The sound of Russian voices led me out onto the lower deck. The girls looked fresh and clean, and if not happy, at least human. Nika turned to me, in a large tee shirt and sweat pants she looked thirteen years old. I looked away.
“I am glad you did not die.” She craned her neck, looking up at me.
“The day’s young.”
“My sister, she is?”
“Soon. Trust me.” I ran back upstairs, bile backing into my throat. All I could see was my dick in her.
I left the girls to Mikayla, who was trying to find out if they knew anything that might help us track down the Russians. On the way over, we had cruised the West LA mansion only to find it empty and abandoned.
Upstairs, I found Gregor with a monstrous turkey sandwich in one hand and the stolen cell phone in the other.
“You want to reach out and talk to that Russian bastard?”
“You found his number?”
“Dumbfuck didn’t clear his voicemail. The old man sounded real pissed to hear you had made it back to LA.” Some of the color had returned to Gregor’s face. Son of a bitch looked like he might actually survive.
Ten minutes of dialing proved the Russians smarter than I had thought. The phones had all been disconnected. Peter’s contacts discovered squat, the numbers all linked to prepaid dump phones.
Uncle Manny hadn’t left his office. Gray stubble patches dotted his chin. He looked sunken and old as dirt. He showed no surprise when I stepped in.
“How many times do you think you can sell me out before I put one between your eyes?”
“You will do what you must, as I have.”
“I used to look up to you. When did you become such a pussy?”
“You get a family, build a life, care and feed it. You have nothing, you have no idea what you would do to keep it safe.”
“Sold your soul for the rose garden, huh? Fuck you, Manny. You don’t think I have shit I care about? I have a life, old man. I want it back.”
“I don’t think that this is possible.”
“Then we’re both fucked. Call the Russians, tell them I want out.”
“It won’t be easy.”
“Neither is dying. Make the call.”
Manny left a message at their drop line, he told them I was there and needed to speak to them. After that, we had nothing to do but wait. Any anger I had for the old man was gone, replaced with sadness.
Behind us, the strip club sat empty. The scent of lust, sold out rain checks and broken promises permeated the stained carpet and soiled booths. How many men had busted a nut in the lap room hoping to feel alive, only to leave more hollow then when they came in? How many girls traded their joy for cynicism, one buck at a time? Burn the fucker to the ground. The price paid for this shit was way too high.
The phone rang like a gunshot to my head. Manny played it straight. Told them I wanted out. Told them he thought I was finished, ready to deal.
“He wants to speak to you.” He passed me the receiver.
“What?”
“And a good day to you, too, Mr. McGuire. You are a resilient termite, chewing at my structure, destroying so much of my life’s work. In light of your imminent extermination, you want to deal?”
“I want my woman back and you out of my life. Do that and I’ll let you get back to business.”
“Bygones will be bygones, this is your deal? I lose my property, my pride and it costs you what? Nothing? No. Here is my counter offer. Bring me the girls, all of them, and I will afford you twenty-four hours to leave the country.”
I hung up the phone.
“Time for you to blow town, Manny.”
“What did he say?”
“Forget him. I’m retiring you. Take your family, find a small town where I won’t have to see you. We clear on this?”
“Yes.”
Walking through the club, I fought the urge to set a match to it.
The noon sun burned onto the back parking lot as I descended. The daylight showed the club in all its shabby glory. Purple paint blistered and peeled on the stairs. I was unlocking the Crown Vic’s door when a shadow fell across my back. A huge form reflected in the window. I dropped down. A massive fist swung over my head, smashing the glass where my head had been.
Pasha the giant towered over me. I swung up, my fist bounced ineffectually off his gut. It was like hitting an iron plate. His fist flew down towards my face. Rising, I took the blow on the chest. I bounced off the door, leaving a dent. I gasped for air that wouldn’t come. Meat paws grabbed my shoulder, lifting me to my feet. His arm cocked back, ready to take my head off.
“Blin! He needs to tell us where the girls are.” A pale hood held Pasha’s hand back. It took a lot for Pasha not to swing. This was what he was built for. Slowly, the tension left his face.
“Where are they?” The pale boy pushed a pistol barrel into my crotch, snapping back the hammer. The blade made no sound cutting through his throat. His blood splashed down onto my face. The man fell, revealing Mikayla standing behind him, the wet razor in her hand. Pasha stood stone still. Gregor pressed the shotgun barrel into the back of his head.
“Dude, please, tell me where they’re holding Anya. If I take the leash off my girl, it will get messy, and I’ve had enough blood to last a lifetime.” We were parked on a quiet dirt road in Griffith Park. Pasha hadn’t said word one since leaving the parking lot.
“Fuck it, boss, time to start taking souvenirs.” Gregor hobbled over to the front of the car, using a shotgun for a cane. Pasha was bound, leaning against the hood, his eyes bored. Gregor flipped the gun up by the barrel. The butt broke Pasha’s lip and I could hear teeth snapping off.
“Chill.” I pushed Gregor back, he was getting ready to hit the Russian again.
“Fuck that, Mo, he knows where Anya is.”
Mikayla had her back to us, smoking. All this talk made her uncomfortable. Cut him and be done, was her plan. Always.
“I’m telling you, big man,” I said, moving between Pasha and the mad Armenian, “I can’t hold this shit together much longer. Just tell me where she is. You walk, Anya walks, happy fucking ending.”
“Nyet.”
“You speak, that’s something.”
“No happy ending.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Maybe just a less ugly ending. Could we try for that?”
He closed his mouth into a tense bloody line.
“Enough talk.” Mikayla lifted her freshly cleaned razor and walked toward the giant.
“No, cut him one tiny bit at a time, turn him into so much ground chuck and he still won’t talk. Trust me.”
“We’ll see.” She raised the blade, resting it against his ear.
“I’ve run out of options, or I’d never ask you to do this.” Nika studied my face. The other girls were in Helen’s living room watching MTV and eating Spaghetti-Os.
“Will this get my sister back?”
“I don’t know, but it’s what I got.”
She nodded her head and followed me into the garage. Pasha was trussed up in the back seat. It took some pleading but Mikayla and Gregor had been convinced not to take him apart one piece at a time. I had lost some tough guy points in their eyes, but fuck it, I was too tired of destruction to care.
Moses closed the car door behind Nika and stepped away, leaving the teenage girl alone in the back seat with the giant. For a long moment, they stared at each other.
When she finally spoke, it came out as a whisper. “My name is Veronika Kolpacolva, I come from Yaroslavl. All I wanted were pretty clothes, a house with a swimming pool. That was forever ago. My sister is a good woman, she’s not trash to be thrown away. You are not trash. I need you to remember, please, remember. Once you were young and hoped life would be more.”
Pasha looked at this little girl. When had life gotten so ugly?
“Tell me where my sister is. I need her to be alive and safe. You can be a hero instead of this. Be a hero. Save my sister.”
I stood
in the shadows of the garage, watching Nika. She was brave beyond her years, after all that men had done to her, she had the courage to sit in the car with this giant. I could barely hear her murmured Russian. After what seemed like forever, the giant spoke. Nika nodded her head. They spoke more. She leaned up and kissed his cheek.
“Here.” Nika handed me a slip of paper. “They are holding Anya there. Get her back.” The young bend but don’t break easily. Old fucks like me, that’s a different story.
Peter printed a map off the computer, the address was in Redlands, tucked between the Santa Ana river and the foothills of the San Bernardino mountains.
“You coming with us? See how it all ends?”
“My guy’s guy almost cracked the laptop. The wire’s crackling with an explosion in Chatsworth, bodies found. The story goes to press Friday. I’m up to my ass in fact-checking.”
“I wasn’t going to let you come anyway. Someone has to survive to tell the tale.”
When I returned to the garage, Mikayla was in the front passenger seat. Gregor was in the back. “Not this time, Gregor, I want you to sit this one out.”
“No.”
“Pal, look in the mirror. You’re done.”
“They have Anya.” Something in the way he said her name told me all the talk in the world wouldn’t get him out of the car.
“Where’s the big Russian?” I asked Mikayla, sliding in behind the wheel.
“The trunk.”
“Alive?”
She looked at me like I was an idiot child. I wanted to ask her why, but I knew her answer, we had what we needed and he was one less scumbag on the planet. I hoped she was wrong, hoped that redemption was possible, but I suspected she was right.
CHAPTER 20
It was still early enough to avoid the parking lot the 10 became after quitting traffic. Gregor sat rigid, the mixture of Helen’s Percodan and Peter’s coke had taken his pain and sealed it into a soft little lock box.
“Put these on.” I passed him a pair of Ray-Bans. His crazy eyes were more than I needed to see.
Mikayla was counting out a fat wad of cash. She had given the wallets and documents to Peter. The cash and jewelry were her spoils.
“When this is over, where will you go?”
“It is never over.”
True for her, not for me. I was done, fried and baked. My life up to this point had been one long battle and I was ready to see it end. The citizens with their nine to fives looked real good.
This was bad.
Tired and weak was a quick way to get dead. Anya was out there, waiting. Nika was counting on me to save her sister. I owed her, hell, more than I could repay.
It was Clash time. Crank up the guitars. Turn the stereo to attack. Mikayla cringed at the sound, but said nothing.
“Give me a line,” I barked at Gregor. Dumping a fatty on the top of my hand, I took a blast. It was alligator heart time. Dump rage on top of the machine gun heartbeat. Angel, my beautiful pup, was still touch and go, the vet didn’t give her good odds. Fuckers have to die. Anya, her lips on mine, could have been true love, they fucked that. Her tears. Nika’s broken cherry, her blood on my cock. Mikayla’s severed breast. Fuck fuck fuck. Ahhhhhh!
My scream rose above The Last Gang In Town. In the rearview, Gregor grinned. He might not walk real good, but he was ready to take some heads.
Xlmen lay on his belly, in amongst the white sage he was all but invisible. Ripping a piece of deer jerky, he kept his eyes on the ranch. It had taken him a long day to discover that the gringo had been driven to Tecate. Bodies in the borderland had been found with the bitch’s cards. He had lost their trail in the southern tip of the Mojave. In the two days since crossing the border, he had followed the Russian. He figured they would not let what happened in Ensenada rest. Sooner or later, they would go for the big gringo and the tarot bitch or, the two would come for the Russians. Either way, he would be waiting. Senor Santiago had instructed him to let the assassin be, she was gone and that was all he wanted. A weak move. He had been sent to kill her. And he would. If he let this bitch best him, what would come next? He could feel the breath of old age tracking him, getting closer. He knew if he fell, the young street dogs would feast on his bones. His reputation was all that kept the curs at bay.
“Nailing yourself some midweek poon, huh?” The gap toothed clerk winked. After drifting in the foothills for forty lost minutes, I had pulled into a Stop-N-Shop for directions.
“If you say so.” The coke had my teeth grinding.
“Ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of, no siree Bob. Man has a right to get his dick wet without needin’ to buy a girl no diamond ring.”
“How do I get there?” I was making a real effort not to reach over the counter and pinch his skinny neck.
“In a hurry, yup, know that feeling. Dang, they got some girls out there will wring the wiggle out of your worm. Call me a liar if it ain’t true.”
I was seconds away from calling in Mikayla and letting her get him to talk when he finally gave up the directions.
Rolling off the highway, we moved down an unmarked gravel road. The headlights pierced the black. No moon or streetlights. River stones the size of Volkswagens lined our way. Cresting a rise, a farmhouse glowed in the distance. I killed the lights and slowed to a crawl, keeping us on the road as much by feel as sight.
Wooden horse fences surrounded several acres of pasture, a freshly painted farmhouse and a barn that looked one good gust of wind away from falling over. From the sage a hundred feet above the ranch, I watched. Floodlights on the house and barn lit the surrounding area, no one was going to sneak up on them. Through the windows, people could be seen moving inside. Two men sat on the porch. One leaned on what looked like a rifle. In a corral behind the house were parked several Mercedes, a Suburban and a rusted GMC pick-up.
“What’s the plan, boss?”
“Go in hard, come out alive.”
“Works for me.”
We finished the toot in two lines. Gregor crunched a Percodan and racked a shell into the Remington auto loader.
“Put this on.” I tossed him the Kevlar vest I’d taken from the dead fed.
“You put it on.”
“I can run, can you?”
“Yes,” he lied. Pain in the ass.
“Put it on or I dump you here, let the coyotes have you.”
“Whatever, boss.” He shrugged into the vest.
Opening the trunk, I was confronted by the dead giant. His neck had been broken. Whatever his plans for the coming year, he wasn’t going to get to them. Fuck him, he chose the life. Pushing him to the side, I got to the guns we’d pilfered from the Israelis. I stuffed a Jericho.45 auto into my belt and the Beretta into the opposite side. Harry’s short barreled.44 went into my jacket pocket. I hung the strap of an Uzi around my neck.
“Got enough guns?” Mikayla stubbed out a cigarette.
“I doubt it.”
I keyed the Crown Vic to life and mashed down the accelerator. The V8-driven monster spat dust and gravel out the back as we soared toward the light. The boys on the porch jumped up as we splintered the gate. I was passing sixty MPH when I hit the E-brake, and racked the wheel to left. We slid sideways towards the porch. A shotgun boomed from the back seat. A painful ringing filled my ears. I fought to stop the beast before we collided with the house.
Shafts of light bore down through the dust storm we caused. The skid hadn’t ended before Mikayla was out the door and on the run around the building. From the second story, I saw the rapid flash of automatic fire. Bullets ripped through the car’s roof, tearing up the seat beside me. Rolling out the door, I put the car between me and the guns in the house. I thought Gregor would follow. The shotgun report told me he didn’t. Opening the back door, he sat with his back to me, firing up at the house. A manic grin was glued to his face. Never give drugs to an amateur.
A fresh burst ripped through the headliner. These fuckheads were doing a real job on my ride. Grabbing the
scruff of Gregor’s jacket, I dragged him out the door. From the ground, he looked up at me like I was the asshole.
And that was when the shit got bad.
From the house, bullets punched ugly holes into the Crown Vic. From out of the barn, I saw a flash just before the dirt by my face exploded. We were trapped in the crossfire. Any way we went was death. The next bullet grabbed a piece of my leather jacket, pulling it open. Gregor, still grinning like an idiot, slipped fresh shells into the Remington.
I flicked my eyes up over the car to the house. He nodded.
Gripping the Uzi, I rolled into a crouch, leapt up and started to run toward the barn. Behind, I heard the shotgun; Gregor was firing over the hood of the car into the house. I hoped he could keep them from shooting me in the back.
I got twenty feet before the first bullet hit me. Flame popped from the barn. There were at least two shooters. I felt the hot burn along my lower left side. The Uzi jumped in my hand. One quick bone-rattling burst and it was empty. Thirty-two shots in a blast. I barely hit the broad side of the barn, but it had driven the shooters for cover and bought me ten feet free of their fire.
Dropping the Uzi, I pulled my Beretta and dropped to one knee. Aiming up at the door, I was ready when the bastard poked his head out. He was dressed in night camo and leveling a sniper’s rifle when I took off the top of his head.
Bursting through the barn door, I almost killed Mikayla. She was standing over a second Israeli in camos. He was wet and still.
“Looks like your trip wire didn’t take them all out.”
“They are dead now.” No smile. No pride. Just a fact.
Out the barn door, I watched, helpless, as Gregor fell. Bullets rained from the second story window. He slumped down behind the car.
Picking up the Israeli sniper’s rifle, I wrapped the strap around my forearm, just as Uncle Sam had taught me. Clicking the sight in, adjusting for distance, bullet drop, wind, I let the cross-hairs drift across the upper window. A man leaned out, searching the ground below for his shot at Gregor. His blonde hair was tousled, as if he had been woken from a restless sleep. In the scope, I could see his pale blue eyes. He was young. I let out a breath and pulled the trigger. A pink puff danced off his head. And he was dead. His eyes would haunt me later. But not then. Then, it was killing time.
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