Three steps. Four—
He wasn’t kidding. None of them budged to stop her.
Five steps. Six—
“Marko,” Victor said.
Nadia froze.
Victor tapped the manila folder. “I have pictures of Marko Tesla.”
Nadia turned toward Victor.
“Would you like to see pictures of your brother at his nightclub yesterday?”
Marko. Whose voice from childhood she missed the most. He’d been the ultimate big brother growing up. They played Wiffle ball in the park. Consoled each other when one of them got the strap for getting a B in school. As adults, they’d grown apart. Now, on the rare occasions they saw each other, he was often drunk, and she was always unforgiving. Was it really him?
Nadia edged up to the desk and glanced at the photos. A worn and weathered rider straddling a purple Harley, filling up the entire frame. An unlit neon sign read BRASILIA in the background.
It really was Marko.
Victor extended an open arm toward her chair. “Have a seat, Nadia. Please. Let’s discuss this like rational people.”
Nadia stumbled back to her chair.
“You wandered out of your kitchen and accidentally stepped into our bread and butter,” Victor said. “It happens. You’re guilty of nothing intentional, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But you’re accountable for our losses.”
“Go to hell,” Nadia said. “I owe you nothing. And even if I did, I’m broke.”
“You lost your job,” Misha said.
“You’re four months late on your rent,” the Wolverine said.
Victor smiled. “A friend of ours owns your apartment building. We know you’re broke.”
Misha said, “We thought you might have some valuable information.”
“Inside information?” Nadia said. “I don’t know anything about any deals.”
“That’s not what we had in mind,” Victor said.
“What did you have in mind?” Nadia said.
Misha leaned forward. “What did the dying man whisper in your ear?”
“What?”
“What did he whisper in your ear?” Victor said.
Light burst from the doorway. Brad Specter slipped into the room.
Nadia tried to remove her eyes from Specter but couldn’t. He regarded her without expression of any kind, like a man doing his job.
“We’ve been following you for the last two weeks,” Misha said.
“Why?” Nadia said.
“We weren’t sure you’d accept an invitation to meet us,” Victor said, “so we wanted to know your routine.”
Specter said, “What did the man say?”
Resistance was futile, Nadia knew. Her only hope was deception. The best deception was rooted in truth. “Find Damian. Find Andrew Steen.”
The Wolverine didn’t react. The names meant nothing to him.
Misha looked up with a blank stare. “Steen. Steen. I know that name.”
Victor nodded at Nadia. Now he understood why she was asking about Damian.
“That’s all?” Victor said. “He didn’t say anything else?”
“Well,” Nadia said, “he did say something else. But I’m not sure I heard him correctly. I could barely make out his words.”
“What?” Specter said. “What was it?”
“Millions of dollars,” Nadia said.
No one said a word.
“Damian’s millions,” Victor said.
Misha snapped his fingers. “Steen. Steen. I got it. Money manager in Kyiv. He’s connected to the top. To the top, I tell you.”
“Who was this old man, and why were you meeting him?” Victor said.
“He called out of the blue,” Nadia said. “He heard I was asking about my father and said he had answers. He told me his name was Max Milan. He checked out, and I agreed to meet him. When I saw the real Max Milan in Obon’s shop an hour ago, I knew I’d been duped.”
“Obon has nothing to do with this, or I’d know,” Victor said.
Specter said, “Then who killed the old man, and why?”
“Someone else who wants the money,” Victor said. “Whoever it was came back and removed the body to make sure there was no trace of it. To make sure no questions were asked.”
Misha said, “So there’s ten million dollars in play and two players. Us and someone else.”
“We’ll find out, won’t we?” Victor said. “Here’s what I propose. The three of us will find out what we can about this Andrew Steen in Kyiv. Meanwhile, you go home and ask your mother about Damian. And the money.”
“My mother?” Nadia said.
“Yes, your mother,” Victor said. “I knew her when I was growing up.”
“You knew my mother?”
Victor shrugged. “It’s a small community of immigrants. It was innocent, I promise you. As a child, she was like a squirrel always burying treasure. She probably has more secrets than the Kremlin. We meet again at Veselka in twenty-four hours. Three p.m. sharp.”
Victor looked at Misha and the Wolverine. They nodded. He picked up the pictures of Nadia’s brother, glanced at them, and looked at Nadia as though reminding her of his leverage.
As she squeezed out the door past Specter, Nadia’s shoulders brushed his arm. When she glared at him, she thought she spied compassion in his eyes.
Outside, Nadia wobbled down the steps. At ground level, a sign hung in the display window for a clothing boutique beneath the apartment: CRY WOLF, NEW YORK CITY.
“Ah, fresh air,” a voice said from the stairs above her.
Nadia turned.
Victor leaned against the rail.
Nadia studied him for a second. “May I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“If I offered you ten million dollars or a clear conscience, which would you take?”
He considered the question. “Both,” Victor said. “I am a thief.”
The light flickered behind his eyes, but faded before he could finish his sentence.
CHAPTER 14
THE SUN CAST purple streaks as it disappeared over the horizon. Shadows gathered along the perimeter of Tompkins Park.
After their usual Sunday dinner at the East Village Restaurant, Victor and Stefan strolled through the park, watching the dogs play.
“You believe her?” Stefan said.
“We know there was an old man,” Victor said. “We know there was a shooting, and we know the man whispered something in her ear. We know all this because we have a witness. Specter. As for what he said to her, it doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter? How can you say that?”
“Because one man shot another man in the street in broad daylight, and it had nothing to do with a woman. Since perestroika happened and capitalism came to our homeland, why do men shoot each other in the street?”
“Money,” Stefan said.
Victor grunted. “Exactly. Money. So whether the dying man told her about Damian’s ten million dollars—which he very well may have—or something a bit different…”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s money.”
“Yes. It has to be money.”
A petite woman in black tights with a perfectly formed ass walked a pug on a leash ahead of them.
“Two cloves of garlic,” Stefan said. “All they need is a loaf of bread and some salt.”
Victor let Stefan enjoy the view for a moment. “Bread costs money,” he said. “Have you wired that money out of my personal account to Tara yet?”
“How could I? Banks don’t open until tomorrow.”
“Change in plan. Wire her seven thousand. Get the other five thousand in cash. And I want to get it to her tomorrow so she can leave town before Misha does some damage she can’t walk away from.”
“I’ll take care of that and the girl’s surgery in Kyiv first thing in the morning. Speaking of Misha…”
“Yes?”
Stefan looked away. “He offered me a job.”
“Of course he did. And you accepted.”
Stefan regarded him with a look of surprise. “You don’t seem surprised. Or upset.”
Victor veered off the trail toward the wrought-iron fence, where darkness would hide the embarrassment on his face.
“The other day,” Victor said, “when you joked I was scaring you because I was senile and you said you might leave me, what did I tell you?”
Stefan kicked a pebble out of his way. “That the day you stopped scaring me is the day I should leave you.”
Victor stopped walking and faced his sovetnik of twenty-three years. “So tell me, Stefan. Do I still scare you?”
“No, Victor. You don’t scare me anymore.”
“Then it’s time for you to go,” Victor said.
They left in opposite directions.
When Victor got home, he sank to the floor in the corner of his dark kitchen. The cat meowed and jumped in his lap. He wrapped his arms around it and kissed its head.
“It’s just you and me,” he said. “It’s just you and me, Damian.”
CHAPTER 15
ON SUNDAY EVENING, long after most churches conducted their services, another form of worship began at 7:00 p.m. at Brasilia in Willimantic, twenty miles outside Hartford.
Giant speakers suspended above a runway stage thumped with a Joan Jett rock-and-roll anthem. Two women gyrated on the floor, arching their backsides within inches of the faces of their worshipping clientele. Nadia counted thirty-three customers scattered around her brother’s club. None of them wore fine black leather coats, and none of them looked familiar.
Marko came around from behind a bar the length of a destroyer and gave her a lukewarm hug. With his shiny head and gray goatee, he looked like a prematurely old Cossack. A blast of mint gave way to the inevitable stench of alcohol.
“Oh, man,” she said in Ukrainian. “You’re drinking again.”
He blinked. “I can control it.”
“Last month, you told me you were sober for twenty-three days straight. What happened?”
“I think I can handle one cocktail.”
“Oh my God, you’ve got to be kidding me, Marko.”
“Just stop. You call me from your car all frantic and shit, telling me to be careful like my life is in jeopardy. Then you show up here with your holier-than-thou attitude. I don’t need this, Nancy Drew. I really don’t.”
Nadia looked around to make sure someone hadn’t crept close enough to listen. She pulled her checkbook out of her purse.
“I’m giving you an early birthday present,” she said. “It’s going to be a big one to make up for all the years we were incommunicado.” She wrote her brother’s name on the check. “I want you—no, I need you—to leave the country for two weeks. Immediately.”
He laughed in disbelief. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Ain’t no one leaving the country”—he stopped laughing—“unless it’s you. What the hell’s going on?”
Nadia started filling in the amount. “I don’t have much money left, or I’d make it more. Three thousand dollars. The Bahamas. Or maybe Aruba—”
Marko grabbed her wrist and lifted the pen off the check. “Stop. Stop writing.”
Nadia tried to force the pen down, but Marko wouldn’t let her hand budge.
“Talk to me, little sister,” he said. “What’s going on? What’s this all about?”
She pulled her hand away and rubbed her wrist. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
She looked around again. No one suspicious. “It’s not safe for me to do so.”
“What?”
“I can’t tell you anything except that your life is already in danger. If I tell you more, someone could try to get it out of you, and I won’t put you in that position. You have to trust me on this.”
“Trust you? Listen to yourself. I’m your brother, and you won’t trust me by telling me what’s going on.”
Nadia remembered when Marko had secretly tracked her during her three-night survival test on the Appalachian Trail to make sure she didn’t get hurt. She was twelve years old at the time. Her father had insisted she become the youngest girl in the history of the Ukrainian scout organization PLAST to earn the survival merit badge. Marko had saved her from a pair of criminals who’d escaped from prison. Now his life was in jeopardy because of her.
“I’m so sorry this is happening,” she said. “I’m so sorry we’re having this conversation.”
Nadia resumed writing the check.
Marko said, “Does this have something to do with that antiques ring you busted up last year?”
Nadia didn’t answer.
“Does it? Were the people you put away just a front for someone else?”
Nadia signed the check.
“Oh no,” Marko said. “They were, weren’t they? Oh, shit. Uke or Russian?”
Nadia tore the check out of her book and slid it across the bar toward him. “Will you please leave the country? For your own protection.”
Marko glared at her, slipped off his stool unsteadily, and raised both pant legs. A gun was strapped to the left, a twelve-inch Bowie knife to the right. “Got all the protection I need right here.”
“No. No, you don’t,” Nadia said. “Not from these people.”
Marko’s face darkened, as though he understood her message.
“I’m begging you,” Nadia said, pushing the check closer to him. “Please go on a vacation. For me?”
Marko tore the check into eight pieces.
“Asshole,” Nadia said under her breath. “I knew this would be impossible.”
“Then why did you bother coming?”
She added a dollop of sarcasm to her voice. “Because I hate you and I want you to get hurt.”
Nadia gathered her purse and started to leave.
“Yo, Nancy Drew,” Marko said.
She turned. As a child, Nadia had escaped from her parents’ demands that she be the perfect student, Ukrainian, and daughter by reading mysteries. She always had a Nancy Drew in her hands, and it was Marko who supplied them. He delivered newspapers before school and bought her books with the proceeds.
“I’m leaving for Bangkok on Monday. Bunch of us are hiking to Burma. Two weeks. You need me to cancel and stay, just say the word.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me that from the beginning?”
“That would have been the normal thing to do. Not our family way, though, is it?”
Nadia managed a smile. “Watch out for the snakes.”
“You too, Nancy Drew. You too.”
CHAPTER 16
NADIA ZIPPED DOWN the highway to Rocky Hill, a bedroom community between Hartford and New Haven. Her mother’s condo conveniently abutted Dinosaur State Park. Yellow paint peeled from the clapboard exterior. The glass on the bottom half of the storm door was missing, as though her father were still alive and had kicked it during one of his tirades. She remembered how his temper had frayed when she resisted taking the three-day survival test. She didn’t need to be the youngest Ukrainian Girl Scout ever to win the most coveted merit badge, she told him. He screamed at her that she would never make it in America. That she had to be stronger, tougher, and more fearless than the other children because she was an immigrant’s daughter.
Her mother’s role in her upbringing had been one of tacit participation. When her father berated her for a less-than-stellar teacher assessment at an American school or a rival’s victory in a Ukrainian spelling bee, her mother fixed Ukrainian comfort food and gave Nadia compliments. But Nadia’s rewards were always conditional on her scholastic and community achievements. Both mother and father acted the same in that regard. Any and all affection she received was always conditional.
When Nadia entered the kitchen, her mother was arranging photographs at the circular wooden table. She didn’t get up. She didn’t even glance Nadia’s way.
Nadia wrapped her arms around herself. “What happened to the bottom of your door?” she said in Ukrainian.
; “A T. rex got lost and kicked it when he saw his reflection. What do you think happened? The juvenile delinquents next door were playing soccer. When I told their mother she should fix it, she told me to go F myself. Can you believe that?”
“That’s terrible, Mama.”
“They’re Puerto Rican. What do you expect? This country will let anyone in now. This country is going to hell. You want some tea?”
“Tea would be nice.”
Nadia’s mother glided to the stove, her elongated, birdlike jaw leading the way. The belt from her black satin robe dangled behind her like the tail of a pterodactyl that had escaped with the T. rex. After preparing two cups, she joined Nadia at the kitchen table.
Nadia looked at the photographs scattered all around. In one, her father stood beside Marko on Mount Carleton, the Canadian peak of the Appalachian Trail. Her father, windswept hair like an angry lion. Marko, a pipsqueak, about eight.
“Do you have any pictures of Father when he was young? When he lived in Ukraine?”
“I have some pictures when we met in Lviv. After he was bit by the nationalist bug and moved from Kyiv. And I have some wedding pictures, but of course, we got married here in ’71. Why are you asking? Are you still obsessing over what your father did and didn’t do for the Partisans? What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me? When I lost my job, I took a look at my life.”
“Oh, really. And what did you see?”
“Nothing, Mama. I saw nothing, because other than my career, I have nothing. I have no one.”
“You have nothing,” she said under her breath. “You have a college education, you have your health, and you’re an American citizen. You have everything.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know what you mean. And what does this have to do with your father? Wait. Let me guess. Your father didn’t dote on you, and after he died, there was no man around the house, so you have trust issues, right? You can’t hold a relationship with any man, and he’s to blame.”
“No, he’s not to blame—”
“No, he’s not. You are. Because your entire life has been about money. You’re just another in a long line of Tesla quick-buck artists. Working with those criminals on Wall Street. You could have stayed in Hartford and been a mortgage banker. Helped people buy homes.”
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