A Dangerous Breed

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  And if Saleem somehow slipped past Guerin at the station? The location I’d given Aura was Burke’s barn in rural Snohomish. Isolated. And designed to make people vanish for good.

  The idea of returning to that slaughterhouse, opening that vat once more to see what might remain within, made sweat rise on my scalp despite the outdoor chill.

  But I could do it. For Cyndra and Addy, no question.

  Driving uptown, I was about to enter the underground tunnel when my phone rang again. Not Aura this time; the calling number had a 721 prefix. The burner that I’d tossed to Sean Burke.

  Speak of the devil, and he shall telephone.

  “You around?” he said.

  “Depends what you mean.”

  “Get here. My apartment. You remember where.”

  And he hung up. Less than ten words, most of them sounding pulled from his throat. Was he drunk? Being forced to talk? Or was there something else going on?

  I wouldn’t waste any minutes getting there to find out. I did allow one extra second, however, to make sure the Colt had a round chambered.

  Forty-Two

  I ran the lights down Dexter Avenue and into Belltown until I reached the burnished spike of Sean Burke’s building. I pressed 3-1-0-5 on the intercom and he—or someone—buzzed me in without a word.

  I took the elevator off the residential lobby to the twenty-ninth floor, got off, and checked the stairwell. It was clear. Two flights up, the hallway outside Burke’s door was equally quiet.

  Without leaving the stairwell, I tapped the button to reply to my last call. Burke answered on the third ring.

  “I’m outside,” I said.

  Ten full seconds later, the apartment door opened. Burke walked out into the hallway. He held a rocks glass full of ice and a dark brown liquid. It took him a second to find me and another tick to focus his eyes.

  “Huh,” he said. “Cautious cat, ain’t you?”

  He returned to his apartment. I followed. The double-paned French doors to the balcony were wide open and the wind at thirty stories brushed my hair back before I took my first step over the threshold.

  It was my first look at the place with the lights on. Five grand a month in rent, easy, half of that paying for the view. The furnishings were slightly lower market, and so much of a piece I suspected Burke had bought them based on a catalog display. Sturdy and masculine and showing minimal signs of wear. I guessed Burke wasn’t home a lot.

  He plopped down in a leather club chair arranged where he could look out through the railing at the city beyond. Divots of perfect circles in the Persian rug marked where the chair normally stood. I shut the door and bolted it.

  “You want coffee?” he said, brandishing his glass. “Something with teeth? Bar’s over there.”

  It was coffee swirling around the ice cubes. A sharp aroma of burned beans persisted even through the breeze ruffling the curtains.

  “You called me,” I said, wondering if he might have forgotten.

  “I did. Siddown.”

  There were no chairs near his. I crossed the expanse of living room to the dining area, taking an extra few steps to glance into the bedroom. No one there, unless they were hiding in the walk-in. I dragged a straight-backed chair from its place at the table and placed it where I could see the hall and the front door. The view could take care of itself. Cautious cat.

  Burke sipped his coffee, licking stray drops from his lips. “You asked me why I didn’t let Stepan kill you.”

  I nodded.

  “If you found me, an’ you know about Anatoly Liashko, that means you got some buddy-bud in the cops letting you peek at their files. Right?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “So I guess you must know all about Gus, too. My dad. Right?” The second right was spat out, like I’d insulted the man’s memory.

  “Gut Burke. Used to be a Westie in New York.”

  “That’s Pops. Gus wanted me to have an education, which for him meant he spent stupid money for me to go to private school. Me with a buncha rich brats never walked more than a quarter mile at one time. I hated it. But I finished, ʼcause that’s what Gus wanted.”

  Some kind of painkiller in Burke’s veins. Or maybe a muscle relaxant. No indicators of long-term addiction, no weight loss or tipsy balance. The action at the barn had proven Burke’s reflexes were just fine.

  Whatever he was popping tonight, it had relaxed his tongue well enough.

  “After school I went back to what I’d been doing with Gus. Stealing, mostly. He’d started taking jobs for Russian multimillionaire fucks, looking to get their hands on American products that hadn’t been cleared for export. After a few years he got in with Anatoly, and that was real money.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Whatever needed doing. Gus kept me out of the hard stuff back then.” Burke pointed in the general direction. “I think he still had ideas of me going legit someday. But I knew what he did. And he knew I didn’t mind.”

  “Back then.”

  “Things change. Gus got older. Slower. Whether he changed his mind about bringing me in or jus’ realized he needed my help, I don’t know. Pretty soon I learned about everything, even the barn.”

  We both listened as a high, sustained whisper came into the room. The sound of a siren, some four hundred feet below us on the street, its wail stretched to the breaking point by the night wind.

  “And you were still okay with all of it,” I said. Making a connection between us I would have ignored if I could. “Sleeping soundly.”

  “Is that a crack?”

  “No. It’s a resemblance.”

  Burke shrugged. He didn’t catch my meaning, but he didn’t give a shit, either. “Anatoly had swerved from smuggling into selling weapons by then. Our job on this side of the water was about making deals run smooth. Cash drop-offs. Leaning on bent lawyers and money men who wouldn’t take a hint. Sometimes there was work in Russia besides.”

  “So you got a passport.”

  “You know that, too, huh? Anatoly found Natalia for me, bribed somebody in the right directorate over there to approve my residency and attest to my living in Russia for years.” Burke snapped his fingers, like describing a magician’s illusion. “I bought a house with backdated estate papers. Only met the girl once, at the wedding. Never even fucked her. Done and done. But I’m getting ahead. All that came after.”

  He blinked, slowly. “Gus fouled up a job. A big one. Anatoly let it go. We thought.”

  Burke downed the last of the coffee and reached into his rocks glass to pluck an ice cube from the stack. He didn’t put it in his mouth, just held it between thumb and forefinger, letting the melted drops fall to the rug. I waited.

  “A year later Gus gets hit by a car in a casino parking lot. Crushed the whole side of him. Cops never found the guy. Never found the car. Don’t know how hard they looked. Stupid Sean, I go on a tear trying to find Gus’s killer by checking local body shops for repairs, before I wised up.”

  I was tracking Burke’s tone, the pattern of his strange mood, as much as his words. “You stayed dumb. To stay close.”

  He grunted and tossed the ice cube out the window to a long, long fall.

  “Sticking a blade right through Anatoly’s neck was my first idea. Whap. Just enough time before he kicked so he’d realize why I’d done it. But getting next to him would be impossible in Russia. And Liashko comes to America about as often as I visit fuckin’ Africa. He’s a paranoid. Going to jail over there doesn’t scare him. If they send his ass to a corrective camp, he’s wired enough to buy himself a comfortable reeducation. But here? All the race shit and the other gangs? He’d be meat. He knows it. Our prisons freak Anatoly out.”

  “You’ve been waiting for a chance at him this long?” I said. According to the FBI file, Gut Burke had died almost a dozen years ago.

  “I found other work.” Burke couldn’t help but glance at his fine apartment.

  “Must pay well.”

  “Som
ebody owed. They signed their paid lease over to me instead.”

  Instead of the alternative. Whap.

  “But I kept on bugging Anatoly,” he said. “Telling him there was plenty of money to be made in the U.S. of A., the way the country’s going to shit. And his cash flow’s been squeezed ever since Putin started jailing his old sponsors on corruption charges. Now he’s fucking frantic. It’s beautiful.”

  “Stepan’s crew was here to set up a deal,” I said. “Is Liashko coming stateside?”

  Burke sneered his affirmation, mouth a little slack from the pills. “I know that son of a whore. His mistrust cuts both ways. Any big transaction, Anatoly has to know every fucking thing.”

  He stopped, maybe noting how intently I was following his story.

  “You an’ me, we got—what do you call it? Commonalities. We can both keep it together when shit goes down.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Plus I think I’ve got you scoped, Shaw. I tell you to take a long vacation away from Seattle, there’s no better way to make sure you’ll stay around. Keep stirring up trouble. And I’ll keep trippin’ over you.” Burke laughed harshly. “So fuck it. You’ve already got me by the balls ʼcause I let you live. If telling you to screw off doesn’t work, maybe the truth will.”

  “Maybe.”

  “After too many years I finally figured out I’d never get my shot, a chance to take out Anatoly the way Gus might have. Dropping him into the vat still alive with his hands and feet tied. No gag, though. I’d wanna hear him.”

  He said it with the same flat tone he might have used when ordering the furniture from the catalog. Talk to Burke long enough, and you started to notice the shallow pools in his emotions.

  He settled back into his leather chair. “I’d have to get Liashko another way. I needed help. So I called a friend of mine. A guy I’ve known since we were just kids. His life turned out different than mine. Better. I figured if there was anybody in this world I could trust, it would be him.”

  Holy shit. I gave the moment the space it needed, the space I needed to wrap my head around it.

  “Burke,” I said. It was the first time I’d called him by name. “Are you telling me you’re working with the cops?”

  He crushed the last ice cube between his teeth.

  “Funny, isn’t it? Gut Burke’s kid, a fuckin’ rat. Nobody knows about it except me and a coupla Feds. For my own safety. And now you.”

  “That’s how you found me at the garage by the museum,” I said. My face was probably stupid with astonishment, but right then I didn’t give a damn. “The Feds have traces on my accounts. And your buddy is keeping you in the loop on my movements. In case—what, I might be hunting you?”

  “You coulda been from one of Anatoly’s competitors. Or who knew, maybe from the man himself. I wouldn’t put it past that fucker to hire somebody to snoop into my business.”

  “I thought the task force was trying to nail you. For the dead ATF agent.”

  “Santora? Hell.” Burke chuckled. “Marcus Santora’s alive and kicking, somewhere. My guy put him undercover for months as a dealer. Had a whole trailer full of rocket grenades as bait. He got damn close, I’ll give him that. But like I told you, Liashko’s a bugout. He smelled something wrong. The next thing I know, he’s fled back to Russia.” Burke flipped the imaginary Liashko the finger. “I had to do something to save face. So we made the best of it. Santora vanished, and I told Anatoly I was the reason why.”

  “And he believed you.”

  “I had some cred. A few years ago, two Bratva shitheads ripped off Anatoly’s summer house for spending money before they fled to the States. Busted up his housekeeper while they were at it. Anatoly sent me to find them. Wasn’t hard. The idiots had holed up in a Long Beach fleapit owned by the brotherhood. But when I got there, they were already dead and stinking, overdosed on some laced heroin. Lucky opportunity. I made it look like I’d tied up the two punks and spiked them myself.”

  Burke had a different definition of luck than I did. If the two gangsters hadn’t already been cold, would he have taken care of that minor detail, too?

  Or maybe he had killed them after all. And lying to me about it was just second nature. Maybe he was lying about everything, including his status with the federal task force.

  “So what now?” I said.

  “Now you stay as low as the deepest roots under the tall trees, until Anatoly comes to America and we nail his ass. Don’t say shit to anybody, just vanish. I can contact you when it’s safe.”

  “No. Liashko’s boys tried to burn my face off. Tell your guy on the task force that I want in.”

  “Get bent. He’ll never go for it, and sure as hell I don’t want you neither. You’re gonna get me killed or something worse, stumbling around.”

  “So aim me where I can do some good. Even if it’s watching your back in case your paranoid freak boss decides to have you whacked on general principle.”

  He slapped his glass down on the side table, hard enough to make the ice cubes jitter and bounce. “Fuck whether or not he takes me out. There’s pressure here. My guy put his ass on the line, you understand? He’s the only guy in the world would do that. I ain’t taking him down with me.”

  Despite his loose tongue, Burke had kept his handler’s name out of our conversation. But I could put the pieces together into a rough picture. The supposedly dead Santora had been ATF. And ATF Special Agent Rick Martens had offered me a similar deal as Burke’s, to turn informant. Martens was in his late forties, about the right age to be a childhood friend of Sean Burke.

  One plus one plus one. Burke had sent Agent Martens to Bully Betty’s to offer me a deal, right after I’d told Burke about Moira.

  Which might mean he wasn’t as positive as he claimed about whether he might be my father.

  “If you have enough faith to tell me all this,” I said, “you can tell me about Moira.”

  Burke sighed. “I figured you’d circle back to her. You’re like a pit bull on a fuckin’ pork chop.”

  I waited. Without taking his eyes off me, Burke reached into the pocket of his trousers and removed a rectangular piece of clear plastic. A sealed bag. He unfolded it to show me. Inside the bag was a Q-tip. One tip of the swab was wet.

  He held out the bag. I took it.

  “You knew her,” I said.

  “Of course I knew her. I never forgot her. And before I spend the rest of my life in WITSEC, I guess you and I better sort this out, huh?”

  Forty-Three

  I called Paula Claybeck the instant I was back at the car. She picked up, thank God.

  “Dr. Claybeck,” I said. “Van Shaw. Hollis’s friend.”

  “Oh, I’m aware. You said you would lose my number.”

  “I need a small favor.”

  “Color me surprised.” Claybeck didn’t seem too grateful that I’d helped extricate her from Ondine’s clutches. But then, maybe the good doctor felt she’d traded the frying pan for the fire.

  “I need to compare two DNA samples for paternity,” I said.

  “Honestly, dragging me into your baby mama troubles?”

  In a few sentences I laid out what I needed. A long pause followed.

  “That’s not something I can do here at any rate,” Claybeck said. “DNA comparison requires specialized equipment to separate the fragments and review the profiles.”

  “I guessed.”

  “I’ll call a friend and see if he would be willing to fit the analysis into his day. Take down this address.” She read it off. A street in the southern part of the Central District. “Unless I call and tell you differently, meet me there at seven o’clock in the morning. The process will require at least a few hours. Hours unencumbered by you hanging over his shoulder.”

  “Understood.” I almost had to stop myself from adding “ma’am.” Claybeck had that superior officer vibe down cold.

  “Don’t be late.”

  Un-damn-likely. I would be counting the minutes. Sle
ep might be impossible. It was like a twisted version of Christmas Eve as a child, agonizing through the hours until morning and time to see what presents had appeared under the tree.

  Not that the yuletide had ever been so showy with Dono. My grandfather had kept our festivities to an extra slab of meat and some dessert on the dinner table, with a gift or two wrapped crudely in newspaper and garden twine as the centerpiece. Usually winter clothes or something I needed for school. But there was always cash on Christmas morning, too, and Dono never gave a crap what I spent it on. Spider-Man comics and a candy feast for me and Davey Tolan from the 7-Eleven later that same afternoon was the standard spree.

  Now I held what might be the conclusive link to my father in my hand, and there was nothing to do but wait.

  Stanley snuffed from his tractor-tire-sized bed in the corner, battling some dreamland adversary. Normally he’d be in Cyndra’s room, occupying ninety percent of the mattress, but when I’d spread blankets on the couch around midnight he had padded out to join me, a yawn stretching his huge maw. The dog had apparently determined that he and I were guarding the castle gates together.

  It was near five o’clock in the morning. For the past hour, my mind had been turning over what Burke had said about his buddy in law enforcement, how the Fed had put everything on the line to help Burke. That if the bust of Liashko went south, they would all be finished.

  Burke saw his C.I. status as transactional. I had the same opinion. If Liashko wasn’t caught, Martens’s career might be flushed and Burke’s chances of survival would follow it down the same drain. No criminal trial equaled no escape into WITSEC. The man in charge, U.S. Attorney Palmer Stratton, would wipe his hands clean of the whole debacle.

  It was the smart move, politically. Burke would be abandoned, forced to run. Anatoly Liashko didn’t seem to lack for trigger men to chase after him.