'Try hiding it under your spoon, Dad,' she joked. 'It always works for me.'
Freeman smiled ruefully. 'It's fine,' he said. 'Honest.'
When Mersiha had finished her breakfast and loaded up the dishwasher, Katherine kissed Freeman goodbye and picked up her handbag.
'Isn't Dad coming?' Mersiha asked.
'Girls only,' Katherine said briskly. 'Come on.'
Mersiha hesitated, but Freeman made a small shooing motion with his hand. 'Go,' he said. 'Enjoy yourself.'
Mersiha wanted to protest, to say that she had no wish to spend time alone with Katherine, but remembered what she'd promised her father. 'See you later,' she said. He winked and she winked back.
She followed Katherine to the car. They both climbed in and fastened their seat belts. 'So what's the surprise?' she asked.
'We're going shopping.'
'That's my surprise?'
Katherine smiled. 'Sort of. You're going to have a makeover.
And a new dress. And we're getting your hair done. Then you're having your photograph taken. Then we're going to show your dad the new you.'
Mersiha beamed. 'Really?'
Tup. Even your dad doesn't know. I want to see his face when he sees you all made up. And the dress is for your birthday dinner on Monday.'
Katherine made small-talk as she drove to the White Marsh shopping mall, and Mersiha did her best to sound interested. She knew that Katherine was making an effort to be nice, so she did her best to respond, but no matter how she tried she couldn't get Art Brown out of her head. What she wanted more than anything was a promise from Katherine that it wouldn't happen again, but that wish would have to remain unfulfilled. There was no way Mersiha could tell her that she knew about the affair. Or that it was she who had ended it.
The holiday her father had suggested might be just what she needed. A week away from the house, alone with her father, might push the memory of Katherine's infidelity away and allow her to start again. She hoped so.
They were so different, the brothers Utsyev. Anyone seeing them together wouldn't have known they were from the same country, never mind the same womb. Sabatino was corpulent with the olive skin that betrayed his Italian genes, with black hair that always appeared greasy no matter how often he washed it. His face was wrinkle-free and baby smooth with soft fleshy lips, and he could go several days without shaving.
Bzuchar Utsyev was two years older but the age difference appeared much greater; he was lean and wiry and looked as if he'd spent a lifetime outdoors. His skin was dry and leathery, his hair close-cropped and grey, and his eyes had the lifeless stare of day-old fish. But when the brothers were together, it was as if they were twins. There was a tangible bond between them which excluded everyone else, and each seemed to know what the other was thinking before a word was uttered. It was a bond that had been formed in the days of Stalin's purges, when the brothers Utsyev were orphans in a strange land, when they could depend only on each other and no other.
The two men embraced in the office above The Firehouse, Sabatino sighing like a virgin on her first date, Bzuchar gripping his brother like a drowning man holding a lifebelt. 'Everything is okay?' Bzuchar asked.
'Everything's just fine,' his brother said.
Bzuchar put his hands on Sabatino's shoulders and looked into his eyes. 'My little brother, the Italian,' he said, grinning.
'My big brother,' Sabatino replied. 'The New Yorker.'
Bzuchar patted Sabatino's expanding waistline. 'Too much pasta,' he chided.
Sabatino shrugged. 'Gives the girls something to hold on to.
What can I say?'
Bzuchar faked a punch to his brother's stomach, then hugged him again.
'Do you want a drink?' Sabatino asked.
'Yeah,' Bzuchar said, 'but none of that Italian fizzy wine. I'll take a bourbon.'
Sabatino went over to his drinks cabinet and poured three fingers of Jack Daniels into a crystal tumbler. There was a bottle of Frascati already open and he splashed a good-sized measure into a glass. They toasted each other in Russian and drank deeply. 'So, what do you think of Jenny Welch?'
Bzuchar asked.
Sabatino shrugged noncommittally. 'She seemed efficient.'
'Yeah. Great figure, huh? Amazing legs.'
Sabatino shrugged again. 'Didn't notice,' he said.
Bzuchar grinned. 'Bullshit. You wanted her, didn't you?'
Sabatino wondered what the bitch had said to his brother.
'Don't be stupid,' he said. 'She was way too old for me.'
'Still go for the young stuff, huh? You've gotta watch out for that jailbait, Gilani.' He looked around the office for somewhere to sit. He decided on Sabatino's chair behind the desk. Sabatino knew better than to object.
'Nelson won't be troubling us any more,' Bzuchar said. He grinned. 'Did she tell you how she did it?' Sabatino shook his head and took a long sip of wine. Bzuchar raised his glass to his brother. Down below, in the disco section of the nightclub, one of the disc jockeys began a sound check. Sabatino could feel the vibrations through the soles of his feet. 'She made it look like a gay suicide. Great, huh? Kills the guy and his reputation at the same time. Talk about two birds with one stone.'
'Do you think that'll be the end of it?' Sabatino asked.
'What, you think the bank will be too busy covering up the scandal to bother with his investigation?' He pulled a face as if the bourbon was leaving a sour taste in his mouth. 'I don't think so, Gilani. That's why I'm here in this godforsaken city.'
Sabatino sat down on a leather sofa and waited for Bzuchar to explain the reason for his visit. Nelson had been the instigator of the investigation, but Bzuchar was right. There'd be files and notes and eventually Nelson would be replaced. Down below, rap music began to pound. Sabatino hated the music but it brought in the crowds and their money. Given the choice he preferred opera, but there was little call for culture in Baltimore.
Rap music, drugs, cable television and baseball were the main entertainments for the city's inhabitants, and the brothers made a good living from the first two.
'It won't take long for Nelson's replacement to realise what's been going on,' Bzuchar said. 'It won't take too much digging to discover the money your man's been washing for us. He ain't gonna have time to cover his tracks, so I've decided on a pre-emptive strike. We're going to take the company over, lock, stock and barrel. We pay off the shareholders and the banks, then it's our company and to hell with them.'
'That's going to cost us,' Sabatino said.
Bzuchar drained his glass, then stood up and went over to the drinks cabinet. 'I've had some number-crunchers go through the figures Anderson gave us,' he said as he refilled his tumbler. 'We can sell off the profitable parts of the business and use that to pay off some of the loans. We take the land we want and sell the rest and we'll be getting a few tax breaks as well. The total shortfall after we've paid off all the bank loans will be about three million dollars. That's chickenfeed compared with what we'll be making on the development.'
'And how do we persuade the shareholders to sell?' Sabatino asked.
Bzuchar's eyes sparkled like diamonds. 'Easy,' he said. 'You make them an offer they can't refuse. Just like The Godfather.''
Katherine parked the car and took Mersiha to a boutique on the second floor of the huge shopping mall. She helped her go through the racks, suggesting dresses she thought would be suitable but letting Mersiha have the final say. Mersiha went into the changing rooms with half a dozen dresses on hangers and tried them on, parading in front of Katherine for her approval, even though she already knew which one she wanted: a short black sleeveless dress, cut low at the back, which showed lots of thigh and a respectable amount of cleavage. She kept it until the last, standing in front of the changing-room mirror before going out to show Katherine.
'It's a little… revealing,' Katherine said hesitantly.