by Ryan Schow
“It’s a lot nicer than this,” Atlas said. The man gave neither an immediate response nor an immediate reply.
“The city center is beautiful,” the driver finally said.
“So I’m told.”
“It is not like all of this you see. We are becoming more European, less Russian, but it takes time, for the roots of our past run deep.”
“I understand.”
“You are American?” Atlas nodded. “Then you cannot understand. This life here is hell. There are good things about Odessa, but there are more things that are not good. You are a tourist. You see the pretty things, but you miss the struggle. We are locals with a history steeped in war, corruption, and communism. I will take you where you want to go, but please don’t ask any more questions.”
“Should I call another taxi?” Atlas asked.
The driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror, those two judgmental eyes holding a certain hostility for Atlas. At that moment, he knew there were more stories in that man than even Atlas could imagine.
Instead of bending to the native, Atlas stood his ground, saying nothing until the cabbie said, “I will be your taxi, sir.”
“Good. How long until we arrive?”
“Ten minutes.”
They ended up driving to an unsightly neighborhood with a dirt road canopied in telephone wires and untamed shade trees. The ramshackle houses were old, disheveled, some made of brick, others made of wood so old any inspector in America would deem the property “unfit for occupation.”
A light sprinkle spattered the windshield, spotting the glass’s thin layer of dirt. He waited for the driver to turn on his wipers, but they never came on. Leaning forward, taking a quick look, he saw the cab had wiper arms but no blades.
“Almost there,” the driver said, rolling down the window. He pulled to the side of the street, which was just a sidewalk with a lot of junky cars parked haphazardly.
“Here?” Atlas asked.
“No,” the driver said as he leaned out the front of the taxi and wiped a circle in the dirty windshield for him to see. “Every so often this happens.”
“Rain but no wiper blades?”
“What did I say about questions?” the driver snapped, before catching himself.
“I don’t care what you said about questions,” Atlas barked. “You need cab fares, and I need a cab, so be quiet and drive, and if I ask you a question, just fucking answer it.”
The driver said, “Yes, sir,” then under his breath, he added, “Pompous prick.”
“Yes,” Atlas agreed. “Pompous prick. But I’m the same prick who’s going to pay your bills today.”
“I mean no disrespect.”
“Shut up.”
They drove another two blocks. It seemed to take forever, but that was because the feel of the neighborhood turned his stomach. If he hung around long enough, would the soul of poverty penetrate him so deeply, not even a Brillo pad and a power washer could cleanse him of it? He ached to shower just being there.
They left the packed dirt road to drive over cracked and broken asphalt. The neighborhood seemed to close in even more. He needed to roll the window down. When he did, all he got was a stifling wet heat. He left it down, his eyes moving from house to house, taking in the differences in size and shape, and studying all the makeshift walls. Each house was its own compound, and each compound had either concrete walls, brick walls or wooden walls. Even the shade trees in this part of the city looked barren, like they’d suffered too much neglect to properly produce their leaves.
The cab stopped next to a shoulder-high brick wall. Big chunks of plaster had fallen out of the structure and were lying in the dirt. The house beyond it—from what he could see—was in a serious state of disrepair.
“We’re here,” the driver said.
“Back up and pull right up next to the wall.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
The driver did as he was asked.
“Wait here,” Atlas said.
He deftly hopped up on the small car’s hood, inciting a loud, animated response from the driver. Walking across the already dented hood, ignoring the vigorous protestations from within, he jumped over the brick wall and landed in a large, filthy patch of dirt, weeds, and maybe (once upon a time) grass.
A man sitting in an old lawn chair, smoking a cigarette, and listening to headphones. The instant he saw Atlas, he sat up fast, his eyes shooting wide open.
He reached around the back of his pants, but Atlas had the handgun out fast, his finger on the trigger. Atlas saw the man seeing this, but then he held up a hand and said, “Mykola Danko?”
Him knowing Mykola’s name startled the man further.
“What do you want?”
Atlas said, “I’m here to talk to you about Oleg Igorevich—”
“I have the money!” he said, panicked, moving his hands away from his pants. He got up quickly, standing there like a berated child, unsure of what to do, how to act, where to go.
“I don’t believe you,” Atlas said, walking closer and going along with whatever it was this man was saying.
“I do, I do, I was just going to—”
Atlas slapped him so hard he staggered sideways. He then kicked the back of Mykola’s thigh so hard, he dropped down in the dirt and dead grass with a yelp.
Atlas pulled a small revolver out of the back of Mykola’s pants, checked the cylinder, saw two rounds. He shook them out, threw them into the yard. Pathetic.
“Do you think I came all the way here to listen to you whine about how you have it? Get up and take me to it, now!”
Mykola was slow to his feet, so Atlas incentivized him with a swift kick to the backside. When he got up, he cowered from Atlas, half-covering his face.
“You’re wasting my time, Mykola.”
“Okay, okay, come with me, but be quiet. My wife is down for her nap. She gets headaches.”
“Looks like she married a headache, too,” Atlas grumbled.
They traipsed into a falling-apart house filled with rotting wood, dreadful wallpaper, and the kind of low ceilings that made an already unsightly abode feel like the inside of a coffin. He followed Mykola down a small, dark hallway to a closed bedroom door.
Mykola gripped the handle, then turned and said, “I don’t want Oleg to think I was cheating him.” When he said this, he did so with a shaky voice.
“I’ll be sure to tell him, but only if you cooperate. Because honestly, he said to come here and kill you. Lucky for you, I’m a pacifist.”
“A what?” Mykola asked.
“Just get me the money. All of it.”
Mykola nodded, then slowly opened the door. A waft of warm, stuffy air hit him. It was so thick he could hardly breathe. Deeper inside the room, he heard the light snoring sounds of a woman with a weight problem. Mykola’s wife. Beyond the bed, next to a small chest of drawers, was a desk. Instead of a sliding wooden drawer, Atlas saw a combination lock on a metal door. Mykola knelt and began twisting the safe’s dial.
Atlas stood over him, saw him tense up, then relax, and then finally open the metal door. Atlas raised his weapon to the back of Mykola’s head. His finger was on the trigger guard, but he was ready to slide to the trigger should the threat arise.
“You don’t have a gun in there, do you Mykola?”
“You have my gun.”
Atlas slid his finger over the trigger. “I didn’t ask you that. I asked if you had a gun inside.”
“No,” he said, looking up.
Atlas’s finger stayed on the guard. He didn’t want to kill this man, but the smell of old socks and ass was making him sick. It wasn’t coming from Mykola, who stank of unfiltered cigarettes; the stench was emanating from his wife. The lovely Mrs. Danko.
Mykola withdrew a fat stack of bills, peeled a few off for himself, then said, “It’s all there.”
Atlas took the money, thumbed through it, then folded it and stuffed it in his pocket where it sat li
ke a fist against his leg. He stepped back, bent over, and glanced into the safe. There was nothing left inside but the few bills Mykola had kept for himself. On the bed, his wife was stirring.
“Honey, what are you doing?” the old woman asked, her voice heavy, garbled.
Atlas turned, couldn’t help seeing the leg hanging half out of the sheets. It was pale white and mapped with a network of blue-tinted veins and scribbled-red arteries. It reminded him of his grandma’s legs when he was a kid. Scrunched down around her ankle and loose at the toes was a single bisque-colored sock. She rolled over and he saw holes in the heel of it. Along the back of her thigh was a long patch of black unshaven stubble. He felt himself getting ill, but then he swallowed hard and turned to Mykola.
“It’s okay, just taking care of business,” Mykola said.
“Well, do it quietly,” she said, her mouth practically smashed into the pillow. “I’m still sleeping.”
Atlas grabbed the man by the shorthairs, gave a firm twist, then walked him out front, where he threw him into the chair where Atlas first found him. The instant Mykola landed, the two legs on the chair’s weak side broke and he fell sideways, his body tangled in the mess.
Atlas shook his head, disgusted with this man, with himself. “Get up,” he said. “And hurry up already, my cab is waiting.”
The man stood and pulled himself together as best as possible. If he’d had any kind of self-respect before all this—and it looked like he hadn’t—that was all gone. Atlas pulled out Kaylee’s picture, showed it to Mykola. “Where is she?”
“How do I know?” he said rudely. Atlas slapped him in the head again.
He held his head where he’d been hit. “I don’t mess with girls, man. I’m a drug dealer, alright? You know this!”
“You deal in girls, too.”
“No man, just heroin, and only Oleg’s product!”
“Oleg runs girls.”
“Yeah, but we run heroin, too,” he explained. “Long before girls.”
“I want to know what you know about his girls, specifically this one,” he said, tapping Kaylee’s photo hard. The man started to cry, his tears the one clean thing about him.
“What girls, man? I don’t know about the girls. Just the H.”
“I want to know about this one in particular.”
The Ukrainian finally leaned in, looked hard at the picture, then asked, “Why are you showing this to me? I’m good now. You have the money. Oleg has the money!”
“He told me he sold you this one,” Atlas said, his temper unwinding again. “Are you telling me Oleg is lying? Should I call and ask him why you think he’s a liar?”
“I don’t deal in girls, man. I didn’t even know he did. And he certainly didn’t sell me her, or give her to me, or whatever.”
Atlas drew a deep breath, held the man’s gaze unwaveringly, then let out his breath in a pissed-off rush of air.
“You think you know people, but then they’re just rats, like everyone else,” Atlas said, polishing the suppressor with his shirt. “You were reliable once, Mykola, but then you turned into a rat, nibbling off Oleg’s cheese, and now this…”
Atlas trained the gun on Mykola, who put up his hands in surrender and hurriedly said, “Talk to Vanko! If anyone has his girls, it’s him. Or maybe Dasha. It could be him, too.”
“Who is Vanko?”
“Vanko runs girls. I just do the H, man. I wouldn’t even know where to begin, plus I’m loyal to my wife. Meaning I’m not about girls.”
“Well, then, you’re the only loyal one I know,” Atlas said. “You were saying? About Vanko?”
“He’s just another hustler trying to break into the Neuromelanin market like everyone else. Do you know how much money you can make selling that crap to the American and European elite?”
Atlas smashed the end of the suppressor against Mykola’s forehead, causing the man to wet himself. “What’s his name, Mr. Deadman?”
“I told you his name was Vanko!” Mykola said, rubbing his forehead where it hurt. “If you hang around in the city center at night, spend some time in the clubs, you’ll learn who’s who.”
“I’m on a tight timeline,” he said.
“If you’re going to make inquiries, I suggest you be more subtle. This kind of American bravado will get you killed.”
“More subtle?”
“They don’t trust Americans.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because you’re arrogant. You think the world owes you a favor. It doesn’t owe you a thing. Not me, not Vanko, or Dasha—not any of the girls you’re looking for.”
Mykola was speaking without a filter, maybe because he was proud, or stupid, but his eyes showed Atlas nothing but fear. It was a strange contradiction.
“Would Vanko sell a girl like this?” he asked, showing him Kaylee’s photo again.
“You mean the way she looks?” Mykola asked. Atlas nodded. “Vanko isn’t the only one who likes pretty girls, and he stays in his cave. If you want to find him, find one of his girls.”
“How do I do that?”
“Same as we all do,” he said, almost like the answer was too easy. “You use Tinder.”
“You have Tinder here?”
Mykola started to laugh, but Atlas whacked him on the forehead with the suppressor tube and said, “Answer the question.”
“Of course we have Tinder. It’s great for people like you. The snooty Americans and Europeans, all you Don Juans who think you can so easily take our girls.”
“I’m not like that.”
“You all think you’re hot shit until you’ve bought the pretty girls a taxi ride to town, or a few hundred-dollar bottles of wine. When you realize you aren’t getting any of that sweet Ukrainian pussy, you make a call, find a guy like Vanko, get yourself a pretty girl who wants to party, or a young girl who will do what you want. But you can’t go directly through Vanko. Or Dasha. You must go through the process.”
“I get it.”
“Go to Tinder, look for a date.”
“That’s not good enough,” Atlas said.
“I don’t have any more suggestions for you.”
Atlas made a quick fist and fired a brutal, unexpected shot into Mykola’s gut. The man doubled over from the punch, a string of saliva leaking from his mouth. He started to cry again. Atlas was so disgusted with this response, he kneed him in the forehead and watched him fall over. For a long minute, he simply lay there. Then he started to stir, a low moan coming from his mouth. Atlas kicked dirt in the man’s face, not an ounce of remorse in his heart.
“You deal H to kids and junkies,” Atlas said. “I’d love to be kind, and patient, and I’d love nothing more than to trust you, but you are a scumbag. Your product kills people, it ruins lives, it cripples entire generations of kids.”
“Save me your moral indignation,” he blubbered, spitting out a mouthful of dirt.
“I want a meeting with Vanko.”
Laughing with tear-stained cheeks and beet-red eyes, he looked up and said, “He will not meet with you. Are you a complete blockhead?”
“Let’s assume I am,” Atlas growled. “Let’s assume I’m just dumb enough to beat you to death looking for a way. I can spare you the beating and you can tell me how to reach him, or I can make the rest of your life very, very painful. This is the one time I give you a choice, Mykola. Make it a good one.”
Holding up a hand, getting to his knees, and trying to catch his breath, he said, “Go into Odessa, into the city center. It’s down by the beaches. Lots of restaurants, cafés, and clubs. And lots of pretty girls.”
“You’re sending me to a tourist hot spot?” Atlas asked, his patience wearing thin.
“No, no…it’s not like that. You want to go to Arcadia, specifically Ibiza Beach Club. It’s better at night than the day, although some of his girls will be there during the day, warming up the men for the night. If you can find Ruslana, she is Vanko’s top earner, and a friend of mine.”
&
nbsp; “You mean she’s someone you paid to be a friend?” he asked, suggesting he was more of a client than he was an actual friend.
“I’m loyal to my wife,” he said again, drying his eyes. “But if I were to ever cheat on her, it would be with Ruslana. When you see her, you will know why. She’s very beautiful. Too beautiful.”
“Why do I want to talk to her again?” Atlas asked.
“Put that gun to her head, ask her to take you to Vanko. That will work. But he won’t be happy.”
“I don’t trust you, and I certainly don’t trust the women in this city, especially the pretty ones, as you say.”
“Those are good instincts,” Mykola said, clumsily getting to his feet. “You’ll need them to survive Vanko.”
Atlas thought about shooting the man but decided he might need him later, for something else, or maybe just to lean on if it turned out he was lying about Vanko.
As Atlas started to walk away, Mykola said, “Make sure you tell Oleg I paid in full. And be careful of Ruslana. She won’t be easy. Girls like that never are.”
He stopped, turned around. “Why, because she knows the scams?”
“Because she is the scam. Most of them are.”
Something was bugging him, a small nagging happening in his brain. “What’s this Neuromelanin you mentioned?”
The Ukrainian’s face went pale. “I never mentioned that.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“The hell you don’t!”
Mykola hung his head and said, “You are going to get me killed.”
Walking back to him with his gun at his side and his finger on the trigger guard, he said, “You’re about to get yourself killed if you don’t tell me what you’re talking about.”
“Neuromelanin, or Neuro, is one name for a new drug that is also an old drug. Do you understand? It’s sold as Vampire’s Kiss, or VK, because Neuro is not a sexy name.”
Atlas raised his eyebrows.
“It is a blood-based drug,” Mykola said. “Something you drink. Like an elixir.”
“You said it’s…blood-based?”
“It’s kids’ blood. Oxidized adrenaline taken from the pineal glands of children, mostly young boys, but girls are okay, too. They’re just not as potent.”