"My dad taught me." Daisy is subdued. Her eyes go distant, sad.
I sit straighter, as I know little about Daisy's past. I only know her present. That she is alone, poor, and with few resources and no family—or so I thought.
"What happened that he would do that?"
At first she shrugs, a French enigmatic shrug that could mean many things. "I lived on a farm. In this direction actually." She waves her hand out the windshield down the long highway road we are taking.
"Fathers teach all their daughters to shoot on a farm?" I ask. I know only a few agrarian families and, now that I think about it, they probably all can shoot a rifle.
"Varmints," she says quietly. Sensing she has something more to say, I wait and soon my patience is rewarded. "My mother was killed by a stranger. Or, at least we think it was a stranger. He's out now. Served two years in juvie."
Out of all the stories I imagine Daisy sharing with me, none was this one. "Your mother was shot?"
My imagination gallops away from me. Was she involved in some criminal activity? Did she steal something?
"I know. It sounds unbelievable, right?" Her voice is choked up, and I want to pull over and comfort her. Instead, I can only reach out and squeeze one of her hands.
She returns my grip and holds my hand between both of hers. "My dad and I don't know why it was her. When he got out of juvie, the murderer sought my father out and said he was next. It changed my life. My dad is afraid to leave the house. He took me out of school, and we became hermits. One day he brought me downstairs to the basement. He'd set up a seven-yard shooting range down there with a barrier made of hundreds of phone books, which I guess were destined for the recycling station. For months, I went down every night and shot a gun into the wall of phone books."
"What gun?"
"Baby Glock."
"That's a good gun. A .38?"
She nods. "You know a lot about guns."
"I did a job once." I say vaguely. Still truthful. "I'm sorry about your mother and your father. And he only served two years?"
"He was a minor, and he pled it down to involuntary because he was high on meth," Daisy looks down, and I feel wet, hot tears splash onto our joined hands. "They were lenient, even though he took my mom away from us."
My heart aches for her. When I am done with this job for Sergei, when I bring retribution to Sergei's house, I will return and find this man and kill him for Daisy. We may never be together again, but I will do this. I vow it silently. For now, all I can do is comfort Daisy in her time of need. I pull over onto a side road. Unbuckling my seat belt, I reach over and pull Daisy onto my lap. She hugs me, but only for a moment before she pushes back.
"Thanks. I don't know why I got so emotional." She swipes away the tears with the back of her hands.
"There is no need for apologies. Your response is normal," I assure her, rubbing her back in steady, firm strokes.
She tilts her head and smiles at me. "Is there no emotional response that will make you uneasy?"
"None from you," I lean forward and kiss the base of her throat. Her pulse flutters in response. "I want all of your emotions." All of them. I treasure even her anger. Indifference is what I fear.
Daisy melts against my chest, and it is not sexual desire she arouses in me this time, but fierce protectiveness. I hug her and then say, "Do you want to drive now?"
She nods her head and takes the wheel.
We drive for a long time, and I tell her about my time watching the curator. Not that he had a predilection for young boys, but the art that he managed and how it spoke to me in ways that surprised me.
"I'd love to see art like that," Daisy says. "I've only seen pictures of it. My father regulated everything in my life, even my connection to the Internet."
I begin to understand why she is so innocent, and I fear for her.
"Do you still have a gun?"
"No, I left it at the farm."
"I will buy you one then." Tomorrow we will go and get one. Or I would get one. There were always guns on the street for purchase. The weapons I have are too big for her delicate hands.
"You can't keep buying stuff for me," Daisy says with exasperation.
"Why not?" Harold's girls vied for his gifts more than they wanted his attention. Even the whores were more interested in my pocketbook than the actual fucking we did. This I did not understand about Daisy. "I have money. It is of no consequence the purchase of a gun."
Daisy shakes her head. "If you have so much money, then why are you living in a dump across the street from me?"
I tell her a little truth. "I am, what you say, investigating someone."
"Oh my god, are you spying on someone? Like a guy who is cheating on his wife?" Recognition gleams in her eyes. "That's how you started watching me, right?"
"I am observing someone. He has taken money from someone I work for. That someone would like it back."
Silence fills the car, and I wonder what it is that Daisy is processing. Does she understand the ominous tone of my words? But no, she surprises me again. "He must be an awful man, to steal money from someone."
"Da."
She flushes, but then shrugs. "I guess watching me is pretty boring compared to that."
"Never."
"Never?" She laughs. "All I do is sleep and then go to work at the gas station."
"I do not like that place," I announce. "Bad things will happen there."
She rolls her eyes at me, as this is an argument we have had before. "I told you Craig, the owner, lives right down the street."
I shift in my seat but she is not looking at me. "There are bars on the windows. That tells you it is dangerous. Safe places do not have bars."
"I need the money," she says, her chin firmly set.
I heave a sigh and rub the side of my neck. Patience, I tell myself. "I cannot watch you all the time."
"I've never asked you to!" she exclaims in a frustrated voice.
I am equally frustrated. "One day I will not be there, and the man down the street will not be home, and someone will come and try to hurt you."
"What's my alternative, Nick? To not work? Sit at home and let a man take care of me?"
Yes, I would like that, but even a man as dumb as I knows better than to give voice to that sentiment. "Perhaps we can find you another job. At a library or a museum."
Daisy's face falls, and she looks dismayed. "My resume is a big blank, Nick. I don't have schooling, and I don't have work history. No one at a museum would hire me. I don't have the skills for anything like that."
"I didn't realize that there were skills you needed for that," I admit.
"There are." She is abrupt in her response. "It's not like I want to work at the gas station. It's that at the age of twenty-one, the only job I can get is working at a gas station."
She sounds frustrated and resigned, and I am helpless in this situation. I can give her money, but she will not accept it. I cannot give her a job. I have few marketable skills myself outside of a military organization.
I am restless after my drive with Daisy. There are loose ends that need to be taken care of. The accountant. Sergei. Daisy is making me think of the future when before I'd only considered life on a day-to-day basis, moving from one job to another. In between tasks, I spent time perfecting my craft. Firing my weapons and honing my body. I read some, visited museums, slept with whores. That life has made me ill equipped to do anything useful.
I am not even certain of the full extent of my accumulated wealth. I do not live expensively, but neither do I own anything, preferring to live out of hotels and rentals. My bank balance is very healthy, but I've never done anything with it.
Not only do I have no real skills outside of killing people, I'm not educated, even though I try to brush on a patina of learning through my reading of books—mostly strategic military tomes—and my visits to art houses.
I have so little of worth to offer Daisy. That I could buy her a phone or a few pieces of cl
othing or even pay her rent is the only thing I can provide, and she rejects even that. I want something more with Daisy. I want, perhaps, to not kill anymore. To live with her in a tiny apartment and eat food made by her hands and make love to her every evening. And maybe some mornings. Also afternoons.
But I cannot make love to Daisy until this matter with Sergei is resolved. It is time to settle these issues so that I can lie down with Daisy without fear of danger to her and me.
I WATCH MY MARK. MR. Brown is moving around his apartment getting ready for bed. Either I've missed his daily perversion, or he is too tired for that nonsense tonight. He heads for the bed, and the dog trots obediently behind. I wonder if the dog would attack Mr. Brown if it were allowed to, like the pack of boys had attacked the Milan curator.
The uncomfortable silence in my apartment is interrupted by a chime from the second bedroom. I consider ignoring it, but then think it may be Daniel.
"Allo," I answer.
"Nikolai." Not Daniel. Sergei. The head of the Bratva. His voice is nearly unaccented. He told me once that accents are as dangerous as fingerprints and that an accent will always give away your history and ultimately lead your enemies to your family. I had no family, I told Sergei. He clapped me on the shoulder and replied that he knew, and that's why I was the perfect weapon.
Perhaps it is why he felt he could kill Alexsandr without a second thought. Sergei believed that I was a machine, a gun that Alexsandr pointed and fired. And now that Alexsandr was dead, he believes that I am a weapon that Sergei now controls.
I have done nothing to disabuse Sergei of this notion. In truth, I am doing Sergei's bidding right now. Tracking this errant accountant and then disposing of him.
"Sergei. What is it that you need?" I wonder if he has cleaned up the bodies left at the Palisades. That must have been a mess.
"I was wondering whether you have heard about the passing of our friend Bogdan. He was in Los Angeles taking care of a problem for me and wasn't able to follow through due to some digestive problems."
"Bogdan always drank too much. His liver give out?" I ask.
"Liver and heart. Actually, an all-organ failure," Sergei replies.
I click my tongue against the roof of my mouth. "That's too bad."
"Bogdan's young wife is full of distress. You know she is pregnant."
"I did not." This I did not want to hear. "Bogdan lived a dangerous life. She was unaware?"
"No, she was aware. I think she didn't know the extent of his debts, however." Sergei's voice was light and smooth. He was probably imagining with glee all the things he would require of this young widow.
My nostrils flare in disgust. Sergei should be eliminated for the mere offense of being a cliché. As a soldier in the Bratva, Sergei once held himself to strict standards. Once he was the leader, he fell victim to the power and what he viewed as the spoils due a victor. Forcing himself on a grieving widow would be exciting for Sergei. That she would resist him would be like an extra serving of dessert.
He once raped two sisters, forcing the father who owed him no more than a few thousand American dollars to watch. Sergei had laughed like a movie villain. I wanted to kill him then, but instead, I squeezed the carotid of the father until he passed out and then discharged my gun into the ground. Sergei was bigger than me at the time and eighteen to my fourteen, but I was more feral. He stopped, but hate had burned in his eyes.
"You do not like this?" Sergei asks, prompting a response.
"It is not my place to render a judgment." My non-answer is all the reply we both need. "But I do not think you call about Bogdan."
"Nikolai, you were never one for small talk, which is why you are still a soldier in the Bratva and not a leader."
"I'm not part of the Bratva," I correct him. "I have not been part of it since I was fifteen." That was how old I was when Alexsandr kicked me out. At the time I was hurt, but in the past weeks I've wondered if this was Alexandr's biggest sacrifice and the most generous action he could have ever taken. Bogdan wanted out and could not leave. Sergei would've eventually wanted to punish me for putting a stop to his activities. Alexsandr made me leave, and in doing so gave me freedom.
"Once a part of Bratva, always part of Bratva," Sergei sneers.
I smile into the phone at the sound of his temper. Another sign of Sergei's weakness. He does not deserve the power that he's been given, but Alexsandr did not want to lead, and Sergei was Petrovich's nephew and the oldest male progeny of the Petrovich family. The responsibility fell on his shoulders, but he did not wear the mantle well. The Bratva would be in pieces within ten years.
While some may believe that criminal organizations should never exist, the Petrovich family serves an important role. There are many families that relied on the income the Bratva generates, and if it is not Sergei controlling the flow of guns, illegal substances, and secrets, it will be someone else. Crime does not go away. It can only be contained.
I remain silent, however, because Sergei does have power and the resources of the Bratva at his disposal. There were some who believed in the structure of the family with religious fervor; they were good people and they would do Sergei's bidding without question because he was the head of the family now.
It does not pay to unduly antagonize Sergei, particularly when I suspect that he is calling me because I am taking far too long with the accountant, Mr. Brown. His next words confirm this.
"This job is taking up months of your time. It is extraordinary. Is our accountant really that clever of a man?" Sergei asks. Clever enough to steal millions from you, I think, but know better than to say this.
"It's a delicate job. I do not want to draw the wrong attention."
"Just drug him and bring him back," Sergei commands.
"Do you want someone else to do this job?" I ask.
I hear Sergei breathing heavily and then a sharp sound as if he is striking his wooden desk with something. "Yo-bar." Fucker, he calls me, but he tries to make it sound like a laugh. We both know he is not joking.
I wait.
"Give me a timeline then. When will you be done? I have other tasks for you."
I shrug, but he cannot see it. "You are not the only contract I take. I have a job I will be doing after. Then, I will see."
"You little piss-ant, you listen to me." Sergei has lost control now. He is yelling. All pretense is over. "You were born in the gutter to pizda, and the Bratva took you in and made you what you are today. We own you."
"Calling my dead mother a cunt is not going to make this job go faster," I respond mildly, but I am gripping the table so tightly that the edging is cutting me and blood is beginning to loosen my hold.
Sergei curses again. "Pizdets na khui blyad! I know where you are, and if you don't get this job done within the next week, you'll be the mark."
Fucking load of bullshit? That's all he had in the barrel for me? I felt insulted by his lack of creative invectives, but the thought that he knows where I am concerns me. I'd need to finish up with Mr. Brown just to ensure Daisy's safety. I didn't need a better version of Bogdan coming to town.
I needed to see Daisy shoot a gun. I needed to make sure she had one.
Later, I followed Daisy to work that night to ensure that she was safely ensconced inside. Outside, I find the exterior satellite feed cables and attach a tap so that I can monitor the security feeds remotely. I should've done this weeks ago. Feeling a little better about Daisy's safety, I head to her apartment complex. Mr. Brown is waiting for me.
I don't bother knocking. The door opens easily for me, and I know from a previous search that Mr. Brown has only one weapon, which he keeps in his bedside table. Why allow intruders to get so far into the residence before being able to mount a defense? It makes no sense to me. I have trip wires on the door, so easy to set up with a few cans or bells and very hard to disable unless you are already inside. They are low-tech safety measures that Mr. Brown couldn't be moved to employ. His loss.
Even his smal
l dog could not be moved to provide any defense, because Mr. Brown insists on the dog being locked inside the bedroom with him. The front rooms of the apartment are dark, which allows me to slip inside and move around undetected. I pull the rickety shades and carry an uncomfortable metal chair into the living room. Mr. Brown will sit here, and I will stand.
There is no surface I feel comfortable touching, even with my gloves on. "Mr. Brown," I call, "You have a visitor."
The sound of my voice awakens the dog, and soon the dog wakes Mr. Brown. I stand in the corner—in case Mr. Brown decides to shoot first and ask questions later—but it is just an outsized precaution. Mr. Brown likely has never pulled any trigger, unlike Daisy.
"Who is it, Peanut?"
Peanut? I shudder at the grotesqueness of the dog's name, given Mr. Brown's perversions. The dog trots out obediently and comes up and yips at me. I kneel down and give the dog one of his special treats. Over my head, I hear the whistle of a bullet followed by a sharp retort.
My eyebrows climb my forehead. Mr. Brown has actually shot at me, and because I bent over to feed the dog, I've avoided having to dodge a bullet. I remain crouched. My eyes are adjusted to the night so it is easy for me to see him waving the gun around. I will have to disarm him.
I give Peanut a final pat and move stealthily to creep around Mr. Brown. He does not sense me, and I'm able to easily rise up behind him and remove his gun from his hand. The gun is small and lightweight. Perhaps I will give Daisy Mr. Brown's gun. But no, Daisy shouldn't be touching filth belonging to Mr. Brown.
I wave the gun toward the chair. "Please, Mr. Brown, sit down."
"I'm not Mr. Brown. You have the wrong person," he says, but he obeys nonetheless.
"George Franklin, formerly an employee of the Petrovich Bratva? Currently on the run and in hiding?"
Mr. Brown gasps and then begins to plead with me. "What do you want? I have money. Lots of money. I'll give you anything."
These encounters are so similar that I wonder if there is some script that is handed out to criminals. In case of capture, use these bargaining tools. Alas, I must surmise that these work on occasion or the bribes wouldn't be offered.
Last Hit (Hitman) Page 17