An Image of Death

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  “Good evening, Ms. Foreman,” Gordon said pleasantly.

  I didn’t answer.

  “I apologize for the surroundings. I would have preferred to be indoors, as, I’m sure, you would as well. Unfortunately, we had no choice.” He glanced over at the tall man, who had halved the distance between us. “My colleague here is going to take the tape off your mouth so we can conduct business. He assures me, however, that if you scream again or cry out in any way, he will kill you. Do you understand?”

  I made no reply.

  “Do you understand?” Gordon repeated.

  I nodded.

  The tall man bent down and ripped the tape off my lips. I gasped in pain. Gordon winced, but the tall man’s eyes were empty. He straightened up and barked something in Russian. Gordon hunched into his overcoat, and when he replied, I heard the tension in his voice. For some reason I remembered Dad trading in his double-breasted for a down parka last fall. I was in my sweats now. With no coat. They must have stripped it off when they brought me here. I shivered.

  “It is cold. So let’s make this quick, shall we?” Gordon hooked his thumbs in his pockets.

  I tried to lift my head to answer, but the pain forced it back down. The tall Russian pulled out a gun.

  “Please, Ms. Foreman, don’t make my friend nervous,” Gordon said.

  The man aimed the gun at my head. I ran my tongue around my lips. “What do you want?”

  “The video of the ground-breaking ceremony. It’s the only piece of evidence connecting me to that dirty little business in the suburbs. It would be prudent for me to have it.”

  Prudent indeed. “What dirty little business are you referring to?”

  “Don’t prevaricate. You’re wasting time. It’s unlikely that my—my associates will be able to find the tape without your help. They have no idea where to look. You must tell me where it is and how to identify it.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  Gordon slid his eyes to the man with the gun. “It will not be pleasant.”

  My mind worked feverishly. A VHS copy of the ground-breaking ceremony was in my VCR at home. But the original was locked up in Mac’s studio. Even if they did get hold of my copy, the original would be available for the police.

  But they didn’t necessarily know that. In fact, many people don’t differentiate between originals and dubs. They don’t realize that, like CDs and computer files and diskettes, we always make copies to edit from. If Gordon had been asking for a computer file, I wouldn’t have a prayer. They’d know to demand the original. But this was video. It was worth a try. I started to tell them where to find the copy when I heard a muffled groan.

  I turned toward the sound. A few yards away was a lump I’d thought was a mound of steel pipes and tubing, but now it was moving, rolling over. Mika! Like me, her hands and feet were bound, and someone had stuffed a gag in her mouth.

  The man with the empty eyes backed away from me and trained his gun on her instead. With his free hand he removed the gag. I couldn’t see her face, but her body language was oddly relaxed. Not at all tense.

  “Halloa, Vlad.”

  “Halloa, Mika.” He pulled the slide back on his automatic.

  Vlad! I remembered what she said about him killing her “Don’t…don’t hurt her,” I begged.

  Vlad’s eyebrows lifted, and he spoke sharply to Gordon. When Gordon replied, Mika stiffened.

  “We won’t hurt her if you tell us where the tape is,” Gordon translated.

  Was he lying? Mika’s words earlier seemed to suggest he was. Still, I didn’t see that I had many choices.

  “Where is it?” Gordon pressed.

  “At my house. In my VCR. I was looking at it when—earlier.” I didn’t need to tell them about Mika’s visit; they probably knew anyway.

  Another conference in Russian. Vlad motioned to the small man with the greasy hair. They conferred, after which the small man trotted toward the gate.

  They were going for it! The greaser had almost made it to the street when Vlad called out. The man stopped abruptly. I held my breath. Vlad must have realized there had to be copies. I steeled myself. Vlad said something in Russian.

  “Da.” The burly man rummaged in his coat and threw the other man a cell phone. The smaller man pocketed it and headed out to the street.

  I let out my breath slowly. It was okay. For the moment. I tried to calculate how long it would take to retrieve the tape. At this hour with no traffic, about thirty minutes each way. I had an hour to figure out how to save my life. And Mika’s.

  While we waited, Gordon stationed himself away from Vlad and started to pace. As he reversed direction and started back, a worried expression swept across his face. It deepened as he completed another pass. I got the feeling he wasn’t quite sure how he’d ended up at a construction site in the middle of the night alongside criminals and murderers.

  As his discomfort grew with each additional pass, a glimmer of an idea came to me. The only evidence connecting Gordon to the murder of the woman at the dentists’ was the shot of the construction worker on the ground-breaking video. And that was thin at best. The police might use it as a pretext to investigate further, but the tape itself wasn’t incriminating. All it did was illustrate a sleazy, but not necessarily criminal association between Gordon and the killer. Gordon was a shrewd man. He had to know that. According to Dad’s friend, Frank, he’d figured out how to elude criminal prosecution in the past. With good legal advice, there was no reason to think he couldn’t do it again.

  But that wouldn’t free him from Vlad. Gordon needed capital; Vlad needed legitimacy. Their lives had become inextricably linked over the years. They had become a two-headed hydra, and, like the mythological monster, the destruction of one would guarantee the demise of the other. Watching Gordon now, though, I wondered whether he was prepared to go down with Vlad. He might even be hanging onto a vague hope that he would be spared, released from the web Vlad had spun.

  I tried to ignore the pain and numbness spreading through my body and took a quiet breath. “You look as surprised as I am, Max.”

  Gordon stopped pacing and rocked back on his heels. My stomach knotted. Had I said the wrong thing? The burly killer squinted at me, as if he was trying to figure out what I was doing and whether he should do something about it.

  Then Gordon took his hands out of his pockets. “It wasn’t supposed to come to this.”

  “I know that, Max.” Use his name. Make it personal.

  “I’m first generation, you know.”

  “Tell me.” I kept my voice low.

  “My parents had nothing. My father dropped dead of a heart attack in the boiler room of a hospital. My mother was a seamstress. She never had a day off. I wanted to prove that coming here wasn’t a mistake.”

  “You did.” Praise him. Keep him talking.

  “When I started at Chase, it was a dream come true. And then, when I started working with Gorbachev’s right-hand man…the major general…I knew I’d made it.” He rocked back on his heels again. “I just don’t know how it came to this.” He cut himself off, with a sound that could have been a sob…or a cough.

  “Oh, I bet you do,” I said softly.

  The man with the limp edged closer.

  “You know when it started to go bad.” I tried to keep my voice sympathetic.

  He sighed. “After the collapse. It was the chaos. Everyone pushing, struggling. Scuffling. Whatever it took to make a few rubles. I looked the other way at first. And then.…” He shook his head. “When I started to pay attention, it was too late.”

  “It’s never too late, Max.” I groped for the right words. “You—you still have so much to offer. Don’t let Vlad put that in jeopardy.”

  The burly man scowled. He was trying to decide whether to tell Vlad I was talking. I didn’t have much time.

  “You never intended to get involved in the seamy side of this—this business, did you? Vlad forced you into it. And once you realized how deep in you
were, you got scared. Isn’t that right?”

  Gordon hunched into his coat again and snuck a glance at Vlad.

  “You can end this, Max. No matter how dark it seems right now. All you have to do—”

  The man with the limp shouted to Vlad. I froze in mid-sentence. Vlad smiled faintly, whispered something to Mika. Her reply was to spit in his face. His smile disappeared. He rose to his knees, still keeping the gun trained on her.

  Suddenly, the tones of a cell phone, ironically sweet and benign, chimed. Gordon pulled it out of his pocket and flipped it on. After a moment, he snapped it closed. “He’s got it. He’s coming back downtown.”

  That was the cue. The Russian lunged toward me, bent down, and picked me up. I struggled against him, but with my hands and feet tied, it was useless. As he started to drag me off, I tried to twist back toward Gordon, but Mika’s voice rang out, loud and clear. “Go. Now. He will kill you.”

  Vlad leaned back over Mika and tenderly cradled her neck. At first I thought he was ministering to her, pillowing her head with his arm. Then he looked into her face, pointed the gun at her temple, and pulled the trigger. Her body slumped.

  Vlad scrambled up and shouted to the goon who had seized me. The man deposited me on the ground and hurried over to join Vlad. Together they dragged Mika’s body across the site to a spot where a dozen large holes, about five feet in diameter, had been drilled in the ground. Some of the holes were filled with concrete pillars. Concrete chutes lay nearby. A sick feeling spread through me. They were going to bury her in one of the holes! I don’t know anything about construction, but from the size of the chutes, the holes had to be thirty or forty feet deep. No one would find her. The two men spoke. Then Vlad looked over at me and nodded.

  After she’d been disposed of, they would come for me.

  I watched, horrified, as the two men rolled Mika’s body over to one of the holes. I heard the sound of scraping, then a thud. Then a gaping silence. Vlad spoke again, and the man with the limp came over to me. He scooped me up and headed back to the holes. I made one last effort to extricate myself from his hold by stiffening into a plank.

  It didn’t work.

  My heart hammered in my chest. I was desperate. I decided to appeal to Gordon one more time. But when I craned my neck to see him, he wasn’t there. I squirmed and wriggled and finally caught a glimpse of him retreating into the shadows of the equipment.

  He was running away!

  Vlad must have seen Gordon, too, because he yelled something sharp to my captor. The man with the limp stopped, and practically dropped me on the ground. A faint fishy smell drifted over me. We must have been just above the river. Vlad pulled out his gun, and the two Russians closed in on the equipment from two sides.

  My chest went tight. They were going after Max. Then they would come for me. I stared at the dark mass of equipment, a deep well of hopelessness engulfing me. It was over. I should accept it. Suddenly, a roar split the night. Followed by the scrape of grating gears. A huge piece of equipment started moving out of the shadows.

  Something that looked like a bulldozer or an army tank advanced slowly on thick tires. A long arm protruded in front, and attached to it was an object that resembled the jaw of a huge, mechanical monster. As the machine rolled forward, the jaws opened, revealing enormous serrated teeth. They looked like they could pulverize or crush any prey they snared. Max Gordon was at the controls, grinning maniacally, and steering it in my direction.

  I rolled from side to side, trying to wriggle out of its path. But for every inch I moved, Gordon adjusted his direction, and the jaws crept closer. I kept slithering until I felt cold metal at my back. I was up against the barbed wire fence. There was nowhere else to go.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The crusher was inches away when sirens blasted through the air. A phalanx of Chicago police cars screeched to a stop on Wabash. Panic shot across Gordon’s face. The crusher stopped, and he tore out of the seat. The motor was still running. He bolted across the construction site, coattails flapping behind him. He was almost out of sight when a female voice shouted through a megaphone.

  “It’s over, Gordon. Give it up!”

  Davis!

  “We’ve got you surrounded,” a male voice added. “It isn’t worth it.”

  Gordon slowed and turned around. Light slashed across his face, making deep runnels and shadows. His eyes seemed to bug out in astonishment, as if he couldn’t quite believe he, a respected businessman, the creator of Gordon Towers, was facing off with a team of Chicago cops. Raising his arms, he slowly advanced toward me and came to a stop a few feet away. He opened his mouth to say something. A shot rang out.

  He stumbled forward, his lips twitching. For a moment, he remained upright. Then he keeled over on top of me. I struggled to breathe. I thought I felt his chest expand and contract, but I wasn’t sure. When I heard him wheeze, though, I shouted.

  “He’s alive! Help him!”

  Everything happened at once. More shots. Shouts. The roar of the crusher. The splash of something breaking the surface of the river. Between the noise, the struggle to breathe, and the pounding in my head, I started to drift off. My last conscious thought before the police lifted Gordon’s body off me was a sense of surprise that I wasn’t cold anymore. His body heat had warmed me.

  ***

  The paramedics put a temporary bandage on the back of my head but said I had to go to the ER. I told them I would after I talked to Davis. Meanwhile, the cops called for more officers, and evidence technicians showed up to process the scene. Davis hovered in the background while a Chicago detective questioned me. After I’d gone through the chronology of events at least three times, he told me I could go.

  Davis came over to the ambulance where I was on a gurney. “How are you?”

  I felt weak and exhausted, and I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to go through another Chicago winter. “I’ll live.”

  She stuck her hands into her pockets. “You had me worried.”

  “That makes two of us.” I touched the back of my head. Pain stung my skull. I dropped my hand. “How did you do it, Davis?”

  “I got your message a few hours ago. I was gonna wait until Monday to follow up, but there was something in your voice—I don’t know. I decided I ought to call you back.”

  I nodded.

  “When you didn’t pick up, I went to your house. I figured the worst it could be was a false alarm. When you didn’t answer the door, I called for backup. When we went in and saw the videotape, I put it together.” She mimicked pressing a button with her finger. “It was still paused on the shot of the guy in the ski mask.” She said. “Then the other asshole showed up.”

  “With the greasy hair.”

  Davis nodded.

  “They made him come back for the tape.”

  “We took him down outside your house. Got him to tell us what was going on. Then we called the Eighteenth District and headed down here. We didn’t let him call until we were a few minutes away.” She shrugged. “You know the rest.”

  “I’m glad it’s over.” I paused. “It’s too bad about Gordon.”

  “Too bad?”

  “He didn’t have a gun. They didn’t have to shoot him.”

  “They?”

  I yanked a thumb at the patrol cars parked at the curb.

  “It wasn’t us, Ellie.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “The cops didn’t shoot him.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “One of the Russians did.”

  “Vlad!”

  “In the back. But he’ll live. The medic thinks the bullet didn’t hit any vital organs.”

  “Where—what about Vlad?”

  Davis looked down.

  I repeated myself.

  She waited a fraction too long. “He got away, Ellie.”

  “No!”

  “We weren’t fast enough. He went into the river.”

  I remembered thinking I’d heard a splash ju
st before I went out. “The water’s got to be close to freezing. Did he make it?”

  “Don’t know yet. CPD’s sending divers. We got the other two, though.”

  “He got away, didn’t he?”

  “We don’t know that. But even if he did, we got our quota of bad guys tonight.” I started to shake my head, but a rush of pain made me stop. I let my eyes close. A moment later, I snapped them open. “Now I get it!”

  “Get what?”

  “I didn’t realize it until just now!”

  “Realize what?” Davis prodded me.

  “Mika. What she said. Just before Vlad shot her.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Before Vlad killed her, she cried out ‘Go. Now. He will kill you.’ I thought she was trying to warn me, but it couldn’t have been me. She knew I was bound and gagged.” I looked at Davis. “It wasn’t me she was trying to warn, Davis. It was Gordon.”

  Davis frowned.

  “She knew he was next. That Vlad would kill him. And she was afraid for him.” I paused. “She was about to die, but she was trying to help someone she didn’t even know.”

  Davis didn’t answer for a moment. Then she put a hand on my shoulder. “If you hadn’t tried to help her, you wouldn’t have ended up there yourself.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Right.” Davis smiled. “Maybe.”

  One of the paramedics came over and told me it was time to go to the ER. I looked past the site, down the length of river. Over the lake the eastern sky was lightening. The wind had subsided to a gentle breeze. Dawn would be breaking soon.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  A weightless band of flurries dusted the ground as Davis pulled up to the curb the following afternoon. I opened the door, feeling the urge to catch snowflakes on my tongue.

  “You okay?” Her face was pinched with worry.

  I patted the bandage on the back of my head. “They shaved the back of my head and took a few stitches. Nothing that won’t heal.”