting the dock.
The men below keep working. The afternoon's freight is still moving, the gates are shut between arrivals, and nobody in the yard knows why I've stopped eating my late lunch.
Mustard burns the back of my throat when I swallow.
This office has none of the Ninth Masque's expensive stone.
The floor is painted concrete, the desk has a long scratch where somebody dragged a stapler across it, and the broad window looks onto a fenced court full of vehicles with my name on the doors.
I kept the old room when I took over the depot.
From this chair, I can see what earns the money before anyone tells me what it should've earned.
There are other collections I don't put through dispatch. Men in my bratva visit businesses that pay for our protection, and the money comes back to me through Kirill. Luka wants those payments as much as he wants my freight contracts. On Saturday he asked for a share of both.
I haven't given him either.
Klim ends the call. “They're on their way.”
“Which women?”
“The costume partners from the launch. Hem & Havoc.”
I look at the photograph again.
We sent their details to the police on Sunday morning.
By lunchtime, we knew Beatrice was dead and the questions concerned a murder.
Klim has spent the last two days checking everyone who worked that event, supplying records and trying to account for the damaged camera.
This afternoon he was going to the South End to speak to the costume vendors in person.
Luka's men got there first.
I push the sandwich away. A little oil has soaked through the paper onto a freight manifest. Beside it, the shop's display fills barely a quarter of the screen. It looks too small to interest anyone with a crew to pay.
Unless somebody inside it has something he wants.
“They made the video,” I say.
“The two women own the account. I'm still waiting to speak to them about the original.”
The public launch clip showed the woman dressed as an angel. Her friend held the camera, or stood somewhere close to it. I remember a red dress beside the bar, a laugh behind a horned mask, and an invitation upstairs that she refused because she had work to finish.
I turn to my laptop.
The business page has an address, a telephone number and a photograph of its owners beneath a line about making an entrance. The angel is easy to recognize without her feathers. Her name is Peggy Travis. The other woman stands beside a dress form with one hand on its shoulder.
Tessa Sutton.
I say the name silently, looking at the uncovered face. The shape of her mouth stops me before I scroll any farther.
There's a short workshop video beneath the picture, posted the week before the launch. I start it.
She has a measuring tape around her neck and a dark dress pinned to the form in front of her. As she lifts its hem, a piece of lining falls across her shoe. Someone behind the camera laughs.
“That part costs extra,” she says. “Especially if you want it attached.”
She looks up, laughing too, and I know.
My chest tightens so suddenly I lean back from the desk.
I remember that mouth close to mine, the warmth of her hand, the way she inspected my jacket without pretending she was only interested in the cloth.
I'd enjoyed being a man she could tease.
She hadn't wanted an introduction to my business or a favor from somebody dangerous.
On the screen, she crouches to pick up the lining and keeps explaining the dress.
I stop the video before it ends.
“She's the woman in red.”
Klim looks from the laptop to me. He's known me long enough to hear what I haven't said. His eyes return to the photograph of the waiting car.
The back of my neck grows hot. I've spent two days wanting to find her when I had something better to offer than questions about the launch. Now I have her name because men who work for my rival are watching her door.
“Both women get protection,” I tell him. “At work and at home. Separate cars if they live apart. Nobody goes back to an empty building alone.”
“I'll need another shift.”
“Take the men you trust. Pay the overtime.”
He picks up his phone, already moving toward the door.
“Klim.”
He turns.
“Tell them who you are. Let them check with the club. They're frightened already. I don't want my men arriving like another threat.”
He sends both photographs to my phone before he leaves.
For a few seconds I can still hear his steps on the metal stairs outside the office. The stairwell door closes below. A forklift passes beneath the window carrying a load wrapped in blue plastic, and the driver waits for a worker to clear the marked crossing before turning.
I've spent years teaching men which instructions aren't suggestions.
I can empty a loading bay with a telephone call, put another car on the street, pay for a closed business until its owner stops worrying about rent.
None of it will help Tessa if I mistake these men for something they'll grow tired of doing.
I call Luka.
He answers after several rings. “Volkov.”
“Your men are outside Hem & Havoc.”
“Are they?”
I stand, taking the phone to the office door. A smell of diesel comes up the stairwell with a draft from the open truck bay. I close the door and turn the latch.
“Move them.”
He lets me wait. I look down at my right hand on the door handle, at the square stone catching the light. Three nights ago, Tessa took that hand without knowing anything about the man offering it.
“Someone who does event work for you also does work for me,” Luka says. “Your costume girls have been filming things. My man doesn't want his other employer watching him on their little business page.”
“What work?”
“People pay for information. You know that.”
I leave my hand on the handle until the metal warms beneath my palm.
Guest movements, delivery times and the doors my captains use all have value to men like Luka. It would explain his interest in a video without telling me who stood behind the skull mask, or whether his explanation is true.
“A woman left my club and was found murdered,” I say. “If your man was there, he can speak to the police.”
“I said he works events. I didn't say he had anything to do with her.”
His answer comes quickly. I hear a chair move at his end, then the sound of a door closing.
I want a name. I also want him thinking about the men he's left within reach of mine.
“You're finished outside that shop. Send anyone to frighten those women again, and I'll come to you for the explanation.”
“All this for two costume girls?”
“Move them.”
I end the call before he can make the question about something else.
My grip has left a damp mark on the handle. I wipe my palm against my trousers and go back to the desk, where Tessa is still on the laptop screen. The frame holds her smiling over the dress she made.
Luka claims he's paying somebody who works the events I host. That doesn't make every photographer, caterer or temporary worker his employee. It gives Klim a question to ask and me another reason to keep the guest records where the police can get them.
I send him what Luka said. He replies from the car a few minutes later, then calls when his men are in position.
“The watchers are leaving,” he says. “Both of them. My men have the car details.”
I let out a breath through my nose. Their departure loosens something beneath my ribs, but I don't sit down.
“Go inside. The guards stay.”
He ends the call.
On the other side of the office window, one of my vehicles waits by dispatch.
It has space for eight passengers, leather seats that have never carried a freight worker and tinted rear windows.
Most weeks it moves visiting partners between my clubs and hotels.
This afternoon it can take two women home without making them get into separate cars with strangers.
I send the driver to the South End and release a second car to follow. I authorize the extra shifts and hire another vehicle to cover the club's evening bookings. Tessa's voice, laughing about a loose lining, stays with me after the confirmations arrive.
I wanted to send her a car for dinner. She could've inspected the upholstery the way she inspected my jacket, and I could've spent an evening finding out what else made her laugh.
I rub a hand over my face. Every time I imagine her stepping out of the shop now, the man beside the parked car is waiting in the picture.
I could call her now. Her number is on the page in front of me.
She needs to hear Klim's warning before she hears from the stranger she took into a bathroom. I leave the number where it is and open the staffing request he's sent. He gets everyone he asked for.
By the time he calls again, the light has moved off the first row of trucks. I put him on speaker and set the phone beside the laptop.
“They've checked my name with the club,” he says. “I told them I'm the security chief. They've seen the photograph and know those men may approach.”
“How are they?”
He pauses. “Working. They keep asking what they can finish before they leave.”
I look at the dress frozen on my screen. She told me she did the swearing at the sewing machine while her friend did the selling. On Saturday it made me laugh. Now I picture both of them trying to get through a day's orders with a guard beside the window.
“Close the shop to customers.”
“They're doing that. There's something else. Tessa received a message on Sunday. She reported it to the detective.”
He reads the words to me.
“Delete the whole launch video. Original too. Or you're next.”
The edge of the desk presses hard into my thigh. I hadn't realized I'd stepped against it.
Sunday. While I was going through camera records and waiting for answers, somebody was telling her she'd follow Beatrice. I press my free hand flat against the desk until the impulse to throw something passes. I need Klim listening to instructions, not to glass breaking in my office.
Klim waits until I ask him to go on. “The detective has the number. Tessa's calling her now about the car.”
I open the photograph Klim sent. The passenger leans back against the car, watching Tessa's shop as though he has all afternoon. I have men at her door already, and enough money to put her work somewhere he can't reach it from a parked car.
“Give them the fitting room at the club,” I say. “We cover transport and anything they lose by closing.”
Klim speaks to somebody away from the phone. When he comes back, there's a new edge to his voice.
“Peggy's checking tomorrow's pickups. One booking used a number I know. It called our dispatch office last week, trying to get Kirill's arrival time. One of Luka's men used it.”
I enlarge the photograph, although I can't get anything more from the faces.
“When?”
“Nine tomorrow morning. Masks and three black capes. Paid yesterday.”
Tomorrow is Wednesday. The shop was meant to be open, both women expecting a customer who'd already given them money. A receipt would've brought him through the door without anyone wondering why he was there.
My stomach contracts.
“Cancel it. Refund it. Keep the confirmation.”
There's no argument about losing the sale. I hear the faint tapping of keys through the connection, then Klim asking her to save the booking. I wait until he says the cancellation has gone through.
The quiet afterward is worse than the typing.
Paying for a rental takes planning. So does watching the women at work. I've made Luka move his men, but I haven't made him forget whatever his informant believes is on that recording.
“Tell me how they're getting out,” I say.
Klim has the cars outside. The women live at separate addresses nearby, and guards will stay at both overnight.
They'll bring the most urgent work with them when they leave today.
Tomorrow morning, the same escort will take them back to pack the remaining Wednesday orders for the club.
The workshop will stay shut to customers, with guards inside while our driver loads.
I make him confirm that the guards at the shop are staying through the night too. Nobody is relying on a sign in the window to keep a man outside.
The plan puts people between Tessa and every ordinary way somebody might reach her.
It also leaves her able to finish the things she promised.
I want to order the whole contents of the shop moved tonight, but Klim says the larger gowns are still pinned to forms. They need the morning to secure them for the van.
“No one waits for my permission if those men come back,” I tell him. “Get the women under cover and call for help. Call me once they're safe.”
“Understood.”
I hear him move away from the worktable. A door closes before he speaks again.
“Peggy showed me the notes on that order.”
“What notes?”
“The customer wanted Tessa to hand it over herself. Said he needed help with the fit.”
I look at the rental details Klim has sent. The masks and capes are standard stock, with ties anybody can adjust. Nothing in the order needs a private fitting with the woman who designed it.
For the price of a costume rental, he'd arranged to have Tessa waiting at the door.