by Jon F. Merz
Headlights bounced through the windows.
I turned the chair around. The beams of light scored the window and filtered through the soot, throwing light on the interior.
Outside, a car engine died.
Then the headlights went off.
Darkness returned but I could hear a door open and close. Tentative footsteps crunched a few stones underfoot.
Thompson? It had to be.
He was probably already rethinking his decision to participate in the hijinx. Hell, I wouldn't blame him if he got back into his car and zoomed on home.
But he didn't.
Instead, he stood framed in the doorway; a dim halo of evening light surrounding him. I recognized his build even if I couldn't completely make out his face from the distance I was at.
"Mr. Thompson?"
He started walking immediately toward my voice. "That you, Jake?"
"Yeah."
His footsteps increased almost if the poor guy felt safer closer to me than the door. That was nice.
"Helluva place you arranged for this thing."
"Wasn't my choice," I said. "Blame it on my boss. He likes to conduct transactions where there's little chance of idle spectators."
"Couldn't we get into trouble being on restricted property like this?"
I chuckled. "Well, no more so than getting in trouble for the real reason we're here, eh?"
"Good point."
He drew close enough for me to see his face finally. He was dressed in a light brown suit. His face looked tired. Worn.
I shook his hand and noticed it felt like smooth wood. "Glad you could make it."
"Will this take long? I'd really not prefer to spend any extra time in here than is absolutely necessary."
"I don't blame you. I've only got here about five minutes ahead of you and I'm ready to go home."
He nodded and looked around. "So, this is what an abandoned bus yard looks like huh?"
"Yeah."
"There's a lot of land here. The T could make a fortune if they sold this place off to developers."
"Maybe they've grown fond of it."
"Maybe."
"Neal."
He turned, realizing it was the first time I'd used his first name only. "Yes?"
"You and your wife, how long have you been trying to have children for?"
He sighed. "Years, it seems like. It's been at least three. We've tried everything. We spent a fortune on ovulation kits, pregnancy kits, basal thermometers, everything. Finally we got so sick and tired of it all, we just gave up. Decided to adopt."
"And how long did you say it's been waiting for the adoption?"
"Over two years. And expensive as hell." He smirked. "I mean, I've got the money, that's not really the issue. If I'm spending cash on something, I like seeing results, you know?"
"Sure."
"Waiting years for an adoption to go through is just ludicrous. It makes no sense. All they had to do was make sure we were both responsible people, capable of supporting a child, and that we were two of the most wanting wanna-be parents on the planet."
"Too bad it's not that easy, huh?"
He clapped me on the shoulder. Normally, I don't like it when people do that to me. I let it pass.
"Well, thank God you came along, Jake. That's all I have to say."
Yeah. Thank God for me. Whoopie-doo.
Another set of headlights broke the darkness and we both turned at the sudden light flooding the terminal. Neal looked at me and I nodded.
"That'll be Mr. Darmov."
"Is he nice?"
"You mean nice as in what Ð that he smiles? Sure. He's a peach. A real man's man."
"That wasn't what I meant."
I nodded. "In that case, the answer is no. He's not a nice man. He's a very dangerous man. And he's very very capable of doing awful things. But you are a client and he knows that so he'll treat you with respect."
"Okay."
"Just relax and you'll be fine. Remember that the best thing to do is just get your business done and be on your way. If this all goes well, you won't be in here much longer than ten minutes."
He nodded. "Okay."
I looked at him as the headlights faded. Lines of worry had etched their way onto Thompson's face. I sighed, wishing I was far away from this kind of shit.
Two car doors slammed and then a third. It sounded like three sets of feet were advancing on the terminal. Beside me I could almost feel the energy leaping off of Thompson. He did not want to be there.
I didn't blame him. I didn't want to be there, either.
Viktor's telltale shape eased through the door quickly, aware that if he framed the doorway too long, he'd make a tempting silhouette target. The guy was a seasoned pro. I could see the outline of a small compact submachine gun in his hands. He held it at low-ready, ready to bring it to bear on anyone he took to be a threat.
He slid further into the room along the right wall, closing down the distance between us the way a snake will slither toward its enemy, slowly and carefully, but perfectly lethal.
I hadn't seen Viktor like this before and it scared the crap out of me.
He finally got a visual on Thompson and me. He actually smiled. "Hey. Jake."
Man of many words that Viktor. I grinned back. "Viktor. How ya doing?"
He nodded, his eyes still busy scanning the area. "Okay. Everything okay?"
"Yeah. Far as I can tell it looks legit." If Viktor had been shot, the injury couldn't have been that bad. It didn't look like his arm was even bandaged.
He nodded again and whistled into the darkness. Down at the doorway, another body eased through and took the opposite side of the building. Whoever it was moved exactly like Viktor. And he was built about the same way as well.
I hoped McCloskey had a good team of men waiting.
Darmov came through the doorway a second later and strode toward us as if he didn't have a care in the world. Obviously, he felt it was important to give the impression of having no fear to his clients.
If that was how he wanted to do things, fine with me.
He advanced and held out his hand to Thompson. "Good evening. My name is Mr. Darmov."
"Neal Thompson," said Thompson with a shakiness in his voice.
Darmov held his hand a second longer, searching his eyes for some reason before finally nodding and releasing the hand. He turned to me.
"How are you, Jake?"
"Fine, Mr. Darmov. Heckuva place you found for us here."
"Isn't it nice?"
I nodded. "Sure, if you like this kind of thing."
Darmov smiled some more. "It's just that after the unfortunate events of the past few days, I wanted to take an extra measure of security with regards to my business transactions."
"Makes sense."
"I think so." He nodded at Viktor who was still scanning the area. "Viktor, of course, thinks so, too."
"Cool."
Darmov nodded. "Indeed." He turned to Thompson. "So, Jake tells me you wish to make a purchase."
"Yes, sir."
"And the fee that you discussed with Jake, that's satisfactory to you?"
"Money's not an issue, Mr. Darmov."
Darmov clapped his hands together. In the darkness it almost sounded like a gunshot. "Excellent. In that case, would you be so good as to go and get the money for me?"
"Where is the baby, Mr. Darmov?"
"Very close by. Have no worries, Mr. Thompson. I have no intention of taking your money without a fair trade. If I did that, it wouldn't be very good for my business now would it?"
"No."
"Precisely." Darmov smiled again. "The money. Please?"
Thompson looked at me and I nodded. "It's okay, Neal. Just go and get the greenbacks."
He walked toward the door and I had a funny feeling of dŽjˆ vu come over me. Just the same as when McCloskey had walked back to his car to get the money.
I glanced around.
Viktor held the machine gu
n pointed just down and off the horizon. The man on the other side of the building had stopped moving.
Viktor was frowning.
Thompson's footfalls grew dimmer the further he walked away.
Darmov hummed a tune to himself.
And in that tiny moment when my subconscious started to scream at my conscious mind Ð started to send the signal that something wasn't quite right -
all hell broke loose.
Again.
Chapter Forty
Bullets exploded in the darkness, splanging off of the cement and steel. I jerked the chair around and to the right, trying to get a bead on where the rounds were coming from.
From under my seat, I pulled the USP out and flicked the safety off as I brought it up. I saw Darmov spinning wildly, calling out in Russian.
I saw Viktor firing off to the other side of the building. But he wasn't shooting up.
He was firing at the other man Darmov had brought in.
I saw the rounds from Viktor's gun toss the other man like a marionette in the darkness, making him dance as he caved back and into the wall, finally dropping dead.
Where the hell was McCloskey?
There was no time to think about it. Viktor was turning his attention back toward our direction. Darmov had some sort of silly frown on his face, a bewildered expression of confusion and realization tied together as one, each battling the other for supremacy.
On Viktor's face sat a grim smile of determined fervor. He knew what he had to do and he was ready to see us all die.
He spotted me bringing the USP up on him and whirled.
"Don't."
I didn't have the USP up high enough on target with him. By contrast the compact Heckler & Koch PDW he carried was locked on to me.
I lowered the USP.
He nodded. "Smart. Now don't do anything else."
Darmov was yelling at him in Russian. Viktor shook his head. "Speak English, Ilya. That's what you always taught us, remember?"
Darmov switched in the middle of his sentence. A good thing he did too, since my Russian sucks.
"-the hell are you doing, Vitya? Why did you kill Alex?"
Viktor shook his head and kept the PDW loosely trained on the space between Darmov and myself. "You haven't figured it out yet, have you?"
Viktor's English suddenly seemed to be getting a whole lot better. The smile he wore had blossomed even more across his face.
I tried not to look off in the darkness. Any time McCloskey wanted to ride in with the cavalry would just be fine with me.
"Figure what out?" asked Darmov.
Viktor turned to me. "What about you, Mr. Private Detective. Have you figured any of this out yet? Have you done what you were hired to do? Does any of this make sense?"
"Beginning to," I said.
Viktor sniffed. "Only now? I'm surprised."
"Don't be. You both did very well. Concealing your true motives must have been very tough for you while working around Darmov here."
Darmov sighed. "What are you talking about, Jake?"
"All this time out of the intelligence world has really dulled your senses, hasn't it?"
He frowned. "I don't think so."
I shook my head. "Think about it. Your closest confidant, your trusted associate, the man who was by your side during all those covert ops in Beirut and elsewhereÉhe's turned on you, Darmov. And you weren't alert enough to see it coming."
Darmov looked at Viktor. "Vitya, is this true?"
Viktor smiled. "True enough."
"But it can't be you! You were shot the other day. You were wounded."
Viktor shrugged. "I have a partner who is almost as good a shot as I am."
"Almost?" said a voice in the darkness.
We all turned. Slowly since Viktor still had the PDW locked onto us.
I grinned. "About time you showed up, Vanessa. Or rather, should I say Ð Melinda?"
"Whichever you happen to prefer." Her voice had a light lilt to it. "You don't seem surprised, Jake."
"I'd hoped it wasn't true. But then again, it's tough hoping against the truth."
"How long have you known?" Melinda walked out carrying a long assault rifle. By the look of it, a G3 with an infrared scope.
"Not so much that I knew it was you. But it was the only thing that started to make sense in this whole mess."
"Oh?"
"Viktor was conspicuously absent on the first attack. He had to have been one of the shooters. You, judging from the way you carry that rifle, were the other."
"True enough. I went to a very good private school as a girl. I'm sure you found out?"
"I found out, yeah."
"I excelled in marksmanship."
"What did Vanessa excel in?"
"Being a good little girl."
"That why you set her up to take the fall?"
"She was in the way. She saw our father's death as a chance to put all the criminal activity behind us. She wanted us to go legitimate, if you can believe that silly notion."
"So, what Ð you dressed her as you, doped her up and set her loose on Woolery?"
"It wasn't all that difficult. Scopalamine in a Coke did the job nicely. It tends to leave the patient very confused, amnesiac, and even given to bouts of hysteria."
Darmov frowned, but it looked twisted. As if he was trying not to grin. "Wait, if you two were conspiring against me, how come you did not kill me that day?"
"It wasn't for a lack of trying," said Melinda. "However, certain other things came up that didn't allow us to complete what we set out to do."
"What kinds of things?" asked Darmov.
Melinda looked at me. "You want to tell him, or should I?"
"God knows I'll miss the sound of your voice when you're dead Melinda. You might as well tell him."
She looked at me for a second and I briefly thought I might have gone too far. But she only just smiled and kept talking. "Jake here never had any intention of working for you, Ilya."
Darmov looked shocked for the second time this evening. I guessed this wouldn't go down as one of the best days in his life.
"Turns out the place was crawling with cops the other day. We were barely able to subdue them all and then kill Gregor before the police started coming back around. It's a wonder we weren't killed."
"Was that you in the Explorer?" I asked.
She nodded. "Yes."
"The moaning was very convincing."
She eyed me. "What makes you think it was staged?"
I ignored that. "How come you didn't take out the buyer when you had the chance?"
Melinda shrugged. "No reason, too. Besides, Viktor suspected he was a cop."
I nodded at Viktor. "Good guess."
He smiled, but said nothing. I turned back to Melinda. "So, why did you even come to me in the first place?"
"I assure you it wasn't for your witty repartee." She almost laughed. "You seemed so sincere that day when I told you of my plight."
"Don't kid yourself. I was only checking you out to get you in the sack." It was feeble, but I hate self-righteous people.
She nodded. "Yes, well, the problem was that I needed two people out of the way before I could assume my rightful position as head of the Patterson family."
"Why not just kill them both? Why drag me into it?"
Melinda sniffed. "You can't be serious. Darmov is far too well connected to kill outright. And Vanessa was much too proper to ever go away. So I devised a little plan. Get Darmov to kill Vanessa thinking she was me. Hire you to find Darmov and enable me to kill him here in this scummy place. It will go down as a bad business deal. Blackmail babies, a gun battle, and a few dead bodies." She smiled. "All the loose ends tied up nicely."
"And you get the hundred million?"
"Just as soon as Viktor and I are married"
I looked at Viktor. "She's good in the sack, ain't she?"
He looked vaguely disturbed by that comment. Melinda sighed. "He knows that we slept together, Jake. V
iktor is a very pragmatic soul. He knew our sleeping together was one of those things we'd have to suck up."
"Literally," I said with a grin. "Your act sure was convincing. Especially when you screamed my name like some whore in heat."
Viktor backhanded me across the jaw. Shit that hurt. He nudged me with the muzzle of the PDW. "Be nice."
I rubbed my jaw and sucked blood through my teeth. "Sure thing, big guy."
I looked at Melinda. "So, what makes you think Darmov's backers won't simply come calling anyway? They might look to even the score when one of their own goes down in a blaze of gunfire."
Melinda nodded at Viktor. "Viktor will take care of that."
"Oh yeah?"
Viktor nodded. "I will assume command of Darmov's organization and simply tell the people in Moscow that all has been taken care of. As long as there is no disruption in the flow of money and goods, no one will bother asking about Darmov."
I glanced at Darmov. "See, you work your butt off for a company and in one split second they can you. Forget you even existed."
Darmov frowned. "Your humor is, as always, somewhat annoying, Jake."
I glanced back toward the door. Where was Thompson? For that matter, where the hell was McCloskey?
Melinda caught my glance. "I wouldn't worry about him, Jake. I gave him a nasty knock on the back of the head. The way we took care of your police friend the other day. He'll be out for some time."
"Well, at least you didn't do anything in haste."
"You mean kill him?" She smiled. "There was no reason to. He's not involved in this."
"You know, nice you brought that up. I'm not really involved in this either. Why don't I just leave you all to sort this stuff out. There's a Red Sox game on the tube I want to catch. I'll just leave, okay?"
Viktor shook his head. "Not so fast, Jake. It's not that easy."
I stopped. "Oh. No?"
Melinda smiled. "I wish we could leave you alive, Jake. But you're just one of those unfortunate loose ends. A casualty of this mess. When the smoke clears, Viktor and I will be left standing. Viktor will assume leadership of the Russian Mafiya here in Boston. I will control my father's organization. And we will be one hundred million dollars richer."
"Nice dowry," I said.
Melinda laughed. "Dowry? Jake, don't be silly. Viktor and I aren't lovers. Far from it. We're business partner, nothing more."