Bum Rap by Paul Levine

barged through the curtain, waving a slip of paper in his meaty hand.
    “Card bounced, Mr. Dugan. You got another one?”
    “Is not Dugan!” Marina cried out.
    “Who then?” the bartender asked.
    Elena chattered a few angry sentences in Russian.
    Marina did the same.
    The bartender motioned to one of the waitresses. “Get Alex. Now! Seychas! ”
    Alex had to be Nicolai’s brother, the guy who liked to drop women from his helicopter.
    The bartender pointed at me with a fat finger. “You! Up!”

-18-
    The Pit and the Jeweler
    E verything happened very quickly. Both women leapt off the sofa and moved several feet away. The bouncer from downstairs tore through the curtain. At the same time, a third man emerged from a corridor in the back. Judging from Solomon’s story, the corridor led to the office where Nicolai Gorev had been killed. The office had likely been inherited by his brother Alex, the guy now approaching me with balled fists.
    Alex wore a charcoal silk suit, Italian cut, not the right style for his burly frame. He had dark eyes and a bushy black mustache. His salt-and-pepper hair was receding. I pegged him at about forty. From the body language of the others, Alex was the boss. The new boss.
    “What the hell do you want?” he said.
    A bebop saxophone was playing “Yardbird Suite,” and it was all I could do not to tap my toes. “Just making friendly conversation,” I said.
    “He’s been asking the girls about Nadia,” the bartender said.
    “Why do you care about that shlyukha ?” Alex demanded.
    “Why do you care that I care?”
    “Who are you? FBI asshole?”
    “No, lawyer asshole. I represent the man wrongfully accused of killing your brother.”
    “Wrongfully?”
    “Your brother pulled a gun, and Nadia shot him in self-defense.”
    “Crap lie! Police found no gun. You know what I’d like to do with you?”
    “Drop me out of a helicopter into a pit six hundred meters deep?”
    That stopped him a second, and all we could hear was Charlie Bird Parker’s saxophone.
    “What do you know about it?” His eyes were wary. I had just gone from a man with too many questions to a man who already knew too much.
    “That you liked to drop Chechens out of your army helicopter.”
    “Screw the Chechens.”
    “And once in a while, drop a woman who was giving your brother a hard time.”
    “Do you know who invented the helicopter, lawyer asshole?”
    The bartender and the bouncer took positions on either side of me. If they grabbed my arms, Alex would have a clean shot at my face or gut.
    “Leonardo da Vinci,” I said.
    “Invented! Not drew picture. Igor Sikorsky. Russian.”
    I decided not to say Sikorsky did the work in the United States and became quite wealthy without employing Bar girls.
    “What’s your point?” I asked.
    “I love helicopters. But I don’t have one to drop you out of.”
    “Pity.”
    “I have boat to drop you in Gulf Stream.”
    I had no smart-ass reply to that.
    “What do you know about that deep pit?” Alex said.
    In reality, nothing. But I’d touched a nerve and wanted to probe like a dentist testing a tender tooth.
    “I know enough,” I lied.
    Alex Gorev moved closer, invading my personal space. “You can tell me now or I can have the shit beat out of you.”
    I remembered something Solomon heard Nicolai Gorev say about that deep pit: “Nadia, you know the place. The jeweler knows the place.”
    “I know as much about the pit as the jeweler,” I said.
    Gorev’s dark eyes went wide. I had surprised him, and he did not like surprises. He glanced around the bar. A couple of the other tourist marks were looking this way. Maybe getting edgy about the place.
    “We need a more private place to talk.” Gorev turned to the bouncer and said something quickly in Russian. Then he turned back to me. “My car is downstairs. We go now.”
    Before I could say nyet , the bouncer grabbed my left arm above the elbow while the bartender took my right arm. They started