Chapter 17 #2
Thompson listened to it all without moving, until he began to slowly shake his head with the smallest of smiles.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Running girls. I’m not running any girls; I manage a dating service.
That’s all there is to it. I don’t ship money back to the motherland, and I don’t need any contacts in the Old Country, because it’s the Old Country. I’m living in the New Country.”
“I didn’t explain myself clearly enough,” Lucas said. “We need a lead to this hit team. We know local Russians have been helping them out by supplying them with cars. We think you could probably find out who that might be. We’re counting on you to do that. If—”
Thompson threw his hands up. “I don’t know anybody—”
Lucas rode over him: “If you continue to say that you have no idea, then, well, we’ve got a search warrant for this house.
We’ll tear the ass off it, looking for your connections around town.
You’ll probably get your computers back next year.
Given the guys your high-end girls are banging, I expect we’ll find some interesting names and phone numbers. ”
“Maybe some even going back to the Old Country,” Sherwood suggested.
“What the fuck? Search warrant? I haven’t done nothing but run a dating service.” Thompson’s pale face had gone pink, and he was losing his grammar.
“Give us a break,” Sherwood said. “You’re running a string of whore—”
“Who the fuck are you? You look like you jumped out of a Cracker Jack’s box,” Thompson said to Sherwood. “You ain’t a cop.”
“That should worry you,” Lucas said.
“Let’s not everybody get all upset,” Capslock said. “But I gotta tell you, Rick—can I call you Rick? Or Oly?—we will wreck this place if we don’t get some help.”
“If it turns out you’re the guy supplying these cars, then we’re talking accessory to first-degree murder,” Lucas said. “So: where are we at?”
“I need to talk to my lawyer,” Thompson said.
“I need to serve you the warrant,” Capslock said. “I didn’t want to do it…”
· · ·
A redheaded woman came down the stairs carrying a brown leather shoulder bag, with a hand in the purse. Capslock pushed back his sport coat and Lucas crossed his hands in his lap.
Thompson picked up on that and said, “Wait, wait, wait…Sally doesn’t have a gun.”
“Then tell her to take her hand out of her purse, without a gun in it,” Capslock said. To Sherwood: “I hate shooting women. Instead of moaning, they scream. Or cry.”
The woman said, “What?” and snatched an empty hand out of the purse. “Who are you? Are you with Larry?”
“They’re investors, they’re not with Larry,” Thompson said.
“That’s interesting,” she said. She was nice-looking, but not crazy pretty, or sexy; she looked, as Capslock had said, like she’d just driven in from Wayzata in the BMW convertible that Daddy had given her.
Low heels. Pearl earrings. Gold bracelet.
Short brown-wool coat that looked expensive and subtly chimed with the bracelet.
Lucas: “Would you like to join us?”
“I have to get my hair done,” she said, her voice crisp and suburban.
“Have a good time,” Capslock said. “Though I gotta say, your hair looks perfect.”
“Just a blow job,” she said, with a smile. She crossed from the bottom of the stairs to the door in two long strides and was gone.
Sherwood said, “Wow.”
· · ·
Thompson said, “About that warrant…”
“Yeah, about that,” Capslock said. “We’re desperate. We admit it. We gotta have some information, one way or another.”
Thompson held up a finger—wait one—and walked over to the stairs, walked up four, craning his neck, then another step, seeming to peer down a possible hallway at the top, took one more step, then turned and came back down.
“The people who run my former country can be very rough. A lot of people would be happy to do them a favor as, you know, insurance, in case they decide to go back.”
Sherwood: “Yes.”
Thompson looked him over and said, “You’re not a cop.”
“No.”
“Then what are you?”
“You don’t want to know that,” Sherwood said.
Another few seconds spent examining Sherwood, then, “Okay, I’m up to my neck in shit.
I’m hoping the other lady upstairs doesn’t hear us.
You want to talk to Lawrence Bell, formerly Ilarion Belov, who I believe, who I know, is close to the people you are interested in.
The people in Russia, maybe not exactly this crew you are searching for. People like…” He nodded at Sherwood.
“Where’s he live?” Lucas asked. “Belov?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Minneapolis, in general. He seems to have several places. I have his cell phone number.”
“We’ll take that,” Lucas said.
“If you tell Belov where you got the number, I will probably part ways with my testicles, if not my entire skin,” Thompson said.
“We’ve already forgotten your name,” Lucas said, “though we have it written down on this warrant. We’ll be back with it, if you’re lying to us.”
“I’m not. I really don’t want…Listen, you gotta…If you…”
Like that, for ten minutes.
· · ·
Out on the sidewalk, after more threats and saying goodbye to Thompson, Sherwood looked back at the house and said, “You know, that place could be a little treasure chest of information. I bet there are places like it in every big city in the country.”
“Probably,” Capslock said. “Even some middle-sized ones. I know there’s one down in Cedar Rapids.”
“Local cops know that they’re running sex workers out of there…but you don’t do anything with it?”
“Nothing illegal about escorts, if all they’re doing is hanging on the arms of tech bros at parties,” Capslock said.
“Who’s gonna testify that they’re providing sex for money?
Even if we could prove that’s happening, it would be like a two-hundred-dollar fine and harsh words for their customers.
Not worth chasing after. At two thousand bucks a night, you’d be embarrassing and pissing off a lot of rich potential political donors. ”
“Where are you going with this?” Lucas asked Sherwood.
“Possibly simultaneous raids by FBI agents looking for information about overseas connections. Get the warrant, grab every phone and computer in the house, and then, you know, see what else we can squeeze from the women and the managers in return for non-prosecution.”
“What a shitty thing to do,” Capslock said. “I like it.”
“Let’s go see Larry,” Sherwood said. “Call your phone guy at the BCA, see if he can get a billing address.”
“If we get an address, we go back to the judge and ask for another warrant,” Lucas said. “If he’ll do it.”
“He’ll do it,” Capslock said.
· · ·
The BCA came through with a billing address for Bell’s cell phone, and Capslock told the judge about the possibility of Russian spies in the community, and about the hit team, and the judge came through with another warrant.
He asked only that he be told of the outcome, in a narrative way, and not just through the return on the warrant. Capslock said he could do that.
The address was on the south side of Minneapolis, in a trendy neighborhood of older houses and coffee shops and people who didn’t have much to do in the morning.
On the way over, with Lucas driving, Capslock riding shotgun and Sherwood in the back, Capslock asked a lot of questions about the investigation so far, and after Lucas filled him in, he turned to Sherwood and asked, “Do you know if the FBI did one of those Identi-Kit facial things with the neighbor who talked to the Russian? Out in Minnetrista?”
“Yeah, they did. It’s been on TV news shows, it’s on the Internet,” Sherwood said.
“Do you guys, the CIA, do facial recognition stuff? Picking guys out of a crowd?”
“Sure. Not in the States, that’s FBI again.”
“I’m wondering what would happen…I mean, there are cameras all over Hennepin Medical Center…I wonder if facial ID could pick out the guy, based on Identi-Kit, if he shows up at the hospital? If they decide to go into the hospital, they’d have to do a recon first,” Capslock said.
Sherwood said, “Hmm. I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone’s ever tried it. I could call St. Vincent and ask.”
“You’re not doing anything else right now,” Lucas said.
Sherwood called. St. Vincent was in a conference and couldn’t be interrupted, so Sherwood left the request with an assistant, who promised to get the question to St. Vincent as soon as he was free.
“I’ll have him call you back. Should be within the hour.
” He added, in a hushed tone, “He’s talking to Washington. ”
Sherwood rang off and Capslock said, “Talking to Washington? All of it?”
· · ·
Bell’s place was another well-kept older house, like Thompson’s had been, and, as had happened at Thompson’s, the door was opened by a female housekeeper. She looked at the three men on the porch and said, “I will get Mr. Bell.”
She closed the door on them, but a minute later, it cracked open again and Bell peeked out.
He was almost Thompson’s opposite: while Thompson was tall and soft-looking, Bell was short, thick, with a face that would have fit a minor evil character in Lord of the Rings.
He was chewing on something, possibly a cud.
Sherwood smiled and said, “Ilarion Belov, as I live and breathe. Good to see you prospering, man.”
Bell swallowed and asked, with a heavy accent, “Do I know you?”
“No, you don’t, but I know you. You don’t know these other two people, either, but they’re police officers and honestly—he switched to Russian—“You’re up shit creek without a paddle.”
Bell regarded him with stone eyes, and then said, in English, “I have been up this creek before, but here I am.”
Capslock: “What? A creek?”
“Shit creek,” Sherwood said.
Bell looked over his shoulder, as if to make sure the front room had been evacuated, and said, “You come in. Is this about Friday?”
“It might be,” Lucas said, improvising. Friday? What happened on Friday? “If this keeps happening, this Friday problem…”
“That boy, he was spoiled and he was too rough,” Bell said. “He got what he deserved and is fine this morning. I asked and his father said we are all okay. We returned the escort fee, and they will not be back, either one of them.”
“That’s not exactly what we heard,” Capslock said.
“But that is where we are,” Bell said. They followed him into a living room, and he said, “I would give you a beer, but you’re working.”
“That’s okay,” Lucas said. “Is your housekeeper a Russian?”
“Ann? No.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble, in case you decide to answer some of our questions,” Lucas said.
“I should tell you that we have a search warrant for your house. We may not need it, if you cooperate. If you don’t, I will call a BCA search crew with hammers and screwdrivers, and they will take this house apart. ”
“Can I see this warrant?” Bell asked.
“Sure,” Capslock said. He took the folded document from his jacket pocket and passed it over.
Bell looked at it for a full two minutes, even though there wasn’t two minutes’ worth of information, sighed, and handed it back to Capslock.
“There’s nothing here, you can look,” Bell said.
“It might be true that you’ll find things that you don’t want to find.
I have some very prominent clients. They hate being disturbed.
This thing on Friday, it’s very, very unusual. ”
Capslock, Sherwood and Lucas looked at each other and Lucas said, “Maybe we’ve pushed that as far as we can. I would kinda like to know what happened on Friday, though.”
Bell said, “What?”
Sherwood: “Friday is your business. We’re here for something else. There’s a Russian hit crew in town. They’ve tried to kill a Russian defector twice. The crew needs cars, and somebody local has been getting the cars for them.”
“This isn’t Friday?”
“No. This is about the hit crew,” Sherwood said.
“I know nothing about this thing,” Bell said.
“That’s too bad,” Lucas said. “Because—”
“I can make some calls,” Bell said.
“We need all the information we can get on what they’re currently driving,” Lucas said.
“All I can do is call, and talk. I make no promises.”
“Then do that…”
“You have to leave now,” Bell said. “Give me a phone number, and I will call.”
“If you try to run, we’ll go after you for accessory for first-degree murder,” Lucas said. “So if you have to run, I’d suggest you run very far—like back to Russia. If we get our hands on you…”
“If I need cooperation from local police sometime in the future…”
“Depending on what the problem is, we can help,” Capslock said. “On the other hand, I might look into this Friday business and stick that whole thing up your ass.”
“Don’t do that. Just give me a number,” Bell said. “I might have to talk in person. I might have to go out, play cards. I call tonight.”
“Sooner is better,” Lucas said. “If you think you might need a get-out-of-jail ticket someday, the sooner we hear from you, the bigger the ticket gets.”
Bell nodded. “I know how this works. I have friends in Minneapolis.”
Capslock: “Cops?”
Bell nodded again. “Sometimes, they want dates. I have a dating service here. I am sure you know that.”
“We do,” Capslock said.
Lucas: “Call me.”
· · ·
On the sidewalk, Sherwood looked back and said, “Mr. Belov was uncommonly cooperative.”
“Not yet, he isn’t,” Lucas said. “Maybe Minneapolis or some other organization has him in a crack and he needs that get-out-of-jail card. On the other hand, he might decide to disappear. Without a full crew watching him, he could do that. We’re five hours from the Canadian border.”
“That’s another thing we might be onto,” Capslock said. “I wonder if the cops who want dates are getting free sex. I mean, if the BCA were to look into that…it would end, and right quick.”
Sherwood: “I said it once, I’ll say it again. I find these interactions absolutely fascinating. The good cops extort a pimp with an illegal search warrant and tell him a bunch of lies and end up possibly helping the pimp by fending off crooked cops.”
“I don’t find it fascinating. I find it depressing, in the nonmedical sense,” Lucas said.
“Now what?” Sherwood asked.
“We have some lures in the water…so we wait.”
St. Vincent never called back about using the Identi-Kit to look for similar faces at the hospital.