The man seems amused at my naïveté. “You must not be a collector.” He looks at Ellis. “Now, Officer—”
“Detective.”
“Yes, Detective. Mr. Kutuzov is not here, obviously. Though I believe he is in the States at the moment, but I cannot tell you this with certainty.”
“But you know how to get hold of him,” Ellis says. Ellis hands his card over the counter.
Knightley was also good in one of those Pirates of the Caribbean movies and one of the Star Wars prequels.
The man takes Ellis’s card and gives him another card. Ellis takes it and reads it, as do I. It’s a card for a lawyer named Edgar Griffin, from Griffin and Weaver.
“That’s too bad,” says Ellis. “I was hoping to just have a quick chat with Mr. Kutuzov and then move along. But if you’re involving lawyers, then maybe we’ll have to take him to the police station for questioning. It makes the whole thing more antagonistic.”
“Antagonistic.” The Russian allows a brief smile. “I thought in America you were not punished for requesting the assistance of counsel.”
“You know a lot about our system for a guy who sells used books for a living,” I say. It isn’t really my place to chime in, but this guy doesn’t know that I’m a reporter and not a cop. Maybe Ellis and I can be a team, like on Castle, except I’m not a crime novelist and Ellis isn’t a hot brunette, last time I looked.
Ellis says, “Tell Mr. Kutuzov, or his lawyer, that if I don’t hear from him soon, I’m going to come looking for him again, and it won’t be as enjoyable as this visit.”
The man stares at Ellis with a flare in his eyes, but he ultimately relents. “As you wish,” he says. “I shall pass on your inquiry.”
“Please do that.”
We’re back in the car a minute later. “Well, that didn’t take long,” says Ellis. “We’re barely in the door and the guy’s already lawyered up.” He looks at me. “It’s a start, Ben. We’ve shaken the tree. Now let’s see what falls out.”
Chapter 46
“Still nothing on Operation Delano?” asks Ashley Brook Clark over the phone. “I haven’t pulled out all the stops. You still want me to hold off?”
“Could be dangerous,” I say into my cell. I have a limp after the bike wipeout and I’m working on almost no sleep, but it warms me up to talk to a friend and colleague. Ashley Brook’s been with me since I started the Beat five years ago.
“Danger’s my middle name,” she says. “Hey, Ben—tell me this much. How did Operation Delano come up?”
“Jonathan Liu mentioned it to me the other day.”
“The lobbyist Jonathan Liu? The one they just found dead in his house?”
“That one, yes.” By yesterday evening, a few hundred media outlets were reporting the news. Gunshot wound, apparently self-inflicted, according to the reports, but nothing else from the MPD.
“And I got confirmation from one of Diana’s best friends, Anne Brennan. She heard Diana mention it once. Delano, not Operation Delano.”
“Same difference,” says Ashley Brook.
I’ve never really understood what the phrase same difference means. I mean, I get Ashley Brook’s meaning, which at the end of the day is the point of communication—to convey a thought—but same difference never made sense to me.
Anyway. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.
“So what is this about the Russians?” Ashley Brook asks. “You said when you called that this Delano thing ties into the Russians.”
I pass a couple making out on a park bench and experience intense jealousy toward anyone who (a) doesn’t have someone trying to kill them and (b) has someone they can make out with on a park bench.
“FDR normalized relations with the Russians,” I say. “He officially recognized them and he gave them a lot at Yalta, when he, Churchill, and Stalin were divvying up the spoils after World War II. He caught a lot of heat for that. It’s something, at least.”
“Not really, boss. It’s pretty thin.”
“That’s why I pay you princely sums to uncover information, Ms. Clark.”
“You pay me princely sums? I must not be reading my paycheck right.”
Everyone’s a comedian.
“Okay, well, I’ll look for a Russian angle,” she says. “Hey, boss? Are you still living out of a gym bag? A different hotel every night?”
“It beats being dead. By the way, if anyone shows up at the office with a submachine gun, tell them I’ve moved to Antarctica.”