Steven Sweeney, Chapter 2

[foolish_m0rtal]

Okay, we're getting to the meat of the mystery here, so I'm nervous. (when am I never nervous anyway?). I did so much research on Russia, the Russian mafiya, and firearms that I'm now probably on the FBI watch list... *sweatdrop*

Summary: When grizzled gumshoe Steven Sweeney takes a case from a mysterious client, he gets into the middle of a mystery where no one can be trusted. Has Sweeney finally bitten off more than he can chew? Is this the case that will finally have Sweeney sleeping with the fishes?

 Note for History Fans: Most of the places Sweeney visits are actual buildings/districts in 1950's Chicago.

 

So I stared where any good private eye would start- at the scene of the crime. Rogers Park was a bunch of crowded streets and cluttered apartment buildings. There were cheap signs tacked up in the store windows advertising fresh challah. Dingy family owned restaurants that sold fresh steaming boxty were squeezed right next others that had lunch specials with bratwurst and sauerbraten. You wouldn’t think there was a thriving Russian community here in the middle of these other immigrant families. But as I went further in, I started seeing some small quiet signs written in Cyrillic popping up here and there. I could only guess that one of these stores had been Andrei’s.

That bastard Rokossovksy’d left some information with his payment. Pretty useful stuff, I had to admit- names, addresses. Some places I could start digging. I figured I’d start by asking questions around where Andrei and Yuri had lived.

I found some local kids playing catch in front of the apartment complex and called one from the older group over. I didn’t know how much of this neighbourhood spoke English, so the kids were probably my best bet. They’d at least gone to school somewhere around here and knew enough to get by. The kid seemed kind of small and nerdy, the kind other kids picked on, so I bet he would be glad to get away. I’d actually been one of those shrimpy kids a long while back, but the only person who knew that prime piece of dirt was my ma, and she wasn’t telling a soul.

“Hey,” I said as he came closer and stuck out a hand. “Name’s Sweeney. I’m a detective. You happen to know which one of these places is...” I checked Rokossovsky’s information, “Andrei Baranova’s?”

“Lyov,” He shook my hand awkwardly. “You want Andrei? You know, he is dead.”

“Yup, that’s why I’m here.” And then, carefully, “Heard it was a suicide.”

“No.” Lyov shook his head. “You don’t listen to the police.”

Huh, seemed like Rokossovksy’d been telling the truth then. “So what do people think it was? A local murder?”

Lyov was still shaking his head. “They were well loved here. Come with me.”

As we passed by some of the other tenants, I could definitely feel them giving me the fish eye. Some of them turned away when I tried to look at them and stared at Lyov disapprovingly. I wondered what about me had gotten them so spooked. “You guys don’t think it was just a random killing though, do you?”

Lyov looked doubtful. “I do not know. I will take you to their neighbour, Isai Olegovich Khostov. The adults, they do not, eh...they do not talk about such things around us.”

Looked like these people didn’t talk at all. Beside them, Lyov seemed downright chatty.

“He is up here,” Lyov’s voice echoed down towards me as he went up the stairwell. I jerked my eyes away from the others and followed. The more I saw of this place, the more I doubted a guy like Rokossovsky even lived here. The stairs smelled kind of sour, and the paint was already yellowed and peeling off the walls. And I thought I lived in the bad part of town. Jeez, Chicago sure gave these immigrants a raw deal.

As Lyov knocked on Khostov’s door, I eyed the door to Andrei’s place. The lock had been busted in. So it looked like I could rule Yuri out of the picture since he would have had a key to the place. I’d seen those murders too, people shooting up their families and then turning the gun on themselves. It was a sorry world we lived in, no doubt about that. I wasn’t even going to start on the weird gruesome murders we’d been seeing this year. It was half of why I’d taken this case- it had seemed pretty clean and straightforward compared to what I’d been dealing with. As clean and straightforward as murder ever was.

“Did he hear the shots?” I asked, eyeing the broken door again.

“Yes. They barricaded themselves in.”

 

The door to Khostov’s opened. He was an old guy, kind of scrawny. Didn’t look like he got out much- he hadn’t shaved for days. “Lyov!”

Lyov ducked his head. “Zdravstvujte, Isai Olegovich.” They shook hands.

Then Khostov saw me and began speaking in rapid Russian. Well damn. Looked like I’d need Lyov to do some translating.

Lyov said something back and then turned back to me, “I told him you’re here to speak to him about Andrei.”

I nodded. “Uh, yeah, Mr. Khostov. Just a few questions. I know the police say it was suicide, but my client suspects otherwise.”

Lyov nodded and relayed that back. Khostov looked uncomfortable and said something really fast and low. Even Lyov had to lean forward to hear.

After asking Khostov to repeat it, Lyov frowned. “He says just because you’ve forgotten the McCarthy hearings, Mr. Sweeney, doesn’t mean we have.”

That hadn’t even occurred to me, and I realised why a lot of the older folks had seemed so scared of me. I gritted my teeth. “Look, Mr. Khostov, doesn’t matter where a guy is from, America, China, Russia, whatever- a guy knows what’s right and what ain’t. And what happened to you folks back then, that wasn’t right.” I held up my hands. “Now this ain’t some kind of witch hunt. I’m just trying to solve a murder for Foma Ro-”

But Khostov cut me off. He was talking a mile a minute again, but the hunch in his shoulders was gone, and he was opening his door wider.

Lyov turned back to me, smiling. “Why didn’t you say before that you were working for Foma Vadimovich? Come in.”

“Foma Vadimovich?” I muttered to Lyov as we squeezed through Khostov’s tiny door. “I thought his name was-”

Lyov shook his head. “If you want to be a proper Russian, Mr. Sweeney, you must speak like a Russian. America has its Mr. and Mrs and your surnames. If you want to formally address a Russian, you must use his first name and his paternal name. Vadimovich means he is the son of Vadim.”

“Huh. Interesting. So this guy’s name is...”

“Isai Olegovich.”

I nodded. “Alright. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Lyov seemed surprised at that but didn’t say anything as Khostov ushered us into his cramped matchbox living room. Most of the space was taken up by tables and some strange wooden armchairs that looked like they had been hand carved. I glanced at some of the pictures and knickknacks crowding the tables. There were some bright wooden dolls in a line, each one fitting inside another, and small painted boxes with images of Mary and scenes from some kind of story. One table was crowded with glass figurines: hedgehogs and birds and little ballerinas. Khostov was definitely a pack rat. Or, I thought as I spotted an old picture of a young couple sitting together, maybe his wife.

And speak of the devil, a little old lady came out of the kitchen with a tray. I got up to help her with it- just because I was social low life didn’t mean I couldn’t be a gentleman now and then. She took the opportunity to go over and pinch Lyov’s cheeks, poor kid. My aunt had done that to me even after she’d had to get up on her toes to do it. Aunt Mary’d been a tough old bird; contrary to what people thought, she was the one who’d taught me to shoot tin cans off the fence posts. My dad hadn’t even wanted me getting my fingers around a gun. After what I’d seen on the beat, I didn’t really blame him.

The teacups rattled a little as I put the tray down. They were more like glasses fastened into metal holders.

“Podstakannik,” Lyov replied, tapping the side of the metal. “It is a tea glass holder.” The kid had apparently taken it upon himself to educate the barbarian.

I took a cautious sip. It was stronger and smokier than I was used to. “It’s good.” I nodded to the missus and raised the glass. “Thanks, ma’am.”

She smiled widely and Khostov fit a cube of sugar between his teeth before taking a swallow. I tried it and almost choked to death. Khostov just laughed and said something before putting the cup aside.

Lyov turned back to me. “He wants to know how Foma Vadimovich is doing.”

I shrugged. “He seemed fine to me. You guys know him?”

“He built a factory near Rogers Park and created many jobs for us. He is a good man.”

I wondered whether we were talking about the same guy here. The Foma Rokossovsky I knew was slimier than a barrel of snake oil. But Khostov was going on.

“- poor mother, and it is a shame about his cousin. He is only ruining the family name.”

I jerked my head up at that. “Cousin?”

Khostov leaned forward. “Akula Demidov,” he whispered. His wife’s mouth puckered a little, and she made some excuses to retreat back into the kitchen with a last pat to Lyov’s hair.

“That is not his first name,” Lyov explained. “It is his...how would you say, his mafiya name. Do you understand this word, mafiya?”

“Yeah, I get it. The guy’s a two-bit gangster.”

When Lyov translated that back, Khostov shook his head. “You misunderstand. He is not a thug. He is cunning. And cruel. I would not be surprised if he was the one who...”

I put my tea glass down so hard, the glass rattled in its podstanik-thing. “You think he killed Andrei and Yuri?”

Khostov shrugged, and I didn’t need Lyov to translate that. Who knew, and how exactly was he going to prove it?

“That man is not right in his head.”

“Those messed up murders in the papers,” I said slowly, putting two and two together. “You don’t think that was…”

“I told you,” Lyov translated gravely. “That man is not right in his head.”

I asked some more generic questions after that- did the Baranova’s have any enemies or extended family (I’d come to learn from experience that the two weren’t necessarily separate), what their habits had been, the regular stuff. But Akula Demidov was ringing in the back of my brain like a brass marching band.

Khostov even let me into Andrei’s place, but it showed a lot of what he’d told me already. Andrei and his son lived by themselves. Andrei’s wife had died in Russia, and they’d come over here to start over. Yuri was pretty young and didn’t have a wife yet. The pictures on the tables and their rooms told me as much.

I circled around the living room, where I could see a big dark stain covering most of the carpet. “This where they found them?” I waved my arms around the stain. “This?”

Khostov nodded. Lyov had stayed next door- Khostov didn’t think he needed to see this, and I’d agreed with him. He was just a kid really.

I got down on the carpet to look for anything the police might have missed when they went through. Rokossovsky’d been right- they’d just looked over the bodies and declared it a suicide. I found little dark bits of hair that looked like they matched Andrei and Yuri’s, so I either had nothing or my guy had short dark hair, which was pretty close to nothing. And then I struck gold snooping in the fireplace, the place nobody looked because those nance cops didn’t want to get their mitts dirty.

A shell casing. Looked like a .22 Short. Could have been loaded in a rifle, but at this range, most likely a pistol, possibly a mini-revolver. Easy to carry and conceal- a lot of Chicago dames carried them. Like I said before, playing with fire, jeez.

I’d gone through the police report, which was so puny it could have been a grocery receipt. Two clean shots, side of the head. And Andrei’d had a gun in his hand when they found him. It had definitely been made to look like a suicide. But when I showed Khostov the casing, he shook his head, and I got the impression Andrei wouldn’t have owned a roscoe like that.

I turned the shell around in my fingers. A mini-revolver. Peashooter like that wouldn’t have packed much firepower, but at point blank, the bullets would have gone right through. So the police would have found…I reached into my pocket and unfolded the copy of the police report Bernice had typed up for me that morning. Bodies, check. Gun, check. But no used bullets.

Which would mean they hadn’t been shot at close range, and the bullets were still inside their sorry skulls. The police had thought the busted lock was just a couple of local lowlifes hearing the shots and coming to scavenge off the dead. But now it looked like-

“Murder,” I muttered. “That Foma sonovabitch was right. He broke in, held them up,” I traced the trajectories of dark dried blood going across the carpet. “And shot them with Andrei’s own gun.”

And Akula Demidov was right at the top of my list.

Well well. Looked like I had a gen-u-ine psychopath on my hands.

Chapter Three

Comments

[grimmsical.livejournal.com]

The plot thickens! But of course Rocco's information would be more accurate than the police's. *shakes head* shoddy work right there, not even trying to find a different reason for two senseless deaths.

I love the culture bits in there. Seems dropping Rocco's name helped a lot. Looking forward to seeing how he reacts to whatever information Sweeney brings to him... Hmm... is Sweeney going to go and ask him about his cousin? P: If so, they'll have to interact... yey~

[foolish-m0rtal.livejournal.com]

of course we must have confrontation and meaningless accusations! Yes yes!