Maybe everyone would be better off if they locked her up. Her thoughts repeated in an endless loop of self-recrimination and sadness. Inna wrapped her arms around her stomach. She had tried so hard not to be a victim. And now what had she become?
“It’s going to be okay,” the doctor said.
“How can it be okay? I killed him, didn’t I?” The words were a garble of tears and desperation. This doctor was a liar. Nothing would ever be okay again. The image of the man’s blood pooling all around her burned behind her eyes. No amount of tears would ever wash it away. She was a killer. She had shot him.
The doctor pressed his lips together as if in sympathy. “If it’s any consolation, I’d say it’s not likely you shot anyone. Roofies tend to incapacitate people, almost paralyze them.”
“Tend to, but not always?”
“No, not always,” he said and stripped her of any reassurance.
VLAD
“I TOLD YOU, I didn’t kill him,” Vlad said. He tried to stay calm, but he was getting impatient with Detective Sharp’s endless repetition of the same question: “Why’d you kill him?” Either this was some kind of advanced interrogation technique, akin to water boarding, or Sharp was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Vlad wondered what time it was. He felt as if he had been in the interrogation room for days. He couldn’t waste time here. He needed to get out, regroup with Artur. Brighton Beach was on the brink of a mafia war, and Inna was in imminent danger.
“Zviad was already dead when I came in,” Vlad said.
“Don’t lie to me.” Sharp threw his pen on the table and jumped to his feet as if ready to smash in Vlad’s nose. The cop smelled like stale coffee and really needed a breath mint. His eyes were bloodshot with thick, dark bags underneath. “It’ll go worse for you.”
Vlad didn’t expect a friendly chat over coffee and donuts tonight, not when he had been two-fisting guns in a room where a man had taken a bullet to the brain, but his handler was a little too intense, a hungry shark that had caught the scent of chum.
Vlad’s nerves stretched taut. He remembered other visits to the station, other lengthy interrogations. Then he had been defiant, maybe even unrepentant. Vlad hadn’t done anything arrest-worthy tonight, hadn’t even fired his gun, but he still felt like a no-good kid with guilt itching to be confessed and threatening to show on his skin like an angry rash. If he wasn’t careful, he would give himself away.
“I’m telling the truth.” About this, anyway. “The door was locked. I kicked it in. She was trapped under him, and he was dead.”
“You said they were having sex.”
“I said he raped her,” Vlad said.
His handler cast a frustrated look at the mirrored wall, where his fellow officers were likely monitoring the questioning, as if Vlad were obstructing justice. “You said you weren’t in the room. How do you know what the hell happened?”
Vlad reminded himself that the cops hadn’t seen what he had seen: Inna half-naked, trapped under Zviad, and screaming her lungs out.
“He was lying on top of her. His leg was over hers like he was holding her down. His pants were pulled down around his ankles, and her dress was torn,” Vlad said. “What the fuck do you think happened?”
“Maybe she liked it rough. Maybe she wanted it,” Sharp said.
Vlad’s temper threatened to explode like a grenade, and he tightened his fists under the table to hold it in check.
“Maybe you got jealous and shot him. Did you know him? Were you friends? We can easily find that one out, so just tell us.”
“I told you, I didn’t kill him.” He squeezed his fists tighter, but his hold was slipping. “And, no. I didn’t know him personally. We’ve met a couple of times on business.”
“What is it you do for the Koslovskys?” his handler asked in an obvious attempt to try a new tack.
“I’m in charge of surveillance and security for Koslovsky Industries,” Vlad said. “And before you ask, yes, I’m licensed to carry guns in New York.” There was nothing illegal in the job he did, part of the brilliance of Artur’s scheme. Problem was, the scheme was almost too brilliant.
Vlad still had so much to learn from Artur about his business enterprise. The buyers and suppliers. The “products.” The relationships with the other small businesses in Brighton Beach and in the New York metropolitan area, never mind the connections overseas. He still didn’t know how it all worked, where all the money came from. Artur provided only crumbs of information, a faint trail that hinted at the larger enterprise. Sometimes Vlad felt certain Artur knew his angle and was baiting and teasing him: I have everything you want. Come and get it.
The door slammed open and Detective Saul Hersh stalked in. “I don’t fucking believe it,” Vlad blurted as one of the few men who could blow all of his plans to hell strutted into the room.
“Believe it,” Saul said. He was short and on the slight side for a cop, but his threat wasn’t in his physical strength. The man was clever, sneaky. He used to have a reputation as a hardcore interrogator, the kind who always got his answers. Sharp was only the warm up. The real deal had just arrived.
Another test, Vlad thought, as dangerous as the others. Artur had eyes and ears on the police force.
Saul placed scarred hands on his narrow hips, and the circular marks drew Vlad’s eyes, just as they had the first time he had met Saul. Ivan’s abuse hadn’t left visible scars on Vlad, other than the cleft in his eyebrow from where his head had hit the corner of a coffee table. Saul had told him his own father used to burn cigarettes on his hands. “I had a choice,” Saul had said, “to be like him, or go another way. You have that choice too. What will you choose?”
“Never thought I’d see you here again. On that side of the table,” Saul said now. “Thought I’d scared some religion into you. Guess I was wrong ’cause here you are. Playing your father’s favorite role—gangster with guns.”
“Stuff it, Hershey. We both know you’re the one who tried to play my father’s role,” Vlad said. “You thought if you saved Nadia from Ivan she’d shower you with … gratitude.”
“Does your mother know you’re here? That you’re gunslinging for Koslovsky—just like your old man?”
“I don’t talk to Nadia. The worthless whore,” Vlad said. He made a spitting sound for extra effect.
Saul got up in his face, grabbed him by the collar. “Don’t talk about your mother that way.”
“You’re defending her?” Vlad couldn’t hold back a mirthless laugh. The poor fucking sap, sucker punched by love for a woman who would never love him back, who would never love anyone save Ivan, even her own son. Ivan had beaten Nadia so hard she couldn’t stand and then turned his rage on Vlad, who had been too small to defend himself or his mother, and still she had professed her love. Sickening.
“She’s practically signed your death warrant,” Vlad said with a shake of his head.
“You want to talk about death warrants?” Saul tightened his grip on Vlad’s collar as if to prevent any sympathy from leaking out of him. “Let’s talk about what you were doing armed to the teeth at Troika.”
“My job,” Vlad said.
“Get a new job,” Saul said.
“Did they send you in to play good cop or bad cop, Hershey?” Vlad taunted, and Saul winced at the jibe. “It’s amazing they kept you on the force after what you did.”
“We all make mistakes, son, and that was a long time ago,” Saul said.
“I’m not your son.”
“I’m willing to help you—for your mother’s sake. Is there something you want to tell us?”
“Why don’t you speed things up and write my statement for me?” Vlad said.
Ivan had been guilty of plenty of murders, just not the one for which Saul had arrested him. If anyone deserved a life sentence, Ivan did, but Nadia had turned on Saul the moment the truth of what he had done came to light, despite the fact that his actions may have saved her life and Vlad’s. She had taken the
story to the papers and spent every moment since lobbying to get Ivan’s case appealed, to have him freed, even knowing that the first thing Ivan would do once he got out was kill Saul Hersh.
Saul cuffed him on the ear. “That’s the way you want to play it? Fine by me.” He pulled a metal chair back from the table and sat down. “Maybe your statement goes like this. You and Artur walked in on Inna doing the horizontal tango in the nightclub.”
Vlad interrupted. “Say you’re right. Why would I bring out the heat? Not like I give a damn who she screws.”
“But Artur does. Heard he doesn’t want his little princess dating a gangster.”
“So Artur kills Romeo to keep him away from Juliet? In his son’s nightclub. In the middle of prime time when he might get caught. When he would bring the cops breathing down his neck. Are you out of your fucking mind? Artur Koslovsky doesn’t even carry a gun.”
“But you do. Two of them,” Saul’s partner interjected. He tapped his pen against his notepad.
“Thanks, Einstein. And we’ve already established that neither of them fired tonight,” Vlad said.
“All right,” Saul agreed. “Let’s say you and Artur weren’t the shooters. Inna fired the gun.”
“Because Zviad was raping her,” Vlad said, again imposing his favored theory. Sharp raised his eyebrows at Saul, sending him some secret communication.
Saul cleared his throat. “Because of what he knew,” Saul said quietly.
The statement wasn’t a question, and it caught Vlad off guard. There was something else going on here, some part of the story Vlad didn’t know. He was missing something. He needed to focus. He sat up a little straighter, alert now to whatever clue Saul or Sharp might cast in his direction.
“You think he was blackmailing her?” Vlad asked. The detectives exchanged another glance. They didn’t like this theory any more than the one about the rape. Why didn’t they want to see Inna as a victim?
“While we’re playing this game of hypotheticals, tell me this,” Vlad said. “Inna’s in her little dress, hot and heavy with her Romeo. I didn’t see a purse or a holster on her. Where exactly did she hide the gun if she was planning all along to seduce and kill him? Even strapped to her thigh, the Glock would have been conspicuous.”
“Maybe the gun was his,” Saul said.
“Sure. Okay. So why don’t you think he might have held her at gunpoint? That there could have been a struggle, and she won?”
“We’re asking the questions,” Sharp said.
This time the defensiveness was unmistakable. Another shifty look from Sharp to Saul, and realization hit. The detectives couldn’t stomach the idea of Inna as a victim because they didn’t want Zviad to be guilty—of anything. It was as if they were protecting one of their own.
One of their own. Vlad’s mind started to race with the possibility. What if Zviad was an undercover cop? He would have been investigating the Georgians. What could he have found out about Inna? Was she involved with whatever was happening at Troika—the drugs and women Dato had mentioned?
People did stupid things, sure. Supposing Zviad had something on Inna, Vlad still didn’t buy that she would off him like that at the club where they were sure to be found. If silence were her game, she had nothing to gain from a messy murder that would lead to so many questions. And why at Troika?
A nasty suspicion took hold and stoked the rage inside Vlad even higher. The Georgians would surely benefit from killing the cop who was spying on them and framing someone else for the deed. Even better to have the murder at Troika, have the cops swarm the place, and shut down their supposed competition.
But why involve Inna?
Vlad silently kicked himself. He should have paid more attention to Inna these last few months. She worked closely with Artur. She pointedly avoided Vlad. Come to think of it, Artur actively kept Vlad away from her. He always sent Vlad on an errand when she was in the office. Vlad had assumed Artur had been giving him a signal, well within his rights, that his daughter—his much younger daughter—was off limits. Vlad had done his best to dampen his natural interest in her long legs and inky hair and the smoky quality of her voice that made his thoughts wander. Not for me. Not for me.
Now he wondered whether there was more to Artur’s separation of them. Perhaps Inna was central to Artur’s plots and schemes and Artur still didn’t trust Vlad enough for him to know. Or perhaps Artur wanted to keep her clear of the intrigue.
She might be innocent. Or she might be another spider at the center of an elaborate web. She wouldn’t escape Vlad’s notice now. He would learn all of her secrets. First, he needed to stop the Georgians from killing her.
“Dato and Goga were eager to blow her brains out,” Vlad said. “Said they wanted retribution. But maybe it was a smoke screen. Maybe one of their crew killed Zviad—because he had something on them. And now they want to make sure Inna stays silent about the murder.”
Saul shook his head with sad wonder. “You’re in the wrong profession. With a mind like yours, you should have been a detective.”
“Yeah? Would that help you sleep at night? You could say it was all worth it, all the lies, as long as Ivan’s son turned into one of the good guys?”
“It was worth it,” Saul said solemnly. “Whatever happens—to me, to you—it was worth it.” Saul’s intense gaze, the fatherly worry etched in the strained lines around his eyes, unsettled Vlad. He looked away.
Saul clutched Vlad’s forearm, squeezed, made him meet his eyes. “I would make the same choices all over again.”
Detective Sharp coughed, and Vlad was aware once more of the awkwardness of his predicament, the need for the utmost discretion. “You’re a piece of work, Hershey. You know that?” Vlad shrugged him off. “Let me tell you the real difference between us. We both tell lies when it suits us, but at least I don’t lie to myself. And just for the record, I tried my hand at law enforcement. It fucking sucked.”
Saul blew out a heavy breath and pushed back from the table. “You’re free to go.”
ARTUR
AS SOON AS the police finished questioning Artur, he headed straight to Coney Island Hospital, where the ambulance had taken Inna. Maya was already there when he arrived. As soon as she spotted him in the hall outside the Emergency Room, she rushed for him, ran into his arms, and clung to him tightly.
“They won’t let me see her,” Maya cried against his shoulder. “I’m her mother, and they won’t let me see her.”
“Hush,” he whispered and rubbed her back.
“I told Inna not to go out like that. But did she listen? No, she never listens to me,” Maya complained.
The familiar chill washed over Artur and doused any tenderness he might feel toward her. “This isn’t the time for I-told-you-so’s.”
Inside he pulled away, while outside he continued dutifully to hold her. His wife was very beautiful, tall and supple, innately elegant. Her white-blonde hair, blue eyes, and delicate features made her a classic Russian beauty, a rarity among the Jews, Georgians, and other former Soviets in Little Odessa. Her beauty had attracted him, but it hadn’t been enough to hold his love.
For Inna’s sake, he had been pretending for the past twenty-six years.
“No? Then when is the time? She doesn’t respect me. Doesn’t take anything I say seriously.”
“You know that’s not true.” Artur stepped out of the embrace and maneuvered Maya back into the waiting room.
“Then why is she refusing to see me? Shouldn’t she want her mother at a time like this?”
“She’s had a very difficult night.” Artur had tried to broker peace between mother and daughter, but he found he couldn’t fault Inna for distancing herself. He would have left Maya himself if her father didn’t have so much power over him, even from so far away.
“You’re always making excuses for her,” Maya said.
“And you’re always criticizing.”
“I don’t criticize,” Maya said. “I tell her what she needs to
hear—out of love. Is it such a crime for a mother to want help her daughter be a better person?”
This was the beginning of an old argument, one that had long plagued their marriage, and Artur was not about to engage, not tonight. Maya was prickly and critical when it came to Inna, always chastising and correcting in the name of love, claiming she needed to balance Artur’s favoritism, while the feckless Aleksei could do no wrong. No matter how hard Inna tried, she could never please Maya, who doled out her love generously to Aleksei, never making him earn it. Again, she would say, to balance Artur’s favoritism toward Inna.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” Artur said.
She drew back as if affronted. “Why would we fight? I hate it when we disagree.” Her blue eyes were wide and round, wet with ready tears, and she looked up at him with a guileless innocence, another familiar, almost predictable move in her usual pattern of stab and parry. Yet, he supposed her responses were genuine, born of deep wounds rather than calculated attempts at emotional blackmail.
Few in this world lived the kind of duplicitous life he did. He was a rare creature, he knew. Sometimes the complexity of his own machinations made it hard to remember that others were exactly as they appeared. He reminded himself Maya was the fragile woman, almost scorned, who had managed to hold onto the man she loved, who had taken him back after his affair had ended in devastation and disaster. She wasn’t the spymaster her father was. She didn’t know about the Directorate and its constant greedy demands.
Maya was hungry, especially now in this moment of stress and worry over Inna, for signs of his love and affection. It wouldn’t hurt to throw her a few crumbs. Her loyalty all these years certainly merited the small effort, the emotional white lies. He clasped her delicate hand in his. “I hate it, too,” he said. “You know I love you.”
“Inna might not need me, but I know you do,” Maya said, but her tenderness was lost on Artur as a swarthy, dark-haired man in a trench coat stalked to the triage desk.
Kings of Brighton Beach Bundle Page 4