Page 24

CHAPTER 24

I did a circuit of the town—there’d been a dead body in a window once and I didn’t want to miss another one—and came back with the good news for Rose that Jackie Quill was clean. But before we could discuss it, the door opened and we heard a rich voice say, “Ah, my wandering friend. And his most beautiful companion.”

Dmitri was standing in the doorway, wearing his long coat and a fur hat and holding up a bouquet, which he must have gone out for while I was checking windows for bodies. “Roses for the lovely Rose.”

“That’s so sweet of you, Dmitri,” Rose said, smiling her Cheery Boost smile as she took the flowers. I thought she was giving those up but here we were again. The woman would flirt with a tree stump. And New York journalists. And now Russians.

“Did you give roses to Betty?” I asked, annoyed.

“Ah, Betty,” Dmitri said. “Her tastes are more esoteric. My companion, Tanke, is away running an important errand to tend to that. I have not renewed our acquaintance yet.”

“She likes teacups.” Rose held out the hand that didn’t have roses in it. “We weren’t formally introduced the other night. Rose Malone.”

“Alexei Dmitri at your service.” He took her hand in both of his, bowed, and kissed it, but the whole time, he was looking past her, into the shop, as if the Bactrian hoard was somewhere on the shelves.

“May I enter?” He stepped forward, pretty much forcing Rose to back into me, all three of us moving farther into the store.

“Of course,” Rose said, balanced by my arm around her now since he’d almost knocked her over. “Can I interest you in a teacup for Betty?”

“What an eclectic display.” He paused at the ashtrays made from shell casings. “Ah, I see Oz’s hand in this.” He turned to face us. “So. Treasure?”

Subtle did not begin to describe Dmitri.

“Nope.” Rose Cheery Boosted again. “No treasure here!”

“But Oz left you everything,” Dmitri said to her. “Did he not?”

“Everything in this building.” Rose spread her hands. “Look around. You see treasure?”

Dmitri had been searching the room with his eyes while he talked, and now he stopped and moved over to a table in the next room, so we followed. He reached down and grabbed a painting Poppy had propped up against a box there, probably after cleaning out Oz’s living room for Marley since it was the ugly print Oz had hung by the door. It showed an exhausted man on an exhausted horse approaching a dull brown citadel.

Dmitri angled it toward the light and was staring at it.

“ Remnants of an Army ,” I said. “Ring some Afghanistan bells?”

“I have seen it before,” Dmitri said, but then he shook his head. “There is something off about this. Have you checked it against the original?”

“I’ve been busy,” I said.

Dmitri put the print down. “I will think about this print.” He looked at me. “Maps?”

“Not today,” I said.

He frowned but didn’t argue. “And now I must go to see if Tanke has been successful in locating Betty’s gift. Be well, my friend.” He turned for the door, but he paused when he was standing in the open doorway. “There is more going on here than appears, Max Reddy.”

I went toward him. “No shit. We don’t need people talking about treasure adding to our problems, so stop.” I shut the door in Dmitri’s face and turned back to face Rose, who was frowning. “What?”

“I think he’s right,” she said. “We’re missing something big here. None of this makes sense. And it might be about that treasure.”

I felt tired just thinking about it. “Yeah, I know. He keeps hinting that he knows something we don’t, but he’s not going to tell me anything until he’s got his treasure. What I don’t understand is what he thinks he’s going to do with it. He can’t move something that special and unique. At least I don’t think he can.”

“Why he wants it doesn’t matter,” Rose said. “It’s the fact he wants it that matters. He didn’t want to talk in front of me, that’s why he left.” She smiled at me, not a Cheery Boost but damn close. “Maybe you could go find out what he knows. You’ll get it out of him faster than I will.”

“No, I won’t,” I said, knowing that she could get secrets out of Satan.

But I gave up anyway and went out after Dmitri.

* * *

He hadn’t gone far. He was standing in the doorway to Luke’s carpentry shop, looking up at the owner. Luke had his arms folded in such a manner that my astute study of human nature told me he was closing himself off to whatever nonsense the Russian was spouting. Probably asking Luke if he’d built Oz a custom treasure chest and if he happened to know where Oz had hidden it.

“You wanted to look at Oz’s maps?” I said.

Dmitri turned, that damn smile on his face. He made Rose’s Cheery Boost look dismal. “I would very much like to look at Oz’s maps.”

Behind him, Luke frowned and gave me a look that was basically saying “What the fuck?” I tried to give him back a look that said “I’m on top of this” but was probably just a scowl. I had that down.

“If I let you do that, will you tell me what great thing it is that we’re all missing here in Rocky Start that you indicate you know?”

Dmitri glanced over his shoulder at Luke, then back at me. “You want to make a deal, is that it? What do you Americans call it? Horse trade?”

“Drop the bullshit,” I said. “Serena came to town willing to kill to get that microfilm Oz stole from your SCIF. Instead, Herc took her out. But there are loose ends to all of this. I don’t like loose ends. My friend Luke, who is right behind you, also doesn’t like loose ends.”

“Ah,” Dmitri said. “The not-so-subtle threat.” He turned so he was sort of facing both of us. “We are civilized people, are we not? You take me to maps and we can chat.”

“Not me,” Luke said, bailing on my threat. “I’ve got work to do next door.”

“What work?” I asked. Luke had Nice Funerals on one side of his woodworking shop and a vacant store on the other.

“Rose wants to set up Nice Funerals as a possible doctor’s office or clinic. I’m checking to make sure everything works over there and see what needs cleared out before she shows it to Jackie.”

“Jackie?” I said.

“Doctor Quill,” Luke said.

“Right.” Rose wanted a clinic in a building she owned so she could bribe the doctor into staying. “Very reasonable rent,” I could hear her saying.

Luke started for the building next door, a big tool bag slung over one shoulder.

“Maps?” Dmitri prodded.

“Come on.”

“I have been thinking,” Dmitri said, falling in beside me as I walked back to Oddities.

“Good for you,” I muttered. “I’ll alert the media.”

“Humor,” Dmitri said. “Not so effective as you might think.”

I walked into the store. Marley was sitting behind the counter, doing something to a piece of sheet metal that looked complicated, possibly a wing of something. It involved screws and wires. I could hear Rose in the kitchen talking to someone in her solving-a-problem voice.

“Don’t you have a job?” I said.

“Heat’s out at work,” Marley said. “They closed the place for the day. Probably tomorrow, too. Owner wants a long weekend.” He looked past me at Dmitri.

“Marley, meet Dmitri,” I said. “He’s an old friend of your dad’s. Dmitri, this is Marley. He’s Pike’s oldest boy.”

Marley stood and offered his hand. Dmitri took it and the two remained still for a few moments, and I realized that the Russian was exerting pressure on the grip. Marley just smiled at him, showing no sign of strain, giving as good as he got.

“All right, manly men,” I said. “Enough.”

They broke off the handshake and Dmitri graced Marley with a smile. “I only met your father once,” he told Marley. “It was not, shall we say, a pleasant moment.”

Marley gave me a questioning look.

“Ignore him,” I said. “He’s Russian. They’re always grouchy.”

“We also see things others do not.” He walked over and pulled the print of Remnants of an Army out from under one of the tables.

“What do you see?”

“Show me the maps, please, and I will explain.”

“Come on,” I said to Marley. I figured it would be easier for him to be in on it and tell Pike than my having to explain. Besides, Marley knew the surrounding area much better than I did, having grown up here and spent his childhood ranging the forest. Plus, we had to go through his living room to get to Oz’s stash room.

We trooped up the stairs and into Oz’s old apartment that was now two-thirds Marley’s. I unlocked the back room and we went in.

Dmitri nodded at the weapons lining the rack in Oz’s workroom. “Classics.” He went over and picked up an AK-47. “The standard.” He checked the receiver. “Made in Pakistan.” He chuckled as he put it back. “Probably the same one Oz used when he attacked my column.”

“Probably,” I said. “Pike has its twin. Simple guns for simple minds,” I added as I glanced at Marley, who looked at the ceiling, probably remembering when his brother Reggie had fired a warning shot in my general direction with Pike’s AK.

Dmitri wasn’t insulted. “You must admit our simpler Soviet weapons are far superior to your American ones. Much too complicated.”

I wasn’t going to argue the merits of weapons with Dmitri, who was still stuck in the remnants of a failed empire.

He opened his phone to show me a photo of the print of Remnants of an Army and put it on the table on top of the maps Oz had put there.

“So what’s your brilliant insight?” I asked.

Marley stood beside Dmitri, staring at the picture on the phone. I really would have preferred having Luke here, but it seemed he had higher priorities than finding treasure. Like finding Jackie. But since Marley was Pike’s adopted son, it seemed appropriate in some weird, Rocky Start way that he should be involved in something that was a legacy of Pike and Oz.

“This,” Dmitri said, tapping the glass covering Oz’s print, “is what Oz framed.” He pointed to his phone. “This is a photo of the original painting.” He put it next to the frame.

“They’re different,” Marley said.

“Indeed, they are,” Dmitri said.

They were actually very different in a not so obvious way, which is why my brain had alerted on the picture the first time I saw it hanging in Oz’s apartment. The foreground, which someone would focus on, was the same: assistant surgeon William Brydon of the British Army, lone survivor, on an exhausted horse, riding toward the sand-colored fortress walls of Jalalabad, and troops coming out to meet him. There was water off to the right where the Kunar River joined the Kabul River. But in the distance, instead of a low row of sandy mountains, there were several rounded mountaintops, covered with very dull green. Definitely not the mountains I’d known in Afghanistan.

“Did he photoshop the print or something?” I asked.

“Who knows how he did it,” Dmitri said, which was not a question. “That is not important. What is important is he went to some effort to get it done.”

“Okay,” I said. “Why?”

“Do those look familiar?” Dmitri asked Marley and me.

“It’s the Smokies,” Marley said.

It was such a disconnect, an anomaly with no apparent reason, that other than notice something was off, I had not processed what it was.

“But why change the print?” I asked.

“It’s a map in a way,” Dmitri said. He tapped the topographic map tacked to the table underneath the print. “That most likely works with this. Someplace local, perhaps, in the hills in the backdrop?”

Marley pointed. “Here. See this little bit of gray below this irregular mountaintop? That’s a cliff. I know where that is.”

“That is good,” Dmitri said. “Where?”

Marley looked at the topo map, then marked the spot in pencil.

“That’s where the treasure is?” I asked.

Dmitri held up a hand. “Let us see what our expert sees.”

Marley shook his head. “No.” He tapped the print. “I recognize this mountain here, too. See how it’s bald?”

I remembered facing the treeless mountaintop with two killers after me. There were several in this area of the Smokies. “All right,” I said, still not sure where this was leading.

“So you recognize two places,” Dmitri said, eyes on Marley as he marked a second spot. “Do you see a third?”

Then I finally understood as Marley squinted.

“There,” Marley finally said, pointing. “See that dip there? That’s Little Melvin Notch. Where the river passes through.” He marked it.

“Ah, excellent,” Dmitri said. “And if you have three points of reference on the ground, what can you do?”

“Let me think,” Marley muttered. “Three points make a triangle but don’t specify a point.” He put the print to the side and focused on the map sheet with the three marks. “What if whatever Ozzie was trying to show is in the exact center of the triangle?”

“How would you figure that spot?” I asked. I glanced at Dmitri to see if he had the answer, but he appeared as baffled as me.

“It’s called the centroid,” Marley said.

“The centroid?” I was trying to remember some of the trigonometry I’d been taught in high school, figuring there had to be some sort of formula, but that had been decades ago and my focus hadn’t been the greatest. Nor had I had much use for it in the years since.

Marley closed his eyes as he recited. “The centroid of a triangle is the spot where all three medians of the triangle intersect, marking the center of mass or balance point of the triangle; each median connects a vertex to the midpoint of the opposite side.”

“Right,” I said, having no idea what he was saying.

“There’s a formula for it,” Marley said, “but it’s easier to just measure.” He got a ruler and pencil. “We draw the triangle.” He connected the points. “Now we find the midpoint of each side.” He measured and did that. “And now, we draw a line from each point of the triangle to the opposite angle.” He drew three more lines. Then tapped the map at their intersection. “The centroid.”

“And that,” Dmitri said, slapping Marley on the back so hard he staggered forward into the table, “is where the treasure is.”

“Maybe.” I was still trying to process what Marley had done.

“Why would Ozzie do this?” Marley asked. “Hide it like this? How did he expect anyone to figure this out? Who’d he leave this for?”

“For himself, primarily.” I pointed at the maps on the wall. “He didn’t want to mark the exact spot so that anyone else could easily find it. But there was one other person in town who would have recognized that something was off about the print.”

Marley nodded. “Pike. And he taught me geometry early. Told me if I wanted to build stuff, I had to understand measuring. Pike could have figured this out, too.”

So we’d still be standing here without a clue if I hadn’t included Marley. And Pike had never looked.

We all leaned over and looked at the map.

“Rough terrain,” was my initial impression. I located Rocky Start to get an idea how far away it was. About twenty miles north-northwest. Which doesn’t sound far, except we were in the mountains. The closest road that could handle a vehicle was a National Forest road that only came within a half mile. It was hard to tell from the topographic map if a vehicle could get closer. From there to the area was steep and heavily wooded. And currently covered in snow.

“I think spring would be a good time to look for it,” I said.

“I will not wait for spring,” Dmitri said.

“I don’t give a shit,” I said.

His phone buzzed and he looked at a text message and smiled. “Tanke has procured my gift for Ms. Betty and will be back in the morning. I must prepare. Thus, I have something else to do.” He looked at me. “We can delay. Tomorrow is soon enough.”

I thought about saying “Tomorrow is too soon,” but it’d be easier to just handle that tomorrow.