The Michelin Man’s name was Vitaly. His skinny friend was Marat and could have been the guy I saw smoking outside of Titans. In happier times Oksana had innocently asked them their last names and they had told her that anyone who needed their last names to find them could go screw themselves. Charming.
“Why are they following you and why in the world would the fat one have been following me?” I asked.
“We can’t talk here,” she whispered.
I thought she was being melodramatic but who knew? I told the salesclerk we were trying to avoid some creeps who weren’t taking no for an answer and asked her to look outside to see if the two men were still there. Once she was convinced that we weren’t plotting to rip her off, she did it. Then she pointed to a house phone, where I called the valet to get my car. Oksana took off her scarf, borrowed my quilted jacket, and bought a two-dollar bandanna with a dice and feathers pattern on it. She tied it around her head in a makeshift disguise and we walked out of the shop expecting to feel a hand on our shoulders at any moment.
By the time we got to the entrance we were breathing easier. My car was already there and we took off for the trailer park, where Oksana and her roommate lived. It wasn’t far but Oksana took me by the back roads and I tried to imprint the turns and landmarks so I’d be able to get back without her.
“Isn’t there a more direct way?” I asked, faintly irritated.
“This is the way Nadia comes. It’s the only way I know,” she said.
“All right, we’re out of there. Now why is Sergei having his men follow you and why would they have been following me? This can’t be about some petty thefts from last year.”
“Vitaly protects Sergei. Sergei is somehow involved with the Mishkins’ investors. I don’t know how, but the night Nick was killed, I overheard him tell someone on the phone he could make it uncomfortable for people if they didn’t find a way to cut him in. Vitaly was at the bar. He also heard what Nick said.” She looked down at her nail-bitten hands and tore off a piece of cuticle. I waited for the other shoe to drop.
“What else?”
“I might have told him Nick had mentioned an older woman. He might have thought I meant you.”
Older woman? When did I join the ranks of older women? I was in my thirties, for Pete’s sake. What was I supposed to do, flick my hair and inject the word like into every other sentence?
“Did you tell Vitaly about Lucy’s call?”
“I may have,” she said quietly.
And now Nick was dead, my house had been ransaked, and Lucy was missing. But why?
We were on a poorly lit road riddled with enough potholes to make it seem like an obstacle course. “Oksana, are we getting close?”
“The building up ahead on the left, that’s the manager’s office. He’s never there, and the gate is always open. Just make a left and turn into the park.” So much for a gated community.
Oksana used the word park loosely. In the near dark I could make out rows of similarly shaped trailers reminiscent of overseas shipping containers and vintage diners. Occasionally one would stand out because of its outlandish paint job, or the disemboweled vehicle on the rectangle of outdoor space each tenant had a right to-I tried to remember them as breadcrumbs to help me get out of there after I’d dropped her off.
The only sign of vegetation was a few rows down, an aluminum Christmas tree one of the occupants had placed outside of the trailer, bits of tinsel still attached and fluttering in the early-morning breeze despite the fact that it was mid-March.
“Turn right at that tree.”
I had a feeling if the tree was moved Oksana wouldn’t know how to get home any more than she knew how to get there from the casino. It was all done by rote. We pulled up to the double-wide and she got out.
“Look after yourself,” I said.