by Reid Astor
He gets up and drags himself to the bathroom, rather than risk listening to Viola assert herself over this single thing. That's the last thing he needs. He'd rather she learn to assert herself to actual customers, say, in telling them it's impossible or downright a terrible idea to add chai or Irish cream to a latte already loaded with green tea. He leans over the sink, staring into its stained depths as on instinct he opens the medicine drawers and fingers the numerous boxes and bottles within.
Painkillers, he thinks as he looks up, I need painkillers. And the antibiotics Germaine gave me. What else? The mirror swings into view as he shuts it, and he tugs on his turtleneck to look at his neck for the first time since last night. The sight makes him glad he wears turtlenecks regularly- his entire neck is a set of dark, angry blue and purple splotches.
He only barely tugs his collar back up in time to register the pattering of her footsteps on the wooden floor. She's so light-footed- on any other occasion Niklas wouldn't have heard her at all.
"You're… you're hurt," she says, peering through the doorway and visible through his mirror. Her gaze comes between him and the pills he's set out by the sink. "I…"
Best cut this off in the bud. "I spent the night at a female friend's house. I walked into a door I couldn't see, hence the bruise. Was in a rush."
"Oh…" the blush that sweeps over her face is a prudent reaction, he thinks. "Well, um… Y-you just got flowers delivered, Niklas."
He turns around at that. The girl volunteers the bouquet, stepping through the threshold and bringing it out from behind her back, face laced in crimson as if she was the intended for the bouquet all along. "It's not from a woman," she says from below her brows, staring at the floor tile patterns as she offers it. “It’s not from a woman, but that’s... that’s okay, I want you to know i-it’s okay.”
He ignores her, and counts- dozen white roses. How goddamn quaint.
“Thank you,” he says. When he reaches for the bouquet, though, her grip is surprisingly firm. The entire thing rustles as he tugs, dew brushing off on his coat, but Viola doesn't give in.
She looks him in the eye and asks, "Did he hurt you?"
And he laughs, in spite of himself and the pain he’s in. He laughs because it’s such a simple question that he can’t really answer- yes, Lars did hurt him, but there wasn’t a point when he could have stopped it, when the world wasn’t hurting him anyway, so what did it matter in the grand scheme of things where the bruises came from? He felt like an outsider then, looking in on the web of shit sprawled across his life, points and points of iniquitous deeds and Dantean struggles to push others down on the climb out of the pit. And he thought he was above it. He wasn’t. Did Lars hurt him? Did it matter if he hurt himself more letting all this happen?
“You think he hurt me,” he says, still laughing caustically as he seizes the bouquet from her and points to the door. “Please. Get out, Faraday.” It’s brusque. It’s not fair. But he does it anyway; he’s tired.
He’s left alone in his room to the sound of the door slamming all too quickly closed. He didn’t even look up to see her face as she left- doubtless, she was hurt. He turns the bouquet over in his hands, examining each crinkle of its all-too-cheery baby blue umbrellas-and-rain patterned wrapping, and finds the tag to flip over and read.
‘Nikky,
Wish you stayed longer.
-L.V.’
Rather than black away, the world seems to come to him in slow motion. The wrapping makes a satisfactory ripping noise, the band tugging them together flown away by angry fingers. And the flowers come spilling out, tumbling to his feet in an assembly of green and white and dew and the gentlest graceful scent of rose, fluttering there with the odd leaf making its way elsewhere. A congregation down there, he thinks, already imagining the order he’ll bundle them up in to throw in the trash. As beautiful as they are, they’re filthy.
The entire sequence is set off by the solid thump of a box, no larger than that which his mother would use for a ring or a necklace, landing on his shoe.
It’s metal-lined, secure, but so miniature it would almost be cute on some shop display. Bewildered, he crouches down slowly to pick it up, the roses falling away from his legs as he does so. There’s a small latch on it that he can undo by his thumb.
When he flicks it open, the cords spring out to meet him, tumbling out over the edges and bringing the small, folded-up brochure with them. He snatches it up, putting the box down and unfolding bit by bit of the brochure, watching the diagrams come into sense as the condensed text unfurls itself out to meet him. It’s a manual of some sort.
He starts at handwritten scribble on the top left corner, constantly smoothing down each piece.
‘Hide me,’ says the very first sentence, ‘I’m a recorder.’
The door clatters open behind him, so quickly he only barely has time to grab a fistful of whatever’s in that box and shove it, unceremoniously, into his boot. He’s surprised to feel its texture, the beads pressing through against his skin and the gentle tickle of wiring as he shoves it away against his leg.
It’s a rosary.
Lars, you fuck, he thinks, and turns around.
“You get roses and then tear them up. You must make a terrible lover, you one-eyed punk,” the man in the hallway says as he raises his gun. There’s a trace of old, bitter humor in his voice.
Niklas shuts his eye and sighs. Of course. Were all his brothers in her pocket all along? “Privyet, Luka,” he says when he opens it again, looking straight up the barrel of the semiautomatic. “It’s good to see you again. If only in a better place.”
CHAPTER TEN
The car ride is bumpy in the jeep, and one particular tyke seems fixated on asking him if the bloodstain on metal floor was from his eye all those years ago, but Niklas holds his silence with dignity. It's enough to know they're holding Viola somewhere, but on top of it, Luka is here. Luka, fatter than he remembers, tougher than tan leather and with his two new stars peeking out under his jacket and loose-hanging t-shirt. Luka with both hands on his gun, casually slung between his legs as he watches the scenery go by outdoors.
"Good job with the promotion," he manages to say, feebly.
Luka looks to him, his elongated eyes narrowing to scope out for sarcasm. "You think it'd get me off of street work," he replies with amiable contempt, "but in the end higher ups still decree I end up dealing with your kind."
He remembers a much skinnier Luka, a meth’d-up Luka covered in blood, in the back of this very jeep eight years ago. Holding out a rosary to him, saying, "You can do this. You can leave. You're not a pussy or a bitch like those guys say; I know you, Kolya. You're going for a good reason. But you can't be allowed fight again. Boy like you can't be let loose on the street for anyone to take. Orders, no? Nothing personal. No bitches, just blood."
"I always thought you had a captain in you," he says. "Our other brothers in heaven would be proud of you." It's enough to bring somberness over all of them. An easy reminder, really. Luka looks annoyed he even stirred at such old memories.
The haze of drugs had taken him all those years ago, but something penetrated through them cold and sharp like a knife- a glint of sobriety, and purpose for being there. He'd taken the rosary and laughed aloud, had said sluggishly, "Not even a knife?"
And Luka had said, in all seriousness, "No. Not even a knife."
In the end, taking out an eye doesn't feel like crying. It didn't even hurt as much as he expected- it was just like a cut from any other point on his body, only deep inside, only his fingers could feel membrane to dig through.
Only then did he truly feel the electric jolt of the drugs and the pain working in synchrony, and then the pain turned to an itch and he scratched and tore away at himself. Only then had he screamed, leaned over and felt something come out, and then Luka took him by the shoulder and finished the job for him.
And then he was free, and Luka had kissed both his bloody cheeks and dropped him at the hospital, telli
ng him that this was the last time he hoped to ever see him.
The man spits out the window, seemingly untouched by the chill of the stormy day. The bristle of his whiskers gleams in the scarce light. "Bleed enough for anything and it'll change its colors for you," he says. "Sacrifice. You know this, yes?"
"All too well," Niklas says, looking back to that stain and giving the youth just beyond it a grim smile.
* * *
If there is a truly spanking example of an impressive resume, it belongs to Detective Inspector Rayleigh Carne. At thirty-three, she has a Masters in Criminology, an extensive and pristine five-year history of teaching gym and history in high schools, and a more than desirable, long list of talents and capabilities: everything encompassing from flower arranging, tea ceremonies, ballroom dancing to driving tanks, war tactics, tailoring, handling a butterfly knife in combat and mountain climbing.
And while her career has not been at its most stellar with consideration to her collaboration with Lars Verdura and all that comes with him, and this involvement has added nothing to her collection of special abilities beyond “able to endure prolonged exposure to cigarette smoke in close quarters” and a testimony to her truly breathtaking amount of self-control, she can say quite honestly that she’s happy where she is. She’s happy shuttling data to his smoke-odored hands, mostly because he adores and needs her in equal measure.
She supposes there’s also something to do with being needed and not being pushed along to the next pair of hands or authority that could handle her tactfully. She doesn’t know for sure. She simply understands that when she’s sitting back in a wicker chair at an improvised surveillance station listening to the world from the point of view of Niklas Baranov’s boot, her heart beats a robust rhythm. Never mind that they’re in a cheap hotel, or that there’s trash most everywhere. She’s living for this steady concentration.
She’s jolted out of her happy meditations by the hand on her shoulder, and knocks the earphones off her head faster than Lars can speak, swatting him away. “Don’t do that,” she says, turning the volume down on the impressive-looking apparatus he’s got set up here. A laptop, a swimming spaghetti of cords hooked to a receiver, and of course the program itself translating the sound into fancy visualizations across the screen.
When she looks back up at him, he’s worse for wear, even for the person he is. Lars always aureated this attractive, ragged energy, even when he subsisted on hubris and drugs, but even that’s dampened when he’s got a band-aid across his nose. “I know I’m only just saying this, but you look like shit,” she says, astutely.
“He’s fucking ace, isn’t he?”
She looks up sharply at that, trying to find any trace of sarcasm or mistruth. Lars has never talked about anybody that way, and she’s known him for far too long. She can still hear him in that filthy, cheap apartment he kept in college, talking about women in terms of cup size and hair color when he deigned to mention them at all. And the men? The men he did spend time with never seemed to exist at all after the fact.
Lips tightly pressed together, she sets down the headset and looks at him. “Talk to me here, Lars. What’s going on?”
His eyes flick between her and the screen, densely specked with red lines, and slowly he crosses and uncrosses his arms over his holster as if he needs to remind himself his gun’s still there. She narrows her eyes, trying to figure him out, but then just realizes- he’s not high, he’s just goddamn exhausted. Exhausted and, wouldn’t you know it- anxious. “I just don’t know what this bitch is gonna try to do, Ray.”
“Whatever she does, we have it all recording itself right now. We just need to trust Baranov to talk about the right things and get it out of her, and when the op happens- the police will be ready and waiting.” She frowns when he doesn’t react, just keeps fidgeting. “Lars. Get with me here. DeLane, this bugging, all you’ve done- we have a goldmine on this woman. Don’t-” she catches herself wanting to say Don’t go out there, but she knows Lars and how he responds to reverse psychology- that is, with enthusiasm. “What is it about him?” she says, instead.
The fidgeting stops altogether, and she takes that as a bad thing, because in the next moment he’s looking at her with a dangerous grin stretched across his face. He says, “Don’t talk to me about him, Ray.”
“I will talk about this if I damn well please if you’re putting yourself in more danger than you already need to be, ‘corrupt private investigating’ and all,” she grunts, putting a foot down from where it was resting over the chair and crossing her arms as she looks up at him. “You meet this man and it’s like-” she snaps a finger demonstratively, satisfied by the twitch of his nose as her hand swings too close, “-that. You start using again. Don’t think I don’t see your track-marks opening up? Reopening the old pathways, walking the old streets? How’s that going?”
Rayleigh tells herself, she’s going too far, bids herself to calm down lest she push out the man and let in the monster. Then, she reminds herself she’s been handling that monster all along- it’s dangerous to think of Lars Verdura any other way. Men know when to run when there’s danger; Lars just chases it like it’s questioning his right to live and prosper.
Chases it like he chases the high, chases it like he chases Baranov.
Lars stands there for a while, hands on his hips, moving his jaw around like he’s tasting the words in his mouth or might just try to hit her. Then, without a word, he picks up the headset from where it sits on the laptop keyboard and starts tuning in, pulling up a chair to sit in beside her. He leans forward as if he could lean into the transmissions, a thumb running across his jaw and a glazed look in his eyes.
And Rayleigh tries to swallow the disrespect, because in the end, it’s Lars she’s handling here.
She barely has a moment to check her cell phone when she hears the clatter of the earphones being slammed down and, in her peripheral vision, sees him rise and throw his fists up in jubilation. “What?”
Lars swings around, a maniac come back to life. “Lend me your bike.”
Every single rational fiber of her mind says, No. Do not lend him your bike. But she reaches for her keys, looking him dead in the eye. “When’s the last time you even-” and feels the keys snatched right out of her hand.
“You’re a stunning woman, you know that? Scar and all,” he says, tiptoeing and planting a light kiss on each of her cheeks before giving her shoulder an amiable pat. “I could marry you, if only my wallet could handle marriage.” And he turns around, shoving the keys in his pocket and snatching his suit jacket from where he left it on the floor.
She sighs resignedly. “No money in the world could make me marry you.” He’s digging his trench coat out from the strew of his bags and other belongings when Rayleigh says, “If I even so much as see a scratch on my bike when you-”
“You’ll switch my name and mugshot on police files and get me deported to Mexico. I know!” he exclaims with alacrity as he sticks a knife down his boot and sprints out the door.
Before she even hears the door shut, she rushes to the headset, tugging it on to listen. At first there is just static, a rush of noise to her eardrums staggering in and out of loudness- then there is the inhuman moan on the other end, and she realizes she’s listening to someone breathing. They suck in air over the sound of someone else crying out, and talk.
It’s Niklas Baranov breathing, speaking a foreign language over the sound of someone choking.
* * *
The meeting point is cheaper than he imagined- an empty warehouse to some company on the far north end of the coast. Bacchus Trades, he doesn’t doubt.
The ground is filthy poured concrete, layered with what seems to be congealed old wine or oil or any combination. And Luka, Luka’s slowly changing colors.
“I’m sorry,” he says, in Russian, voice coming out steadily over the effort it’s taking to keep his childhood friend pinned down, keep his thumbs and hands decisively placed around his neck. “I’m sorry,
Luka, but I know who you’re loyal to, and I understand,” And he waits, watching the purple rise in the folds of Luka’s fleshy face and the man to stop trembling and spasming beneath him.
He takes that decisive moment to take a hand off and put his entire weight on, grabbing ahold of the gun Luka’s got strapped across his back and yanking it out from under the man. The Kalash is warm and natural in his hands like an old lover, and once secured he butts Luka across the face with it, and points.
“You walk in front, okay, Luka? Don’t lead me into a trap or you know how it is.” He wants to shut his eye and breath and focus, but Luka’s looking at him now, rasping for breath, and so instead he steps to stand and drags the man up with him, ignoring the burn of his muscles and how heavy Luka is. “I have my eye on all of you, so don’t think you can fuck with my blind side,” he says, jabbing the man across his chest before pulling him around. “Lead.”