puffy… and she’s so pale!:::::: She quickly put the glasses back on. She knew what she looked like. “This whole thing is driving me crazy.” She snuffled back more tears.
“Look, you’re gonna be all right! But first you gotta tell me what it is.”
“All right, I’m sorry,” she said. “Well, so yesterday I was in Sunny Isles visiting a friend of mine. He’s always been so cool and aw-aw-aw-all tha-at—” She broke down again and began sobbing silently, lowering her head and muffling her nose and mouth with a napkin.
“Magdalena—come on now,” said Nestor.
“I’m sorry, Nestor. I know I sound… paranoid or something. Anyway, I was visiting this friend of mine… he’s very successful. He has this two-story apartment, like a penthouse, in a condo on the ocean. So I’m there in Sunny Isles, and we’re just talking about one thing and another, and his phone ri-i-i-iings…”—she sobbed silently—“and from that moment on, my friend, who is always so cool and elegant and confident, becomes very nervous and all tensed up and angry—I mean, he’s a different person… you know? He’s yelling into the telephone in Russian. He’s Russian himself. And pretty soon these two men show up. They looked like out-and-out thugs to me. One of them was really scary. He was a big tall guy with a completely shaved head, and his head was—it looked too small for a man as big as he was. It had these odd shapes to it, these sort of hills, like the mountains on the moon or something. It’s hard to describe. Anyway, this big tall guy gives my friend a newspaper, yesterday’s Herald, and it’s turned to a particular page. I saw it later on. It was a long article about some Russian artist I never heard of who lives in Miami and does—”
::::::Igor!::::::
Nestor interrupted a little too excitedly. “What was his name, the artist?”
“I don’t remember,” said Magdalena. “Igor Something-or-other—I don’t remember the last name—and now my friend is really mad and starts rushing around and giving orders and being abrupt with everybody, including me. He tells me I’m going home. He doesn’t ask me or say why. He just orders one of the thugs to drive me home. All he says to me is ‘Something’s come up.’ He doesn’t offer me one clue what this is about. Then he goes into this little library in the next room and takes the two thugs in there with him, and he starts yelling at them—not actually yelling, but he’s obviously mad—and then he starts sort of barking orders into the telephone. It’s all in Russian, but this library has double doors, and they don’t close them completely, and I can hear what they’re saying even though I don’t understand any of it, except for one thing, Hallandale. And then he and one of the thugs rush out, without any explanation. The other thug, the tall one with the shaved head—he’s like a… a… a robot. He drives me home and doesn’t say one word the whole time. It’s all beginning to be… you know, weird and sort of spooky, the way he orders them around and they just take it. But… What’s that look you’re giving me, Nestor?”
“I’m just surprised, I guess,” said Nestor. He was conscious of breathing too fast. “And what’s your friend’s name?”
“Sergei Korolyov. You may have heard of him? He gave the Miami Museum of Art about a hundred million dollars’ worth of paintings by famous Russian artists, and they named the whole museum after him.”
Had he ever heard of Sergei Korolyov?!
In the throes of astonishment a wave of information compulsion—the compulsion to impress people with information you have and they would love to have but don’t—the police investigator’s best friend, in fact—the wave hit Nestor head-on.
Have I ever heard of Sergei Korolyov!
::::::You’re gonna be bowled over by what I’m about to tell you:::::: but at the last moment another compulsion—a cop caution to guard information—brought him back from the edge.
“How did you meet this guy Korolyov?”
“At an art show. Anyway, he invited me to dinner.”
“Where?”
“Some restaurant up in Hallandale,” said Magdalena.
“And what was that like?”
“All that was fine. But being there with Sergei—” She hesitated, then added, “Korolyov… gave me a strange feeling.” Nestor wondered if she had added the “Korolyov” so he wouldn’t get the idea she had an intimate thing with the guy. “From the minute we got there, starting with the parking valets, everybody treated Sergei”—she paused again but must have decided that