by Joanne Pence
The two assumed she must be still in the house. They waited in the dark at the end of the block where they hoped to remain unseen. If Charkov knew they had found out where he lived, it would cut their longevity to about twenty minutes. If that.
Richie didn’t want to contemplate what walking into that house had done to Rebecca’s. He prayed she was still alive. He kept checking his phone, but she never answered.
No car but Rebecca’s was near. Charkov’s was probably in the garage, but guys like him were rarely alone this early at night. So, where was everybody?
“I’m going in,” Richie said.
Shay held his arm. “He’s never alone. You won’t make it.”
“Then where are the other guys’ cars? I can’t just stand here.”
Just then, Richie’s phone buzzed. “A text from Rebecca. ‘48th and Fulton’ What the hell is that?”
“It might not be from her,” Shay said ominously. “Not if they took her phone. If they did, they saw your message telling her to get out. This is a taunt.”
Richie ran his hand over his mouth, torn between going to Charkov’s house, or the texted location.
“Charkov may have left before we got here,” Shay said. “Something about that house—it seems too quiet.”
Richie nodded. “True.” He looked at his phone again. “Okay, let’s go.”
The intersection of 48th and Fulton had a building on one corner, a dark, empty parking lot across from it, and Golden Gate Park all along Fulton street. The park was thick with shrubbery, all but forming a natural fence between it and the sidewalk.
Shay held a semi-automatic pistol at the ready. They looked around but saw no one. “That way,” Richie said, pointing towards the park. “If the Russians are coming, it makes the most sense as a place to meet.”
They quietly walked into the park, staying among the trees and brush surrounding them. “Stop,” Richie whispered. “I think I heard something.”
They waited and listened.
Thump.
“Go!”
They hurried towards the sound, but saw nothing in the darkness. They searched, trying to spot any movement among the trees and bushes.
Thump.
“That way!” Again, they ran towards the sound, then stopped.
All was silent.
They went deeper into the park. Only a few dimly burning lamplights lit a path. They stayed off it, inching along its edge in the shadows, waiting, listening.
Richie couldn’t take it any longer. “Rebecca!” he called, despite the look Shay gave him.
They heard a soft thud again and ran towards the sound.
Shay pointed to a dumpster deeper along the path.
“Rebecca?” Richie called as they neared it. No answer. His heart pounded with fear as he and Shay each took one side of the heavy metal top and lifted it up and over, to fall on the far side of the large bin.
It was so dark they couldn’t see what was inside. They reached down, pushing aside food containers, cans, paper cups. Richie’s hands felt thick plastic sheeting. He tried to lift it, but something heavy was holding it in place. Something like a body.
“What the--!” Richie said, as he climbed up and into the dumpster.
A body bag.
God, no! he thought, thankful it wasn’t matted down, bound with tape, and that it just might have held some oxygen. He prayed that was the case. He tried to rip it open, but the plastic was too strong.
Shay handed him a knife. Quickly, he cut into the bag making a long gash, then ripped it apart.
Rebecca.
She lay still as death. She was on her side, her head tucked as if trying to make a space to find air. But her eyes were shut, her mouth covered with tape.
Richie carefully pulled the tape off. “Breathe, Rebecca. Breathe.”
He felt for a pulse. “She’s alive,” he whispered, then patted her cheek several times as he called her name over and over. He should have hit her harder, perhaps, but hated the thought of hurting her any more than she had been. She blinked a couple of times, and then opened her eyes.
Seeing that, he felt as if he, too, could breathe again. He quickly cut the bindings from her wrists and ankles, and then moved to her side and put his arm under her head and shoulders. “You’re okay. We’ve got you,” he said.
She let her head roll against his chest and shut her eyes once more. Richie waited, thanking God she was alive.
Rebecca slowly moved her arms and legs, stiff and cramping, then wrapped her arms tight around Richie, as her breath came in sharp, harsh gasps.
“It’s okay,” he said, holding her against his chest. He kissed the top of her head, and lay his cheek against her hair. Her entire body was trembling.
“Richie, we’ve got to move,” Shay said.
He nodded. “We need to get you out of here,” he whispered to Rebecca. She needed his help to stand, and then he lifted her and she all but rolled over the edge of the dumpster into Shay’s arms. He lowered her to the grass.
Richie quickly climbed out of the garbage, and sat beside her once more. She tried to sit up, and he supported her as her heart rate calmed and her breathing returned somewhat to normal.
“No air,” she whispered as her fingers grasped the front of his jacket.
“Shh.” He couldn’t help but put his arms around her once more as he shuddered at the thought of how close she had come. “You’re safe now. We found you.”
She burrowed closer to him, holding him tight.
“You were smart to kick the sides of the dumpster,” Richie said, lightly stroking her head. “That’s what we heard.”
“I could scarcely …” Her voice broke.
“But you did,” he murmured.
“I knew you’d find me,” she whispered. Her large blue eyes looked at him with such openness and trust it was almost his undoing. “I knew it.”
He swallowed hard, and wondered if she even realized what she was saying. He felt as if she were filling all the cold, empty places in his heart.
“I saw your text message,” she said, a little stronger, “and stood to leave. Two men came in …”
“You don’t have to talk,” he whispered.
She didn’t seem to hear him. Her arms tightened as, speaking in a halting, almost spasmodic manner, she told him what had taken place. “Charkov said it was too bad I knew where he lived. That it made me less than trash, and that’s how I would be treated. The others wanted him to kill me, to shoot me right then. But he said no. He said he wanted me to think about how everyone had failed me. He said he would send the police a message saying where to find me—I guess he thought you were a cop, my partner perhaps—but he said you would fail. He sent a text and then laughed.”
“Don’t Rebecca,” Richie didn’t think he could bear to hear more.
“The worst part,” she swallowed hard, “he wanted me to die slowly, to be thinking as I suffocated in garbage.”
Richie couldn’t speak as his imagination filled with what she must have felt as her air slowly diminished. Sometime, someplace, he would get even with Charkov. The sadistic son of a bitch would pay for what he did to her.
“We have to go,” Shay said. “I don’t think they believed we would find her still alive. They were sending a warning to anyone tempted to follow Rebecca’s lead. But when they see no ambulance and such, they may come back.”
“Can you stand?” Richie asked.
“Yes.” She winced as she got up. He gripped her arm. As she took a few steps nearer a lamp post, he could see the full extent of bruises on her face.
He stopped and turned her towards the light. He saw more bruises on her neck, and when he pushed open her jacket to look closer at it, he saw that the front of her blouse had been ripped open. Black, blinding rage swept over him. “My God, what did those fuckers do to you?”
“I didn’t let them take me without a fight,” she whispered. “And I swear, somehow, I’m going to make them pay for this.”
; “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he muttered for strength not to go after them right then and there. “Do you want to see a doctor?”
She shook her head. “I’m bruised, nothing more.”
He nodded, his jaw tight, then put an arm around her, holding her close. “In case you get dizzy,” he said as he led her to his car.
“My gun, my cell phone. They have them.” She looked worried. “I have to call—”
“First, we make sure you’re safe,” Richie said, “and then you can deal with Eastwood.”
CHAPTER 15
Rebecca began to feel a little more herself as Richie drove her across the city to Twin Peaks. Shay had left them as soon as they were out of Golden Gate Park, saying he had things to check on. She put her head back and shut her eyes. Right now, she didn’t want to think.
After a long while, Richie asked, “Do you like Indian?”
He made no sense. “Indian what?”
“Food.”
She could hardly think about food, but murmured, “I never met a curry I didn’t like.”
“That’s what I hoped you would say.” He used his hands-free phone set-up to order what sounded to her like enough food for a small army, and asked for rush delivery to his house.
“Who is all that for?”
“I didn’t have much for lunch today.”
At Richie’s, Rebecca was glad to see Spike. He was a beacon of sanity for her.
She let him out to the back yard, and then called Eastwood to tell him what had happened. She gave him Charkov’s address, and asked for a little time before she went in to give her statements and press charges. He ordered her to stay wherever she had been hiding until he got back to her. He needed to involve the Gang Task Force, but he was sure they would act immediately. He’d call and let her know when they needed her come in.
After that she took a long, hot shower to wash the stink of the dumpster and the Russians off her body.
When she stepped out of the bedroom, she heard Richie’s shower running, so she went outside with Spike.
The night fog was rolling in. Twin Peaks, especially near the top of the hill, tended to be a foggy area. Soon the mist would cover nearby homes and weave between them, cutting them off from one another, and making it seem as if she, Richie, and Spike were all alone in the world. She liked that thought, liked it very much.
Despite the chill, she was glad to have this time to be alone, and to try to decompress. Her whole world had gone topsy-turvy. She wondered, after all this, if she could she ever go back to her normal way of life.
o0o
Richie’s hair was still a little damp, and he wore sweat pants, a pullover, and flip-flops as he opened the door to The Bombay House deliveryman. In a minute, he called out to Rebecca. “Our dinner has arrived.”
She joined him in the kitchen. He was glad to see that, although she still looked a bit wan, she otherwise looked great in clean jeans, a white turtleneck, with her just washed hair hanging loose and silky down past her shoulders. He realized he was staring at her a bit too long, and began to open one carton of food after the other and to line them up on the counter. “Grab your plate.”
“It all smells so delicious,” she said.
“I hope it is.” He studied her face, wondering if she was about to collapse as the strain of what had nearly happened hit her. Most women he knew would; so would most men. He knew his own heart was still beating too hard and too fast, and the memory of finding her so still in a body bag would haunt him a long, long time.
They sat down and he was glad to see that her troubles hadn’t hurt her appetite any. He was also happy that she liked Indian food. Because he loved it.
He had ordered four bottles of Kingfisher beer to go with the meal, and poured a bottle for each of them.
When they had eaten their fill, she helped put the leftovers into the refrigerator, and clean up the kitchen before they moved into the living room. He opened the last two beers.
The night air felt chillier than usual, or maybe it was his nerves, but Richie flipped the switch on his gas fireplace. He would have preferred a real fireplace, but there were so many regulations against wood burning in San Francisco, he decided not to bother with them and had the fireplace converted to gas.
“I think it’s time to talk about what happened this evening,” Rebecca said. “Charkov is furious that I know where he lives. I can’t ‘un-know’ it.”
That was the problem exactly, Richie thought. But such thinking got them nowhere. “I’m positive the Feds know where Charkov lives, even if he thinks they don’t,” he said. “I suspect they don’t have enough evidence of his wrong-doing to arrest him, or he’d already be in jail. When you started asking questions, it pushed every paranoid button of his. The best way to calm him down is for Yuri Baranski to disappear permanently. That will take immediate pressure off Charkov and the Golden Gate Garage. All of us are in the hunt for Baranski now.”
“I hate it that I had Baranski in hand, and then lost him.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Richie said. “If Larry Wong had moved faster, he could have found him. The problem now is that, if Baranski is smart, he won’t go back to the garage. Charkov will be after him for bringing this down on them.”
“For sure,” Rebecca said, but then she looked away.
“What?” he asked.
She shook her head.
He didn’t get it. “Tell me.”
“It’s you.”
That was a surprise. “Me?”
“How do you know all this? About the mafia, how these guys think, what they do? I don’t understand you, Richie. Cops and crooks think this way. And you’re not a cop.”
He could hardly believe what he heard. His heart sank. “Is that what you think of me? Really?”
She shook her head, and the look in her eyes was pained as she said, “Does it matter?”
“Yes, goddamn it!” He felt both fury and extreme disappointment.
He could see the anger building in her. “Don’t yell at me. Everyone says you’re connected. They all tell me I’m a fool for having anything to do with you.”
“Connected? That’s the last thing I am or that I’ll ever be. I thought you knew me better than that.”
“How am I supposed to know what you are? You never tell me anything about you.”
He was stunned, wondering where all this was coming from. He was sure it had built up over time, probably a lot of time, considering she said “Everyone says…” He wasn’t sure how to respond, and didn’t. That angered her, or perhaps her emotions were already raw because next thing she shouted at him.
“Tell me! How am I supposed to know?”
Richie felt his face grow hot with anger. He tried to tamp it down before things were said that couldn’t be unsaid, but found it difficult to do. He walked over to the big picture window with its view of the lights of the city. He took a deep breath, then turned to face her, still fuming that she brought this on. “All right, Country Girl. If you really want to know what I’m about, I’ll tell you. I grew up in the Italian part of North Beach. When I was a kid my father was murdered. Shot to death as he left work. It wasn’t mafia, Black Hand or any of that crap, okay? He was a good guy, but some people didn’t like good guys, and that’s all I’m going to say about it. He left my mother with nothing. But we had family—aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. What you see when you look at North Beach isn’t what I see.”
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured. Her eyes had widened with shock as he told her about his father. “I had no idea.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s not anything I go around talking about. But you wanted to know, so there it is. I made it only because I was lucky to live in a small, close community where everybody has known everybody else since forever, and a fatherless boy has people looking out for him. A place where we take care of each other.”
She nodded.
“You nod, but I can tell you don’t get it,” he said. “Not really.”
He raked his fingers through his hair, then tugged at his ear, rubbed his nose. She waited.
“Look,” he said finally. “Do we cut corners and pull fast ones? Of course. Do we cover for each other, and protect each other, and maybe not be all that cooperative when we know stuff that might hurt one of our friends? Hell, yes. But that’s as far as it goes, okay? No gangsters, no ‘made men,’ no Sopranos. End of lesson.”
She folded her hands and sat in silence, and then spoke softly. “I don’t know if I’ll ever fully understand your world, but I do understand what you told me,” she said. “I should have known better than to listen to people who don’t know you. Thank you for explaining.”
“It’s okay,” he said after a while. He didn’t know why she so often made him go from one emotion to another like some misshapen Ping-Pong ball. But since he was already talking about things he didn’t want to speak of … “While we’re confessing things, I need you to know that Shurik Charkov is a wannabe crime boss, trying to make his name, wanting go big time.”
She stared at him, her brow furrowed. “Wait … are you saying you already knew that? You knew it and you didn’t tell me? You didn’t even think to warn me?”
“I thought …” he began, then stopped. His lips tightened.
“That’s why you kept telling me to stay away. To keep me safe,” she whispered, then louder. “But I’m a cop, and keeping me in the dark could be the most dangerous thing you could do to me.”
“I guess,” he began after a long while. “I guess neither of us understands what the other is all about, do we?”
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head, and dropped her eyes. “When all this is finished, we’ll go about our separate ways, and then it won’t much matter, will it?”
He studied her, hoping that wasn’t her first choice. “Or, we can see if there are other options.”
She lifted her gaze to him, her eyes sad. “I don’t—”
“Hey, it could be fun trying,” he said, taking a seat near her and doing his best to get her to smile.