Free Dead Man's Rule by Rick Acker Page A

depressed about the Bears. When are they going to get a back that can actually run the ball?” She looked at Sergei as if she expected him to know the answer.
    “Good question. Kozlowski’s a good bulldozer if they only need two or three yards, but he never gets much more than that. They could sure use someone with some real speed and evasiveness.”
    “Maybe,” Olga said. “But you are not just here to talk football, am I right?”
    She was right. Olga Yanayev was his mother’s second cousin, but she was also the widow of one of the top bosses in the Moscow mafiya and the mother of two others. Her sons did no business in the United States—otherwise she would have had nothing to do with Sergei except at family reunions. However, she knew most of what went on in the local mafiya underworld, especially if it involved dealings with Russia. She and her husband had moved to Chicago when he’d retired, so that they could be near extended family and good hospitals, which he had needed because of his diabetes. It finally killed him two years ago, and he had left her a small fortune of dubious origin. She worked in the restaurant because it was a convenient way to talk to her friends and hear news, not because she needed the money.
    “Of course you’re right,” Sergei said with a smile. “I came for the borscht and black bread too. And for the chance to visit with you.”
    She left to tend to her other customers and came back a few minutes later with his food. “Here’s the borscht and bread. Now let’s have the visit.” She walked around the counter and sat on the stool next to him and eyed him shrewdly. “Let’s be frank. You want to ask me something, and I want to ask you something too. Since you’re the guest, I’ll let you ask first. What is it?”
    “Do you know Nicki Zinoviev?”
    She shrugged slightly. “I know of him. He’s a small fish for you, isn’t he?”
    “But not for my client. Nicki broke a contract to sell a safe-deposit box because he got a better offer from someone else. My job is to find out who that someone else is. I think it might be the Brothers. Do you know where I can find their names and addresses?”
    “I can get them for you.”
    “Thanks. Do you know if they’re trying to buy something from Zinoviev?”
    “I don’t know what they’re doing. Why would they tell me?”
    “I didn’t think they would, but it never hurts to ask.”
    “Sometimes it does,” she observed. “Now it’s my turn.”
    “Fire away,” said Sergei with a relaxed smile that hid a heightened alertness. She was his auntie, but she was also a very shrewd lady with her own agenda and a remarkable ability to read between the lines. He’d have to choose his words carefully.
    “What are the Chechens up to around here?”
    “Lots of stuff,” he said. “You know that.”
    The Chechens had been fixtures in the Chicago crime scene for years. When Sergei was still with the Bureau, for instance, he had helped break up a sex-slavery ring on the North Side, allegedly run by Chechens. Recently, there had been a string of beatings, robberies, and murders targeting the Russian community, and a lot of people suspected Chechen gangs. Sergei had heard through the grapevine that the FBI was in the midst of a large investigation aimed at putting a stop to these attacks, but of course he couldn’t say that.
    Olga looked him in the eye for several seconds. “You know what the problem with those evasive running backs is? If you catch them, they go down hard.” She smiled and patted his hand so that he wouldn’t take her comment too hard, just hard enough.
    Sergei smiled back. He knew she wasn’t really threatening him, but he also stopped evading her questions. “You know from the papers that someone’s been attacking Russians over the past few months and that it’s probably a Chechen gang or gangs. All I can tell you is that law enforcement is aware of the problem and taking steps to deal with it.”
    “Are