Nelson frowned. 'What the hell is up with you?'
Derbyshire nodded at the envelope. 'That's trouble. Big trouble. I should be asking you for more money. Two thousand dollars isn't gonna cover my hospital bills if anyone finds out what I've done.'
Nelson leaned forward. Their waitress returned with a mug of coffee and a glass of milk. Nelson said nothing until she was on her way back to the kitchen. 'Okay, Ernie. Stop playing games. | Spill the beans.'
'"' Derbyshire grimaced. He took a sip from his glass. When he put it back down on the table he had a white foamy moustache on his upper lip. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. 'The agent you gave me, the lawyer, wasn't one I'd worked on before so I didn't have any contacts. Nice office, though. Really prestigious, all the trimmings. It's a small firm. I tried approaching one of the secretaries but she wouldn't have " anything to do with me and I couldn't risk trying anything else.
That meant I had to do a little breaking and entering…'
Nelson held up a hand. 'I don't want to hear what you did, Ernie. That's nothing to do with me.' Nelson knew that the private detective had spent two years in prison after a security guard discovered him standing over a lawyer's desk with a flashlight in one hand and a miniature camera in the other.
The banker didn't want to hear about any illegal activities. He just wanted the facts.
'Yeah, yeah, I understand,' Derbyshire said. 'Okay, so I got the Ventura file, no problem.' He tapped the envelope. 'There's copies in there. There are two investors in the partnership.
Russians.'
'Russians?' Nelson repeated. It was the last thing he'd expected to hear.
'Yeah, but not just any old Russians,' Derbyshire said. He took a pack of Marlboro cigarettes from the pocket of his raincoat, tapped one out and stuck it between his lips. 'Russian gangsters.
Mafioski, the newspapers call them. I've included a few of the choicer cuttings in the envelope.' He patted his pockets, looking for matches. 'They're brothers. Gilani and Bzuchar Utsyev. Bzuchar lives in Brighton Beach. He owns a couple of restaurants, a trucking company and a taxi firm. He's just opened a marina up in New York State. But the bulk of his income comes from drugs, extortion and prostitution. Have you got a light?' Nelson shook his head. Derbyshire waved at the waitress and mimed lighting his cigarette. She came over with a book of matches. Derbyshire winked and lit up, exhaling through clenched teeth as if reluctant to allow the smoke to escape.
Nelson toyed with his mug of coffee. 'Gangsters?' he repeated.
'You're telling me they're gangsters?'
'Uh-huh. Damn right. The younger brother – Gilani changed his name – to Sabatino, of all things.'
'Sabatino?'
'Yeah, don't ask me why. Sal Sabatino. He lives here in Baltimore. Runs a nightclub, but I couldn't find too much on him. He keeps a lower profile than his brother. Everything I could get is in the envelope.' Derbyshire leant forward as if he was frightened of being overheard. 'They're worse than gangsters, Lennie. Bzuchar's a psychopath, by all accounts.
Worse than Al Capone, worse than Dillinger, worse than any Mafia don you've ever heard of. They left Russia in the late eighties. God knows why, because they'd already made a fortune out of the black markets. They come from a place called Chechenya – it's close to the southern borders of the old Russia, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. It declared itself a republic when Gorbachev split the country up. The whole country is run by mobsters – it's the Russian equivalent of Sicily.'
Nelson picked up the envelope and slowly turned it in his hands. 'The evidence is all in here?' he asked.
'What you've got there is what I got from the lawyer's files, and from the New York Times cuttings library. But if you want the real dirt, it's gonna cost more.'
'How come?'
'Because all the good stuff, the stuff about their illegal operations, came from a friend of mine in the FBI. If you want paperwork to back it up, he's gonna want a payoff.'
Nelson tapped a corner of the envelope on the table. 'How much will your friend want?'
'It's gonna cost five.'
'Five hundred?'
Derbyshire sneered at the banker. 'We're not talking about running a licence plate through the MVA computer, Lennie.
We're talking about FBI files.' He drained his glass noisily, then banged it down with a dull thud. 'Five thousand. And you're not gonna be dealing with me – I'll put him in touch with you.'.
Nelson considered the detective's proposal. Five thousand dollars was a lot of money, but if it proved beyond a doubt that Ventura Investments was a money-laundering vehicle run by gangsters, it would be a major coup for him, and the death knell for Walter Carey's career. Put like that, it was an attractive proposition. 'Let me read this first,' he said. 'If I need more, I'll get back to you.'
'Fine,' Derbyshire said, holding out his hand.
Nelson took a cheque from his inside pocket and slipped it over the table to the private detective. Derbyshire took the cheque, scrutinised the figures and the signature, and pocketed it. He pointed a warning finger at the banker, and narrowed his eyes. 'Whatever you do, don't tell anyone that I was involved in this. These guys are killers. My life is on the line here.'
'What do you think I am?' Nelson replied. 'You think I'm going to admit that I know what you've been doing? You're a professional consultant, nothing more. That's what you're shown as in our accounts, and that's all I know.'
Derbyshire shook his head. 'No. That's not good enough. I don't want my name connected with this at all. I don't wanna be on any file, I don't wanna be on any computer.' The detective's face was flushed and he was sweating. 'You know what banks are like. They leak information like sieves. If I'd known that the Utsyev brothers were involved I wouldn't have touched this case.
For any amount of money. They're fucking animals, Lennie.
They make the Mafia look like Mormons.'
Nelson flicked the edge of the envelope with his thumbnail.
Derbyshire wasn't faking, trying to drive up the price. He was genuinely scared, and he didn't look like the sort of man who'd scare easily. 'Okay, Ernie. I'll be in touch.'
'Yeah, well, when you do, don't mention their names, either on the phone or in writing. If you want the FBI guy to get the stuff for you, tell me you want the football statistics. I'll then get him to contact you direct. Remember, it'll be five grand.'
Derbyshire stood up and leaned over the banker. His face was so close to Nelson's that Nelson could smell his milky breath.
'Watch your back, Lennie. That envelope could be the death of you.' He raised his eyebrows and nodded, then turned on his heels and walked quickly out of the coffee bar, his coat flapping behind him like a loose sail in the wind.
Freeman knew it was bad news even before he picked the fax up off his desk. He'd been in one of the development labs with Josh Bowers, discussing a potential modification to the MIDAS deployment system over chicken salad sandwiches and cans of 7-Up, and when he arrived back in his own office his secretary was missing and the fax was face down next to his in-tray. If it had been routine it would have been in the tray with the rest of his correspondence. If it had been good news then Jo would have rushed up to him, waving it like a victory flag, her cheeks flushed with excitement. No, it was bad news, and before he read the first words his stomach was churning with the realisation that CRW hadn't got the Middle East order.
He read the brief letter with a heavy heart, though he was enough of a realist to know that it wasn't unexpected. Despite Anderson's unflagging confidence, Freeman had suspected that the Arabs wouldn't come through, that their trip to the States was nothing more than a holiday for the wives and that CRW's demonstration had been just a window-dressing sideshow. 'Shit, shit, shit,' he said, screwing the fax up into a tight ball and tossing it into a wastepaper bin. He flopped down into his chair and beat a tattoo on the desk with the palms of his hands. The day hadn't been a total loss. The Thai Army had just reordered another fifty of the MIDAS systems for use on their border with Laos, and a dealer in Hong Kong had been on the phone first thing that morning about a possible deal with Vietnam. The Vietnamese border with China was heavily mined, and they were still discovering minefields left by the Americans. Freeman tried to look on the bright side, but there was still a hard ache in the pit of his stomach, a feeling that no matter how hard he tried, no matter how hard he worked, the company was continuing its inexorable slide into oblivion. It was starting to look more and more as if Lennie Nelson was right. Drastic downsizing at home with manufacturing sub-contracted overseas might be CRW's only salvation. But he knew that Katherine would never stand for it. To her CRW was more than a business. It was a monument to her father.
Jo appeared in the doorway, a nervous smile on her lips as she looked to see how he was taking it. Tm sorry,' she said.
Freeman held his hands up, palms showing, and grimaced.
'Gotta roll with the punches,' he said.
'There'll be other orders,' she said, leaning against the doorjamb.
'Sure,' he said. $?¦ 'Really. I can feel it. And my psychic said there was going to be a lot of activity at work.'
'Your psychic?'
'Sure. I see her every two weeks. She's never wrong. Well, hardly ever.'
'Yeah? Next time you see her ask her where I left my gold pen, will you? It was a present from Katherine and she'll kill me if I've lost it.' Freeman grinned to show that he really wasn't upset about not getting the order.