Genie for Hire Read Online Free PDF Page A

groups, laughing and talking in
Russian.
    A hostess passed him, holding a tray of vodka glasses. She
was dressed as if she’d just stepped out of Czar Nicholas’s court, with a
pomaded white wig, a red low-necked gown decorated in gold brocade, and long
white gloves with pearl buttons.
    Biff took a glass from her tray, and she smiled
flirtatiously, curtsied and moved on. It was easy to distinguish the help from
the patrons, though all were Russian; the servers were in period costumes like
the hostess, while the guests dressed in flashy Italian couture, the women in
tight, slinky dresses, the men in dark suits and colorful ties.
    Biff moved easily through the crowd, opening his senses to
detect the same signature the thief had left behind at Sveta’s studio. He
strolled the room, fighting against being overpowered by all the estrogen and
testosterone in the room, all part of the mating dance going on between men and
women. Then there were the competing colognes, body washes, after shaves and
perfumes. Not to mention the residue of everything they’d eaten that day,
oozing from their pores in tiny bits of sour cream, blini and kvass .
    It was enough to make him woozy. Or maybe it was the glass
of vodka he’d belted on an empty stomach. He wolfed down a couple of meat
pierogies, a few curls of smoked salmon dotted with sour cream, and some beluga
caviar on tiny round crackers, and started to feel better. He continued his
circuit of the room, his nostrils expanding and contracting as he sniffed. He
caught a man looking strangely at him as he got too close, and drew his
monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. The man glared at
him and turned away.
    He began to wonder if the party was a dead end. He hadn’t
found anyone who smelled of Acqua di Parma, and he hadn’t seen the beautiful
young Natasha or her mother either.
    There was a commotion at the front door, and when he looked
up he saw a tough-looking bodybuilder in a sleek Hugo Boss suit entering with
his arm around Natasha. She wore a body-hugging strapless black taffeta dress
with a full skirt, and a gold necklace with a tear drop ornament studded with
tiny diamonds.
    The bodybuilder was about thirty years old, dark-haired,
with biceps that bulged under his black silk T-shirt. Biff casually made his
way through the room, coming up to stand just behind the man. Biff inhaled
deeply, and then mentally compared what he sensed to what he’d found at Sveta’s
studio that morning.
    A match. The thief stood before him.
    But there was something more. Some kind of magical power
that emanated from the man. Biff tensed. Was the man himself magic? He opened
his third eye and searched for any magical signatures he could feel. With relief,
he recognized that the thief was all human—but that he possessed some kind of
talisman. He was most likely not even aware of the powers of the object he
owned. Biff had discovered that to often be the case. There were many objects
in the world that had been imbued with magic in the long distant past, then had
been lost by their original owners. They showed up at auctions, in thrift
shops, in the closets of old houses.
    Biff allowed himself a satisfied smile. The talisman,
whatever its properties, what not his problem. All he had to do was verify that
the thief was indeed Igor Laskin, and he’d be that much closer to retrieving
Sveta’s files.
    Foolishly, the thief kept his wallet in the back pocket of
his black jeans. With an ease born of years of practice, Biff lifted it with
two fingers. The thief didn’t even notice its passing.
    Biff slipped across the darkened room to the men’s room,
where he examined the wallet’s contents in the harsh fluorescent light of a
cubicle. The wallet belonged to Igor Laskin, as Biff had guessed. He was
thirty-one and lived in a condo on the bay side of Sunny Isles Beach. The
wallet carried the registration for a Porsche 911, license plate IGOR 5. He had
an American Express black card, a