Under Water

by Casey Barrett

  My phone was dead by the time I reached the top of the subway steps coming out of Union Square. It was a warm, still Sunday night, the square deserted save for a few skaters practicing their tricks on the tarmac. I walked east toward Irving, already tasting the whiskey sitting in wait on my kitchen counter. I thought of the window coming down, the look on Fred’s face before the shots tore through him. I thought of the killer fleeing the scene in the same car as my attacker from the other night. It couldn’t be the same guy; I’d hurt him too bad. There was the nagging worry that I might have killed him as I pounded the back of his skull against the curb, but he was probably just suffering from a top-shelf concussion. Or perhaps he was lying somewhere in a coma, brain injuries still uncertain. Best to try to forget the damage left in your wake. I reminded myself it was self-defense. Besides, there were lots of black Tahoes out there on the city streets. It was probably just a case of vehicular coincidence.

  The stories we tell ourselves just so we can turn the page.

  I returned to my subterranean flat and took the necessary steps for personal sanity. I fed the hound, let him out in the garden. I swallowed down a triple helping of painkillers. I poured myself five fingers of Bulleit. Then I called Elvis back inside and together we fell into the couch and turned on SNL, recorded from the night before. The host was a blond starlet I didn’t recognize, delivering an unfunny opening monologue. I refilled my glass with another hand of the amber before she wrapped it up to forced laughter. The haze, all I wanted was the haze. I needed to fill my mind with a fog so thick I could forget all the death and the dying around me. It would all still be there in the morning, along with the throbbing head, but I didn’t care. I just needed a brief respite of annihilation, followed by a few unconscious hours on the couch.

  My buzzer sounded before I could get all the way there. Cass, I thought, of course. I hadn’t bothered to recharge the phone. She’d be worried, she’d have the details on those plates, she’d be pissed I hadn’t gotten back to her. Fuck it, she could let herself in, but the buzzer kept buzzing and Elvis started whimpering, and finally I set down my glass and staggered to the door.

  “Cass?” I called. “You forget your keys?”

  “Mister Duck,” said another woman’s voice. It took a moment to place it. “It’s Anna. Please let me in,” she said. “It’s important.”

  I unbolted the door and turned the knob.

  I saw her unsmiling face first. Then I saw the man next to her. Then I felt his fist in my face.

  Chapter 28

  They say the drinking will catch up with you. I didn’t believe it. In my years fresh out of prison, I’d known self-discipline like any Olympian. I willed myself into a dangerous black-belted badass each day at the dojo. I swore off the booze, didn’t touch a drug. I was rehabilitated. Learned my lessons in those thirteen months behind bars, bet your ass. I wasn’t going to let a felony record or a disgraced family name hold me back. I was ineligible for a private investigator’s license? Fine, who needed one? It was time to live my life on the other side. I would help those in need and find the things they’d lost. And I would be able to defend myself against anyone who stood in my way.

  Sooner or later, the true nature reemerges, doesn’t it? I could blame it on that bullet I took for Cass. Blame it on the painkillers I needed, really needed back then, to cloud the pain of my torn-up insides. I could blame it on bad genes and a need for drink that stretched back generations. I could blame it on my father. They would all be fair reasons, all with a different shade of truth, but the fact was I got sick of sobriety, of being the clear-headed wannabe superhero. I liked my gig as a finder, or pseudo PI, or whatever it was I wanted to call myself. But I found I could function just fine on the sauce. Made me more fearless. I even remembered the aikido from time to time, in moments of sudden violence.

  But not this time.

  This time I came to with a broken nose and a revolver pointed at my chest. Anna held it in her sturdy hands in the chair next to the couch. It did not shake. Standing above her was a man who appeared to be a carbon copy of the man I’d beaten, without the injuries. He was a big, ugly beast with features in grotesque proportions. He had the mangled cauliflower ears of a wrestler, a nose with the nostrils of a racehorse, and a wide mouth turned down over a heavy jaw. His fists were clenched at his sides. He raised them as I blinked open my eyes.

  “Greetings, Mister Duck,” said Anna. “Did we disturb you?”

  “Anna, what are you . . .”

  “This is my brother, Ivan,” she said. “I believe you crossed paths earlier today, yes? Outside the home of this Mr. Kosta?”

  “We never got a chance to chat,” I said.

  “Your timing was not so good, I’m afraid.” She looked down at the gun in her hand. “I did not expect to have to kill you,” she said. “But after what you did to Denis, you leave us with no choice.”

  “Is that your other brother?” I asked. “How’s the back of his head doing?”

  She translated this for Ivan. He responded by stepping past her and delivering a left hook to the side of my head. My ears rang out as I fell to my side and then slid off of the couch. I curled into a fetal position with my arms wrapped around my head. Ivan began kicking in my kidneys. Anna called him off before I could lose consciousness again.

  “Dostatochno!” she cried.

  Ivan’s assault stopped, and he leaned down and picked me up by the neck and tossed me back on the couch. He slapped me once across the face with a meaty open hand before he stepped away and resumed his position behind his sister.

  “We must kill you,” said Anna. “But first we must make you suffer for what you did to poor Denis. This will take time, my lover. By morning you will be begging for death.”

  “Anna, why? Last night . . .”

  “Why, why, why? What is this American obsession with why? You are all so desperate for answers. We were hired to look after you. That is all.”

  “By who?”

  “It does not matter,” she said. “We are paid to perform a service for someone, the same as you. As for our time together, you must understand that there are many means of distraction—through pleasure and pain, yes? Your lovely partner, I know she understands this, with her cute dungeon games? When you did not respond to pain, after that first beating, I tried pleasure. It was not bad, was it, the time we spent? But if I had known last night about Denis?” Now she stood from the chair, took one step, and towered over me. “I promise you, you American bastard, I would have killed you in your sleep.” She spat down at me and swiped the butt of the gun against the side of my head.

  Elvis howled out in protest from across the room. Ivan turned and rushed toward him and kicked my hound hard in the ribs. Elvis crashed against the wall, then tried to scamper away down the hall as Ivan stalked after him.

  “Eno!” called Anna.

  I heard more pained howling before Ivan returned to the living room with a smirk on his ugly face.

  “Fucking cunt,” I said. “You don’t fuck with a man’s dog.”

  Both laughed, exchanged some amused mocking in Russian. Ivan went to the kitchen and began opening drawers until he found what he needed. He emerged with two steak knives, one in each hand.

  I considered my options. I could rush Ivan, maybe slow or stop his progress enough so that Anna was left with no choice but to shoot me. End it quick. Or I could dive at Anna, take a bullet, hope it missed the important parts, turn the gun on her, and then hope I had time to take on Ivan with his knives. The fact that I had a liter of whiskey and a few thousand milligrams of Vicodin in my belly did not better my odds.

  Ivan raised both knives and scraped the blades together as he approached. He inhaled and exhaled through those gaping nostrils. His black eyes were dull and devoid of doubt.

  “Back in Ukraine,” said Anna, “Ivan studied to be doctor. He is very good with the knife, very skilled. You will see, Mister Duck.”

  I remembered James Fealy’s sliced and seve
red body in the shower. Very skilled indeed. Anna leaned back in the chair, not lowering the gun, and settled in for a sadistic performance by her brother.

  “Who hired you?” I asked again.

  It was met with a grunt and another laugh, then the sound of a key turning in my lock. All heads turned toward the front door as Cass crossed the threshold. In that moment of distraction I dove toward Anna and caught one hand on her wrist and another on her throat. But not before she squeezed the trigger. The sound of a gunshot exploded through the room, and Cass’s eyes went wide in pain and understanding. She dropped to her knees as a circle of blood spread across the stomach of her T. Rex t-shirt.

  Ivan was on me with knives raised as I rolled beneath his sister and wrested the gun from her. I fired once point blank at him. The bullet ripped through his face with a spray of red mist. Down went Ivan, crashing through my coffee table as he fell for the final time.

  Anna was writhing and hissing above me like a cornered cobra. She was a powerful woman. She flipped over and drove a knee into my crotch. In the same motion, she knocked the hot gun from my hand and lunged down and bit into my cheek. I tried to throw her off but failed. There was too much raging survival fight in this savage woman. I tried to reach up and hit her back, but couldn’t get any momentum behind my blows. She opened her mouth and spit a chunk of my cheek from her bloody lips, then dove at me again for another bite. I might have taken care of her brothers, but I was losing this one. I was pinned down and being eaten alive, and I was running out of fight.

  A third gunshot ended all that. Anna’s body went limp above me, and she crumpled off onto her side.

  I looked over to find Cass on her knees, bleeding from her stomach, holding the steaming gun.

  Chapter 29

  She was unconscious in my arms by the time the cops arrived. Gunshots are a rare sound in these parts. Once again I was sure there was no shortage of neighbors dialing 911 and reporting the danger that followed me. Police came pouring in with lots of bad noise, slipping through the blood. They spread out and addressed the bodies splayed around them on my floor. They confirmed the deaths of Anna and Ivan and found some life left in my partner. A faint pulse, no breath, their looks confirmed that her survival was doubtful. Ambulances roared down my block to join the brigade of NYPD. EMTs pushed past the officers and kneeled before Cass, strapped her to a gurney, placed the breathing mask over her pale face.

  I looked in worse shape than I was. A ravaged face, ringing in the ears, half my ribs probably broken, but I had enough adrenaline pumping through me to feel sober and alert. I refused to leave the apartment until an emergency vet had been called for Elvis. His prognosis was not much better than Cass’s.

  On the way to the hospital, Cass flatlined. They zapped her three times, each more resigned than the last until her heart kick-started enough to offer some last strands of hope. We were separated as they wheeled us into the ER, memories no more than a blinding white light and voices, hurried, serious voices, all around us. I remember ranting, screaming about killing those evil bastards, begging them to save Cass, asking about Elvis: “Is my dog okay? Somebody fucking talk to me!”

  I must have been sedated, because my next memory was waking in a hospital bed with my face swollen and stitched, my sides and stomach aching, and a needle plunged into the top of my hand. I hoped it was more than saline in that dripping bag above my head. Detective Lea Miller sat at my bedside, grim-faced and impatient.

  “You’re up,” she said.

  “Cass . . . is she . . . how is she?” I asked.

  Miller looked down at her sensible shoes. “Still too early to tell,” she said. “She’s in surgery It’s not looking good, Duck.”

  I stared up at the cracked ceiling, wanting more than anything to trade places with her.

  “We need to talk,” said Miller.

  “Not now.”

  “Yes, now. You’ve had a hell of a week, Darley. Your body count is getting rather disturbing.”

  One week, four murders in my immediate presence. Killed one myself. Cass another, before Anna could kill me. Disturbing indeed.

  “Elvis?” I asked. “Is he okay?”

  “Looks like the King is gonna be fine,” she said. “Some internal injuries, I’m told, but he’ll live.”

  “Thanks for checking.”

  “Fellow dog lover,” she said. “Have a mastiff at home. Name’s Freddy.”

  “Guessing Freddy’s had a better week than my guy.”

  She shrugged, managed a smile, and looked me in the eyes with something that looked like real warmth. Then the cop persona returned.

  “Duck, the man you killed was on FBI watch lists. Ivan Lisko, and his brother Denis, entered the country illegally. They were known radicals back in Ukraine. Ivan had a long list of bad associations to his name. His younger brother Denis once beat a man to death with a tire iron outside a bar in Kiev. A few nights ago, Denis was beaten into a coma on a Williamsburg street. You know anything about that?”

  “Nope.”

  “About the sister, Anna . . .”

  “That bitch,” I said. “If she killed Cass . . .”

  “Your partner killed her, correct? Duck, I’m going to need you to walk me through what happened in your apartment.”

  I did the best I could. No sense holding back at this point. I took her through the last twenty-four hours of my cursed life. I told her about Kosta and the alleged blackmail; Fred Wright coming out of Kosta’s place and being shot down in the street; asking Cass to run the plates and keeping that knowledge from the Brooklyn cops on the scene; returning home and getting aggressively shit-faced and unprepared for what was about to invade my home. I even told her about those girls on the subway. At the end of my recap, Miller continued taking notes as her hand caught up with my words. I rested my head back against the thin pillow and pressed the call button for a nurse. I intended to ask for more meds, the heaviest shit they had. A male nurse appeared in short order. He was a tall, thin black guy with a face of resigned realism.

  “What’s your name, buddy?” I asked.

  He told me it was Clancy.

  “Two questions for you, Clancy,” I said. “When can I get out of here? And how much drugs can you give me to go? I’m thinking those super-sized Percs. I’m in a hell of a lot of pain, man.”

  “I’ll have to check with the doctor,” he said. “But I think we can get you out as soon as the officer here has finished questioning you, if that’s all right with her.”

  Detective Miller looked up from her note pad, gave a quick nod, and continued her note taking.

  “Not the first time you’ve had your nose broken, is it, Mr. Darley?” asked Clancy.

  “Not the first or the last.”

  “That bite on your cheek is gonna take a while to heal. We had to put in twenty stitches. Gave you a tetanus shot. It was a hell of a gash, probably gonna leave a scar.”

  “Not my first one of those either,” I said. “What do you think about those Percocet, Clancy? Maybe a few for the road before I get the script?”

  “You need to be careful with those things,” he said. “Has anyone discussed the dangers of painkillers with you?”

  I thought all three of us were going to start laughing, thought someone must have put up good old Clancy to this gag. Turned out I was the only one laughing. Clancy shook his weary head and walked off. Miller set down her pen and looked up at me.

  “This should be a wake-up call,” she said. “It doesn’t get much lower than this.”

  “There’s always another circle,” I said.

  “Poor Duck,” she said softly.

  I didn’t like the pity or the judgment, and I told her as much. I added that she must be one clueless cop if she thought this was as bad as it got. I asked her about Dealer Pete. Had he confessed to the murder of James Fealy yet? She absorbed my abuse until Clancy returned with some of those magic pink pills in a little cup. While I swallowed them down, Miller stood from my bedside and left
without a word.

  I knew no charges would be forthcoming. I’d killed a dangerous foreign national, on FBI watch lists, for Christ’s sake. Don’t they give out medals when you kill one of those fuckers? Besides, it was all in self-defense. My wounds were proof.

  And Cass . . . Jesus, if I lost her. I couldn’t bear the thought. I’m not a religious man. Got no time for that fear-mongering garbage. But this time I prayed. Don’t know who I was praying to exactly, but I closed my eyes and prayed to whomever or whatever it is that decides such things. I prayed for Cass to pull through, and I offered myself in return. There for the taking, Big Man, feel free to cut me off whenever you see fit. Just allow Cass to walk out of this hospital and heal.

  When a doctor finally appeared, he couldn’t tell me much more about her condition. I should be prepared for the worst. Thanks, doc, I’ll keep that in mind. After a lecture about the pills, he handed over my coveted script for Percocet and told me I was free to go after my IV was unplugged and I was all signed out. If Cass made it out of surgery, I could visit the ICU later in the day.

  It was another gorgeous September afternoon as I left the hospital. Deep blue skies, and that special crisp scent of fall on the horizon, the city may feel unbearable at either extreme for most of the year, but there’s that six-week window where New York City holds its own with the best weather on earth. We’re the best at everything, at least some of the time. I breathed it in, paused for a moment of gratitude, then remembered Cass upstairs and cursed those too blue skies. The survivors of September 11th must feel the way same. God, what a beautiful day that was . . .

  Miller was waiting in her unmarked black Crown Vic out front. Her partner, the sloppy, strap-on-loving Detective Sullivan, was in the driver’s seat. She waved me over.