The Russian Cage

by Charlaine Harris

  “How old do you think she is, really?”

  Peter’s mouth literally hung open for a few seconds. “I don’t know,” he said, in a tone that let me know he was thinking about it for the first time ever. “She looks real young, but she acts a lot older.” He considered it. “I’d average it out, say she’s thirteen or fourteen.” Then he realized that, to his mind, I’d asked a strange question. “But you should know.”

  “You’ve spent way more time with her than I have.” I hadn’t known Eli had kept the story of Felicia and her circumstances to himself. I pondered the reasons he’d done that.

  Peter gave me a blank look.

  “What do you see in your future, Peter?” I hadn’t known what I’d ask him until it popped out of my mouth.

  “I will be a grigori, like Eli,” Peter said, as if that were the stupidest thing anyone had ever asked him.

  “But your older brothers and your father have disgraced your family. Do you…”

  “Understand that may affect my career? Of course I understand it.”

  Here was the bitterness. I waited for him to go on, and he did.

  “But what else can I do? This is what I am. And now that Eli has been arrested, the care of my mother and my sisters is on my shoulders, since my half brothers will only shuffle Lucy and Alice off their hands like cards. To whatever friend of theirs needs a noble wife.”

  I waited some more.

  “Eli and I, once he is out of jail, will bring our family back into good repute.”

  He really said “good repute.” I waited, because there was more to drain out of this sore spot. Though Peter was doing a good imitation of someone who was facing facts… he hadn’t faced them all.

  “You’re assuming Eli gets out of jail,” I said, when I ran out of patience.

  Peter’s face had been still, but it froze harder. “Why would he not?”

  “Because he was jailed on a murder charge.”

  “Murder?” Peter looked even worse now, like someone struggling to get out of a nightmare.

  “Yes.”

  “He told you.” Peter looked really upset and angry, as well.

  “No. You’re going to.” I wasn’t sure I could kill Peter, since Eli loved him. But at the moment, I felt like giving it a try.

  Peter lurched to his feet and walked out the door. I threw some money on the table and followed. We walked in silence back to my hotel and went up to my room.

  I was relieved, because this was the only place we could be sure we wouldn’t be interrupted. I was tired of Peter’s moods.

  When we were inside, we sat on the two wooden chairs set on either side of a tiny table. Peter threw himself back. His body said, Look how miserable I am! I crossed my arms across my chest and waited.

  Finally, Peter quit waiting for me to ask him what was wrong. “I killed Ivan Nichinko,” he said.

  “Am I supposed to know who that is?”

  “No,” Peter said grudgingly. “Ivan is—was—a friend of Bogdan’s, my older half brother, and while I was escorting Lucy and Alice to their library visit… they go once a week…”

  I might give Peter a good slap.

  “We encountered Ivan. I thought it was by accident, but now I think he planned it. Maybe our brother told him the girls’ routine. There’s an obvious route.”

  I nodded, hoping that would hurry Peter along.

  “We had to speak to him,” Peter said, looking down at his hands. “We didn’t have a choice.”

  They’d had a choice, but Peter would never believe that. Not the way he’d been brought up.

  “I didn’t want to. Not only is he a boor, but Ivan had been paying attentions to Alice, who is twenty years younger than him. Alice gets very nervous when she has to speak to him. He likes—liked—to scare her. That afternoon he crossed the boundary as no man should with a respectable girl. Not trying to interest her, or charm her… to seduce her. Like she was no one who counted.”

  “He put his hands on her?” I wasn’t clear what had happened.

  “He said…” Peter made a strange face. “He said he could smell her sweet… female smell. I thought Alice would vomit. Or run.”

  “Did you kill him then and there?” I had uncrossed my arms. I was feeling a little better about Peter.

  “I didn’t want to do that in front of the girls.”

  Who were just about women, especially Lucy. After last night, I would not underrate the Savarov ladies. I nodded, to get Peter started again.

  “Ivan lives—lived—not too far from Felix. It wasn’t hard to find. I hid in his backyard that evening, and when he returned from his dinner…” Peter was breathing in deep, gusty lungsful. He sure was emotional.

  “You killed him. How?”

  “I pulled the blood out of his body.”

  “Which is something Eli can do.” I could see where this was going.

  “Yes. That was my mistake.”

  “That was one of your mistakes.”

  “I had to do it!”

  “I don’t dispute that,” I said. No point, it was done. “But if you felt you had to do it, you should have waited a week or two. I guess Ivan wasn’t by himself when he had this conversation with Alice?”

  Peter turned red. “One of his friends was with him.”

  “There’s your big mistake. You should have killed the friend, too.”

  Peter’s mouth hung open. He had not expected that piece of advice. But it was golden.

  “That would have left you free and clear, and you could have warned Eli to have an alibi for that night. Learn from your mistakes.”

  Peter was vastly relieved to have gotten this off his chest. I could tell he was delighted I hadn’t told him he was a bad, bad boy for defending his sister’s honor. I did have some issues with that, as you can imagine. Alice should be able to defend her own honor. It was her right. That having been said, this asshole Ivan had needed a takedown, though Peter’s response had been pretty drastic. Hot-tempered and young.

  “Would you have done the same thing?” Peter said. “When you were my age?”

  “I don’t have any sisters,” I said, and then corrected myself. “I grew up as an only child. But if someone had said such a disgusting thing to me…”

  Peter nodded vigorously.

  “I might have shot him somewhere that wouldn’t have killed him. Like his crotch. Or a foot or knee.”

  “When you were sixteen?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “You… were shooting people then?”

  “That was the year I joined my first crew.”

  I didn’t know why Peter was so taken aback. The boy was looking at me with different eyes. Didn’t like what he saw. Good. One problem out of the way.

  “So who’s the witness?” Maybe this situation could be salvaged.

  “Dima Zaitsev. He’s a carpenter, working on the royal island now.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “He rooms with a family close to the waterfront,” Peter said. “I don’t know the house, exactly.”

  “How much do your half brothers know about this?”

  “I’m sure it was Bogdan who urged Dima to report the words I had with Ivan to the police after Ivan’s body was found.”

  “But Bogdan would have figured it was you who did the killing, wouldn’t he?”

  “Bogdan doesn’t know me very well,” Peter said. “But he knows Eli is dangerous to him. Bogdan and Dagmar want Eli out of the way.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Eli stands between Bogdan and Mother and the girls. Now that our father is dead, and was exposed as a traitor, Bogdan and Dagmar have had a much harder time making their way in society. In fact, they won’t, unless they somehow get a lot of money. That will open a few doors. The only easy money they can see is money they’d get from the house sale, if they could force Mother and the girls to move. And if they sell the girls in marriage. As long as Eli is around, that won’t happen. They weren’t reckoning with me.�
�� Peter’s back straightened. He was the man who had dealt with the problem, in his own head.

  “You, who so bravely got Eli arrested,” I said.

  It was like I had hit Peter. I was a little ashamed (because it was so easy) and a little angry (because he was missing the point). Peter was not taking the burden of what he had done, only the credit. He expected Eli to squirm out of his situation, some way or other.

  “I didn’t think that would happen. The arrest.” Peter hung his head again.

  “It’s hard to believe you really thought that, since you just gave me a reasoned-out statement of why it would. You commit a murder using Eli’s technique—one no one knows you can do, I’ll bet—and it’s the murder of a buddy of your half brothers, who are looking for an excuse to get rid of Eli. And you left a witness.”

  Peter looked so miserable I almost felt sorry for him… but only a pampered teenager would imagine that he was blameless. Right? And this had caused the arrest of my Eli.

  “Does your mother know all this?”

  “No,” Peter said, choking. “No. Even the girls… but maybe they suspect.”

  This was beginning to feel like kicking a puppy, but he had been so stupid about the whole thing. I couldn’t even be around Peter now.

  “I’m off,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later when I’ve thought about this.”

  “You’ll… you’ll save Eli? Still?”

  “I’ll do everything I can. Doesn’t have anything to do with you,” I said.

  He stood up, looked at me helplessly for a moment, and left without another word.

  I needed to walk myself, so I waited until Peter had time to be a few blocks away before I got to the street. I’d been awful hard on the boy. Eli would have been upset, probably.

  On the other hand, Eli could have been by my side at this moment if Peter hadn’t acted like a fool.

  Dima Zaitsev had to go. And it couldn’t look like death-by-wizard—which was lucky, because I’d have a hard time imitating a wizard.

  I felt powerfully unhappy. This was not the way I operated. I hadn’t ever killed someone outside of work, true. But there was a difference between defending your cargo and killing someone to shut his mouth. Also, this wasn’t the first time I’d had to assassinate someone when I was working for Eli.

  I cast around for a way to feel better, and I found one. Eli was my cargo. My job was to defend my cargo.

  There was so much truth in this that my world righted itself, and I felt steady. Zaitsev had to go.

  Back in my hotel room, I checked my telephone book, but Zaitsev didn’t have a phone. And I didn’t know where he roomed. I could have stood by the ferry when it came back from the royal island, scanned the faces, and followed him home… if I knew what he looked like.

  I knew someone who did.

  The hateful Natalya answered the telephone. “Savarov residence,” she said, as if she was daring me to ask for something.

  “Lucy, please,” I said.

  “May I tell Miss Lada who is calling?”

  This was probably standard, I felt sure, but it felt snide and personal.

  “This is her friend Amanda,” I said.

  Without another word, Natalya put the phone down on something wooden and hard. She was gone quite a while. Maybe she’d stopped off on her way to Lucy’s room to clean the bathroom.

  I heard footsteps. The telephone was lifted. “Hello?” Lucy said, with a big question in her voice.

  “Hi, Lucy. It’s Lizbeth. I didn’t want to tell Natalya the Spy it was me,” I said. “She probably guessed from my voice.”

  “Or from the fact that very few people call us anymore.”

  “I need your help,” I said.

  “Really?” Lucy sounded not only interested but surprised.

  “What time did that really unpleasant meeting outside the library happen?” I was willing to bet money that Veronika didn’t know about the incident. I was being cautious in my words so Lucy would be cautious, too.

  “Oh! The last time Peter escorted us there?”

  Had there been more than one? “Yes, that one,” I said. “Was this a normal thing? Being… accosted?”

  “Normal for them, Dima and Ivan. That was why we asked Peter to go with us. I had taken as much insult as I could, and Alice was getting very… ah, anxious about it. But we didn’t want Mother to know. We usually go to the library about nine. We like to be there early. Fewer people to snub us.”

  “A weekday or on Saturday?” I assumed the library was closed on Sunday, like almost everything else.

  “It was a Thursday. We always go on Thursday.”

  Sure, because why make it harder for people who wanted to lie in wait? “All right, here’s what I need,” I said. I’d gathered from scraps of conversations that there were various shifts of workers on the royal island: construction workers from six to noon, the second shift from noon to six, six days a week. There were also cleaners who came in at night to clean halls and offices and kitchens, and cleaners who worked during the day on bedrooms and the personal areas. If the Savarovs had encountered carpenter Dima in the morning, he must work the afternoon shift. So we could catch him. I explained my reasons to Lucy.

  “I can’t go out by myself,” Lucy said.

  “Even if you’re meeting me?”

  “No. Not done.” Lucy didn’t sound angry about this, just factual.

  I thought if Lucy was such a pariah, she could do what she damn well pleased, but I didn’t say that. Not my life. I cast around for a way to get around this. “Could you go out with Felix?”

  “Yes, if you were with us.”

  “I’ll talk to him and get back with you.”

  Telephones were handy things. I talked to Felix in the next five minutes and explained the whole Peter issue, what I’d concluded, and what I thought we could do.

  “So you and Lucy and I will watch for this Dima, and you’ll kill him,” Felix said. At least he sounded workmanlike about this.

  “Not then and there, but yes, that’s the plan. There won’t be a witness who can incriminate Peter, ’cause he won’t be anywhere around. And Eli will be in his cell. So Eli won’t be obliged to take the weight for Peter. He’ll be released.” It seemed simple to me.

  “There are some flaws in your reasoning,” Felix said in his extra-dry voice. “But I agree that Dima being out of the way would be a good thing. And of course, spending time in your company is always entertaining.”

  I was sure he was making fun of me, but I didn’t care. “You’ll get to spend time with Lucy.”

  “And that’s the consolation. When and where?”

  “You and I have to go together to pick Lucy up at her house. Lucy says she has to have both of us. Seems you have to protect us by just being a man, and I have to protect Lucy because you are a man. Let’s try to catch Dima when he gets off shift at six this afternoon.”

  “I’ll pick you up at four forty-five. We have to get across town and back to the pier.”

  “Okay.”

  Felix hung up. I guess saying good-bye would have been too much trouble.

  That left me with a hunk of empty time. I’d have liked to spend some time with Felicia, but since she’d missed a lot of class hours the day before singing at the palace, I didn’t want to disrupt her school hours today. I could not do any of the things I’d normally do: hunt, shoot at targets, clean my cabin, do my wash, take care of my neighbor Chrissie’s baby. Since my last crew had fallen apart—all but one were dead—I’d taken to helping Freedom, son of my friend Galilee, who had started making furniture in a shed in his backyard. Fatherhood had improved Freedom’s character, and there was something satisfying about making things that people could use.

  I went to the zoo. The desk clerk had told me it was a marvel. I’d never seen a zoo.

  Two hours later, I knew I’d never go to one again. No matter how interesting it was to see animals I’d never seen before, it was depressing as hell. All the animals reminded me o
f Eli, shut in a cage.

  I sat on a bench and stared at a bear pacing back and forth until an old man asked me if I was okay. I said, “Yes,” but I knew I wasn’t. I took myself out of the zoo and walked back to the area of my hotel. I’d dropped Veronika’s dress by a cleaner’s, and I picked it up and hung it in my room’s wardrobe. It was the only thing there.

  Since I was tired of thinking about getting Eli out of jail, I thought about how I stuck out like a sore thumb on the streets. Not enough that people would start laughing and pointing, but a lot of people gave me a second look, and that wasn’t good.

  As I had noticed my first day in the city, there were women wearing pants, but they weren’t my kind of pants. I figured anything with legs was easier than a skirt or a dress. I hadn’t wanted to be in the city long enough to need to blend in, but here I still was.

  So I went shopping.

  I had only been in a women’s store once before, and it hadn’t been a good time. So I sort of crept in and tried to look at pants by myself, but that didn’t work. The middle-aged gal was on me like white on rice. I have to admit she was a lot of help.

  “You’re from out of town,” she said brightly. “Can I help you?” She didn’t sound superior or disgusted.

  “I want to blend in,” I said. Might as well lead with my chin.

  “No harm looking cute while you blend, right?” She smiled at me. “I’m Margaret.”

  “Margaret, I’m Lizbeth. I figure I need some pants, a blouse, a jacket, and some shoes. Walking shoes.”

  “Then we better get to work. We don’t sell shoes, but there’s a ladies’ shoe store on the next block, Florence’s City Steppers.”

  An hour later, I got back to my room with my two bags. I’d had to insist on flat shoes, but I’d gotten them. And socks. And very roomy gray pants with a white blouse, and a navy jacket. My old belt would do, I figured. I’d almost gotten a hat, but I’d added the price of my purchases in my head and put it back on its rack.

  I was all fixed up when Lucy and Felix pulled up to the curb. Felix kept looking past me until I got in the back seat.

  “You look so nice!” Lucy said. “Mother won’t let us wear trousers.”

  “These your own?” Felix said. He was being snooty again. I didn’t understand Felix.