Genie for Hire

1 - Stolen Files

"You must help me, Mr. Andromeda." Sveta Pshkov was a slim blonde in her mid-forties, with breasts that had been surgically enhanced and a Russian accent that was all natural. She leaned forward across the desk, and her girls bunched up under her low-cut nylon blouse. "You are only one I can trust."

Biff knew a flirt when he met one. He was a big man, six-four, with a muscular build and a deep tan. There was a hint of the Oriental around his eyes, accentuated when he smiled. Sveta's body language said she appreciated his physical attributes.

"Tell me about your problem," he said, leaning back in his ergonomic chair, the only contemporary touch in the room, which otherwise resembled a Middle Eastern seraglio, with an Oriental carpet, frayed from centuries of travel. Several kilims, flat woven tapestries in geometric patterns, hung over the plain drywall, and a fan with woven paddles moved the air lazily overhead. A glass door led from his office to the tiny room out front, where a receptionist would sit if he had one.

"Is a theft," she said. "Someone steal digital files from my studio this morning."

Sveta's photography studio was a few storefronts down from Andromeda Investigations, in the Aventura Beach Shopping Center at the northern border of Miami-Dade County. She specialized in boudoir photos women could give to their husbands or boyfriends. "The files that were stolen," Biff said. "From a camera?"

She beamed. "From computer. I move to digital some years ago. Much cheaper, no developing, no cost for film. I take courses at community college in Photoshop."

"Impressive. These digital files—they contained photos of a woman?"

Even though they were alone in the room, she lowered her voice. "Young woman, maybe twenty-five. In this country only year or so. She want pictures as gift for husband."

"Would you say these photos were X-rated?"

"She is naked," she said. "But everything very tasteful. Is what I do." She sighed, a deep, theatrical exhalation that could have come from a character in a Tolstoy novel. "I come to this country from Ukraine when I am thirty years old. I live with my cousins in Sunny Isles Beach. Five adult and six child in three-bedroom apartment. I am very successful in my country, so is difficult."

Biff did not say anything, nor did he make any notes on the white lined pad in front of him.

"I am photographer in Ukraine, so I start business here. Is many Russian people here, who like speak their own language."

"And this woman you photographed was Russian?"

Sveta nodded. There was a sizable Russian community in Sunny Isles Beach, just over the causeway from his office, a Little Moscow without the snow, the art-filled subway system or the communist legacy. You could buy Russian-language DVDs, read the news in a newspaper printed in Cyrillic characters, eat borscht and pelmeni, or hire a Russian-speaking escort from a selection on Craig's List.

"Would you like a glass of tea?" Biff asked, nodding toward the Russian samovar that sat majestically on a teak table in the corner.

She smiled. "Yes, would be nice." Biff noted her surreptitiously adjusting her blouse for maximum effect. As she did, her elbow knocked against a brass oil lamp on the corner of his desk, and Biff jumped up to grab it before it could fall to the carpet.

Returning to his chair after relocating the lamp to a more secure location, he pointed at the samovar; the flame at the bottom ignited and began boiling the water. If Sveta noticed that Biff hadn't touched the urn, she didn't say.

"Did you turn over the photos to this woman?" he asked.

Sveta nodded. "Three days ago. She come in to pick them up, and pay in cash. Is very happy. Then this morning, husband come to my condo for original files. He does not want anyone else to have."