by Jonas Saul
But what kind of life is that? How could he provide for Rosina? He needed his MacBook Pro to write. He needed an American address and bank account to get paid. That meant he would have a bank card and leave an electronic trail to wherever he was. Just to get food, clothing, and shelter, he would expose them to the constant threat of being murdered in their sleep. He refused to sleep with one eye open for the rest of his life, however long that would be.
He scanned the parking lot. He thought he heard scuffling, like mice scurrying about, but nothing else.
“Oh, Rosina, I love you so much,” he whispered. “Why did this have to happen to us?”
When he escaped from the pine box seven days ago, he didn’t care if he lived or died that night. He was so bent on revenge that he felt prepared to die, as long as he killed as many of Gambino’s men as he could.
When Rosina came into the picture again, life rekindled a fire he couldn’t put out. He had to save her first. That meant he needed to stay alive. Hope rose from there and blossomed to how he felt now, seven days later, ready to move on and start living again.
Hearing about the Russian Mafia took all that hope away, just like Fuccini tried to do and Gambino almost did.
The decision had to be made. Run with Rosina or locate the Reds and offer to work with them. But for how long? When could he get out? When would it be over? One day, one week, or one month? When was enough, enough?
He slapped his knee.
Fuck, when will all this be over?
Then he answered his own question.
When I say it’s over.
And the only way to do that was go to the Russians, find out what their interest in him was and then go to the next stage. He’d make new decisions at that point. If all hell broke out, he could find a way to kill as many as he could and run, grab Rosina and still head to South America. But at least he would have given it a try. Just running meant they’d always be running. Joining them had the potential to remove the threat.
Rosina was safe with Greg. The world thought both of them were dead. He had to do what any good husband would do and leave her where she was safe. He had to deal with this last issue.
He got up and stepped out of the shadows. No one was visible. He walked down the rows of cars on his way to the exit that was clearly marked. Something moved to his right. He jumped back and looked, but nothing was there.
What the hell? Fucking mice. If any of those Russian guys see me like this, they’ll shoot me for making them laugh so hard.
He shook out his arms and started walking again. It was warm in the parking garage. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He wiped it off and bumped the string around his neck.
Oh, shit, I forgot.
He lifted the visitor pass over his head and tossed it between two cars. If anyone was waiting for him outside there was no way he could join them as a visitor of the FBI.
They won’t take too kindly to that.
He didn’t have a death wish, but if Arkady and his thugs were coming after him, he couldn’t ignore it, hoping they’d go away. He had to face it and he would do everything he could to stay alive. As far as he was concerned, he was living on borrowed time, as he should have been dead ten times over already.
He smiled, feeling better now that he was clear on what he needed to do.
The exit ramp that led up was narrow, meant for one car only. The entrance had to be elsewhere and also made for one car. He didn’t want to take the stairs as that was an obvious exit. Walking out of the building on the ramp wouldn’t be expected.
He stopped at the sound of a noise that reverberated throughout the parking level behind him. He stepped back and peeked around the edge of the wall. A woman had gotten out of her car and was walking toward the elevator bank.
She sat in her car the whole time I walked across the parking level? What the hell could she have been doing?
A moment later, a man got out of the same car and shut his door quietly. He scanned the area around him, and then the whole parking lot. His gaze stopped when he saw Darwin.
Darwin yanked his head back behind the wall.
So the employees were having a quickie. Who cares?
He jogged up the ramp until he reached parking level one. At the far end, the sun shone through large cement holes that ventilated the parking area.
Dress shoes clomped hard behind him.
Why’s the guy chasing me?
Darwin hustled down four cars over and two back, dropped to his knees, and then lay on his belly. From under the car beside him, he could see the spot where his pursuer would exit the ramp.
Just as he expected, the man came around the corner and stopped. The bottom of his legs turned and twisted as the guy looked everywhere, evidently confused as to where Darwin had gone.
After what felt like ten seconds, he turned back to the ramp where he disappeared.
Either he’s gone back down or he’s waiting just around the corner to see if I surface.
Darwin stayed on the ground for at least four to five minutes. Two cars came and went in search of parking. On his knees, he got up and looked around. Then he started walking down the aisle of cars, staying close to the cement abutment at their front bumpers, which kept him relatively out of sight from the ramp the man had disappeared down.
Halfway to the cement holes where the sun shone through, the man popped back out.
“Hey!” he shouted.
Darwin ran. He had no way to explain his presence because he’d discarded the visitor pass. Talking to the man and verifying who he was would take time and mean another hour or two in the FBI building, which was something Darwin didn’t want.
He got to the end of the lot, ran between two parked cars and hopped up onto the three-foot cement wall. The drop down to the grass was about eight feet. Beside the grass was a sidewalk and beyond that, the access road to the parking garage. The street twenty yards away bustled with activity. Getting to the street was all he needed to do. He could easily lose the guy in the crowd out there.
He looked back and saw the man six cars behind him and advancing fast.
In another life, I wouldn’t even be running from a federal agent.
He felt a certain rush from being chased and having to think his way out of the situation.
I could get used to this shit.
Darwin swung his legs over the edge. A green electrical box sat in the center of the grass. He pushed off the wall, aimed for the box. When he hit it, he bent at the knees and let the forward momentum roll him off the top of the green box and onto the grass where he tucked and rolled. He got to his feet and looked up. The man had gotten to the edge and stared at Darwin.
“Freeze. Don’t move. I’m coming down there. Stay where you are.”
Darwin had to start playing the role of bad guy, even if he didn’t know what that role was. He lifted his middle finger and backed away.
“Fuck you,” he said.
Then he turned and ran for the street. He looked back once more, but his pursuer had disappeared.
At the street, he had to stop to let a crowd of people go by on the sidewalk. It was a busy downtown street. He wouldn’t be able to tell if someone was watching him or not. He had no idea how to make contact with Arkady to get the sit-down over with. When they did finally meet, he would tell him that he had had a score to settle with Fuccini. Gambino brought on his own fate by coming after Darwin. If he would’ve left well enough alone, he’d still be alive today.
If the Red Mafia were as smart as Mike said they were, Darwin didn’t feel he’d have a problem getting through to Arkady without having to play chess.
Darwin stepped out and walked along the sidewalk with the flow of pedestrians.
I’m in over my head. What am I doing? I should be at home with my wife, cooking dinner and wondering what movie to watch tonight, not running from federal agents and waiting for Russian hit men to come after me. This is so fucked.
He decided to catch a cab and head back to his hotel
. He would pack and get ready to meet with Rosina and together they would leave Florida and head to Mexico.
Fuck it, I’m out of here. This is too crazy.
It would be better to just disappear. The Red Mafia couldn’t find anybody they wanted just because they were powerful and dangerous. As long as he hid Rosina and himself well, they would never see Darwin again. Maybe after a while the interest in Darwin would wane.
He stepped out to the sidewalk and raised his hand to hail a cab. A checkered cab pulled out of traffic and came up to him, the passenger window down.
“Where you need to go?” the cab driver asked.
“The Howard Johnson’s out by the airport.”
“Hop in.”
He opened the backdoor and slipped in the backseat just as the door on the other side opened.
“Cab’s taken,” Darwin shouted at the new passenger.
A man on the sidewalk broke from the crowd and stepped up to the door on Darwin’s side, preventing him from opening it as the stranger sat down in the backseat beside him. The stranger was small and thin and wore a hoodie that covered his face.
The cab driver looked in the mirror. “Everything okay back there?”
The stranger produced a handgun from his pocket and tapped the driver’s shoulder with it. “Drive the fucking car.”
Darwin tried the door, but it remained blocked. He leaned away in his seat as if moving deeper into the corner could get him farther from the stranger. He caught the hard accent when the man spoke English.
The cab driver pulled away from the curb and joined the traffic heading south.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
“Just drive. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
The man pulled the hoodie back. His head was clean shaven with tattoos on his scalp. He had a deep scar on his neck and two silver front teeth when he smiled at Darwin.
“At last, we finally meet,” the man said.
All Darwin could think about was the weapon. “I’m so glad you brought a gun with you and not a knife.”
The stranger frowned.
“I wondered how long it would take for you to show yourself, Arkady,” Darwin continued. “Do you like what I have done for you so far? Now that I’ve got your attention, how can I be of service to you?”
Chapter 18
“Well, looks like we fucked up,” Carson said.
“Not really.” Mike shook his head.
“How do you figure? The guy has no surveillance, he has no wire, no formal training, nothing. And we let him go. He’ll get killed out there.”
“He’s made it this far.”
“Mike, our job was to scare him. We were supposed to bring him up to speed on the people looking for him. Tell him how dangerous these people are and then offer him a sweet deal.”
“You can see that wouldn’t have worked with Darwin,” Victor interjected. “He does things his way. He reminds me of the Lone Ranger or Charles Bronson.”
Mike and Victor exchanged a smile.
“We just killed him,” Carson said. “If the Reds pick him up, he’s done for and you guys are giggling like schoolgirls.” Carson got up and walked over to the window. “Just over a week ago I would’ve put a bullet in his head myself, but I saw what he did at Gambino’s place that night. I saw the dirt all over him from being buried alive. I saw what he did with a fucking German tank. What that man did to get to his wife … I don’t know many men in the Bureau who could do better. I was wrong about him. My gut is almost never wrong. At least not that wrong.” Carson turned to the men still seated on the couch. “He deserves better. We are the authorities and yet we allowed a citizen in serious danger to leave this office. Sure we had a deal—get us inside information so we can make busts and then we’ll protect you—I can see why he wouldn’t take that. We couldn’t protect him before.” He pulled out his chair and sat hard. “We’re selfish. Use common people in the name of justice. How cruel.”
Mike stood and walked to the door. “If it’s any consolation, Darwin has done the right thing here.”
“How’s that? Tell me.”
“Walking out of this office and refusing to work with us may save his life. If the Reds ever found out he struck a deal we wouldn’t find him in the river with cement weights on his feet. We’d find body parts in numerous states. And it wouldn’t end there. They would do the same to Rosina and her parents and then maybe the Kostas family would find peace. The best thing he could do was leave here naked. They can break anyone. They’d break our Canadian boy.”
“Do we have any leads on where Arkady is?”
“None.”
“Do we have anything on where the Russians frequent? Anything at all?”
“They don’t come around Jacksonville. If you want to find the people in the Russian Mafia who are interested in Darwin, you have to go to Toronto. Or better yet …”
“What? Or better yet, what?”
“Go sit with Rosina and Greg. The Reds will show up there soon enough.”
“Mike, this is fucked,” Carson said. “Do you know how fucked this is?”
Mike stepped out and closed the door without responding. Victor collected his manilla folders and the newspaper off the floor and stood.
“Do you know where Greg is keeping Rosina?” Victor asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“You want my opinion?”
Carson nodded.
“Find Darwin and get him and his wife out of the States. Situation’s too hot. It’ll cool. The feuding families will duke it out. Territory will be established and Darwin’s fight with the Cosa Nostra will become legend. Darwin gets older, grows a beard, assumes a new name. Everything’s back to normal. We go after the bad guys and protect the good guys, like it should be.”
“I like that. I really do, but this isn’t a perfect world. We had to tell Darwin about the Russians’ interest in him. The director wanted to offer Darwin a deal. Wouldn’t you after Darwin’s track record? On the outside, the guy sounds like a regular fucking John Rambo. And that is where we failed him.”
Victor nodded, walked to the door and left quietly.
Carson punched his desktop.
“Fuck!”
Chapter 19
“What did you mean that you were happy I brought a gun and not a knife?”
The taxi drove through the city. Darwin had settled back in his seat, his mind racing to make sure he said the right things. The Russian had spoken in quiet tones to the driver at least twice.
“I hate knives. Anything sharp or pointy pisses me off. I can’t be threatened with knives. I use plastic utensils when eating at a restaurant. But guns, I don’t mind.”
“You have meddled where you shouldn’t have,” Arkady said. “But I like that. Tell me, why did you do it?”
Darwin looked out the window. They were driving over a bridge. Airplanes flew overhead. They were near the airport. The cab driver looked back a few times, but did what he was told and continued to drive without another word.
“I did it to survive.” He looked at Arkady but couldn’t meet his eyes for more than a second. They were dark pits, orbs of violence. He wondered what the man had seen and done in his life to be where he was. “I did it because they pissed me off. But most of all, I did it for you.”
“How did you know that was what I would want?”
“I didn’t. After I killed Fuccini, I found that I enjoyed it,” he lied. “I waited. I knew someone else would come. Then Gambino sent his men and now Gambino is dead and here we are. If a man makes himself a worm, he must not complain when he is trodden on.”
“Immanuel Kant.”
Darwin nodded. “No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.”
“Aristotle. I’m impressed.”
“I don’t play chess,” Darwin said. Arkady’s eyebrows raised. Darwin could detect the edge of a smile. “I play checkers. When someone gets in my way, I jump the fucker. Piece removed. Game over. Checkers is about b
ecoming the king, not acquiring the other’s king. Use the walls to keep your men safe. Never back into a corner unless there are two spots. It’s all black and white. There’s something to think about in that.”
Arkady leaned away and tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Pull into terminal two. You can let us out there.”