style="font-size:15px;"> “Miss? Would you like to purchase a ticket?”
“I’ll come back later,” the girl promised. “Are there any computers with Internet access around here?”
“This isn’t the information desk,” the ticketing agent said through her teeth. “Next!”
Lisa wandered around the station until she found some kiosks with paid Internet access. The girl liked the fact that each computer was separated from its neighbors with a divider. She scooted her chair as closely as she could to her desk, made sure that no one was around and carefully opened the envelope.
Her first few searches on Yandex were fruitless. Nope! Nope! Was it really all in vain? After a few minutes, though, she got a hang of what she was looking for and found the site she needed. Her eyes bored into the screen. Would you look at that!
Lisa carefully studied several niche sites, tucked the envelope back in her purse and pressed the purse itself tightly to her chest. Now she needed to carefully consider how she would manage the wealth that had so suddenly come to her. Soon enough, she had made her decision.
She wasn’t going to pinch pennies shirking comfort and would travel to the sea in the best train available! She had earned this new life with suffering from the very day she had been born. If she managed this business carefully, she’d have enough money for anything she desired. But first, she had to arrange a safety net. She knew better than to go wandering around Moscow with an priceless purse on her shoulder.
Lisa found the station’s post office and bought an ordinary letter-sized envelope. As surreptitiously as she could, the girl transferred all the contents of the old envelope to the new one, sealed it and began thinking about a good address to send her treasure to.
Her wandering gaze alighted on the number of the post office she was in. Lisa wrote it on the new envelope and added her name with “care of” before it.
The envelope, with its new precious weight, slipped into the slot and dropped to the bottom of a blue mailbox affixed to a column.
9
A mid-luxury sedan rolled up to the gates of the hospital. Sitting at the wheel, Tarmo Keelp lowered the window and waved a bill at the security guard. The guard brushed some crumbs off his whiskers and slunk over to the visitor. The bill changed hands, the boom gate swung up and the expensive car drove off in the direction of the morgue.
The sixty-year-old gentleman was shaking with grim anxiety. Boris, the manager-pimp, had told him about the tragedy – Katya had died. The best thing to do was to forget, put the girl out of mind and switch her for some other young slut. But not everything in life was that simple.
The Estonian liked Katya. She provided quality services to him in bed, didn’t fail to praise him when everything went the way it needed to go and paid little attention to male foibles. Paid sex, however, was not the most important thing in their relationship. Keelp had brought Katya into his confidence and entrusted her with an important assignment. The day for her to fulfill her assignment had come. Today, Katya was supposed to bring him a certain envelope and receive an ample reward in return. For an uneducated girl, the envelope’s contents could not have meant very much, but for him, they were extremely valuable.
Tarmo Keelp parked the car beside the morgue van and made his way to the two-story nondescript building. In the hallway of the smelly facility, the Estonian beckoned with his finger to a lanky orderly with a busted lip.
“Tell me, my friend,” Keelp opened his wallet, demonstrating his readiness to share its contents with the orderly, “you had a girl delivered here this morning, a suicide, isn’t that so? She is my favorite niece.”
“Yeah?” the orderly agreed reticently. After the rambunctious Alex, he was assessing this new visitor with suspicion.
“I’d like to say farewell to her.” Keelp twirled a couple thousand-ruble notes in his fingers. “Unfortunately, I am due to fly out of the country soon and won’t be able to attend the funeral.”
“For sure,” nodded the orderly.
He lifted his oilcloth apron and pointed to the pocket of his blue jacket. The money was deposited in the indicated place. Not much later, Keelp was standing over the body of the girl who was supposed to be appeasing him in bed that very moment. Her face was battered. The exquisite lips which the girl had so expertly used to raise both his member and his spirits had transformed into a dried bloody scowl. Only her dense black hair retained its former attractiveness.
Covering his nose with a handkerchief, Keelp scrupulously examined the body. He was particularly interested in the girl’s hips. The visitor kept frowning, either from dissatisfaction or the unpleasant atmosphere.
Straightening out, Keelp asked the orderly to flip the body. The orderly eloquently lifted his apron again and indicated the pocket-depository. Keelp nodded his assent and gestured the lanky orderly to hurry up.
The butterfly tattoo was quite familiar to Keelp. In his youth, tattoos were a testament to one’s membership in the criminal underworld. These days, they had become an industry for decorating the bodies of the unfettered youth. The Estonian was a conservative in many ways; however, he quite enjoyed tattoos – so long as they adored young nubile bodies. He had therefore remembered Katya’s ethereal “butterfly” in detail.
Back in the hallway, Keelp recalled the main thing and reached back into his pocket for the wallet.
“I would also like to examine my niece’s belongings.”
“For sure.” After his brawl with the psycho, the orderly was happy to do business with an understanding person.
The girl’s clothes revealed nothing new. Keelp became downcast.
“What about the purse? Did she have a purse? You see, Katya had in her possession a private letter of mine. I am prepared to pay good money to see it returned.”
The orderly’s greedy mind stumbled across an entrepreneurial inspiration – why not bring this old geezer someone else’s purse? Surely, he won’t figure it out! Yet, remembering that the visitor had referred to a specific letter, the orderly had to confess, “That’s all she had with her, mister. Or – on her, rather.”
Back in his car, Keelp fell deep in thought. He was tormented by well-substantiated doubts. His life experience – replete with plenty of risky situations – spoke to him unequivocally: An unexpected death at the most critical moment cannot be an accident! In any affair, there is always some interested third party. If that is the case, then he must wait for the next move – and assume it would be the least pleasant one when it came.
The Estonian got out his phone and made a call.
“Benjamin, hello. This is Tarmo. I have a favor to ask. If in the next few days someone brings you anything out of the ordinary, give me a call. And try to arrange matters so that the persona in question and I can cross paths – What are you looking for? Well, you’ve got a trained eye, Benjamin. Believe me, when you see it, you’ll understand. And be assured that I will express my gratitude not merely in words.”
10
The workday had long since drawn to a close, yet in Detective
