Avenue of Thieves

by Sean Black

“A cezve?” said Lock.

  “You’re the first American I’ve met who knows the proper name.”

  “Half American, half Brit,” said Lock. “Plus one of the benefits of overseas service is you get to see the world.”

  “Travel the world, meet new people, and kill them. Isn’t that how the saying goes?” said Dimitri.

  “Something like that.”

  Dimitri opened a cupboard and pulled out two espresso-sized cups. “I used to live on this stuff when I was getting started building my business. Even after I moved to New York. Some took cocaine, but I always stuck to coffee, black as mud.”

  “Probably saved yourself a lot of money.”

  “For all the good it’s done me.”

  “Oh, come on, you can’t resent all this, can you?”

  He started to decant the sludgy, sweet coffee into the cups. He handed one to Lock. “Thanks.”

  “Ask me a year ago, and I would have said no, but now it seems like all it’s done is put a big target on my back.”

  Lock took a sip. Damn, that was some strong coffee. He saw an opportunity here to ask Dimitri about Grigor Novak. He hadn’t had the opportunity to raise it with him before now. Maybe he would have some insight into why a guy carrying a Russian diplomatic passport also had a tattoo that signified membership of Russian organized crime.

  When Lock had finished telling him a moderately edited version, Dimitri put his tiny coffee cup down on the marble countertop next to the stove. He had seemed almost amused by the story and Lock’s questions.

  “So what do you think?” asked Lock.

  “I think people here are very naive. They hear ‘Russian spy’ and they think about maybe some cartoon or something.”

  “What about the passport?”

  “It was probably genuine,” Dimitri said casually.

  Lock was a little taken aback. He couldn’t imagine a scenario where a member of, say, the Italian mob or the Aryan Brotherhood would be given a genuine diplomatic passport. Used as informants, that was totally credible, but this was on another level. “You think it was the real deal?”

  “I don’t know. I would have to see it.”

  Lock pulled out his phone and showed Dimitri the pictures they had taken.

  He studied them for a moment. “Genuine. I’d bet a million dollars on it.”

  “That’s like me betting a buck.”

  “Okay, a hundred million.”

  “Why are you so sure?”

  “Apart from the fact it looks real and not a forgery?”

  “It could be a good forgery.”

  Dimitri looked Lock in the eye. “You don’t go around with a forged diplomatic passport from the Russian government over here if you value your life.”

  “But the tattoos indicate he’s Mafia. What do they care?”

  “That’s a good point, and that was true for many decades in Russia.”

  “It’s changed?” asked Lock.

  “The government and the vory came to an arrangement. That’s not to say they don’t step on each other’s toes from time to time. But they’re both gangsters, and the Kremlin has no problem using them when they need to. If you don’t believe me, go look at who controls some of the Caucasus,” said Dimitri, referring to some of the further, and more lawless, outposts of the post-Soviet Russian empire.

  “So a gangster working for the government?”

  “They’re all gangsters, my friend. It’s just that some don’t have the obvious marks,” said Dimitri, pulling at his shirt collar to show a neck free of tattoos. He held up one finger. “That’s not quite true. There are patriots too. But they are even more dangerous than the gangsters.”

  “You think that was who threw Ruta out of the window?” said Lock.

  “No, that would have been a gangster. But the person who ordered them to do it? That might well have been a patriot.”

  “We should forward Novak’s details to the NYPD. Make sure he’s properly on their radar.”

  “I’ll pass them to my attorney. That way you can stay out of it,” said Dimitri.

  Lock leaned against the edge of a kitchen counter. He needed to ask Dimitri about the murder of the young model, but he wasn’t entirely sure how to broach the subject.

  “You want to know if I killed her, don’t you?”

  It was Lock’s turn to smile. “Is it that obvious?”

  “It’s what everyone will want to ask me. It’s what people will associate with me from now on. That was why they did it. It’s one more turn of the screw.”

  “Well, the cops couldn’t have thought you did it or you wouldn’t be back here. You weren’t even formally arrested, were you? Just questioned?” said Lock.

  “When it happened I was in my office, surrounded by other people, including people who don’t work for me and would have no reason to lie. My alibi was cast iron.”

  “Not much of a frame-up job, then,” Lock said. “That was a lot of trouble to go to for something that didn’t even get you arrested.”

  “Maybe they got their timings wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was supposed to be there, but I had some business to deal with.”

  Lock was confused. “So the voice message they were talking about on the news?”

  “I’d left her a message, but it wasn’t the one they found on Ruta’s phone. Poor Ruta.”

  Now Lock was even more lost than he had been even a second ago. “How is that possible?”

  “You tell me,” said Dimitri, pulling out his cell phone, tapping the screen, and handing it to Lock. “One of my attorneys used to be a prosecutor. He has excellent contacts in law enforcement and the District Attorney’s office. He managed to get hold of the message the cops found on her phone. The one I left must have been deleted. They’re speaking with the phone company to see if it can be retrieved. Anyway, this is the one they found,” he said, jabbing a finger at an audio file on the screen.

  Tapping the play icon, Lock held the phone to his ear so he could hear the message without having to ramp up the volume. As he listened he could feel Dimitri’s eyes on him, studying his reaction to what he was hearing.

  When the message finished, he lowered the phone. “I’m no expert, but that sounds exactly like you,” he told him.

  Dimitri laughed. “It does. It sounds so like me even I was confused. I started to wonder if maybe I’d left that message and forgotten about it. But I hadn’t. That’s something else they’re very good at. Gas lighting. Making you doubt your own sanity.”

  Lock held up the phone. “Could you forward me a copy of that?”

  Dimitri shrugged. “Sure, but why?”

  “It might be nothing, but I’d like to run it past a couple of people. Confidentially, of course. They’ll also be under an NDA before I give it to them.” Lock moved the coffee cups into the dishwasher. “You should get some sleep. I’m going to crash in one of the other bedrooms if that’s okay with you.”

  “Worried about someone breaking in to kill me?”

  “No, I think the person that’s most likely to do that is already in the house, don’t you?”

  22

  The bodyguard stepped out of the hospital-room door as Ty came down the corridor.

  “She’s awake if you want to say hello,” said the bodyguard. “She wanted to thank you before for the stuff you got her, but you’d split.”

  Ty glanced back down the corridor to where a hospital security guard was busy playing on his phone.

  “Listen, if you want to go use the bathroom, grab something to eat, I can hold the fort here for a few minutes while I say hi,” said Ty.

  “That’d be great. Appreciate it.”

  “No problem.”

  Ty pushed the door open and stuck his head around. Anastasia Semenov was sitting up in bed. She looked a perkier than the first time they had seen her. Her cheeks had a little more color.

  “How’s the dancing llama?” Ty asked.

  Her face lit up. “I
love it.”

  “Yeah, that’s what the lady in the store said. You mind if I come in?”

  “No.”

  Ty walked into the room. “I’m Tyrone, but most everyone just calls me Ty.”

  “I’m Anastasia, and people call me Anastasia,” she said, deadpan, then laughed.

  “You’re funny.”

  “And brave. I get called that a lot,” said Anastasia.

  “Well, you are.”

  “I don’t see why lying in bed all day being sick makes you brave.”

  “Do you complain?”

  Her head tilted to one side as she thought about it. “Not really. It’s not like it’ll change things.”

  “Then that makes you brave, especially compared to most grown-ups.”

  “You think?”

  “You mind if I sit down?” said Ty, pointing to the very edge of the bed.

  She shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

  “Thanks. Yeah, most grown-ups like to complain about every little thing, so you’re definitely braver than them.”

  “I guess. So do you work for my dad?”

  “At the moment I do.”

  “You’re a bodyguard?”

  “I prefer close protection specialist, but bodyguard works too.”

  “What’s the difference?” asked Anastasia.

  Ty decided not to give her the usual smartass answer he reserved for people who asked that question, which was ‘About five thousand dollars a week.’ Instead he said, “Bodyguards are all about muscles, and close protection is all about using your brain.”

  The answer seemed to satisfy her. “Okay.”

  “So how come you’re not asleep?”

  “The medicine they give me, sometimes it messes up my sleep.”

  She propped herself up on her elbow, her chin cupped in her hand. “So how come you can’t sleep?”

  “I used to be in the Marines. Marines don’t sleep.”

  Anastasia took her time thinking it over. “That’s not true. Everyone sleeps.” Her brow furrowed with concentration. “Even owls.”

  “Okay, we don’t sleep much. Hey, I have a question for you. Are you wearing the bracelet we put in with the toys?”

  She held up her other arm. It was fastened around her wrist. “Yeah. I like it. It’s cute.”

  “That’s good, because we’re going to need you to keep it on.”

  Ty had always believed that, when it came to security, it was better to level with kids, and be honest. The trick was doing it without scaring them, which was a tough line to walk sometimes.

  “Why do I have to keep it on?”

  “Let me show you something,” said Ty, leaning over.

  “You just told me not to take it off.”

  “Just for a second.”

  She took it off and handed it to him. He turned it inside out, finding the section where they had inserted the tiny tracker, and held it up.

  “See this little silver part? That’s a tracking device. It means that your dad, and your mom, will know where you are. As long as you’re wearing it.”

  Anastasia eye-rolled him. “But I’m always here. It’s not like I get to go anywhere.”

  Ty handed it to her, watching as she rolled it back over her hand and onto her wrist. “Good point. But when you get out of here, and you will get out of here,” he said, emphasizing the last part, “it’s important that we know where you are. Not that you can’t go visit friends, and stuff like that, but we need to know where we can find you.”

  “Okay.” There was a long pause, like she was building up to saying something, but she wasn’t sure how to say it.

  “Ty? Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask me anything, anything at all.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Are you scared of dying?”

  Ty had always thought that honesty was the best policy when it came to talking to kids, especially about big stuff. Besides anything else, kids had a way better BS detector than adults. If you lied to them, they picked up on it.

  There was an extra responsibility here too. For most kids―hell, for most people―this question was abstract. For Anastasia Semenov, he guessed, it was all too real. She was already facing her own mortality.

  One of the joys of childhood, as Ty saw it anyway, was that you were free from these big questions. You got to live in the present. It was only with adulthood that that was stripped away.

  “I guess I’m scared of not seeing the people I love anymore. Not for a while anyway,” said Ty. “That part scares me. But I’ve tried not to be too scared.”

  “Why?” asked Anastasia.

  “The way I see it, if you go through your whole life being scared of it being over then you’re not really living. You’re just walking around worrying about something that hasn’t happened.”

  The little girl fiddled absentmindedly with her bracelet. “You think you’ll go to Heaven?”

  “I hope so,” said Ty. “But it’s not really my call.”

  “I get scared,” she said. “I try not to let Mom and Dad know, but I do. Sometimes I cry.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about letting them know how you’re feeling. They’ll understand.”

  “I know, but Daddy has so much that he’s worried about. There are some people who don’t like him. People from where he used to live before he came to America and met Mommy.”

  Kids always knew what was going on, thought Ty. Especially bright ones like Anastasia.

  “That’s definitely not something to worry about,” Ty told her. “Me and my partner, Ryan, we got that covered. No one’s going to hurt your family while we’re around.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  She yawned.

  Ty patted the bed. “You should get some sleep.”

  She lay back, her head sinking into her pillows. Ty stayed there until she drifted off.

  23

  An hour had passed, and Anastasia’s designated bodyguard still hadn’t returned. Ty was happy to sit with her all night, if he had to, but this was turning into one long coffee break.

  Finally, he pulled out his phone and dropped Lock a text asking him to see if someone there could raise the guy. A text pinged back from Lock almost immediately: On it.

  Opening the door, Ty checked the corridor. It was empty. He didn’t want to call out in case he woke Anastasia. The kid needed her sleep.

  A minute later a fresh text came in from Lock. This one read: They can’t raise him.

  Ty muttered something under his breath that he definitely didn’t want the kid to hear. He prowled back to the door and took a step into the corridor. A nurse came around the corner. Ty waved her across.

  “Excuse me, Miss. Have you seen the man who’s usually with Anastasia?”

  “No, sorry. Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, fine. It’s just that he went on a break and now no one can raise him.”

  “You want me to speak with security?” the nurse asked.

  “No, you’re good, I can do that. I just thought maybe you’d seen him.”

  “If I see him, I’ll let him know you’re looking for him.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  He watched her walk back down the corridor. Then she stopped directly outside a storeroom. For a second Ty thought she was going to check inside. That struck him as strange, unless, of course, she’d seen the bodyguard hole up in there before when he was taking a break.

  She looked down at her shoe with a puzzled expression. She lifted her heel, balancing on one leg. It was like she had stepped in something, but Ty was too far away to see what.

  Reaching down she touched whatever it was. Her hand came back up, the fingertips red.

  She startled, almost losing her balance. She looked down to the floor.

  The red liquid that had been on her shoe was seeping out from under the door. Ty knew blood when he saw it. He guessed from her expression that she did too.

  She took a step back and looked back dow
n the corridor to him.

  Ty didn’t move. He stayed exactly where he was. In the doorway of the room, his body side on so that he could see what was happening out there and have eyes on Anastasia at the same time.

  He didn’t plan on moving either. Not for anything. One hand went to his SIG Sauer P226. The other fumbled for his phone.

  As he called Lock, he started calculating how he could extract Anastasia from the room if he had to. She was hooked up to at least one drip. The bag was on a stand, and the liquid was clear, not blood.

  She wasn’t on a ventilator. That was good. The other connections looked to him like basic monitoring such as heartrate.

  He decided that if they needed to move her, he would disconnect the cannula, pick her up and move her like that.

  Back down the corridor, the nurse opened the storeroom door. Ty edged a little further out of the door.

  “Leave it,” he called, doing his best not to shout and wake Anastasia.

  It was too late. She opened the door, and stepped back, horrified.

  Ty said a silent prayer of thanks that she hadn’t screamed.

  She turned to Ty, freaked out.

  Lock picked up his call. “We haven’t located him yet. They tried calling him but he’s not answering.”

  “Try again. Right now.”

  “Ty? What’s going on?”

  “Forget the radio. Call his cell,” said Ty.

  The nurse backed out of the storeroom, her shoes slick with blood. Ty didn’t have an angle to see inside and there was no way he was moving any more than six feet from Anastasia.

  He muted his end of the call.

  “What is it?” he said to the nurse.

  There was the trill of a cell phone ringing from inside the storeroom.

  “He’s shot himself.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I think so,” she said. “He’s still holding the gun.”

  Ty hit the mute icon again. “Ryan, I need Sinai security and the NYPD up here ASAP.”

  “You got it,” said Lock.

  Ty could hear Lock barking orders to someone in the background. Ty scanned the corridor in either direction, ready to draw his weapon. Behind him the girl roused a little.

  “What’s going on?”