“What’s her father’s name?”
“Like you don’t remember.”
“From a case I worked twelve years ago, Helene? No, I don’t remember.”
“Bruce Combs.”
“But his friends call him B Diddy?”
“What?”
“Never mind. Where’s Bruce live?”
“Salinas.”
“And that’s where Amanda flew into?”
“Yeah.”
“Which airport?”
“Salinas Airport.”
“Salinas doesn’t have a commercial airport. You mean she flew into either Santa Cruz or Monterey.”
“Yeah.”
“Which one?”
“Santa Cruz.”
“Yeah, they don’t have a commercial airport, either. So there goes your dumbass Salinas story, Helene.”
Kenny exhaled a chuck of cigarette smoke and looked at his watch.
“You got someplace to be?”
He shook his head.
Behind him, Sophie fidgeted and kept looking at a spot over my head. I turned, saw the clock on the wall. I caught Helene looking at it too.
“You don’t have someplace to be,” I said to Kenny.
“No.”
“You’re supposed to be here,” I said.
“Now you’re getting it.”
“Someone’s coming a-calling.”
A tight nod followed by a rapping on the sliding glass door behind us.
I turned in my chair as Kenny said, “Punctual fuckers, I’ll give ’em that.”
The two guys on the other side of the glass weren’t particularly tall but they were poster boys for stocky. They both wore black leather car coats. The one on the left had belted his at the waist, the other left his open. They both wore turtlenecks—the one on the left wore a white one. His partner’s was baby blue. The one on the left had a black beard, the one on the right had a blond one. They both had full heads of hair and bushy eyebrows and mustaches thick enough to misplace a purse in. The one on the left knocked again and gave a little wave and smiled a big, toothy smile. Then he tried the door. He cocked his head when he couldn’t open it and looked back through the glass at us, his smile beginning to fade.
Helene shot from her chair and unlocked the door. The dark-haired guy pulled it back. He entered in a rush and took her face in his hands and said, “Miss Helene, how are you today?” and gave her a kiss on the forehead. He released her face as if he were shot-putting it, and Helene stumbled backward a step. He clapped together a pair of massive hands as he entered the dining room and gave us all another big smile. His companion shut the door behind him and strolled into the room lighting a cigarette. Both of them had long hair, parted down the middle, à la Stallone circa 1981, and even before the dark-haired one had spoken, I’d pegged them for Eastern Europeans—whether they were Czechs, Russians, Georgians, Ukrainians, or, hell, Slovenians was beyond my ear at the moment, but their accents were as thick as their beards.
“How are you, my friend?” the dark-haired one asked me.
“Not bad.”
“Not bad!” He seemed to love that. “Then that is good, yes?”
“You?” I said.
He gave my question a happy jerk of his eyebrows. “I am great, my main man. I am super-duper.”
He sat in the chair Helene had vacated and slapped my shoulder. “You do business with this man?” He jerked his thumb at Kenny.
“Occasionally,” I said.
“You should stay away from him. He big trouble, this one. He bad guy.”
Kenny said, “No.”
The dark-haired guy nodded earnestly at me. “You can trust me. You see what he do to this poor girl?” He pointed at Sophie, who stood against the fridge, shaking and sweating all the more. “Little girl, and he give her a big drug habit. He a real piece of shit.”
“I believe you,” I said.
He widened his eyes at that. “You should believe me, guy. He’s crazy cowboy, this one. He doesn’t listen. He breaks deals.”
Kenny said, “If you just tell Kirill we’re looking. We’re looking. It’s all we do.”
The guy hit my chest lightly with the back of his hand, wildly amused. “ ‘Tell Kirill.’ You ever hear a thing so dumb? Hey? Tell Kirill. Like a man tell Kirill anything. A man ask Kirill. A man beg Kirill. A man go to his knees before Kirill. But tell Kirill?” He turned away from me and bore in on Kenny. “Tell him what, piece of shit? Tell Kirill you looking? You searching? You out there, guy, beating the hedges to find his property?” He reached out and took a cigarette from the pack Kenny had left on the table. He lit it with Kenny’s lighter and then threw the lighter in his lap. “Kirill says to me this morning, he says, ‘Yefim, wrap this up. No more waiting. No more junkie bullshit.’ ”
Kenny said, “We are this close. We know almost where she is.”
Yefim knocked over the table. I barely saw his arm move but the table was suddenly not in front of us anymore or, more important, not between Yefim and Kenny. “I fucking tell you, guy, not to fuck this up. You make us money, yeah yeah yeah. You always deliver, yeah yeah yeah. Well, you didn’t fucking deliver this for Kirill, my man. And more, you didn’t deliver this for Kirill’s wife and she have her heart set on this. She’s . . .” He snapped his fingers a couple times and then looked back over his shoulder at me. “What you say, my friend, when someone finds no happiness in life anymore and no one can change that?”
“I’d say they’re inconsolable.”
The smile that blew across his face was the kind movie stars give on red carpets—that much wattage, that much charm.
“Inconsolable!” He gave me a thumbs-up. “You right on that, my good friend, thank you.” He turned back to Kenny, then changed his mind and looked back at me. He spoke very softly. “No, really. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You a good fucker, man.” He patted my knee and then turned away. “Violeta, Kenny? She’s inconsolable, guy. That’s what she is. She’s inconsolable, and Kirill, he love her so crazy, man, now he’s inconsolable. And you, you’re supposed to fix that. But you don’t.”
“I’m trying.”
Yefim leaned forward, his voice soft, almost gentle. “But you don’t.”
“Look, ask anyone.”
“Who I ask?”
“Anyone. I’m out there looking. It’s all I do.”
“But you don’t,” he said again, even softer this time.
Kenny said, “Just give me a couple more days.”
Yefim shook his bison head. “A couple more days. Pavel, you hear him?”
The blond guy who stood behind Kenny said, “I hear him.”
Yefim pulled his chair closer to Kenny. “You teach Amanda what she know. So, how she get the drop on you?”
“I taught her what she knows,” Kenny agreed. “But I didn’t teach her all she knows.”
“She smarter than you, I think.”
“Oh, she’s smart,” Helene said from the doorway. “She’s all A’s in school. Last year, she even got—”
“Shut up, Helene,” Kenny said.
“Why you talk to her like that?” Yefim said. “She’s your lady. You should show more respect.” He turned to Helene. “You tell me—what did Amanda get? She get some award?”
“Yeah,” Helene said, drawing the word out into three syllables. “She got gold ribbons in trig, English, and computer science.”
Yefim slapped Kenny’s knee with the back of his hand. “She got gold ribbons, man. What you get?”
Yefim stood and dropped his cigarette on the rug and ground it out with the toe of his work boot. He lifted the table off the floor and righted it. He and Pavel looked at each other for a solid minute, neither of them blinking, just breathing through their noses.
“You have two days,” Yefim said to Kenny. “After that, you were your mother’s dream, guy. You understand?”
Kenny said, “Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.”
&nb
sp; Yefim nodded. He turned and held out his hand to me and I shook it. He looked in my eyes. His were a liquid sapphire and reminded me of a candle flame slipping under the surface of melting wax. “What’s your name, my friend?”
“Patrick.”
“Patrick”—he placed a hand to his chest—“I am Yefim Molkevski. This is Pavel Reshnev. Do you know who Kirill is?”
I wished I didn’t.
“I assume you mean Kirill Borzakov.”
He nodded. “Very good, my friend. And who is Kirill Borzakov?”
“He’s a businessman from Chechnya.”
Another nod. “A businessman, yes. Very good. Though he’s not from Chechnya. You’re a Slavic businessman in this country, everybody thinks you Chechen or”—he spit on the carpet—“Georgian. But Kirill, like me and Pavel, is Mordovian. We take the girl.”
“What?” I said.
Pavel crossed the dining room and grabbed Sophie off the wall. She didn’t scream, but she wept a fair amount, shaking hands held up by her ears like she was trying to ward off wasps. Pavel’s free hand remained in the pocket of his car coat.
Yefim snapped his fingers and extended his palm in my direction. “Give to me.”
“ ’Scuse me?”
All the light drained from his eyes. “Patrick. Dude. You so smart up to now. Stay smart, guy.” He wiggled his fingers. “Come. Give me the gun in your left pocket.”
Sophie said, “Let me go,” but there was no heat in it, only resignation and more tears.
Pavel was turned all the way toward me, hand in his pocket, awaiting instruction. If Yefim sneezed, Pavel would put a bullet in my brain before anyone could say, “Gesundheit.”
Yefim wiggled his fingers again.
Holding the grip by two fingers, I removed the handgun from my jacket pocket and handed it to Yefim. He placed it in his coat pocket and gave me a small bow. “Thank you, dude.” He turned to Kenny. “We take her. Maybe we have her make us another one. Maybe we test Pavel’s new gun on her, yes? Shoot her many times.”
Sophie shrieked through her tears and it came out strangled and wet. Pavel hugged her tighter to him but seemed otherwise unconcerned.
“Either way,” Yefim said to Kenny and Helene, “she is ours now. She is not yours ever again. You find the other girl. You find Kirill’s property. You return it to us by Friday. Do not screw the poop on this one, piece of shit.”
He snapped his fingers and Pavel dragged Sophie past me and past Helene and over to the sliding glass doors.
Yefim gave my shoulder a fist chuck. “Be well, my good friend.” On his way out of the dining room, he grasped Helene’s face in his hands and gave her another hard kiss on the forehead and another push backward. This time she fell on her ass.
His back to us, he held up a finger. “Don’t make a asshole of me, Kenny. Or I make a big asshole of you.”
And then they were gone. Within a few seconds, a truck engine came to life and I got to the kitchen window in time to see a Dodge Ram bump out into the untilled mounds behind the house.
“Do you have another gun?” I said.
“What?”
I looked at Kenny. “Another gun.”
“No, man. Why?”
He was lying, of course, but I didn’t have time to argue. “You’re some kind of douche, Kenny.”
He shrugged and lit a cigarette and then yelled, “Hey,” when I swiped his car keys off the granite countertop in the kitchen and ran out the front door.
A yellow Hummer sat in the circular drive. The poster child for How Detroit Got It Wrong. An utterly useless behemoth that got such piss-poor mileage the Sultan of Brunei might be embarrassed to drive it. And we were shocked when GM came asking for a bailout.
I had the Dodge Ram in sight for half a minute as I climbed into the Hummer. It bounced across the field, up one furrow, down another, Pavel’s blond hair distinct behind the wheel. When they bounced out of the field, they went east toward the entrance gate, and I lost sight of them, but I figured I had at least a fifty percent shot of them heading for Route 1. When I barreled out of Sherwood Forest Drive and back up Robin Hood Boulevard, I saw their tire tracks had turned right out of the entrance toward Route 1. I goosed the gas as much as I could, but I didn’t want to overdo it and ride up their ass.
I almost did anyway. I came over a rise on the country road I’d been zipping along, and there they were at the bottom, sitting at a red light in front of a combination grocery store/post office. I tried to bring my speed down as casually as possible, while keeping my head down like I was consulting a map on my seat, but trying to look inconspicuous in a yellow Hummer is like trying to look inconspicuous walking naked into a church. When I looked up again, the light had turned green and they punched the gas and took off at a good speed, though not tires a-screaming.
In another mile, they reached Route 1 and headed north. I gave it thirty seconds and pulled on. Traffic wasn’t thick, but it wasn’t thin, either, and I easily dropped back several car lengths and over two lanes. When you’re trying to stay undercover in a yellow Hummer, every little bit helps.
Only a suicide takes on Russian guns. And I liked life. A lot. So I had no intention of doing anything but keeping a soft tail on them until I saw where they took Sophie. Soon as I had an address, I’d make a 911 call and be done with this.
And that’s what I told my wife.
“Get off their tail,” she said. “Now.”
“I’m not on their tail. I’m five cars back, two lanes over. And you know how good I am on a tail.”
“I do. But they could be better. And you’re fucking driving a yellow fucking Hummer. Just get their license plate, call it in, and drive away.”
“You think they’re driving a car registered with the RMV? Come on.”
“You come on,” she said. “These guys are a whole different level of dangerous. Bubba thinks the Russian mob is too crazy to deal with.”
“As do I,” I said. “I’m just going to observe and report. They kidnapped a teenage girl, Ange.”
At that moment, my daughter called, “Hi, Daddy,” from somewhere in the background.
“You want to talk to her?” Angie asked.
“That’s low,” I said.
“I never said I fight fair.”
I passed Gillette Stadium on my right. Without a game being played inside, it looked large and alone. There was a mall beside it, a few cars in the parking lot. Up ahead, Pavel turned on his right blinker and drifted over into the far right lane.
“I’ll be home soon. Love you,” I said and hung up.
I moved over one lane, then another. There was only a red PT Cruiser between the Hummer and their Ram, so I kept the distance to a hundred yards.
At the next intersection, the truck turned right on North Street and then took an immediate right into a lot filled with tractor trailers backed up to a long, white distribution terminal. From the road, I could see the Ram drive down a dirt path alongside a row of tractor trailers and then take a left toward the back of the terminal.
I pulled into the lot and followed. To my right stood a retaining wall by the Route 1 overpass. Beneath the overpass, freight train lines and commuter rails fed north into the city or south toward Providence. To my left were the tractor trailers backed into their receiving bays. In one receiving bay, a few beefy guys pushed through thick strips of plastic to load boxes onto a trailer with Connecticut plates.
At the end of the path, the rail lines stretched off to my right while the brown dirt road curved to the left. I curved left around the terminal. The pickup truck sat in the middle of the path about fifteen yards away. Its parking lights were on. The engine idled. The passenger door was wide-open.
Yefim hopped off the passenger seat, screwing a suppressor onto the end of a semiautomatic handgun. In the time it took me to compute this, he walked five paces and extended his arm. The first shot punched a puckered hole in my windshield. The next four shots took out my front tires. The tires were just sta
rting to hiss when the sixth shot added another puckered hole to the windshield. The hole sprouted veins. The veins widened, and the windshield crackled like popcorn in a microwave. Then it collapsed. Two more shots ripped up the hood, though I couldn’t be positive of either the number or their locations, because I was curled on the front seat, covered in windshield.
“Hey, guy,” Yefim said. “Hey, guy.”
I shook some glass out of my hair and off my cheeks.
Yefim leaned into the Hummer, his elbows on the window frame, the pistol and silencer dangling from his right hand. “License and registration.”
“Good one.” I eyed that pistol.
“No good one,” he said. “Serious request. License and registration.” He tapped the silencer against the side of the window frame. “Right fucking now, guy.”
I sat up and searched for the registration. Eventually, I found it tucked into the visor. I handed it to him, along with my driver’s license. He took a long look at them and handed the registration back.
“It’s registered to piece-of-shit Kenny. Piece-of-shit Kenny drives piece-of-shit fag-yellow Hum-vee. I knew it wasn’t yours. You too classy, man.”
I brushed some windshield pebbles off my coat. “Thank you.”
He fanned the air with my driver’s license and then put it in his pocket. “I keep this. I keep it, Patrick Kenzie of Taft Street, so you remember. So you know that I know who you are and where you live with your family. You have family, yes?”
I nodded.
“Go to your family, then,” he said. “Give them big hugs.”
He rapped the door with the gun one last time and walked back to the pickup truck. He climbed in, shut the door, and they drove away.
Chapter Sixteen
One positive thing I learned about a Hummer—bitch didn’t drive too bad with its front tires blown out. As a few brave truckers and freight loaders worked their way out of the nearest loading bays, I backed the Hummer up twenty yards, pinned the wheel, and then popped it into drive and headed for the train tracks. Those front tires were slap-slap-slapping away as the men shouted at me but nobody gave chase; an SUV sporting eight fresh bullet holes tends to diminish the desire to confront its owner.