Last to Fold by David Duffy Page B

Ivanov is told they didn’t get the mastermind—or half the take. Ratko Risly made his Badger bones on that scheme.
    I remembered that scheme. It had been the first really big heist of identity information—the one that put large-scale ID theft on the map. At least forty million accounts, maybe as many as a hundred million, as Ivanov claimed. Front-page news at the time. Front-page news again a few years later when one of the hackers heisted another hundred million credit card numbers, demonstrating the old fool-me-once/fool-me-twice adage was as apt as ever. Foos was bemused by the brazenness—the hackers literally reeled in their prey with a laptop and some wireless equipment readily purchasable on the Internet, sitting in a car in a strip mall parking lot. He was more appalled by the near total lack of security on the part of major retailing chains. Most of all, he wondered what the thieves planned to do with all those names and numbers.
    It appeared Rad Rislyakov—Ratko Risly—was a big-time player, which didn’t mesh on any of a number of levels with the lowlifes supposedly working for him, and certainly not with the three Ukrainians I’d met last night in Jersey City.
    Ivanov had more to add.
    Ratko burns the candle at both ends—on three continents. For the last few months, he’s been seen in the company of an auburn-haired, blue-eyed creature, as gorgeous as any beauty in Ibansk—no exaggeration, Ivanov swears!—but then he and she dropped out of sight. Ivanov is doubly curious because heretofore Ratko has been seen mainly in the company of pretty young men. A foot in each camp, perhaps.
    Did the Badger Brothers rein in their wayward genius, fearing he could flame out? Ivanov hears he’s been busy building a new profit center for the Barsukov empire—a high-tech, hush-hush money laundry capable of making billions vanish into the international ether. Perhaps he was attracting the wrong kind of attention to his own exploits. Many avenues for Ivanov to explore. Stay tuned!
    Could there be two Rad Rislyakovs? Unlikely. The photo in my pocket of Eva Mulholland—an “auburn-haired, blue-eyed beauty” if there ever was one—made it more so. But if Ratko was such a big-shot, globe-trotting, jet-setting, high-tech crook, why was he pretending to screw around with penny-ante kidnapping?
    One more manifestation of Fucktown?
    One way to find out—ask.
    *   *   *
    It was still early, but Chelsea bustles at all hours, especially along Sixth Avenue, where the big discount emporia have reclaimed the elegant limestone buildings constructed originally as department stores for the carriage trade. Times change. In New York, commerce adapts and carries on. Yet Mother Nature can work her will, even in the concrete jungle, and this morning, the heat sucked life from the street. A cab dropped me outside Rislyakov’s luxury loft conversion. (New York is still waiting for its first nonluxury conversion.)
    The lobby was all blond wood and stainless steel. A uniformed doorman, Hispanic, early thirties, sat behind a circular counter. I told him who I was there to see.
    He shook his head. “Not home.”
    “When was the last time he was home?”
    “Can’t say. We’re not allowed—”
    I slid a Department of Homeland Security ID card across the blond wood. A forgery, a good one, a gift from a Russian FSB officer for whom I did a favor. The man looked down at the card and up at me.
    “You’ll be helping your country. Rislyakov runs with a suspicious crowd, Middle East connections, if you know what I mean.”
    “I had no idea. He’s … He’s always been polite to me.”
    “Of course he has. No way you could know. When did you last see him?”
    The man thought for a moment. “Couple months, now that I think about it. He didn’t say anything about going away. But that’s not unusual.”
    “Anyone else asking for him?”
    He hesitated. I tapped the card on the counter. “Couple of guys—foreign guys, Russian