by Ed Kurtz
“Jebo ti pas mater,” Marko muttered. The red was coming back again.
“Shoot,” Charley said. Ivo screamed, the high-pitched scream of a little girl watching her first scary movie. “Not her. You, asshole.”
“What?” Ivo was trembling violently now.
“Talk!” Charley shouted.
“The—the girl, I know this girl. She no here, not no Queens…”
The terrified Serb’s English was deteriorating through his fright. Charley struggled to make sense out his garbled explanation.
“She’s not in Queens?”
“No, not in Queens. Across river…”
“Manhattan?”
“No, other river. Hudson river, Jersey side.”
“Christ,” Ursula groaned. “They took her to Jersey?”
“Yes! Yes, to New Jersey!” Ivo stammered.
“Maybe you’re lying,” Ursula suggested, arching an eyebrow and twitching her hands a little. The gun danced. Ivo sobbed.
“No, Ivo is no lying! No lying!”
“Fuck,” Charley grunted. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do. Ivo?”
“Yes…”
“Knock Marko out.”
“Knock…?”
“Hit him in the back of the skull until he goes to sleep.” Charley folded his hands between his cheek and his shoulder—the international sign for sleep.
Ursula repeated the command in Serbian so that there could be no doubt he understood what he was being told to do. Ivo faltered, his eyes flitting from his furious boss to the gun to Charley. Charley gave a sharp nod, telling Ivo he did not have a choice in the matter.
“Izvinite,” Ivo moaned to Marko. I’m sorry. Marko made a sound in his throat that sounded like a mad dog’s growl.
The frightened Serb moved behind Marko and clasped his hands together into a tight ball of knuckles. He brought it back over one shoulder and then heaved it at the soft spot at the base of Marko’s skull. There was an audible thump and Marko stumbled forward, but he remained conscious. Unconscious men did not roar angry obscenities the way Marko was. More alarmed than ever, Ivo lunged at his boss and sent a fuselage of rapid punches flying into the back of his head. Fists collided with Marko’s skull, neck and spine in a quick succession that suggested some experience in the ring. It did the trick; Marko staggered drunkenly, tripped over his own feet and fell face first on the dusty floor. He was out.
Charley could not tell whether or not Ivo’s brutality contained some pent-up anger for Marko, but in any case he was stunned by the violent display. Ivo was breathing hard, his chest heaving and sweat dripping down his face. His teeth were savagely bared, his hands still curled into tight, bruised-up fists. Charley glanced over at Ursula and saw that she’d lowered the gun. She was as bewildered as he was.
“Damn,” she whispered.
For a couple of minutes Ivo’s gasping breaths accounted for the only sound in the storage room. It even drowned out the pounding heartbeat rhythm in Charley’s ears. Even when the door from the bar flew open and the bartender screamed into the room with a Louisville Slugger held aloft, both Charley and Ursula could still hear the crazed hyperventilation of the animal that used to be Ivo. That did not stop Ursula from raising the revolver and swinging her arms around to point it at the approaching barman, though. He was still screaming, a frothy war cry meant to precipitate the beating he’d come to administer.
Ursula yelled, “Stop!”
But he didn’t. He kept on rushing her and he kept on screaming. And when the bat began its quick arc downward, Ursula squeezed the trigger. The barrel belched flame and kicked hard like a bucking mule. The recoil jammed her shoulders back and she lost her balance. Ursula and the bartender hit the floor at the same time; her with a sore ass and him with thirty-eight caliber bullet embedded somewhere in his brain. Charley stared at the freshly killed bartender, astounded that Ursula had had the gumption to pull the trigger in time. The round had entered just below the man’s left eye, splintering the bone around the eye socket and causing the eye itself to sink into his skull. Bile churned up Charley’s throat. He turned away from the ghastly sight and inhaled deeply to fight the urge to puke.
“God,” he groaned once he’d gotten himself under control. “God.”
Ivo looked pretty shaken up, himself. The savagery he’d displayed minutes earlier seemed to have dissipated, leaving only a scared little man with a badly beaten boss and a dead associate in front of him.
Play with fire, Charley thought.
Ivo whimpered when Ursula pointed the revolver at him again.
“Are we going?” she said. Charley was not sure if she was asking him or Ivo.
“To where?” he asked.
Ursula sighed and said, “Jersey. This asshole can drive.”
Chapter 22
Ivo’s car was parked on the street around the other side of Drina’s. A rusty Olds Super Eighty-Eight that might have been blue when it rolled out of the factory in Detroit fifteen years ago, its paintjob was worn down to the primer now. The Olds’ Skyrocket V8 roared when Ivo turned the key in the ignition, and he couldn’t help but smile. It might have looked like hell but sounded great.
“Some engine,” Charley said from the passenger seat. Ursula was in the back, Ivo’s revolver aimed from her lap at its former owner’s head.
“Three hundred twenty five horsepower,” Ivo said proudly as he jammed the gearshift into drive.
Ivo drove slowly and carefully west through Queens, but he stomped on the gas pedal when they hit the Williamsburg Bridge. There were hardly any other cars in sight at that hour, as good an excuse as any to cruise at a good speed on an otherwise badly congested thoroughfare. In a couple of hours it would bumper-to-bumper all over again. Charley guessed there weren’t many people who just decided to hop boroughs in the middle of the night, not unless they were up to no good. After they crossed the river and passed over East River Park, the bridge dumped them on Delancey. Ivo did not slow down.
“Watch that speed, leadfoot,” Charley said.
Ivo made a dismissive farting sound with his lips, but he eased up on the pedal all the same. That car was his baby, his piece of the American Dream. How he achieved this particular slice of the pie was an altogether different question.
Charley said, “What’s your part in this, Ivo?’
“Part? I do not understand.”
“Stow that crap. You understand me fine. What’s Marko got you doing for him, huh?”
“Mr. Marko? He in entertainment.”
“That a fact,” Charley said through clenched teeth. “Guess that depends on what you find entertaining, doesn’t it?”
“Take all kinds, yes?”
“No, it doesn’t. It only takes some kinds. The rest we just gotta deal with.”
Ivo smiled thinly.
“The rest got money to spend, too. This is America. Capitalism. They buy, Mr. Marko sell.”
Charley narrowed his eyes. He thought he would like to see Louie Cioci argue the finer points of capitalism with this guy, maybe set him straight. But Cioci was just part of a syndicate of a different color. Different color, same goals and methods. None of it very nice. Charley stayed quiet for a while, trying not to think about Elizabeth and her loops and all the blood that leaked out of her back all over the Harris’ balcony floor.
“Listen,” Ivo said meekly, “You think he is dead?”
“Who?”
“Mr. Marko.”
“Don’t know,” Charley answered honestly. “But if he is, I guess that makes you a murderer.”
Ivo said, “Shit.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll find another job. This city’s just teeming with pricks like Marko who need dumb jerks like you.”
“Is my wife’s uncle. She will not be so happy.”
“Don’t you worry about your wife,” Charley instructed him. “You just worry about taking us to wherever Marko is holding my girlfriend.”
Delancey turned into Ken
mare, and Kenmare dead-ended at Lafayette. Ivo hung a left and then another left on Canal.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ursula barked.
Charley shot a glance at Ivo. When the streetlamps flashed across his face Charley could tell that he was smiling. Ursula reached out and gently touched Charley’s shoulder.
“Charley, he’s circling back into the Bowery.”
Skid Row. Charley grunted.
The Olds groaned on its chassis as it rolled around a corner onto Mott Street, one of the main veins of the oldest slum in the city. Ivo ground the car to a halt in front of a fire hydrant and shifted into park. Charley punched the dashboard.
“What’s the deal, man? You said we were heading to Jersey!”
“I lie. Your girl, she is here.”
Ivo pointed at the seven-story structure that towered above them. Like nearly every other building in the area, it had a fire escape zig-zagging down its façade and bars on most of the windows that grinned down at them with serrated teeth. The whole front of the building had been painted a brownish red, the color of coagulating blood. The paint might have been meant to hide the old tenement’s state of disrepair, but if so it didn’t work.
“This is bullshit,” Charley snarled. “If she’s here, why’d you say Jersey?”
“I tell you, I lie. Then this one says I drive.” He jerked his thumb at Ursula. “No more lie now.”
Ursula leaned forward and pressed the bore of the pistol against the back of Ivo’s head. He jerked, startled and afraid. Charley was startled, too. He was beginning to learn all about Ursula’s vicious side. It reminded him of a Lou Reed song.
She reminded him of every Lou Reed song.
“All right, shupak,” she said. Charley figured it probably meant asshole, or something like it. “Let’s get the rundown on what it’s going to look like in there so’s we’re all on the same page from the start, razumete?”
“Da. Two or three men, one room. This girl, she is with them. Seven floor.”
“Top floor?”
“Da. Top floor.”
“Guns?”
“Of course. Autos, probable.”
Ursula groaned and swung the cylinder out of Ivo’s revolver—only three rounds left. She groaned again and said, “Damnit.”
Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, Charley gaped at her.
“What is it?”
“I got three bullets in this piece of crap. Not much use when you got three guys spraying automatics at you. Any ideas?”
“Not really.”
“We’ve got this turd,” she said, gesturing at Ivo.
“What is turd?” he asked.
“You are, baby.”
Ivo said, “Hmm.” He thought it over.
“Do you know these men?” Ursula asked. “They know who you are?”
“Sure, they know.”
“Then you are going to help us. Any objections?”
“Obje—” Ivo trailed off, failing to make sense of the word.
“You got a problem with helping us get the girl?” she said, raising her voice.
“No, no problem.”
“Out of the car, Charley.”
Charley gaped some more. Then he got out slowly, careful not to make too much racket out of the Olds’ creaky door. Ursula must have made a similar demand of Ivo, because in a moment they both followed suit, climbing out onto the dirty street and quietly shutting their doors. She kept her position as last but not least, the one with the gun who said what went. Ivo understood the hierarchy perfectly. He started the procession with measured steps that took them onto the sidewalk, around a pile of broken green glass and through a door that revealed a dark and foul-smelling stairwell. It reminded Charley of Love Connection, only there were no erotic delights to be expected at the end of these steps. This was a rescue mission and he did not lose sight of that, even if he did feel a bit giddy. He felt sort of like Shaft, or at least one of his cohorts.
The tenement was naturally a walk-up; Charley doubted there was a residential elevator within ten blocks of the place. Accordingly, his back was slick with sweat before they reached the landing at the fifth floor. It was going to be cold as hell when they got back outside again. There were a thousand buildings on that island that had been fitted and refitted so many times that they bore no resemblance to their original forms. This was not one of them; the tenement building to which Ivo had taken them looked just like Charley imagined tenements looked at the end of the nineteenth century, in the days of the Bowery Boys and Irish leatherheads. The walls were crumbling and the air was stale and sickly and he could hear the bugs skittering inside the walls. Worse yet it was dark in there, too dark to see his own feet and what he may or may not have been trudging through. His nose told him it was not pleasant, and his ears made sure he knew some of it moved on its own accord. Charley screwed up his face and tried to concentrate on just following the weird conga line up the steps.
The six feet between them clomped on the stairs as they climbed, despite their best efforts to pad lightly. Somewhere a baby was screaming its head off. He hoped whatever noise they were making would be chalked up to normal commotion, like the baby or the shouting in Spanish that drifted out of the sixth floor hallway. When they reached the final landing, Ivo paused to stare down the dark, damp hallway. Something was dripping loudly on the floor, landing with a gooey splash that suggested something other than plain water. Charley hoped it would not drip on him when he passed under whatever it was.
“Is here,” Ivo whispered, pointing straight down the hall. “End of hall. Last door on the left.”
Last door on the left, Charley thought grimly. It sounded a little too much like Last House on the Left for his comfort. He’d seen the picture twice; the first time in Boston at the Mayflower before it went all porn, and the second on the Deuce at the now dreaded Harris. Charley loved it, for what it was worth, but like all the on screen violence he adored, he sure as hell did not desire to act it out. He squeezed his eyes shut and ground his teeth in an effort to push the notion out of his mind. Ivo advanced into the hall. Charley and Ursula followed.
Halfway in, Ursula strode forward and grabbed Ivo by the shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.
“Wait a minute,” she whispered. “What are you gonna do?”
“I knock. Say is Ivo. They open door, yes?”
“With their autos in their hands.”
“This I don’t know. Maybe so, maybe not.”
Charley jerked involuntarily. He was half expecting to discover what it was like to get shot in the next few minutes. Ivo went on.
The door was cracked and slimy with filth. A number was clumsily painted on it: 7F. Charley sucked in a deep breath and held it. Ursula flattened herself against the wall beside the door, the revolver at the ready. Ivo knocked.
Muted voices chattered in Serbian on the other side of the door. They sounded confused, perhaps a bit angry. Finally a sonorous voice called out:
“What you want?”
“Is Ivo. Open door.”
“Ivo!” the voice said. More unintelligible Serbian chatter. The deadbolt clicked and the door opened an inch.
In the thin crack between the door and the jamb, Charley could make out an eyeball, a hairy cheek and the corner of a mouth. The mouth asked a question in Serbian and Ivo answered it likewise. Satisfied, the man at the door stepped back and opened it up all the way.
Ivo peered into the room and then said rapidly, “Two—no guns.”
Before the man who let Ivo in could react, Ursula stormed into the room, pushing Ivo aside and leveling the revolver at the puzzled Serbian standing before her. Charley came in after her and got an eyeful of the situation. True enough, the bearded guy Ivo had spoken to had empty hands. But the man at the back of the dim, unfurnished room held a skinny submachine gun in his meaty paws; a Soviet PPS with a long, narrow stock that was jammed into the crook of the gunman’s shoulder. The submachine gun’s barrel, naturally, was directed at Ursula.
Ivo had lied.
“Oh, goddamnit,” Charley said.
They were pushed into an adjoining room with no discussion. Ursula had dropped Ivo’s gun quickly after getting a look at the PPS; there was no contest between the weapons. She was outgunned and she knew it. After they were shoved back there, Ivo pointed at Ursula and muttered something in Serbian to the guy with the submachine gun. They both guffawed. Charley looked at her with raised, questioning eyebrows but she only silently glowered at their captors. He turned his attention from her furious face to the rest of the room. Blue walls, the paint badly chipping. Water stains splotching everywhere, probably from interior pipes that had been leaking for ages.
Charley inhaled sharply. He recognized the room as clearly as if he had been there before. But he had not; he’d only seen it in a film.
He pivoted to take in the remainder of the distinctive walls and the stained mattress at the back of the room, also disturbingly familiar. The dark splotches on the bare mattress looked an awful lot like blood to him. He shuddered to think what kinds of awful sex acts resulted in bloodshed. Then a hot, dull pain exploded at the back of his head, setting off colorful bursts in his eyes like a Fourth of July Yankees game.
Everything rapidly faded to black after that.
• • •
When he came to, his stomach was lurching and his head pounding. He was being shaken around, but everything was dark so he could not determine the cause of it. Wherever he was, it was hot as hell and the air was thick and barely breathable. The jostling knocked him from side to side, enough so that he figured out he was in a pretty tight space.
A trunk, he realized just before he had to roll over to keep his head from splitting apart. No sooner had he turned did he retch and puke. The car must have hit a pothole after that, because there was a resounding thump and he got thrown up at the roof. When he landed, it was right into the bilious sludge he had only just purged. Charley groaned and he felt like crying.
He had no way of knowing how long he had been out, but the portion of the trip for which he had been awake seemed to take forever. He was definitely alone in the trunk, which made him worry about the safety and whereabouts of Ursula. She had been dragged way too far into this thing, a too-little too-late insight now that they were in the hands of merciless killers. All Charley had really wanted was her expertise in the areas of language and geography—they should have parted ways at Drina’s.