THIRTEEN

BOLDT FOUND TRUE POLICE WORK electrifying. Now that he carried a lieutenant’s shield, such moments came rarely and so when encountered proved all the more meaningful. For him detection was a mathematical process, and therefore very much related to his music, which he thought of as a mathematical language. As a detective you connected A to B and B to C and therefore A to C, and around and around it went, simple algebra and geometry applied to everyday problem-solving.

The problem had been to approach his interview of Malina Alekseevich with more than a hunch and a whim. For Boldt, several disparate pieces of evidence came together in the men’s room midway into his morning routine at work.

Standing at the urinal, going about his business, he heard the distinct click of the door’s deadbolt being thrown and glanced over his shoulder to see a woman locking the lavatory door.

“Wrong door,” Boldt called out, his right hand fishing to return himself to his shorts. “This is the men’s room.”

When the woman told him she needed two minutes of his time, and called him by rank, Boldt hurriedly zipped himself up. In all his years of policing, he’d never been ambushed in a men’s room.

She was a handsome woman in her early thirties, strong-bodied and big-chested. She wore her blond-tinted hair as bangs in front and cropped at her shoulders, lending her coif the look of a helmet. He searched for a name to go with that pleasant face but couldn’t find it. He washed his hands as she moved over to him and spoke quickly and softly.

“Sorry for the cloak-and-dagger, but I couldn’t think how else to ensure privacy.”

He apologized for having forgotten her name.

“Olson,” she replied. “Maddie Olson. Organized Crime.”

Boldt was glad for the moment it took him to yank a couple of paper towels from the box and dry his hands, for it gave him time to think. He’d put the request through to OC earlier this same morning, attempting to establish the torture scenes as signature crimes, hoping OC might have someone on file who liked to pull fingernails. And now here was Olson, delivering information in a quirky, and exceptionally unusual way. He did not question her motives, except to know that if she’d gone to these lengths, she must require an enormous amount of secrecy.

He realized too that she was right about her choice of methods. Any detective from OC visiting a Homicide lieutenant was going to be noticed, even if they took a minute together in a conference room. The safest way was to force an encounter outside the offices, but Boldt went from his car to his office to his car and home. He didn’t offer a person like Olson much chance to corral him.

“Okay, I’m listening,” he said.

“Your inquiry this morning: Rohypnol, duct tape, and fingernail extraction. You’re not going to get anything out of OC on that.”

“I’m not,” he said, trying to follow her.

“No. You’ll nudge us again in another few days and we still won’t have an answer for you.”

“I don’t have a few days.”

“I know that. I’m in the cubicle next to Marcel. I overheard your request.”

Marcel Malvone, on OC nearly as long as Boldt had been Homicide. Boldt had taken the request to Malvone directly, knowing that penetrating OC’s hierarchy could be difficult at best.

Olson glanced quickly toward the men’s room door, as if expecting an interruption. She then turned on the water in the sink to increase the background noise.

Boldt felt his palms sweat. He dried them on a fresh paper towel.

“The thing about OC,” she said. “We’re worse than Internal Investigations half the time. We live by the covenant no one can protect you better than you can protect yourself. It’s not so much about misinformation as it is disinformation. When someone pushes a hot button we make sure that information is lost.”

“I pushed a hot button,” Boldt said, working with what she was telling him.

“No one’s going to give you this. If I’m proved wrong, so much the better. But when I overheard your time constraints, I decided to act. Maybe you repay the favor someday.”

“Will if I can.”

“That signature you’re looking for would come back for a CI,” civilian informant, “that’s currently working a case for us. No way anyone’s going to give him up for you and yours.”

“No one but you.”

“But me,” she confessed. “My sister’s stepson.” Here it comes, Boldt thought. Olson had the favor ready at hand. “He’s on the buying end of a drug deal in the backseat of a car when the skel riding passenger decides to pull a piece and blow away a corner dealer. Car’s pulled over and everyone in the car is charged with manslaughter except the shooter, who wins himself a capital murder charge. My nephew’s a good kid. Wrong place, wrong time. Drugs. He deserves a bad rap, maybe some time, but not the manslaughter.”

Boldt actually knew of the case. He promised to look into it, to do his best.

“That’s all I ask.”

“Done.”

“This CI is planted deep. It’s a joint effort in-house with Special Ops. U.S. Attorney’s Office and INS are even in on it. But this signature you described… I know for a fact he’s into manicures,” she said, meaning the extraction of fingernails. “The Rope, that’s news to me.” She meant the use of Rohypnol. “So maybe it just skews to him but isn’t him. I can’t say. That will be Malvone’s justification in not sharing him with you-if you ever bring it back onto us. The Rope is not part of his gig, not on his sheet. They can withhold him from you for this reason. But the tape and the manicures-that’s him, for sure.”

“The case?”

“These guys are into everything, Lieutenant. We’re talking fraud, smuggling, black market retail. Money exchange. Money laundering. Anything and everything to do with a buck. No drugs, no prostitution, nothing for Narcotics or Vice. But racketeering? Shit, Lieutenant, this guy-the boss, I’m talking about, not the CI-when they wrote the definition for racketeering, they had him in mind. They run a fucking empire. This guy is the fucking Brando of the Russian immigrant community. And he’s Dangerous, capital D. That would be another reason they wouldn’t steer you into this: It’s a fucking one-way street to the graveyard to mess with these people. Our guy, our plant, he’s a gold mine. Constantly funneling information. Reliable, bankable, good information. Compromising him would be a serious setback. We’re picking up foreign networks, massive laundering. The mother lode. That’s how I know you’ll never get him out of us.”

A crashing sound as someone banged into the door expecting it to open. This was followed by a sharp knocking. “What the fuck?!” came the complaint.

“A name?” Boldt asked, his heart dancing in his chest. The Russian community, she’d said. Russian cigarettes from the ash found at Foreman’s torture. A Russian name on a partial print from Bernie Lofgrin. Click, click, click, went the pieces. He loved this job.

She lowered her voice so that even Boldt could barely hear her above the rush of water into the stained sink. “Yasmani Svengrad. The Sturgeon General.”

“Sturgeon General,” Boldt clarified the irregularity.

“He imports caviar. Or did… ”

“Let me guess,” Boldt said. “S &G Imports.”

She leaned back, impressed. “Well… yeah.”

More banging on the door. Boldt shouted for the guy to cool it. He said to Olson, “Your CI. He’s called Malina Alekseevich.”

Her lips parted in surprise. She had nice teeth.

“How’d you know that?”

“He’s sloppy,” Boldt answered.

He told her to take a stall and lock the door. He’d knock on the bathroom door when the coast was clear.

Boldt then unlocked the main door to a disgruntled detective who quickly changed his attitude in the presence of a lieutenant. Boldt hovered by the water fountain in the hall until this detective left the men’s room. Boldt knocked, and Olson slipped into the hall, walking quickly away, never looking back.