Serious Moonlight(58)

“I can’t believe it,” she mumbled, a little dazed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, trying to lean around her so that I could see what she was looking at. But the housekeeper had noticed we’d stopped, and she wasn’t happy.

“No, no! That is a private area, please,” the housekeeper admonished.

For a moment Mona had a look in her eyes I couldn’t identify, and I thought she might fail to comply. But the housekeeper shouldered through us and quickly shut the bedroom door before gesturing upstairs and saying, “Please, madam.”

Aunt Mona relented, but not happily, and as I tried to figure out what that was all about, we continued climbing two more flights and exited through a door at the top that led onto the roof—if it could have been called that at all. More potted trees, a hot tub, an al fresco dining table and grill, and an abundance of outdoor seating packed the small space. A glass railing surrounding the scene helped to buffer the wind while giving guests a clear view of the shoreline, where dozens of other houseboats floated.

I’d met a lot of gallery owners over the years; Aunt Mona often dragged me along to installations. Most of them were upper-middle class, far wealthier than the artists they represented, but none were like the person lounging in front of us.

Sharkovsky was a dumpy, middle-aged man with a severely receding hairline and overly tanned skin. Either he spent a lot of time on beaches in warmer climates, or he had a tanning bed. But all that tanned skin was on display beneath a kimono robe that hung loosely open, revealing a bare chest, a potbelly, and silky black boxer shorts.

He held out both arms. “Mona, my love,” he said in a big voice.

“Hello, Sharkie,” she said, accepting kisses on both cheeks. In heels, she towered several inches above him. “You’ve remodeled.”

“I added the patio up here a few months ago,” he said, gesturing around him to a gray, urban landscape. “Best place to enjoy the view. That’s the University District across the water.”

He patted a portable massage table that had been set up near the hot tub. Nearby, a patio heater chased away the chill. “You’ll have to pardon my rudeness. I have a masseur coming for an appointment in half an hour, so I can’t talk long. I’m having trouble with my back.”

“Sorry to hear that,” she said, frowning at him with shockingly bright Tang-colored lipstick. “But we don’t need long. This is my goddaughter, Birdie, and her friend Daniel.”

I didn’t want to shake his hand. Something about him rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was the fact that he already seemed to be oiled up for his massage. Folding my arms over my stomach, I lifted my chin in greeting and hung back while Daniel did the vigorous male-versus-male handshake.

“Please, make yourselves comfortable,” the man said to us, sitting in a rattan patio chair and crossing one sandaled foot over his bare knee. “Tell me about what you’re working on, Mona.”

“This and that,” she said, taking a seat across from him. “Nothing as grand as Young Napoleon.”

“It’s hard to top that.” His smile wouldn’t have been out of place in a used-car lot. When you got this high up in the art world, it wasn’t so much for the love of art as for the love of money. And Sharkovsky projected a vibe of part greasy salesman, part sleazy socialite. Even sleazier, now that Daniel and I were seated together on a bench that gave us an unwelcome view inside the man’s kimono.

“I’ll always be grateful to you for finding it a good home,” Aunt Mona said.

He lifted his hands and shrugged as if to say, Hey, it’s what I do. “When you’re ready to make more money, I’ll take a trip to the island and see what you’ve been creating in that quirky little studio of yours.”

“You’ll be the first person I call,” she said, but it sounded more like: I want to rip your throat out.

What in the world was going on between them? I glanced at Daniel, and he slid me a questioning look.

After a tense silence, Sharkovsky said, “So, you said these kids had something for me to translate.”

I rummaged through my purse and pulled out the copy of the spreadsheet I’d made at work. After Daniel’s anxious response when I proposed coming here, I decided it was best to clip out the actual spreadsheet part and only show him the header. After all, it was mostly just a list of names and dates, and we could figure that out ourselves; we needed him to tell us the name of the company.

“This is it,” I said, handing the piece of paper to the man. “We were hoping you could tell us what this all means.”

He picked up a pair of reading glasses that were sitting atop a book he was reading and put them on before inspecting the paper. “It has the name and address of a company in Odessa.”

“Texas?” Aunt Mona said.

“The Ukraine,” he replied, sliding her a critical glance over his reading glasses. Then he read off the address, which Daniel quickly typed into his phone. “The name of the company is ZAFZ. It doesn’t say what that stands for, but everything is online these days, so I’m sure you can look it up.”

“Does it say anything else?” I asked while Daniel frowned at his phone.

“It was printed two weeks ago, and it also says Ivanov—that’s a surname. Whoever he is, he has a title. Facilitator.”