by Ryan Schow
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.”
“What is Folders?”
“Coffee.”
“What?”
“I said it’s coffee.”
“Folders?”
Shaking his head, Atlas said, “Never mind.”
The two of them walked across a surprisingly clean courtyard, then waited in the shadows for nearly thirty minutes for someone to leave the building. A man with his arm around his woman pushed through the front door, obviously flirting with her. Atlas and Kofi slid inside the building unnoticed.
They walked up several narrow flights of stairs, located the door to the third floor, then opened it to a cramped hallway lit with bare low-wattage lightbulbs. He drew a breath of stagnant air, battled a brief surge of claustrophobia. Kofi gave him a look; he gave the man a thumbs-up. Before him, the ceilings were low and old, the sloped shoulders of the walls packed with snaking cables, all wrapped up tight with old clamps screwed into the walls.
For a moment, he thought drug-trafficking tunnels seemed nicer. How in the world do people live here? he wondered. They moved from door to door, Kofi checking the numbers on the doors, both of them looking for the address Codrin had provided. Atlas felt the moisture on his face and wasn’t sure if he was sweating or if the apartment building’s humidity was finally clinging to his skin.
Kofi stopped, held up a hand. “This is it.”
“You sure?” Kofi turned to him with a frown. Atlas held up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, just asking,” he whispered. “You’re armed, right?”
Kofi nodded, pulled back his coat and showed Atlas the pistol.
“Are you ready?” Kofi asked.
Of course he was ready.
In English, he said, “Good to go, brother. Now stop the talkin’ and get to knockin’.”
Kofi shot him a strange look, and then he frowned when he finally got it. Standing before the peephole in the door, Kofi popped his fingers and tried to look normal. He finally knocked. A moment later, he heard movement on the other side of the door. Whoever this was, Atlas imagined they were scrutinizing both him and Kofi. The inhabitant threw the locks, then opened the door. Atlas maintained a neutral expression. He and Kofi were now face-to-pockmarked-face with an ugly Russian man.
“What?” he asked.
Kofi looked left, then right, and then he said, “I know you do delivery, but we were told you do dine-in as well.”
“Who sent you?” he asked, studying Atlas. “And who is this guy?”
“He’s American,” Kofi said.
“Why doesn’t he eat at his own restaurant?” the man asked. A second man showed his repugnant face. He had a dark air about him, like something was off. Perhaps he felt the same about them. Either way, the hair on the back of Atlas’s neck was now standing on end.
“They have laws they actually enforce in America, and not always the same opportunities we have here in Russia. I’m told you serve young calf, yes?”
“Who told you that?” the other man asked, less congenial than his equivalent.
“Jasha Stasevich,” Atlas said. “You do serve fresh boxed lunch, right?”
The two men looked at him for a long time. Atlas didn’t blink. The two of them were the epitome of scumbaggery. There was a part of him that wanted to bum-rush those two lowbrow twats and beat them to death. He held his ground, however, made his mouth a flat slash.
“He doesn’t look like he wants sex,” Scumbag Number Two said to Kofi. “He looks like he wants to fight.”
“He is very uptight. You know the Americans, always working hard to pay for all their useless crap. This is why he needs something to eat. To relax him.”
The two cretins laughed under their breath, even though they weren’t actually laughing.
“It’s true,” Atlas said, visibly relaxing.
Two doors down, across the hallway, a door opened and an old woman poked her head out. Scumbag Number One shook his head, frowned deeply. The woman frowned even harder, then said something nasty under her breath and shut the door.
“The nosy old hag likes to ask uncomfortable questions of us all,” he said. “Don’t worry about her. She’s way past her expiration date.”
“I have one of those in my apartment as well,” Kofi said.
“We all have one of those,” Atlas added.
Scumbag Number One looked at Scumbag Number Two, who gave his counterpart a subtle nod. At that, the front door opened wide and both scumbags invited them in.
“Tight quarters,” Atlas said when they were inside.
“We have conjoining apartments,” Scumbag Number One said. “Three of them.” The two deviants showed them a crudely installed door, connecting the main apartment to the one next to it. “We have one more, as well. Lots of pretty young girls.”
A toilet flushed behind a closed door, then that same door opened and another disgusting creep walked out of the bathroom. A wet, meaty stench was pulled into his wake, washing over Atlas and Kofi. Both men curled their noses. Atlas swore under his breath.
“I was not aware we had company,” Mr. Stinky Man said to the other two.
Atlas was seeing too many physical similarities between the three of them, enough that he wondered if they were related. Were they brothers, cousins? Did they have the same mom, all different daddies? Or perhaps they were just three knuckleheads drinking from the same contaminated well.
Either way, standing in such close proximity to them was discomforting. Compared to American apartments, they might as well be socializing in a shoebox. His claustrophobia was making a swift return. Was it crazy that he was fantasizing about solitary confinement just then?
“Are you here to feed him,” Scumbag Number One said, still speaking to Kofi in code, “or are you eating as well?”
Kofi snorted. “I don’t want to watch others eat while I starve.”
This one statement seemed to make the three men comfortable. Mr. Stinky Man finally said, “Okay, gentlemen, come with me. Let’s see if we can find you both something to eat.”
When he opened the first connecting door, it was to an apartment with the kitchens ripped out and nothing but beds on the floors with hanging sheets for walls. There were young girls everywhere. Dead eyes and expressionless faces on every one of them. The oldest looked to be sixteen or seventeen, the youngest maybe seven or eight.
Atlas felt his stomach squeeze hard. So much so that it took everything in him not to ball his hands into fists and growl. He tore his eyes off them, glancing over at the second apartment’s front door. It was bolted shut from the inside. No exit or entry.
“If you see anything you like,” Mr. Stinky Man said, suddenly a perfect host, “just point and she’s yours.”
Aside from the low ceilings, the cramped quarters, the archaic appliances, and the small closed windows, the walls were covered in ancient strips of wallpaper. Of all the things that bothered him about the apartment, separate and aside from the girls’ imprisonment, he hated the ghastly wallpaper most. Corners and seams were peeling up everywhere, the flowery patterns and striped patterns taking him back to those old movies from the fifties, where décor like that was not only commonplace but acceptable. To him, seventy years later (give or take) and in a different country, everything about this apartment felt dismal, depressing, utterly woeful.
“Which one of you is André?” Atlas asked.
Mr. Stinky Man turned and said, “You know my name?”
“They were referred to us by Jasha, the professor,” Scumbag Number One turned and said.
Mr. Stinky Man nodded, almost as if dropping Jasha’s name solidified their presence. “The professor likes his cows young,” he said. “He also pays as expected. You came with money, correct?”
“I did,” Atlas said.
He then turned to Mr. Stinky Man, pulled out Kaylee’s picture and showed it to the Russian pimp.
“What is this?” he asked, offended.
“Jasha told me I need
ed this one. Something about her being a billionaire’s daughter.”
“I don’t know you,” he said, pressing down his thinning comb-over with the fat palm of his hand. “Which means I don’t know her.”
“But Jasha knows you,” Atlas pressed, riding the edge of his anger. “He tells me you find unique girls like this. But I like this one in particular.”
“She’s too old for you,” André said.
“Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” Atlas said, swallowing his revulsion, “what’s the difference?”
“Get the hell out of here,” André finally said.
Atlas blasted him in the nose, then drove him into the living room with several brutal body shots. The girls were scrambling to get out of the way, afraid of being run over. He slammed the pervert into the back wall, right next to the connecting door. Groaning, Mr. Stinky Man was whipped. But good was not good enough. Atlas thrust a palm strike to his chin, causing tur Russian’s legs to buckle. Dazed, he heathen slid down the wall, crumpled onto the floor.
Scumbags Number One and Two immediately attacked Kofi. Kofi tripped over a girl, landed on a cheap makeup station. Atlas turned, saw what was happening, then ripped his gun free and put five rounds into the two of them.
Sitting on the ground, bleeding badly, André began spewing out some of the most atrocious language Atlas had ever heard. He felt a Cheshire cat grin curl his lips. Leaning down before the man, he said, “Alright, André, I have just two questions.”
He jammed the suppressor end of the weapon into the space between the man’s balls, watched him squirm.
“One, who sold her to you? And two, where is she? If you fail to answer either of these questions, I’ll cut out your eyes, and then I’ll cut out your tongue and you’ll never say another word to anyone in your life. Or maybe I’ll just shoot you in the nuts and see how you feel about that.”
“I’m a nobody,” André finally whimpered, now sounding stuffed up. His lips were cut and swelling, and his broken nose was proving to be a bloody mess.
Atlas shot André in the foot, causing him to scream. Before he could really get howling, Atlas jammed the suppressor into André’s mouth, chipping a front tooth and causing him to gag and sputter.
“I warned you,” Atlas growled.
He was now leaning on the weapon, really making the man writhe. He tried not to cough, not to choke. With bulging, watery eyes, with arms flailing and hands grabbing, André tried to push the gun out of his mouth. In response, Atlas planted his knee on André’s shot foot, then shifted his weight onto it. The man really began to howl.
“This just gets worse for you if you don’t cooperate, André.”
“We need him alive,” Kofi said as a warning.
Snapping out of it, Atlas removed the weapon, then wiped it on the man’s shirt, cleaning the blood and saliva off the suppressor.
“He pissed himself,” Kofi said, like it was a problem.
“My nose still works,” Atlas growled, glancing over his shoulder at Kofi. Instead, he saw the girls watching all of this without expression. Turning back to André, he saw the man was about to go into shock.
“Give me a name,” Atlas said, slapping him hard. “Give me an address.”
“Oleg,” he managed to say. “Oleg Igorevich.”
“Address.”
André gave them the address, reciting it by heart.
“Where is she now?” Atlas said, finally getting somewhere.
“She was on consignment,” André said. “I returned her to Oleg.”
Pale, sweating, he started to complain about his foot. The damn thing was bleeding, swelling, and looking uglier than it had in his house slippers when Atlas and Kofi had first gotten there.
“Get him an ice pack and clear the place,” Atlas said to Kofi. A few minutes later, Kofi returned with a fist-sized ball of ice wrapped in an old thin towel.
“Thanks,” he said, putting it on André’s foot. “Is there anyone else here? Kaylee, perhaps?”
“Fourteen girls total, all under the age of sixteen,” Kofi said. “No Kaylee.”
Turning to André, his eyes burning, his heart racing, Atlas took the towel cradling the fist-sized block of ice and started to turn the ends, spinning the ball before André’s eyes.
“No,” he whimpered, knowing what was coming.
“Yes,” Atlas said.
“We need him alive,” Kofi said again.
“Not anymore we don’t. No rules of engagement, Folgers.”
With that, Atlas took the first swing, the fist of ice smashing into André’s face. New cuts opened up on the Russian’s face, so he hit him again, and again, and again. With each ferocious strike, Atlas thought of the lives this monster had ruined. He thought of the young bodies he used to satisfy the perversions of society’s filthiest rodents, the families who no longer had children, the children who would never feel sane or safe again. He thought of these things and they made him madder than he’d ever been before. This had him swinging harder, more violently.
Much like before, when Atlas fell into fits of rage, there was no escape hatch. He didn’t stop when the side of André’s face began to pulp, and he didn’t stop when the blood started to spatter. As the skin gashed open wider on André’s bumpy forehead, above his eyebrows, on one cheek, and on his lips, Atlas thought about Alabama, how much he missed her, what could have happened to her. And then, when André’s teeth began to break, he finally stopped himself.
Turning to Kofi, he saw a horrified look on the man’s face. The girls’ expressions, however, hadn’t changed. Breathing heavy, spattered with gore, Atlas leaned back on his knees and tried to catch his breath. He dropped the chunk of ice. It hit the old hardwood floor with a thud.
“What’s wrong with you?” Kofi asked.
Atlas pulled out his weapon and shot André in the head. His body bucked, but the creep was already dead.
“He sold kids,” Atlas said, drawing a deep breath and getting to his feet. “You said there’s fourteen of them?”
“You’re as bad as they are,” Kofi said.
“Pull yourself together, Folgers,” Atlas said. “How many girls? Exactly.”
“Fourteen.”
“Go find the nosy woman down the hallway while I see about them,” he said, leaning on a nearby chair.
Kofi left the apartment. Atlas opened the second adjoining door, peeking into the third apartment. The kitchens and bathrooms, as well as the living rooms, were just a series of beds separated by sheets. He didn’t see any other girls. Turning, he saw all fourteen girls had gathered together. Were they afraid of him? They had to be, but if so, they didn’t act like it.
“Come here,” he said, waving them over. “It’s okay. I want you to see André.”
“Is he dead?” one of the older girls asked.
“I shot him, didn’t I?” he asked. “Come see for yourself.”
One by one, the girls crept forward until all of them were standing over André’s dead body. The oldest child looked at the other two men Atlas had shot.
“Both of them, too?”
He nodded.
Moments later, the heavyset older woman from down the hall followed Kofi inside the apartment. Her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes shot open at the sight of the dead men and the girls.
She started mumbling something in Russian and backing out of the room.
“Can you take care of them?” Atlas asked, stopping her. “We have to get them to safety, help them find their former homes. Will you help me?”
She stopped, her old, terrified eyes looking at the girls, taking in the sorry details of them. Then she looked back to Atlas and nodded. Solemn, she was scared, but if she had any matronly instincts, perhaps they’d taken over.
“Thank you,” he said. He turned to the girls. “You’re going to be safe now.”
Chapter Twenty
ATLAS HARGROVE
Saint Petersburg’s roads were less busy at night than during the day, but there was st
ill plenty of traffic, as one would expect in a city of over five million souls. Kofi plugged the address André had given him into his phone, then headed in that direction. He had just killed two people and slaughtered a third, and for some strange reason, he didn’t know how he felt.
“You’re insane,” Kofi said under his breath.
“I’ve been called worse.”
Heading away from the Soviet Bloc-looking apartments and into a ritzier part of town, Atlas felt his mood darken. He’d gone from thinking about the men he’d put down and started thinking of what the girls must have endured being there. That was when he realized he wasn’t upset by what he’d done, that he couldn’t be upset about it, because those were dogs of a different breed, rabid dogs that needed to be put down. Not that this helped his mood. All of his feelings and emotions were overshadowed by one very important fact: Oleg Igorevich ran a large sex slavery ring from inside the safety of his estate, and they were on their way to raid it.
He wasn’t nervous thinking about what he would do to Oleg, or even what he might run into in terms of his security team. What gave him pause was this time-for-time exchange he’d agreed to with Leopold. Whatever time Atlas invested into finding Kaylee was the same amount of time Leopold’s detective would invest into looking for Alabama. What if Kaylee was at Oleg’s estate? What if he rescued her tonight? Would the detective be absolved of further investigation? Should he pump the brakes for the night?
He almost told Kofi to turn around. If not for the offensive hovel Cira had booked them in, he might have done just that. Then he thought of Kaylee. Shaking his head, weighing his own interests against Kaylee’s interests, he realized he had no choice. If he could find Kaylee sooner rather than later, he would do that. That reminded him…
Taking out his burner phone, he dialed Cira’s number, waited for her to pick up.
“I was practically asleep,” she said.
“We might’ve found her.”
“Kaylee?” Cira asked, sounding excited, but also reserved.
“No, Mother Mary.”