“Wait here.” I grabbed a map of Texas from the glove compartment.
“What are you planning to do? Direction him to death?”
I ignored her attempt at humor and hid the WD-40 in the folds of the map. Then I got out of our car, map in one hand, duct tape in the other.
I left the tape on the hood of the Crown Victoria as the driver’s door of the Malibu opened and the blond man got out. He strode toward me.
We met between the two vehicles.
It was pretty obvious he wasn’t a cop or a federal agent.
He wore a pair of baggy jeans and an untucked knit shirt emblazoned with an oversize logo of a polo player. His biceps were like hams, straining the material of his shirt. Tattoos covered his forearms and hands, religious figures and Cyrillic writing.
Anybody in law enforcement would recognize him for what he was—a Russian mobster, part of the ethnic group who had wrested control of most organized crime from the Italian mafia.
“Excuse me.” I smiled, tried to look harmless. “Do you know where Earl’s Family Restaurant is?”
“What you talking ’bout?” He had a thick Russian accent. “Who is Earl?”
“They’re supposed to have good enchiladas.” I paused. “Do you like Mexican food?”
He stared at me, no doubt trying to figure out why a guy who smelled like a cop was treating him like a restaurant app.
I took a quick look around. The street was empty. I let the map flutter away, and I sprayed him in the face with WD-40.
He screamed, pressed his hands to his eyes.
I kneed him in the crotch, slammed his head against the side of the Malibu.
He fell to the ground.
Before he could recover, I grabbed the duct tape and bound his feet and hands, slapped a strip across his mouth. Then I searched him.
In his hip pocket I found a wallet containing a New Jersey driver’s license in the name of Vasily Bazanov. A pay-as-you-go smartphone was in his front pocket. No guns or weapons, not even a penknife, meaning he’d flown in with a carry-on only and had not made the effort to procure weapons.
I tossed the wallet on the floor of the front seat but stuck the phone in my pocket. I grabbed the keys from the ignition, put those next to the phone. Then I wrestled him into the back of the Malibu, leaving him on the floorboard.
He blinked away WD-40 and glared at me with red, watery eyes as I shut the door. The front windows were open. He’d be OK for an hour or so. Hopefully.
Hannah stood by the Crown Victoria.
“I found one of your Russians,” I said. “Let’s see if we can scare up another one.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
We strode up the sidewalk to the entrance of the home.
On the stoop was a doormat adorned with a pair of ducks. Under the ducks were the words Welcome to the Stodghills.
The front door was ajar.
I stepped inside, Hannah right behind me.
The foyer was garish—white marble floors, green and pink flocked wallpaper, an alabaster statue of a wood nymph playing the flute. The air smelled like lemon furniture polish.
Hannah and I headed down the hallway toward the rear of the house.
A large kitchen and family room overlooked a pool.
This part of the home was decorated in early Paula Deen, lots of chintz and ceramic farm animals. The pool area continued the wood nymph theme with several marble statues of half-naked mythological figures cavorting about.
Two people were outside.
A man in a maroon tracksuit, kneeling by the water.
And a second guy who had his head under the water, courtesy of Maroon Tracksuit, who was pressing down on his neck.
I opened the back door and approached the two men.
Maroon Tracksuit watched me get closer, an unconcerned look on his face. He was in his forties, stocky like a wrestler. His head was shaved. A tattoo of an eagle with its talons extended adorned his neck. Under the eagle was Cyrillic lettering.
After a few seconds, he let go of the man whose head was underwater.
The second guy jerked up, gasping for air. He looked to be in his forties, too, but he wore different clothes, a pair of khakis and a white oxford cloth shirt.
Even though I already knew the answer, I asked anyway: “Which one of you is Stodghill?”
Maroon Tracksuit nodded toward the gasping man. Then he said, “Who are you?”
“My name is Arlo. And who might you be?”
“You can call me Boris.” His accent was as thick as that of the guy in the Malibu.
I looked at Hannah. “Another one. What are the odds?”
“It’s like John,” she said.
I turned my attention back to the Russian. “Before you drown Stodghill, could I talk to him for a minute?”
Boris sighed. He looked tired, like he’d had a long flight and all he wanted to do was take care of the business at hand and then go home. He pulled out a cell, punched in a number.
The phone in my pocket rang.
Boris quit looking tired. He looked confused. Then wary.
This was probably supposed to be a simple assignment, to deliver a message, hence his partner’s lack of weapons. Now, the situation appeared to be getting complicated.
I pulled the phone from my pocket but didn’t answer. “Vasily is unavailable to take a call at the moment.”
Stodghill curled into a fetal position.
Boris stood, curious but not fearful.
I tossed the phone into the pool.
Boris crossed his arms. “What you want, Mr. Arlo?”
I looked at Hannah. She said, “Are you from Brighton Beach?”
No answer.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “Which means you’re part of the Zharkov crew.”
Boris looked at me. “Why you let woman do your talking?”
I shrugged. “I’m secure in my masculinity. What can I say?”
“This is important meeting.” Boris nudged the banker with his foot. “You go away now, yes? Come back later.”
“Sorry, no can do.” I shook my head. “I need to talk to Stodghill, and I guess to you, too, about the Sky of Zion compound.”
A pronounced silence from both men.
Boris stared at me, eyes narrowing into slits. Stodghill quit groaning, a new fear in his eyes, one that didn’t have anything to do with getting drowned by a Russian thug.
“You look like politsiya.” Boris nudged the banker with his foot again. “Hey, Stodghill. Politsiya is here.”
Stodghill sat up. His face was pale, eyes wide with fear.
“I’m not a cop,” I said. “That means I don’t have to follow cop rules.”
“This is good.” The Russian nodded. “Politsiya bad for business.”
“I’m looking for some kids who ran away from the compound.” I described the two children. “Caleb and Mary, those’re their names.”
“These children, they are yours?” he asked.
“No. But I want to find them anyway.”
He frowned. “I not understand.”
“Let’s circle back to the children in a minute,” Hannah said. “Tell us about the scam.”
“Scam?” Boris said. “No scam. Business only. And business is private.”
“We know you’re running money through the local bank, using their network,” Hannah said. “And the money is connected to the Sky of Z—”
“No, no, no.” Stodghill’s face got paler, if that were possible. He looked at Boris, whispered, “They know about the network.”
“Shut up,” Boris said. “They know nothin
g.”
Stodghill groaned and crawled toward the house.
I shot Hannah a look. “Tell us how to get onto the compound.”
Boris grinned. “You have army?”
I didn’t answer.
“You need army for to go to compound,” Boris said. “Many guards there.”
The banker was halfway to the door, still on his hands and knees.
“What if I neutralize Silas?” I asked. “Will that make the guards easier to handle?”
Boris nodded. “You make Silas go away, you give Boris much happiness. Silas end business arrangement with Boris and make deal with competitors. That’s why Boris having meeting with Stodghill.”
We all looked toward the house. The banker had reached the door. He glanced at us and disappeared inside. I wondered why Boris wasn’t going after him but realized there was little danger. What was Stodghill going to do, call the police?
The Russians had been laundering money for the church. Money was flowing through Stodghill’s bank, illegal money, facilitated by Boris’s crew, heading to the Sky of Zion. Or maybe it was the other way around.
The direction didn’t really matter at this point. What did matter was that for whatever reason, Silas had switched vendors and Boris’s people were angry. Boris couldn’t get to Silas because he was at the compound. But he could lean on the banker.
That left one question: What was the money for?
“Tell me about the network,” I said.
“Boris tell you any more, he must kill you.”
Hannah took over. “They’re running a server farm.”
Boris wagged his finger at her. “Lady should be careful, talking so much.”
A server farm, essentially anything from a roomful to a small city’s worth of computers, made sense.
“The compound is a religious facility, protected by the First Amendment.” She looked at me. “Their servers are probably hosting gambling sites or portals to the dark web.”
The dark web was a little-understood corridor off the information superhighway, a place to buy and sell a variety of illegal goods—drugs and weapons, stolen antiquities, the odd lot of plutonium.
The Sky of Zion servers weren’t completely out of reach, but the constitutional protections guaranteeing freedom of religion made it difficult for law enforcement to access them.
Boris took off the jacket of his running suit. Underneath he wore a wife-beater T-shirt. His arms were covered in tattoos. He lumbered over to a statue of the Venus de Milo. From behind the statue, he pulled a machete.
I took a step back. “What are you going to do with that?”
“Stupid banker man. We had business arrangement. Now, Boris must cut off finger to teach lesson.”
“Is that really necessary?” I asked. “Couldn’t you just ruin him socially?”
“You telling Boris how to do his job?” He cocked his head. “You and Boris still must discuss the Vasily situation. Perhaps Boris cut off your finger, yes?”
I pulled out the Glock, kept it pointed to the ground. “Perhaps not.”
Boris eyed the pistol.
Hannah looked like she was about to say something, but she stopped when Stodghill came back outside carrying a shotgun.
I grabbed her arm, pulled her out of the line of fire.
“Why does everybody have gun but Boris?” The Russian sighed. “Stupid NRA.”
The banker advanced toward the thug.
Boris rolled his eyes. “Don’t be acting like idiot, Stodghill. Put gun down.”
The banker raised his weapon.
“You be in shit pile of trouble,” Boris said, “if you trigger pull—”
BOOM.
The blast sounded like a cannon, bouncing off the water and the exterior walls of the house.
Boris’s head disappeared.
One second it was there. The next it was gone as chunks of skull and brain matter scattered about.
The Russian’s headless corpse fell backward into the pool. A red stain fanned out across the clear water. Hannah gasped and clutched my arm.
Stodghill turned the weapon toward us. His face was contorted, teeth bared, a smile of rage.
I moved Hannah behind me, raised the Glock. “Put down the weapon. We’re not going to hurt you.”
He moved a step closer.
“We’ll leave,” I said. “You’ll never see us again.”
He took several deep breaths. His fingers on the forend of the shotgun grew white. Then he blinked like he’d just woken up from a bad dream. He lowered the gun. After a moment, he dropped it on the pool deck.
The expression on his face was one of bewilderment. A nonviolent man had just committed the most violent of acts.
“Wh-what have I done?” he asked.
“You killed a man.” I stuck the Glock back in my waistband. “He probably deserved it, but that’s still a heavy load.”
The banker shook his head, breathing heavily.
In that instant, he reminded me of my father-in-law in the aftermath of the attack. Men accustomed to barricading themselves behind their desks, fighting their battles via lawyers, forced to confront the primal nature of life and death.
“My wife is in San Antonio,” he said. “She’s going to be home tomorrow.”
He enunciated each syllable precisely, like this information was dreadfully important.
“She’s going to be pissed about the pool,” I said. “Among other things.”
“I didn’t want to kill him.” He covered his mouth like he was going to be sick.
“But you did.” I sighed. “You got in bed with the wrong people.”
“They told me no one would find out.” He sat down in a chair. “The bank’s had a rough couple of years. We needed the money.”
Everything came down to dollars and cents. I remembered my father-in-law’s office, the view of downtown Dallas. The lengths he went to in order to survive.
“Tell me about the money,” I said. “What was it for?”
He stared at me with a mournful expression on his face. “They were selling . . . things.”
“Things?”
“The money they got, they needed it to be untraceable.”
“What were they selling?” I asked.
“I never knew. Never wanted to, really.” He paused. “My grandfather started the bank in 1947. I couldn’t let it end on my watch.”
I felt sorry for him, and I hated myself for that.
Hannah’s teeth chattered, her skin pale.
“Do you have a passport?” I asked.
“What?” He stared at me, confused.
“A passport. Do you have one?”
He nodded.
“The Midland airport is about three hours away. If you leave now, you’ll have a good head start.”
“But this is my home,” he said.
I looked at the body in the pool. “Not anymore.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE
Nine Months Ago
I sped out of the parking lot of the diner in East Dallas, gravel churning under the tires of my pickup, my heart racing.
In the rearview mirror, I could see Chloe standing in the doorway of the restaurant, her uniform dark against the shadows. It looked like she was making a call, but with the way the light played, it was hard to tell.
The sun was hot and bright overhead. The world around me looked brittle, ready to break.
Images of my wife and children played in my head like a movie reel about to jump its sprockets.
Breakfast that morning. My daughter playing with her dolls, the boy eating cereal. My wife makin
g a grocery list.
Innocents, caught in the cross fire of something beyond the bell curve of their experience. All because of Frank’s greed.
I blew through a stop sign and placed a flashing red-and-blue light on the dash.
My home was on the other side of town, the northwest quadrant of the city, a twenty-minute drive with no traffic. The quickest route was to loop through the central part of town, head north on the Dallas North Tollway.
The highway leading to downtown was a few blocks away. My skin felt clammy from fear, mouth dry.
I dialed Frank’s cell as I drove. He answered after the first ring.
“You need to give back the money,” I said.
A car honked as I sped through another intersection.
“That’s not possible.” He lowered his voice. “The FDIC regulators are here now.”
“I don’t give a damn about the regulators,” I said. “They have my family.”
Silence.
“They have your daughter,” I said. “And your grandchildren.”
A sharp intake of air from the other end.
“If you don’t hand over the money,” I said, “they’re going to kill them.”
He gasped. A few seconds passed, but he didn’t respond.
“Did you hear me, you miserable piece of shit?” I was yelling into the phone now. “They’re going to kill them.”
Voices in the background.
“I heard you,” Frank said. “Let me think. I don’t know what—”
Men talking on the other end. Giving orders. Other men responding, an argument of some sort. A woman’s voice cut through the babble, Frank’s assistant, plaintive-sounding, asking for everybody to be calm.
I got on the highway that led to downtown, speeding toward home, weaving in and out of traffic.
“Arlo. Listen to me.” My father-in-law’s voice was low and serious. “I can’t get to the cash right now. You have to believe me. I would if I could.”
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