by Kelly Oliver
Sitting in a booth across from her friend, Jessica devoured the comforting banana pancakes, her Blind Faith usual. The hot pot of Organic Darjeeling was the perfect counterpoint to the tepid tea at the police station. She closed her eyes, savoring the sweet sensation on her tongue. She remembered her grandmother’s homemade waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, and for the first time in a year, wished she were back home in Montana. A wave of homesickness washed over her and she stopped eating.
In her daze, she’d barely registered Jack and Jimmy the security guard sitting on the other side of the booth ordering mountains of vegetarian grub and fancy cocktails. Amber sat attached to Jack like a tick, removing little vials from her big purse, and lining them up on the table. At least she’d traded her dirty nightgown for some full-length tie-dyed sarong number wrapped around her yoga pants, crowned, of course, by her Uggs.
Jessica concentrated on finishing her pot of strong tea. The English were on to something with this rejuvenating beverage. On her second pot, she was feeling alive again and her head had finally quit hurting.
“I forgot to ask about your parents and the fire. Are they okay?” she asked Lolita.
“My parents are fine. They’re staying at the Residence Inn with Bunin.” Lolita sipped espresso from a tiny demitasse. “One step at a time, comrades. We don’t have to see the top in order to start climbing the stairs, but don’t be surprised if these steps lead us all the way to the top.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jessica.
“I have a plan to take down those rapists. We’ll start with those frat boys and footballers who think rape is a spectator sport. You know the ones who text trophy photos of themselves committing felony crimes?” The Poker Tsarina was on a roll. “We’re going to take them down on their home turf.” She took another sip. “Jessica, you could have been the next victim if Nick hadn’t intervened.”
“I really don’t think Kurt put something in my drink,” she said, picking up her fork again. “He was playing the whole time.” She stuffed her mouth with the last bite of pancakes, closed her eyes, and concentrated on chewing.
“But he could have had Alexander do it for him. He said he fills his prescriptions, right?” Lolita took out her iPad. “We’re going to turn the tables on those creeps. Jack, can you get your hands on Rohypnol, Ketamine, or GHB?”
Jack dropped his veggie burger. “I don’t need drugs to get action. Action being the operative word. I prefer sex with animated women.”
“What about the handcuffs, Jackie?” Amber asked innocently. “And that time when you tied me…”
Jessica burst out laughing. “Yeah, what about the handcuffs, Jackie?” she asked, spitting tea onto the table.
“Ah, yes,” he wiped his mouth on a napkin and then handed it across the table to Jessica. “Playful resistance and tension incite passion. Sex with the unconscious is more like necrophilia. Rapists aren’t interested in sex so much as power.”
“I suppose they teach you that in your criminal psychiatry classes,” Jessica said. “And what about the connections between sex and power? Perhaps we could use your handcuffs as exhibit A?”
“Stop bickering, kids.” Lolita ordered. “Can you get the drugs from the hospital where you work or not?” Jack was interning at Northwestern University Hospital as part of his medical training.
“I suppose so,” he said with a mouth full of sandwich. “Why?”
“Taste of their own medicine.” Lolita barely glanced up from her device.
“I can get Ketamine,” he said. “It is used as an anesthetic in cases where respiratory function is compromised. It’s also a dissociative hallucinogenic that will put your frat boys through the psychedelic K-hole.”
“The K-hole for the A-holes,” Amber said.
“Those rape drugs all over campus don’t appear by magic. We need to get to the source. That’s our first flight of stairs. We’re going to start our revenge operation at the Tau Kappa Epsilon Red X party tomorrow night. It’s graduation week, so the creeps will be in rare form.” Lolita tipped her cup and swallowed the dregs of her coffee, then barked out orders to her lieutenants, “Jack, meet us tomorrow night at Brentano at nine pm. Bring the drugs. Jimmy, I want you outside the party in your cruiser, out of sight. I’ll call you on your cell when we’re ready for you to pick up the trash.”
Mouth full, Jimmy looked up from his plate and nodded blandly. Lolita had him on such a short leash, he’d do anything for her. His affable nature was at odds with his tall, toned body and his pocked-marked face. Like the saltines next to his bowl of chicken soup, he was good to have around for an upset stomach, but easy to pass up otherwise.
When she’d finished outlining the plan, Lolita paid the check with a crisp Ben Franklin. “Everyone got it? Remember, courage stays one step ahead of fear.” As always, heads turned as the Russian beauty rose to her full five feet ten inches, and waved her black hair back and forth before stuffing it into her helmet.
“If I’m right,” Lolita said picking up her saddlebags, “we’re going to double down on this game.”
Chapter Twenty
By the time Dmitry got to the hospital to fetch Sabina, it was the dead of night and the clinic was nearly empty. As he took the elevator to the second floor, the silence weighed on him. Exiting the lift, disoriented, he stared at the room numbers trying to figure out which direction to his wife’s room. He walked towards the nurse’s station, a bright island in a dark sea. The nurse didn’t even look up as he walked past. He continued down a long corridor, past door after door, all the same, sealing in the sickness within. The punishing florescent lights were giving way to shadowy dread, and he stopped to catch his breath. Haunted by the nocturnal stillness in this liminal place of both healing and death, he was transported back to his last night in Russia.
Following his father’s instructions, he’d driven an hour outside Moscow to The Hospital. “Dima,” his father had said. “Do this one thing for me and you’re a made man, a vor. I’ll even make you my Sovietnik.” In spite of himself, Dmitry had been proud his father would promote him to his right-hand-man over his older brother. Whether out of fear or love, he obeyed his father.
He’d gotten to The Hospital early to make sure it wasn’t a set-up. Trembling, he’d crossed the threshold of the abandoned building and crept along its dark corridors. The turquoise plaster walls were peeling like the sunburned skin from some exotic alien creature and reminded him of all the times he played nearby as Bratva “extracted information” or got rid of stoolpigeons, moles, and rats.
Illuminated only by rays from a full moon, he’d drifted down the hallway to the “operating room,” an abandoned maternity ward. Passing lab coats hanging from hooks in closets with doors falling off hinges, vials of medicines in rusted cabinets below diagrams of pregnant bellies covered in plaster dust, and surgical instruments laying at the ready in dilapidated surgery bays, he wondered if one day everyone had simply disappeared.
He’d hidden in the shadows and was watching out a window when Yuri pulled into the parking lot. He gazed out at two of his father’s Kryshi dragging a limp hooded man out of the trunk of a black sedan and lugging him into the building. Speculating on who might be under the hood, ears pricked, he listened to the scuffle as the Kryshi approached with their mark.
His father had said, “Meet Yuri at The Hospital and dispose of a Kassir who’s stealing from me. I don’t tolerate disloyalty from anyone. Is that clear Dima? This Kassir carries fire in one hand and water in the other. We can’t allow such dishonesty.” Until now, his father had never asked him to dispose of anyone. He shuddered. He’d never wanted to be part of the “family business.” All he’d ever wanted was to paint and study art.
When the clamor reached the “operating room,” Dmitry stepped out into the light. “Hello, Yuri. My father said you have an assignment for me.”
“This is your assignment.” Yuri pointed to the hooded figure suspended between the burly arms of the two bulls.<
br />
As Dmitry helped the Kyrshi tie the mark to one of the red chairs with stirrups, he’d noticed the Kassir’s starched white shirt was splattered with fresh blood and his camelhair suit was soaked. The bulls pushed the battered mark into a chair, rebound his arms around the back of the chair, and tied his feet to the stirrups. When Dmitry bent over the target to secure the rope around the chair, the unmistakable scent of bergamot, oak moss, and sweat punched him in the gut.
He’d leaned over and whispered “Sergei?” When he’d pulled the hood off the slouching figure, Dmitry was shocked to see his brother’s face so distorted, swollen, and raw.
“For God’s sake, don’t just stand there, Dima. Kill him,” Yuri yelled. “He’s a traitor!”
Dmitry righted himself, realized he was still holding the bloody hood, and flung it across the room. “But he’s also my older brother.”
“I don’t care who the hell he is, the boss wants him dead, so he’s already a dead man whether you pull that trigger or not.” Yuri drew his Makarov pistol and pointed across the birthing chair at Dmitry. “But the Oxford Don insists you do it.”
Shaking, Dmitry reached into his pocket for his gun, and keeping his eyes locked on Yuri, removed it. Small and silent, the MSS-VUL, or “Wool,” was his favorite hand-held.
Sergei raised his head and opened the one eye not swollen shut. He glared straight up at Dmitry and said, “Poor little Dimochka, pissing your pants. What are you waiting for Súchka? Little Bitch. Are you afraid of guns?” Pink spittle sprayed from his mouth.
Growing up, Dmitry was used to his brother’s abuse. Sergei had always been unpredictable, even cruel. As he graduated from slingshots and knifes to pistols and daggers, he progressed from squirrels and rodents to dogs and cats. Sergei, or “Sly” as the Brotherhood called him, was strong and sneaky, but not so clever. As their mother would say, “A liar should have a good memory,” and his brother should have taken that to heart. How could he steal from their father and expect to live? It was true, Sergei was a dead man whether he pulled the trigger or not. He hated his brother more in that moment than he ever had before.
With both hands, Dmitry held out his pistol, and looked his brother straight in the eyes and pointed it at him, but Sergei only scoffed.
“Pull the trigger Súka,” his brother taunted, blinking his one good eye. Dmitry’s hands shook as he extended his arms, holding the gun just inches from his brother’s face. He closed his eyes, opened his hands, and dropped the gun. The echoes of steel striking concrete followed him out into the night. As he walked away from The Hospital, he heard two shots, sounds that still haunted him to this day.
“Can I help you?” asked a perky young woman wearing stained blue scrubs and a messy ponytail.
Startled, Dmitry gaped at her, and then continued down the hall to his wife’s room.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dmitry deposited his wife and dog in the pet-friendly room at The Residence Inn, a small one-bedroom with a kitchenette and televisions in every room. Sabina was like a kid on vacation, looking in every cupboard and closet. It reminded him of their honeymoon at the Ritz in Moscow when they were teenagers.
He thought of the first time he saw her dabbing Prussian Blue paint out of a tube onto a pallet and then mixing it with yellow ocher to make a green as vibrant as her eyes. He’d watched her from the hallway to the painting studio, transfixed by her graceful brush-strokes and pensive gaze. At that moment he knew his life had meaning so long as she would marry him.
They spent two heavenly months painting together in Gorky Park, taking long walks along the Moskva River, and visiting Tretyakov Gallery, before he proposed on one knee in Neskuchny Gardens. On Sabina’s eighteen birthday, in the Church of the Archangel Michael at the former Andronikov Monastery, he swore to honor and cherish her for the rest of his life.
Now, Dmitry waited for his wife to get into bed so he could sneak out to look for his paintings. Once his wife was asleep spooning Bunin in the giant king-sized bed, he whistled for the dog. When the husky hopped off the bed, Sabina only rolled over and groaned.
Vanya was waiting downstairs in the Escalade. When Dmitry got to the parking lot, his cousin was dumping his overflowing ashtray into the hedge while lighting up another cigarette. By now, Dmitry knew better than to say anything. After what happened last time, he wasn’t eager to return to Pavlov’s Banquet and confront the Pope. His side hurt just thinking about it.
“We’ve got to go back to campus and find Alexander, the scrawny kid that works for Bratva,” Dmitry said. “He’s always hanging around the professor’s office and I suspect he knows something about my missing paintings.”
“You mean the skinny dude with an attitude?” Vanya asked.
“That’s him. He deals for Bratva on campus.”
“Alex, the Pharmacist,” his cousin smiled his golden grin. “I know where to find him. Good thing you’re with me, chuvak.”
“Indeed. Let’s go find him.”
Alex the Pharmacist lived in a rundown rental near campus. The patchwork house suffered from years of shoddy repairs and mismatched paint. Dmitry took the front entrance and instructed Vanya to climb the fence and circle around back just in case Alexander decided to bolt. He walked up the cracked sidewalk to the rotting front porch, and stepping over several broken beer bottles and a melted stovetop espresso maker, knocked on the dented front door. He stared at the stuffing escaping from a ratty recliner on the dirty porch, as Bunin scavenged the littered wrappers from every fast-food joint in town. Bunin would have continued cleaning up the crumbs if Dmitry hadn’t yanked on his leash. It was the wee hours of the morning on a weeknight, so any respectable honor student should be in bed, or at least cramming for an exam. But, as his mother would say, “even the barber knew” Alex the Pharmacist was not respectable.
Alexander Le Blanc answered the door wearing a terrycloth bathrobe with more bald spots than threads. Thin nose twitching and black eyes shining, he asked, “Dmitry, what do you want at this ungodly hour?”
When Vanya busted through the back door, Bunin started barking and jerked the leash out of Dmitry’s hand and ran.
“What’s going on here?” Alexander’s head jerked towards the back of the house as Vanya and Bunin crashed through the kitchen and into the living room.
Dmitry heard rattling from upstairs, and a light came on in one of the rooms. By the looks of the place, several other guys must live in this dilapidated rat hole.
“Can we talk in private?” Dmitry asked. Alexander just stood there blinking at him across the threshold, as if he were speaking a foreign language. Maybe he had asked in Russian.
“Is there some place we can talk alone?” he asked again.
Vanya moved in behind the kid and hissed, “Ya deaf or something, súka?”
“No need to get techy, gentlemen. We can converse in my bedchamber. With your racket, I fear you’ve woken my housemates. Gerard is an especially light sleeper.” Alexander waved them into a small bedroom directly off the living room. Unlike the rest of the house, his room was tidy.
The sparse aesthetic was a welcome change, as well as the waning of the unsavory smells emanating from the other rooms. The small space contained only four pieces of furniture: a twin bed, a wooden desk and chair, and a bookcase loaded with tattered paperbacks by Dostoevsky. A banker’s lamp and sleek titanium laptop sat neatly on the desk next to a copy of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. Alexander scurried to make his bed so his “guests” could sit down, but neither did.
Pacing the tiny room, Dmitry noticed one other object in the corner, a plastic cart on wheels with eight drawers, each labeled with a color-coded tab marked in black block letters, MJ, GHB, K, R, H, C, and X. The top drawer was marked RECEIPTS. He could only guess what the others contained. He stopped in the middle of the room and stared at Alexander. Lit only by the desk lamp, he was a mere child. He’s just a messed up kid. “Why are you mixed up with drugs?” Dmitry asked. “For a smart kid, you sure a
re stupid.”
“The idiots who buy the drugs are the stupid ones,” Alexander said. “Those hedonists care only for what their small minds can conceive of as fun.”
“If you sell them the drugs, you’re worse than they are. Maybe they don’t know any better, but you do.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m better than they are,” Alexander said. “I prove it every time those dullards purchase and consume this poison. I’m superior to those fat-head frat boys and air-head sorority sisters because I can control them using drugs.”
Vanya pointed to the cart. “Hey Alex, got good Boris blow?”
“Sure, if you’ve got the cash,” Alexander replied, heading towards the cart.
“Taste first?”
Dmitry glowered at his cousin.
Alexander removed a small white box from the drawer marked C. The box had a picture of the cartoon characters Boris and Natasha stamped on it. He reached in and pulled out a tiny packet with a tiny version of the same stamp. Vanya extended his hand to take the packet, but the kid yanked it back. “Pay in advance,” he said with a smirk.
Dmitry shook his head. “We don’t have time for this. We came to ask about my paintings.”
“What paintings?” Alexander took a step away from him.
“What did you tell the Pope?” He moved in on Alexander.
“Nothing.” Alexander glanced around the room, as fidgety as a Siberian vole. “Why do you ask?”
“Look kid, you know damned well why I ask.”
Vanya snapped open his switchblade. “Want me cut him, Boss?”
“Whoa, look here gentlemen,” Alexander tightened the belt on his robe and stepped backwards. “No need for violence.”