“Uh huh.” She thought this had been her plan, though she couldn’t be certain anymore. Vaguely she remembered bringing an untraceable .45 and a silencer, which she’d hoped Clarissa would use on Gura later tonight. Something like that.
“Dancing on my strings, poppet,” he said again.
The two younger men said little. One was stocky with slicked-back dark hair, the other tall and blond. The shorter one was called Gregor, but she thought of him as Butch. No particular reason. He just looked like a Butch. The blond was Sundance.
Sundance sat beside her while she lay on the sofa. He checked the bandages. She wondered why he cared, why it mattered if she bled or not. She stared up at him, seeing the black tattoo on his neck, and a thin spot in his close-cropped hair over a scar on his scalp. Then his hand closed over her breast in a hard squeeze, and his other hand slid down her jeans, between her thighs, probing with his fingers. It wasn’t sexual, somehow. He was like a butcher testing the quality of a cut of beef. Gura called him away.
Clarissa must have been carried off in the sack, but Bonnie had no memory of seeing that. She did remember Gura slowing the boat to a crawl, and shouts from Butch and Sundance on deck, and a soft splash as the sack and its contents went overboard.
Bonnie was on the floor by then. Staring across the yards of carpet, she saw a purse, probably Clarissa’s purse, lying under a table, forgotten. She seemed to recall seeing her own handbag, with the gun in it, stowed in a cabinet. She really ought to get her bag. With the gun she could kill Gura and the others and save herself. But she couldn’t get it. She couldn’t even stand up.
She wondered if they had drugged Clarissa like this before they shot her. Or had they just clubbed her unconscious or fed her an overdose of heroin or ...?
Didn’t matter. Dead was dead, regardless of how you got there.
Gura lit a cigarette. She was on the sofa, and he was retrieving his scarf.
“It was cleverly done, nyet?” Gura said. “I was almost sure you were the one we wanted. But not one hundred percent. I had to talk to you, watch your face. You are pretty good at keeping secrets. But not from me. I know you killed Lazzaro. I saw it in your eyes.”
He exhaled smoke.
“What I needed was for you to go to an isolated location. Someplace where you could be taken alive. Streinikov was very clear on that point. You must be alive. So I sent you here, to Streinikov’s own boat, the Dragon’s Mouth. It is a kind of orchid,” he added.
She blinked. “What is?”
“The Dragon’s Mouth. A species of the plant. He grows them in his greenhouse. All kinds of orchids. Very beautiful. You will see. It is where we will take you. Bad things happen there.”
“Not ... scared.”
He only smiled at that.
There were other moments. Gura shining a penlight into her eyes. Gura on his cell phone, speaking Russian. Gura at the wheel, and the lights of New York City in the starboard windows. The curtains were open now, the cabin lights dimmed.
The boat hit rough chop. Her stomach clenched, and she coughed up a yellow string of puke. They all started yelling in Russian, and the blond guy slapped her face. They were worried about the mess she’d made, the stain on the carpet. She understood about the bandages then. They didn’t want her bleeding because it was the boss’s boat.
She was thirsty. Thirsty and cold at times, shivering. What the fuck had they done to her? She couldn’t even recall. She wanted so badly to be strong and focused, but instead she was a limp rag on the floor. They hadn’t bothered to tie her hands. She posed no threat.
And she’d lost her hat. The stylish knit beret had come off in the struggle. She didn’t know where it had gone. This bothered her as much as anything. She always felt naked without a hat.
The boat passed under the tall bridge between Miramar and Swansea. That was when they were leaving the Crab River Inlet, before they hit the open sea, before Clarissa was dumped in the ocean like so much waste.
“There never was any Clarissa,” Gura said. He had finished his cigarette, or maybe he hadn’t started it yet. “This girl, she was a dancer in Jersey City.” He chuckled. “Or so she called herself. You know what she really was.”
“Party girl,” Bonnie murmured. “A ho-fessional.”
“Precisely.”
She remembered the girl’s hardness, wariness. The kind of girl who was used to dealing with shady characters and rough characters. A girl who had to look out for herself.
“I hired her to play the role,” Gura went on. “I had that Facebook page created, with her photos on it. It was a bad job—bad enough that even an amateur like you could see through it. Her entire—what is your word?—persona was invented. Today she checked in at the hotel and had lunch with me. We staged a scene to justify her early departure from the hotel. She never did go back to the room. She came here, to this boat, to join my associates. They got her high—she was an addict, like all those of her kind—and then they put down towels from the hotel, and they shot her. Unlike you, poppet, she did not struggle.”
“What ... was her real name?”
“I don’t remember. Who gives a damn?”
“Why ... kill her?”
Gura shrugged. “Why not? She had done her job. It is best to leave no loose ends. She goes into the sea. You would join her if you did not have an appointment with Streinikov.”
“Streinikov lives on the Hudson River,” Bonnie recited in a monotone, “near Palisades Interstate Park.” She remembered this from the e-book she’d read, though she wasn’t sure why she felt the need to say it aloud.
“This is true, poppet.” Gura was amused. “We return his boat to him. Undamaged—he was very clear on this point. Hence, you see, the extra towels I asked our Clarissa to order. Poor girl had no idea how they would be used.”
“Big joke to you,” Bonnie said. “Big fucking joke.”
“Da, big joke. I installed the GPS tracker in the spare belt myself. I placed the syringe and vial in the lining also. The very syringe Gregor used on you. It was all play-acting and puppetry, all a joke.”
“Fuck you,” she whispered, because she could think of no better comeback.
“Nyet, Bonnie Parker.” His smile widened into a giant leer made of crooked teeth, a smile that swallowed the world. “It is not me who is fucked.”
21
Her head was beginning to clear by the time the Dragon’s Mouth pulled alongside Streinikov’s private dock. Time had resumed its normal flow, and her world was no longer whitewashed in a misty sheen. Her tongue still felt like cotton, though, and forming words was hard. The sounds around her echoed, and gravity seemed strangely unpredictable.
Butch dragged her to her feet and pushed her out through the open door at the stern. The cold air, like a slap in the face, revived her a little more.
Sundance assisted her none too gently down the gangway onto the dock. Unlike the pier in the marina, this one floated, riding the choppy water, the separate parts chafing noisily as they lurched and listed under her feet. A wet wind whistled off the river.
Opposite Streinikov’s yacht, an inflatable tender with an outboard motor bobbed like a cork. Bonnie looked at it a little too long and started feeling seasick. She bent over and retched. Sundance grabbed her arm and yanked her forward, cursing in Russian.
Somehow she made it to the far end of the pier and terra firma—though no terra was very firma for her at the moment. A staircase ascended a steep hill toward the lights of an estate. The climb looked impossibly hard.
“Don’t s’pose you creeps could just kill me now?” she muttered hopefully.
A shove in the back was her answer.
She followed Gura and Butch up the stairs, with Sundance taking up the rear. At least they hadn’t cuffed her. She could hold on to both railings and pull herself up one step at a time.
Gazing past the pair in front of her, she saw a slim silhouetted figure waiting by the gate at the top of the stairs. Had to be the man himself, t
he one who was throwing this party.
Her progress was too slow for the blond perv at her back. “Faster,” he said with another poke at her spine. “Move your ass.”
Man, would she ever like to pop that guy.
The gate swung open as she approached the summit, and she came face to face with Anton Streinikov. A tall man, impeccably dressed in a tailored suit and black necktie, with the long elegant fingers of a pianist.
“Alyo, Miss Parker. What a pleasure to meet you.”
“Bite me.”
He was coatless. So was she, but not by choice. They’d left her coat on the cruiser. She was shivering, but Streinikov didn’t seem to feel the chill. Cold-blooded bastard.
Sundance pushed her again. She started walking, Streinikov at her side. They tramped along a winding path bordered by leafless trees. Flashes of the New York skyline broke through gaps in the foliage.
“Well done, Pavel,” Streinikov was saying. “I knew I could rely on my domovyk.”
“Yeah, he’s a good doggie,” Bonnie murmured. “Doggie wanna bone?”
“How much did you give her?” Streinikov asked Gura.
“Two capsules in solution. Fifty milligrams in all.”
But she hadn’t taken the full hit. The needle had popped free, and some of the solution had sprayed her arm.
“That’s a high dosage,” Streinikov said. “I wanted her alert.”
“She was making a fuss. We had to keep her quiet. Anyway, she will be alert enough once she is on the bench.”
“I hope so.”
On the bench. That didn’t sound so good.
Then she remembered something about Streinikov. Something funny.
“You lost your luggage.” She laughed.
Streinikov glanced at her. “Luggage?”
She was giggling helplessly. “Got your grapes peeled. Extra room in your skivvies ...”
“Ah. Indeed, the stories are true. I am a castrato.” He said it with peculiar pride. “I am still a man, for all that—though perhaps not quite so mannish as a hoyden like you.”
She had no idea what a hoyden was, but she got the gist. “Hey, bud ... I’m all woman.”
“Not for long.”
She didn’t know what he meant by that.
The path took another turn, and the greenhouse came into view, aglow from within. Flowers and greenery crowded the transparent walls and made her think of summer.
No more summers for her. No more nights with Brad. No more anything except a few desperate hours of pain.
It got real for her then, real enough to make her lift her head and scream.
“Help me, I’ve been kidnapped, I’m a prisoner—”
Butch socked her in the gut. She went down on one knee, gasping. The world reeled around her. Like a carousel, she thought stupidly. But then ... where were the horses?
“You waste your breath, Miss Parker.” Streinikov leaned over her. “We’re alone. To the north and west lie the woods. East, the river. South, there’s a house, but it is empty now. The owners are in St. John at this time of year. There is no one around. No neighbors to hear you yell.” He grabbed her by the hair, pulling her head back. “Vrubatsa?”
She choked out a reply. “Yeah, I get it, I get it.”
“Good.” He jerked her to a standing position. “No more nonsense, please.”
His arm wound around her waist. He strode toward the greenhouse, carrying her with him, her feet barely touching the ground.
“Dickless ... asshole ...” she whispered.
“Not at all. I retain that particular piece of equipment. Shall I prove it to you?”
“Take your word for it.”
“Just as well. I’d find no pleasure in using your body in that way.”
“Not into girls?”
“I’m concerned only with business matters. You cost me money, Miss Parker.”
“How?”
“You killed Frank Lazzaro. He ran, as you may recall, an import-export concern. He and I were in the final stages of negotiating an agreement whereby my shipments would use his fleet of container ships. The arrangement would have been mutually profitable. His death scotched the deal. It took me years to gain Lazzaro’s trust. Now I must begin anew.”
“Told Gura ... I didn’t kill Lazzaro.”
“He didn’t believe you. Neither do I.”
He opened the greenhouse door and pushed her inside. She fell sprawling on a strip of pavers bordered by gravel. The others stepped past her. Streinikov stared down.
“There she is—my Firebird. She raided my golden orchard. Now she is in a cage of glass. Soon to be—”
“Stuffed and mounted,” Bonnie finished for him. She coughed up a chuckle. “But not in a good way ...”
Streinikov turned to Butch, pointing to a bench that had been dragged into the aisle in the middle of the greenhouse. “Get it ready.”
Butch busied himself clearing the potted plants from the surface. The bench was for her. She understood that much.
She looked dazedly around her. Glass walls framed an opaque darkness. Double rows of wooden benches crowded with terra-cotta pots bracketed the central aisle. Close to her stood a TV monitor where camera coverage of Streinikov’s residence was displayed in a cycling tiled array. A thick orange extension cord drooped from the back of the monitor, snaking under the nearest bench toward the side wall.
The whole place was dense with potted flowers and luxuriant tropical plants the size of shrubbery. There were more plants suspended from the ceiling. It was like the frigging Rainforest Cafe in here.
From a bench next to the monitor—a potting bench, she thought it was called—Sundance picked up a pair of pruning shears and clicked the big blades near Bonnie’s face. Snip. Snip.
“Cool it, jerkoff.” She waved him away with a languid hand. “Already got my trim for the day.”
The blond perv smiled. “That’s what you think.”
He clicked the blades again, brushing her breast. She flinched.
“Hvatit!” Streinikov barked. “I want her in good condition when we start.”
When we start ... She didn’t want them to start. She roused herself to a last effort.
“You’re makin’ a mistake,” she told Streinikov. “I told some cops about you. I go missing ... you’re suspect numero uno.”
“Bullshit,” Gura said. “She told no one.”
“Of course she didn’t.” Streinikov shrugged. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The authorities cannot touch me.”
Bonnie blew a halfhearted raspberry. “What makes you so special?”
“I have in my possession incriminating documents on most persons of importance in this state. The police know well enough to let me be.”
“How ’bout the other Russkie big shots? They may not like it. You know ... takin’ out a civilian.”
“You’re hardly a civilian, Miss Parker. You’re a combatant on the field of battle. And if my rivals could have brought me down, they’d have done it long ago. Isn’t that right, Gura?”
The other man nodded. “Da.”
“I fear no one. I answer to no one. I am my own man. A lone wolf, as the saying goes.”
“Lone wolf ...” Her head drooped. She heard herself laughing again. “Who’s afraid of the big bad vor, the big bad vor ...?”
Streinikov knelt before her, cupping her face in his hands. “Listen to me. I want you to know what’s about to happen. Are you listening?”
“Big bad vor,” she mumbled.
He slapped her face.
“Listen.”
The slap brought her thoughts back into focus. She stared into Streinikov’s eyes. Eyes that shimmered, light gray, like falling sleet.
“Are you listening?” he said again.
“Yeah, yeah ... Don’t s’pose I could have a cigarette?”
“There is no smoking in the greenhouse. Though you make jokes and say foolish things, I know you’re not insensible to your predicament. You are sweating quite prof
usely.”
“It’s a goddamn hothouse.”
“The nighttime temperature is set to a temperate seventy degrees.”
“Ain’t the heat. It’s the humidity ...”
“Nyet. I think it is fear. Your brain works slowly, but it does work. Do you see that bench?”
She looked past him. The bench had been cleared off by now. Butch was securing straps to the corners, tying them into loops.
“That is our operating table. The grow lights will illuminate our work. The loops on the corners are for your ankles. Think of them as stirrups for a gynecological exam. First we will cut off your clothes. Then we will cut off other things.”
Her gaze settled on his face again. He was watching her intently.
“Did you know that castration is not exclusive to the male of the species? A woman, too, can be castrated. Desexed. All that’s required is the surgical excision of certain delicate body parts.”
She blinked at him. “Oh, come on. You gotta be friggin’ kidding me ...”
“Do you believe in hell, Miss Parker?”
“Nope.” She wasn’t really sure.
“I do. But I believe hell is in the mind. Hell is a state of being. You are in hell right now. Do you understand?”
She managed a lopsided smile. “Hoo boy. I think I’m in trouble ...” Her voice lilted upward on the last word.
He seized her by the shoulders. “Do you understand?”
“Sure, sure, Boris Badenov ... Say, did ya ever catch Moose and Squirrel?”
She giggled again.
He rose from his crouch and faced Gura. “You used too much sedative.”
“Pain will revive her. When she is on the bench—”
Streinikov said something in Russian. Gura answered defensively. Bonnie didn’t speak a word of Russian, but she got the gist. Streinikov was pissed off. He wanted her begging for mercy, and instead she was too fucked up to know what a pickle she was in.
That was the thing, though. She wasn’t quite as totally out of it as they all thought. Some of the knockout juice had gotten spilled, and the cold air and long walk had kick-started her brain. She was a long way from being a hundred percent, but she could function. She knew she could.
Bad to the Bone (Bonnie Parker, PI Book 3) Page 13