The Survivor

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “Yeah,” Nate said, “but do I act like a friend of Mr. Shevchenko’s?”

  “You act like crazy person.”

  Nate pushed into the knife a bit more, feeling the pressure against his Adam’s apple. “Do you want to step aside, or do you want me to wake up Pavlo Shevchenko and ask him to handle this matter himself?”

  The doorman withdrew the knife carefully and put it away. “She is in VIP booth on balcony.” His bare skull glistened. “I’m sorry, bro. We do not always know Mr. Shevchenko’s men—”

  Nate moved past him, and the tinted door flew open as he neared, the backup bouncer nodding deferentially. The noise hit Nate like a truck, the strobe lights making him doubt his balance up the stairs. Despite the smoking ban, the air reeked of cigarettes. As he reached the landing, a girl with glassy eyes and a latex dress swiveled, lifting a maraschino cherry from an appletini and sucking it, twirling the stem languidly in his direction.

  With its cabana-like drapery, cushioned benches, and rock-star view of the undulating dance floor, the VIP booth was clear enough. Boy-men clustered at the edge, bouncing, pumping fists in the air, and lifting their cell phones to record a scene blocked from Nate’s vantage. Making his way over, he saw the cause of the commotion—a blonde and a brunette, so skinny they seemed almost elongated, making out with each other as the onlookers whooped and filmed. The girls were really putting on a show, bumping and grinding, tongues flashing into view, long red nails running along endless stretches of stockinged thigh.

  Nate pushed past the guys, through an effluvium of spicy cologne. “Anastasia Shevchenko?”

  The blonde lifted her head dreamily. “It’s Nastya. What do you want?”

  The guys with their cell phones bristled at the disruption, their complaints growing aggressive. Nate turned into them. “Get the fuck out of here. Go. Go.”

  They took note of his stitched forehead and the coaster-size bloodstain on his shirt and dissipated into the crowd. The brunette slid out of the booth, plucking at her miniskirt, and Nastya turned her glazed focus to Nate. Her sapphire eyes blazed, accenting perfect features. Her appearance was so striking it seemed almost fake.

  She straightened her too-tight dress, cinched at her tiny waist with a throwback eighties studded belt. Her hands fumbled at a cobalt pack of Gauloises, and she lit up lazily. “Way to ruin the party.”

  Nate slid into a seat opposite her. Took a breath to even himself out. “I know you were driving that car,” he said. “I know you killed that family.”

  “Are you another relative?” she said, unfazed. “’Cuz I told you I can’t talk about all that. I know you need to blame someone, but it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.”

  She jerked an inhale, the orange flare casting a glow across the left side of her face and illuminating for an instant the raised scar tissue laid like a twig across her porcelain cheek. The damage was all the more evident given her flawless skin. Nate reached across, took her chin, and turned her head, exposing the seam back by her ear. “Yeah? Then what’s that?”

  She wrenched away, her first show of emotion. “I hit no one. I was at the club all night. My car was stolen from the valet here. I was struck in the face with a bottle during a fight on the dance floor.” Her voice had turned stiff, almost robotic.

  “We both know that’s not true.”

  “I hit no one! I was at the club all night. My car was stolen from the valet here. I was struck in the face with a bottle during a fight on the dance floor.” She punched the words, aiming them like bullets across the table at Nate, but he had dealt with his own teenage daughter enough to see right through the shell of fury. He could sense the denial in her face, behind her eyes.

  “No,” Nate said.

  “I hit no one.” Her voice trembled. “I— I was at…” The long cigarette held an inch-long tube of ash that defied physics, refusing to fall.

  “Look at you,” Nate said. “Can’t keep your face straight here. Think what they’ll do to you in court.”

  She sucked an inhale, fingers trembling around the cigarette.

  “You fucked up horribly,” he continued. “And it cost people their lives. I can promise you: You’ll live with that the rest of your life. But I can also promise you: You can move on from this. You can figure out how to live again.”

  A tear clung to her mascara-dense lashes. “How do you know?”

  “Because I know. But it’s not over. Your father, he’s ordered the killing of everyone who witnessed you in the Jaguar that night.”

  To gauge her reaction, he watched her closely, but he needn’t have. Her eyes widened with surprise; she jerked in a half breath and then another, as if choking. “It’s not true.”

  “It is. The first witness, Patrice McKenna, was already stabbed to death. He’s trying to find the names of the other witnesses.”

  “There’s no way. It can’t be true.”

  “He is willing to murder more people to protect you. I have a daughter your age.” Just saying the words made his chest burn, brought the whole flammable scenario roaring back to life. He fought away emotion, leveled out his voice. “And if your father isn’t stopped, he’s gonna kill her. In front of me.”

  Her lips parted to suck in another clump of air.

  “He holds me responsible,” Nate said. “He holds the witnesses responsible. He will do anything. To protect you. Which means you’re the only one who can stop it. Talk to him. Get him to tell you what he’s done.”

  Her radiant skin suddenly looked sallow. “He wouldn’t do something like that. What you said. He just wouldn’t.”

  “Wouldn’t he?”

  She looked anywhere but at him.

  “If the lives of those people, my daughter, matter to you, get your father to talk to you. And take what he tells you to the cops. They’ll make it stop. If you do this, they’ll probably be able to keep you out of prison—”

  “Everyone is so concerned about prison, prison, prison. I don’t care about going to prison.”

  “You’re looking at a life sentence,” Nate said.

  The dance beat throbbed like something living, rumbling the booth, the floor, the cushion in the small of Nate’s back. The ash fell, scattering across Nastya’s knuckles. She took no note.

  “Your daughter,” she said. “Does she have a boyfriend?”

  “If you can call him that.”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “No.”

  “Did you have someone threaten him? Bolt cutter around his knuckle. Like this?” She encircled one delicate forefinger with another.

  Nate felt the shift in conversation as something physical, a rise in the temperature around the booth. “No,” he said.

  “It works well,” Nastya said. She studied him a touch drunkenly, her head lolling. “And this daughter, she has friends? Real friends? Who like her for who she is, not just for”—she spread her arms, indicating the bright drinks, the canvas drapes, the VIP view—“this.”

  Nate nodded.

  Her gaze pinned him to the bench. “A mother?”

  “Yes,” he said. “She has a mother.”

  “And this mother takes her to lunch. They talk. She gives her advice.”

  Nate said nothing. The music thumped deadeningly.

  “He is the only thing I have ever had,” Nastya said. “You tell me I’m looking at a life sentence? I’m already serving one.”

  She blinked hard, stabbed her cigarette into the ashtray, and slid from the booth. By the time Nate rose, she’d vanished into the crowd.

  Chapter 44

  Bloody, crusted, and stitched up like an American baseball, Yuri’s face resembled a Halloween mask. The cool basement gym smelled of the blue rubber mats on which Yuri, on better days, practiced Olympic lifts. The doctor checked his circulation in various places, poking his capped pen at the swollen flesh, then stepped away from the bench press he’d been using as an examination table. Pavlo handed him an envelope, which disappeared into the white coat.


  The doctor said in Ukrainian, “I will return in the morning.”

  He exited.

  Pavlo flexed his hands and stared down at his inked knuckles—crosses and diamonds, asterisks and bars. How many times had a needle stabbed his flesh while he’d gazed up at a prison ceiling? He’d gathered the pain prick by prick, swallowed it whole, stored it for future use.

  Across the space, Dima and Valerik sat on the mats, smoking and playing their cards. Misha did push-ups, one after another, his lithe body plank-straight. He was shirtless, a Fila terry headband holding his swept-to-the-side blond hair at bay.

  Dima glanced at Yuri’s face. “Does it hurt?”

  Yuri stood with a grumble. “No.”

  Contemplating Nate Overbay’s escape, Pavlo ground his teeth. “He has the list still. Now we must chase. You are to call in more favors. I don’t care how much you spend. Every flight, border, bus station. Understand?”

  Yuri nodded. “We are.”

  “More,” Pavlo said.

  “He failed you,” Misha offered. Not the least bit winded, he continued with his push-ups. “He was beaten by a dog.”

  “You did not see this dog,” Yuri said. He walked over to Misha and glowered down. “Perhaps you think you could do better than me.”

  Misha did a few more push-ups, bouncing up to clap his hands between reps, then rose to confront Yuri. “That is why I am here. To do better than you.” His shell of swoop-around hair remained perfect, unruffled from the exercise.

  “No,” Pavlo said. “Not yet. Let Yuri search through our channels. There are ways to locate someone here, many ways. Not just force.”

  “And if you don’t find him?” Misha asked.

  “We will find him,” Yuri said.

  “And if not in time for Anastasia’s trial?”

  “If I must, I will send an army of men with semiautomatics into DA’s office a week before that trial,” Pavlo said.

  “This,” Misha said, “sounds like a better plan.”

  He walked out to the balcony, knocking Yuri’s shoulder. Though Yuri outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds, the bigger man did nothing. Misha stretched his muscles in the darkness, steam rising from his shoulders.

  Pavlo heard the front door open upstairs, and a jangle of keys struck the wooden table. “Papa? Papa!”

  He hurried up to the main floor and immediately knew something was wrong. Nastya stood in the open doorway, makeup smeared down her cheeks. Behind her the Town Car glided silently away.

  “Come in from the cold,” he said.

  Her chest was heaving, her ribs faint outlines beneath her dress. “Is it true?”

  “Is what?”

  “That you’re killing them. The people who saw me in the Jag.” She held out her phone with a news story up on the little screen.

  He caught a flash of the name—Patrice McKenna—and his blood ceased moving for an instant, his insides turning to concrete. “Who told you this?”

  “Is it true?”

  He tugged her arm gently, forcing her a half step into the foyer, then closed the front door. “Do not raise your voice to me.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t care! Answer me. Are you doing this? Are you killing them?”

  He took her slender hand and led her into the sitting room, where he sat beside her on the recamier with its ridiculous scrolled cherry-veneer arms. The admission froze in his throat. He backed up, came in from a different angle. “You will not survive in prison,” he said.

  She seemed to break, as if someone had snipped the cords that held her upright. She sagged, boneless, her mouth spreading to emit a gut-deep moan.

  “Many years, many times, I was in prison,” he said. “I am of prison. Not my daughter. I would kill the world before I let my daughter go into a box.”

  She clutched at him. “That’s not your choice.”

  He flung her back. “It is all my choice. Everything!” Spittle flew from his lips. “For you I betrayed who I was. I betrayed my code. In prison I remained unbroken, but for you—for you—I went against my own skin.” He slapped a hand to his wrist, shoving up his sleeve, revealing the blue ink of the Zone. “Not for you to live a life behind bars like me. Like your dedushka in Babi Yar, starving and weak, made to carry a sack of wet salt across the yard and back. Across and back. A mockery of existence. A celebration of horror. You cannot understand. You will not live as we have lived. Every relative reaching back. All of us, filthy and marked. But not you.”

  “I am filthy,” she sobbed. “I am marked.”

  “No. You are pure.” Vehemence seethed in his words. “If I have to destroy the world, you will not go. I will bring war.”

  “I have no say,” she wept, a hoarse whisper. “I have no choice. Stop, Papa.” She’d switched to Ukrainian, something about his native tongue bringing the words home right to the pit of him, lifting the hairs on his arms. “For me.”

  “It is all for you.”

  “Please, Papa. Please.” Pleading quietly, she pawed at him in desperation, pressing her palms to his chest. “Stop, Papa. Please.”

  “Stop this!” he roared. “Do not question me. I gave you life. I took you from the street. You breathe because of me.”

  She froze against the cushion, a startled animal. Not a sound. Not even the soft rasp of her crying. He was trembling, his powerful hands clenched. He loosened a fist, reached for her. At his touch she softened. Drew a shuddering breath. And then another.

  He stroked her hair. She shifted so she was lying across his lap, the tension slackening in her neck.

  “You will listen to me,” he said gently.

  She settled into him, her muscles surrendering. “Okay.”

  “It will be all right.”

  “Okay.”

  “I will take care of you.”

  “Okay.”

  “You will see.”

  She rustled a bit and then rose. Her face had gone flat, expressionless. “I’m tired. I need to go to bed. I need to forget all about this.”

  “Good. Forget all about this.”

  She paused before him. Holding his face, she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “I know you love me, Papa.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She stepped out of her high heels, leaving them empty on the pile carpet before her father, and floated into her room on stockinged feet. She put her back to the closed door and stared out her picture window at the magnificent view. Hollywood, the pulse of the universe. All those dreams and hopes bartered or bought for cents on the dollar, ground up and fed into the machine, fuel to keep the lights burning. People the world over drawn like moths to this strip of incandescence, yearning for a place, a home, an identity.

  Her razor blade was out of her Coach wallet, in her hand, pressed to the top of her thigh, just shy of breaking the skin. She’d made no conscious choice, hadn’t even known what her hand was up to while she’d taken in the view. She applied a bit more pressure, nylon and flesh yielding, freeing a quick endorphin rush. What a relief to feel something. To cut through the edge of herself, to reclaim her body as her own. Eyes watering, she bit her lip, an expression of ecstasy. Then she let the blade fall from her hand. She breathed, felt the thin tributary snake down the inside of her knee.

  With effort she peeled herself off the door. She cleaned herself up, tissue and styptic pencil, a midsize Band-Aid. The care and healing were as much a part of the ritual as the cutting itself. She had promised her father she’d keep her body unmarred, and she would do so, even now, to the best of her ability.

  Using her brightest pink lipstick, she wrote across the window, NO MORE. Then she drew her heavy shades across the brightness, blotting it out. Beneath her mattress she retrieved a hidden trove of papers, artifacts of her failed search for her mother. Genealogy trees with broken branches, chat-room threads that knit into nothing, leads that went nowhere—she let all the dead ends spill across her puffy duvet.

  Her sturdy desk chair fought the carpet as she shoved i
t to the middle of the room. Swaying, she tilted her head, letting her long hair brush her arm. With a distant smile, she ran her knuckles up her swanlike neck, taking comfort in the smoothness of her skin. Her fingertips rose to the scar tissue, traced its faint ridges. She unbuckled her thin studded belt and snapped it once.

  Then she stepped up onto the chair and tested the sturdiness of her ceiling fan.

  Chapter 45

  When Nate pulled off his T-shirt, grimacing, Janie regarded the fresh slice in his shoulder with disapproval. “Because between the ALS, the letter opener stab, and the butterfly stitches in your forehead, you didn’t have enough problems.”

  “Price of entry,” Nate said. “It was an exclusive club.”

  Aside from the reading lamp angled to spotlight the cut, the Silver Lake house was dark. With the heat turned off and the abundance of windows, the floor in the great room turned frigid. Janie stayed bundled up in a sweater. Nate sat in a leather armchair, Cielle and Jason dozing on separate couches in front of the TV. Nate had returned a few hours ago and shot off a text to Abara, updating him on his conversation with Nastya at the club. No response yet.

  Though the cut had bled nicely, it was superficial. Janie patched it up with a few more butterfly stitches, Nate squinting at her through the glare.

  She finished and said, “How’re the symptoms?”

  He rolled his head back, looked up at the dark ceiling. “Getting worse.”

  “Joints? Muscles?”

  “Yeah. And I’m … I don’t know, fatigued. Especially at night. Dizzy. Nauseated at intervals. Hands and wrists are bad, as you know. The ankle goes in and out.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Regular laugh riot.”

  She regarded him, again with that bittersweet smile. “Can I get you something to eat, Husband?”

  The old game. “No thanks, Wife.” He matched her grin, though the exchange made his heart ache a little, too. “Being on the lam always makes me lose my appetite.”

  She set a hand on his cheek. “Maybe we should go to Paris. That honeymoon we never took.”

  “Dunno. I’m falling apart here. Not the best guy to be on the run with.”