“Hey, you’re sounding up today. When I left yesterday, the look on your face—you should have seen it. You looked like you’d lost your last friend.”
Nestor: “You took the words right out of truth. But I got tired of feeling angry, angry at everybody who turned their back on me. One thing about anger is it sort of revs you up and gets the juice flowing. You wanna know what I did yesterday between the time you left and the shift started? I went on Craigslist and found an apartment in Coconut Grove. In three hours on a Sunday afternoon I did that. Anger is a wonderful thing if you get really angry.”
“That’s great, Nestor!”
“Oh, it’s a dump, it’s too small, and I’m sharing it with a ‘graphic artist,’ whatever that is, and I get to listen to all the goddamned wacked-out kids who hang around Grand Avenue until about four in the morning. They sound like alley cats. You know that sound, that sort of, I guess, yowl cats make when they’re outdoors at night… yowling for sex? That’s what these kids sound like. You know that sound?”
“Hey, we are up today, aren’t we!” said John Smith.
“I’m not up—it’s like I told you. I’m angry,” said Nestor. “Hey, where are you right now?”
“I’m at the paper.”
“Well, then, get up off your ass and leave the building and meet me at that restaurant Della Grimalda. It’s right near you.”
“I don’t know. As I say, I’m at the paper—and besides, I wouldn’t peg you as the Della Grimalda type.”
“I’m not. That’s the whole point. Neither is any other cop, and I don’t want any other cops around when I show you what I got.”
Long sigh… Nestor could tell that John Smith was weakening. “Okay, Della Grimalda. But what do you want to get there?”
“Two cups of coffee,” said Nestor.
“But Della Grimalda is a real restaurant. You can’t just walk in there and take a seat and order two cups of coffee.”
“I don’t know it for a fact, but I’ll bet you a cop can—and he won’t have to pay a dime.”
When John Smith arrived at Della Grimalda, Nestor was already sitting comfortably at a table for two by a window amid the place’s swag and bling—having a cup of coffee. John Smith took a seat, and a very attractive waitress brought him a cup of coffee, too. He looked all around. There were only two other customers in the whole restaurant, about forty feet away, and they were obviously finishing a big meal. Their table gleamed with a regular flotilla of stemware of every sort and squadrons of hotel silver.
“Well,” said John Smith, “I have to hand it to you. You did it.”
Nestor shrugged and produced a stiff nine-by-twelve envelope from under his chair, handed it to John Smith, and said, “Be my guest.”
John Smith opened it and withdrew a piece of cardboard that served as backing for a large photograph, about six by nine inches. Nestor had been looking forward to watching John Smith’s expression when it dawned on him what he had his hands on. The pale WASP didn’t disappoint. He lifted his wondering eyes from the photograph and stared at Nestor.
“Where the hell did you find this?”
It was a remarkably clear digital photograph, in color, of Sergei Korolyov at the wheel of a screaming-red Ferrari Rocket 503 sports car—with Igor Drukovich in the bucket seat beside him. Igor had a waxed mustache that came all the way out to here on either side. Korolyov looked like a real star, as usual, but anybody’s eye was going to fasten right away upon Igor, Igor and his mustache. The mustache was a real production. It took off from between his nose and his upper lip and flew all the way out to here—an astonishing distance—and he had waxed the ends and twirled them into points. He was a big man, probably close to fifty years old. In the I’m-an-artist manner he wore a long-sleeved black shirt open down to his sternum, giving the world a look at his big hairy chest. It was a hirsute triumph almost as grand as the mustache.
“Remember you asked if I could get you access to police files? This picture is from the Miami-Dade Police headquarters. They took it four years ago.”
“Why were they interested in Korolyov and Drukovich?”
“They weren’t interested in them as individuals. This I bet you don’t know, but all the police departments