Hard Cold Winter

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  The shiny blue BMW and the Lincoln stayed to the right and took the exit that led to a long, slow slope down onto the opposite side of the island. It was the middle of the afternoon. There was enough road traffic to offer us cover. Still, I let Reuben stretch his lead out an extra hundred yards. Leo looked at me quizzically.

  “We won’t lose them,” I said. “The island doesn’t have a lot of roads.”

  The BMW took point in circling around to follow the shore of the western waterway. A quarter mile along, they turned into a shipping yard. The yard looked like a small prison. Eight-foot chain-link topped with razor wire, and a rolling gate made of iron slats with a heavy alloy lock on one side.

  Across the avenue from the yard was a parking lot. I pulled into the lot and stopped where we could watch.

  “BerPac Imports,” Leo said, reading the sign on the building. “Ber for ‘Bering Sea,’ I guess, with your Siberian buddies.”

  Reuben and Elana and the thugs went inside as we watched. Elana leaned against Reuben’s tall frame, huddling together in the chill air.

  The BerPac building was two stories high and maybe fifty feet wide, with wood siding painted navy blue. An open dock stretched across the back of the yard, with room enough for a semi-trailer to pull up alongside the waterway. BerPac had an articulated crane, a small one by island standards, fixed in place at the edge of the dock.

  The BMW and the Lincoln weren’t the only vehicles parked in front of the building. There was also a GMC truck, silver with the BerPac name stenciled in red on its sides and tailgate. The GMC had four tires on the rear axle.

  I pointed that out to Leo. “Those tires look brand-new to you?”

  “Pretty clean.”

  “Uh-huh.” If I thought my tire prints might be at the scene of a murder, I’d prioritize some shopping at Goodyear, too.

  “BerPac is the place,” I said after a moment. “I don’t know if the explosives are inside, or what Reuben would want with them. But if that dually isn’t the same one that was at the cabin when Kend and Trudy were killed, I’ll eat its new radials.”

  “Which means the limp dick driving the Beemer killed them.”

  “Or he had it done. Best guess is that Reuben sent that mean-looking mother in the black running togs.”

  Leo looked at me. “And.”

  I nodded. “And Elana knows all about it. Maybe she even set them up.”

  “If all they wanted was the raw explosives, why kill two people?”

  “I don’t know. Kend’s death would cover their tracks. That makes a kind of sense. Trudy might have just been collateral damage.”

  “That takes a serious kind of cold, Van.”

  We sat for a moment. One of the Bratva thugs came to the rolling gate and pulled it shut. The lock closed with a clank we could hear inside the car.

  “So the explosives could be in the building over there,” said Leo. “Or maybe they used to be, and now they’re gone. I don’t know a shit-ton about mob guys, but if they steal something, it’s to sell it, right?”

  “This is a hell of a lot of trouble and risk just to fence some commercial water gel for twenty cents on the dollar. Reuben is crazy, but it’s a different kind of crazy.” I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. “He wants the Tovex. He’s got some reason for needing over half a ton of explosives.”

  “Well, that’s fucking alarming.”

  “Yeah.” Reuben wasn’t a terrorist of any stripe, so far as I knew. Like most crime families, the Bratva’s politics started and ended with themselves. It always came down to money, or power, or both.

  Reuben had the explosives that Kend had stolen. T. X. Broch had held the paper on Kend’s gambling debt. Most loan sharks had bigger fish backing them up with ready cash and protection.

  Maybe Reuben’s family had been backing Broch. Which meant Reuben could have thrown Broch some pocket change, and owned Kend from tip to toe. Broch wouldn’t have been stupid enough to protest.

  I could easily imagine Reuben dangling the offer of freedom in front of Kend. One night’s work, steal a few boxes from your father, and all debts are forgiven. Easy as sin, my friend. Elana, bring your man another drink.

  Had Elana been playing Kend from the very beginning? She could have introduced Kend to Reuben at Willard’s card game. Made sure Kend learned about Broch’s ghost book. Let him run, set the hook in deep, and let Reuben reel him in.

  And now she was dressed to show off every asset, holding hands with Reuben K and smiling ear to goddamn ear.

  “If there’s a race for stupid,” I said, “I’m in the lead.”

  “They were your friends, brother,” Leo said, eyes still on the far-off gantries and shipyards and looming walls of stacked containers. “I’d have trusted them, too.”

  “It’s not like the Regiment. I trusted our guys. I trust you. With these people I should know better.”

  He shrugged. “Do we call the cops?”

  “There’s nothing to hand them. Nothing that would permit a search warrant. If we can get a line of sight on where the explosives are, I know a detective who might be able to make things happen.” I thought about it. “The girl’s our best angle. If I threaten her with what we already know about Reuben, maybe she’ll turn on him to save herself.”

  “That means talking to her when her new boyfriend’s not around.” Leo looked back at the BerPac building. “Or are you thinking extraction?”

  I grinned. “Let’s not storm the castle just yet. Even if we managed to magic her out of there without our asses getting shot off, a kidnapping beef isn’t going to help our case with the cops.”

  “Kind of exposed here, Sarge,” said Leo, looking around.

  He was right. The parking lot was for a private business. It wouldn’t be much longer before someone came out to ask us what we were doing there.

  Leo nodded to the overpass. “We get some field glasses, and we could watch the place easy from under there.”

  “And follow her when they leave, and wait for a better opportunity. Works for me.”

  “Hold up,” Leo said. He pointed. “By the dock.”

  Through the chain-link I could make out the black tracksuit of Reuben’s lieutenant and another thug in red walking out of the side of the BerPac building. As we watched, they climbed down a ladder at the edge of the dock, and out of sight.

  “Shit,” I said. “They have a boat.” If they left by water, we couldn’t follow.

  In ten minutes the two men climbed back up the ladder and went back inside. We waited. No one came out.

  “What now?” said Leo.

  I figured we had another hour before the sun dipped below the landmass of West Seattle. Already the shaded spots were stretching their fingers toward the east. If Reuben and Elana left by boat when it was full dark, we might not see them at all.

  I fished my phone out of my back pocket.

  “Calling for pizza, I hope,” said Leo.

  Food wasn’t a bad idea. But there was something else we needed more.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  LAD, I’M STARTING TO dread your voice on the phone.”

  I had heard Hollis over the speedboat’s engine before I could really see him. It was dusk now, the shadows melting together to blend water and land. He pulled alongside a dock at the southern tip of Harbor Island, and I jumped onto the bow.

  The speedboat was a twenty-two-foot Stingray that looked as common as concrete but could pierce the waves like a javelin. When I’d been home for my short visit last year, I had found moorage for the boat in Hollis’s marina, where he could give it the occasional glance, and keep the salt air from eating through the engine hoses.

  “You made good time,” I said, climbing into the cockpit.

  “Said you were in an all-fired rush, didn’t you? Wait, now!”

  I had taken the helm and pushed the throttle forward. Hollis sat down heavily, his fleece pants sliding him treacherously sideways on the bench seat. I swung us to port and we sped across the
narrow waterway.

  “You didn’t say anything about abduction,” Hollis said. His face was pinker than usual with the wind and cold, and his ears were nearly white. Over the fleece he wore a cherry-red anorak.

  “There’s a blanket in the cabin,” I said. “Wrap it around yourself.”

  “Christ, you’re a pushy bastard. I’m fine.”

  “For cover, not cold. You look like a marking buoy.”

  He sighed, but acquiesced. I slowed the speedboat as we neared BerPac. Its dock was on the opposite side of the water, about a tenth of a mile away. Reuben’s boat was still there, tied up at the ladder. It was a glossy Cobalt powerboat, thirty or so feet long with a high black profile. Not quite a cigarette boat, but close. It had a small hoist installed on the rear transom, maybe for winching a dinghy out of the water. A boat ideal for fast runs to the islands and trolling for salmon close to the coast. I didn’t imagine Reuben had fish dinner in mind.

  A couple of the businesses on this side of the water had the lost look of abandonment. I picked one that looked especially ramshackle, and shifted into reverse to tie the speedboat to its vacant floating dock. This close to land, the odor of rotting milfoil pushed away the smells of the engine’s exhaust and the clean salted air.

  “So that’s BerPac,” Hollis said, peering over the bow.

  “What can you tell me?”

  “I called my man at the Port. BerPac there has two standard twenty-foot containers scheduled for delivery in the wee hours tomorrow night, on the feeder ship MV Osprey. The Osprey will take delivery of the containers from a Maersk Panamax, which is out in the Sound right this very minute.”

  “Containers of what?”

  “Ah.” I could feel gleeful energy radiating off Hollis. “It’s a regular delivery, apparently, three or four times a year. BerPac does nearly all its business with Norilsk. You know what that is?”

  “A town in Siberia.”

  “A mine in Siberia. One of the biggest in the whole fucking world.” Hollis was talking like he hadn’t learned this himself in the past half hour. I let him. It was faster than interrupting. “They mine for metal. Nickel and copper, but they extract platinum, too.”

  “So it’s two containers of metal?”

  “Don’t think of it as two containers, lad. Think of it as forty-two million dollars. That’s the insured value.”

  Jesus. No wonder Hollis looked delighted.

  “But Reuben owns the damned metal already,” Hollis said. “Or his family does, which amounts to the same thing. BerPac places a wholesale order with Norilsk for whatever the stateside buyers want. Customs signs off on the containers. It’s all legit.”

  I thought about it. The navy blue of the BerPac building looked as black as the channel water at night. Lights blazed upstairs and down in the building. I didn’t see anyone pass the windows. Four men and one woman inside the little fortress, and the place was as quiet as an orthodox church.

  “Why does BerPac import metal in the first place?” I said, mostly to myself. “Scratch that. Why does the Bratva Brotherhood?”

  “A front?” Hollis guessed. “It’s useful to have an authentic business.”

  “Could something else be in the containers?”

  Hollis waggled a hand. “Odds are Customs would open them up and have a look-see before letting them come ashore. You know how careful they are these days.”

  A few tons of metal. Two twenty-foot containers that could be hauled by a couple of semi-trailers. Too much weight for anything smaller. How much weight?

  “Do they weigh the containers?” I said. “On the freighter, do they put them on a scale?”

  “No. The weight’s recorded on the manifest of the port of origin.”

  “Which is in Siberia.”

  “Of course.”

  “Where Reuben’s father can make up whatever rules he wants.”

  Hollis’s face went slack with surprise. “You think the manifest is false.”

  “I think if I were a Bratva boss with Old Lev’s pull, and I wanted to get money into the States, I’d make sure that the manifest had everything just perfect, except for about fifteen percent less on the weight. Bribe or threaten a handful of people, and it’s done. Customs opens it up on this end and sees metal, like they expect to, and let it go. Reuben’s job is to remove the extra platinum or copper before handing off the metal to the legitimate buyers.”

  “Skimming from themselves,” Hollis said. “I like it.”

  I did, too. Except that the BerPac shipment would be business as usual for Reuben and his family. It didn’t explain his need for the explosives. If he even had them.

  “Why the sudden interest in the Kuznetsovs?” Hollis said. “There’s something profitable, I hope?”

  “Elana’s with Reuben K.”

  I felt Hollis lean towards me. “With, as in in bed with?”

  “I assume.”

  “You didn’t mention that on the phone.”

  “She wasn’t a question. BerPac was.”

  “And Willard?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So he could be part of whatever you’re poking your nose into. Were you planning on telling me any of this? Or just waiting until I stepped smack onto the bear trap?”

  I looked at Hollis’s wide outline. “They might have killed me, Hollis. They might have killed Luce.”

  “You don’t believe that. Not Elana.”

  “I believe Reuben could. And if Elana’s shacking up with him, then maybe she and Willard aren’t what I thought.”

  “Listen to yourself. Willard’s not your enemy, lad. Next you’ll be thinking I want you dead.”

  Out on the water a flock of gulls screeched a stuttering exchange as they winged just above the surface. I turned back to BerPac. The same lights were on. Still no movement.

  “Thanks for bringing the boat,” I said.

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  “I get it. You want to stay neutral. I won’t ask any more favors.”

  “Jesus, boyo.” Hollis shook his head and climbed out of the cockpit onto the dock. In the deep black of the unlit shore, it looked like he had vanished.

  His voice came out of nothing. “I loved your granddad. He was a fine friend,” he said. “But he was also the loneliest bastard it’s ever been my fortune to meet.”

  “And I’m just like him. I’ve heard this song.”

  “No, lad,” said Hollis. “Even Dono knew he had to trust somebody. Else what’s the fucking point?”

  AGE EIGHTEEN

  “You unnerstand the rules?” the corrections officer said to me in a bored and rapid voice, as she unlocked the door leading to the exercise yard. “No touching. No walking around. Stay seated. No foul language or aggressive behavior. No passing anything. You pass anything at all, we got to do the whole search thing again, and that means full search for her. You unnerstand?”

  I did. Cavity. I wasn’t sure what they were so afraid I might hand to Elana. They’d already taken my jacket and checked my shoes and socks and patted me down and given me a swipe with the metal detector wand. She wasn’t a damn serial killer. I also understood the rest of the rules. The guards had run through them twice already, pointing to a plastic board with the same instructions printed on it in big red letters, like the NO RUNNING NO SPLASHING NO DIVING rules at public swimming pools. I guessed Sultan County Detention was used to dealing with morons on both sides of the fence.

  The exercise yard was smaller than I had expected. Just a rectangle, half cement and half mangy grass, inside the twelve-foot chain-link. Picnic tables with benches on either side took up the part of the cement ground nearest the door. Some of the tables were already occupied with inmates and their families.

  “There,” the C.O. said, pointing to an empty table. I sat. The table and benches were made of the same hard plastic as playground equipment, molded and painted to mimic wood. All the pieces were bolted to the cement.

  The guard left, but other C.O.s sto
od around the tables, not quite out of earshot. The families talked low. Very low. If I tried, I could hear a girl, maybe the inmate’s younger sister, weeping at the next table over.

  A different door opened, farther down the windowless wall of the center, and the guard came out, leading Elana. Not every juvie institution made their inmates wear standard issue, but Sultan did. Elana wore a white T-shirt and rust-colored scrub pants. The day was too warm for her to need the matching long-sleeved V-neck I saw on other inmates, with SCD JUVENILE RESIDENT emblazoned on the back.

  She looked around, spotted me, and walked toward the table without being prompted. Her brown hair hung loose to her shoulders. No headbands allowed in detention. They hindered searches.

  Elana looked pretty much the same as the last time I’d seen her, except for the shorter hair. Same high cheekbones and slightly tilted eyes. Her wide mouth was set in a straight line.

  She sat down and looked at me.

  “I thought you would be Willard,” she said. “The guards just say there’s a visitor.”

  “I’m your stepbrother, today.”

  “Why?”

  I spread my hands. “To see how you’re doing. They wouldn’t let other people except Willard come here for a long time.”

  “No visitors except primary care, first six months,” she said, like a recitation. “It’s a privilege. Which I lost before I even had it, so that added another three months.”

  There had been problems, I knew that much, even if Willard was close-mouthed with Dono, and Dono similarly curt with me where Elana was concerned.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Fights. You have to fight here. There are gangs.”

  “Three months to just get the privilege back, or—?”

  “Three months added time for the fighting. Plus for some other things.” She didn’t elaborate.