by L. T. Ryan
35
When we left the restaurant and stepped outside I was as confused as I was cold. It seemed all my blood had pooled in my stomach, leaving my face and extremities fighting to stay warm.
The time with Gus had been somewhat helpful. We had a few names, a few strings to connect the players together. What we lacked was enough information to make those connections useful. It was too early to assume anyone’s involvement in Thanos’s disappearance. To do so could cause us to miss an important detail along the way.
The sidewalk was crowded and cabs were few. Lexi tried to hail one, but after three passed her over, she said screw it. Our next stop was less than a mile away. We set out on foot, Lexi bookended by me and Bear. Groups of people split to let us pass. Even the toughest looking guys stepped aside. Looking at Bear’s face, it wasn’t surprising.
“That’s it, up ahead.” Lexi pointed toward the soft pink neon glow of an open doorway.
A tall black guy with no jacket wearing some kind of thermal top that wrapped around his over-developed biceps like cellophane sat on a stool in front of the entrance. He didn’t pay attention to us until we were within ten feet of the club. His gaze bounced from me, to Bear, and back.
Deep bass resonated underfoot and electronic music filled the air. Muffled chatter rose and fell.
The bouncer held up two fingers, indicating the cover charge of twenty dollars total.
I handed him a fifty. “Keep the change.”
He nodded, gestured us in with his chin. We stepped into the softly illuminated tunnel that resembled a birthing canal, meant to deliver us to the club. A tall slender woman with blue hair stood in a cubby. She held her arm out.
“Take your jacket?” she said.
I shrugged her off. Lexi took off her coat and handed it to the lady. So did Bear. I didn’t see the point. No guarantee we were leaving through the same door.
The music grew louder with every step forward. I felt the bass in my chest, my heart pounded in time with the beat. As we moved into the club, I looked around the room. A long, curved bar started to the right of us, stretched the length of the building and wrapped around the wall across from us. There were tables scattered between. Far to the left was a roped off section. I assumed it was designated for VIPs. Currently it was empty. The dance floor was aglow in light blue, pink, and silver. There were a couple dozen people lost in the music, and each other. Their eyes were glazed over. Stares vacant. They were riding high, and Ecstasy was the vessel that took them there.
We split apart. Bear headed to the bar to get us a couple drinks to help fit in. Lexi veered off toward the bathroom. I shed my jacket, draped it over my arm, and walked over to the VIP section, coming way too close to the dance floor along the way. Two women dressed in clothing that would freeze even their most private of parts if they were to step outside accosted me. One planted herself behind me, pressing her chest into my back. Felt like she had clamps on her nipples. The other danced in front of me, her eyes rolled back so far in her head I only saw the whites. They draped their arms over my shoulders, locked me in. I tried to fight them off, unsuccessfully. Couldn’t put up too much of a fight. Might draw the wrong attention.
The woman in front rubbed hard against my leg. She smiled as she worked up my thigh. She stopped when she felt the hardness of my pistol. Her eyes came into view. Her grin faded. She took a step back, releasing her grip on my neck.
“You a cop?” she asked.
The woman behind me took a few steps back.
“Maybe,” I said. “Would I have any reason to be suspicious of you?”
She wiped her nose and shook her head, then stepped around me. She and her friend disappeared to the other side of the dance floor, hand in hand, and assimilated into a group of six.
Bear showed up, handed me a blue drink. Looked like it was glowing.
“The hell is this?” I said.
He shrugged. “I just named a couple off the board over there.”
I held the glass to the light, saw chunks of stuff floating around. “The hell they put in it?”
“Didn’t really watch.” He pointed across the room. “Was too busy watching them chicks dry hump you.”
“They’re over there now if you wanna get in on the action. Be careful, though, I’m still not sure one of them’s not a guy.” I set the drink on a table and pulled out a chair. There was no way I was taking a sip. Bartender could have been told to look out for us, drug our drinks. “What’s your feel of this place?”
Bear glanced around. “Not too bad right now. I imagine in an hour or so it’ll be packed to the gills. Enough high people to float it to the stratosphere.”
I watched the dancers in their trance. “Halfway there already, man.”
Lexi crossed the room and sat across from me. She put her phone on the table. “He knows we’re here. Said it’ll be a couple minutes.”
“Great.” I kept an eye on the entrance hallway. The faint glow we traveled through on the way in was a hindrance now. I couldn’t tell if there was a person there until they passed all the way through. But they could sure as hell see me. I lifted my shirt and slid my hand underneath, resting it on my pistol.
“Easy, cowboy.” Lexi directed her gaze up to the ceiling. “They’re watching us.”
I casually glanced around the room, taking note of ten cameras. Who knew how many more were hidden behind the mirrors and in the lights?
“What do you know about this place?” Bear asked her.
“Not too much,” she said. “I know some shady people make even shadier deals in the backrooms here. I know…”
“What is it?” I asked after a few moments.
She stared down at the table. “My ex used to get involved in a backroom game here. High stakes poker.”
“Is this the place—”
“No.” She took a drink, made a face, spit it back in the cup. “The hell is this?”
I nodded toward Bear. The big man shrugged.
“It’s disgusting,” she said.
“Never told you to drink it,” he said.
“Anyway,” she said, “no one here will recognize me. We wouldn’t be here if there were any chance they would.”
A couple of minutes passed. I spotted a group come through the hallway. One man immediately turned and slipped through a door behind the bar. Three people headed our way. Two muscleheads bookended a short woman with shoulder-length black hair. Her cheeks and eyelids sparkled, reflecting the soft colors of the room. Her eyebrows were drawn in, looking like two big inverted smiles. She had two larger-than-necessary hoops on either side of her nose. Despite that, I found her oddly attractive.
“You are Lexi?” Her Russian accent didn’t fit her look. “Come with us.”
36
The two guys stepped forward toward Bear. He hiked his hands halfway. He wasn’t surrendering, far from it. Bear was getting ready to react. If one of them so much as put a pinky on him, the big man was gonna throw down.
“They’re with me,” Lexi said.
“The meeting is for you only,” the woman said.
“Then I walk.” Lexi turned toward the corridor, grabbed my hand and pulled me with her.
“Wait.” The woman had her cell phone in hand, composing a message. She looked up at Lexi. Her eyes flared wide. “Just wait a moment. He is reasonable man, even if you are unreasonable woman.”
Lexi’s grip on my hand tightened, she pumped it a couple times. Her bluff had worked. Maybe.
The woman lifted her phone and focused on the screen, then she shifted her gaze to her associates and nodded. “He’ll see you now.”
We were led past the velvet rope into the VIP section, but we didn’t stop there. One of the guys pulled back a curtain, the other stopped on the other side.
“Come with me.” The woman looked back, motioned with her index finger to follow.
Bear led the way. He’d actually been right behind her since we left the table. She was his type. Fiery and dominant.
What a couple that’d make, him at six-six, her barely five-feet tall.
The whole look of the place soon changed. It had gone from champagne dreams to whiskey hangover in the span of a couple feet. The floor and walls were concrete and gray. The ceiling was water-stained. There was no one back here, but it surprised me how easily someone could gain access to this section of the club. Then again, I figured they didn’t let just anyone into their VIP area, an area staged to provide quick access to where the real action went on around here.
We were alone with the woman now. She led us to the end of the hallway, turned right, and went most of the way down the next corridor. She came to a stop, pivoted on her right foot, stared up at Bear. The music echoed through the hall, but was considerably dampened. It had been louder on the street. I looked at the ceiling and noticed a few vents, and as soon as I saw them, I recognized the fuzzy sound of piped-in white noise. They were masking the club music.
The lady rapped on the wooden door and waited. It opened a few inches a couple of seconds later. She spoke in Russian with a man. We didn’t bother to tell them Bear understood every word. The door closed and she spun around to face us.
“Here’s the rules,” she said.
“Come on,” Lexi said. “Let’s just get—”
“Here’s the rules,” she said again, her finger raised in Lexi’s face. I began to wonder what this lady did outside of the club. “This meeting is between you and him. He understands you’re feeling that you might need protection, so he is allowing your bodyguards to have access. He, however, will be in there alone.”
He might be alone, but one move by us, and we’d get mowed down within a few seconds.
“If they cause any problems, you are through. Got it?” She looked each of us in the eye in turn, settling on Bear last.
He started to say something, but the woman rolled her eyes and pushed the door open.
“Rejected.” I slapped him on the stomach.
“I’m just getting started,” he said.
Kozlov immediately set his sights on me. “Ah, the mystery man from the other day.”
“The mysterious Ginger,” I said. “Had a hell of a time finding you. Great accent by the way. You a Thespian in college?”
He ignored my comments. “Lexi, I thought we were going to have a brain trust type of meeting, try to figure out what happened to our acquaintance. Instead I see you have brought me the number one suspect.”
“It’s called a brainstorming session, asshole,” I said. “And I’m hardly the suspect in all of this.”
Kozlov shook his head, held his hands up. He stared down the woman who remained by the door. “Didn’t I make it clear to you to tell these people if they want to be in here with Lexi then they are to keep their damn mouths shut?”
She pulled the door, turned and didn’t look back. “What do you expect? You can’t follow your own rules and you expect them to?”
Kozlov clenched his jaw. His nostrils flared. His eyes narrowed. He stood that way for several seconds, hands in his pockets. Finally, he broke off his stare and looked down at the ground. “I know this one isn’t your bodyguard. What about the big guy?”
“I’m with him,” Bear said.
“The question was for her,” he said, alternating his icy stare between me and Bear. He had a bit of a mad scientist look to him at the moment.
“He’s with him,” Lexi said, attempting to control her smirk. “Look, you have to trust me on this. Jack works for a government agency who is interested in finding Thanos. He’s on our side.”
“Whose side is that?” Kozlov walked over to the bar in his office and pulled down a bottle of vodka and four glasses. He filled each halfway and set them on the table in the middle of the room. “I can tell you, my side is most definitely not aligned with any agency in the United States of America.”
“I’ve got resources,” I said. “They can help track down Thanos.”
Kozlov took a sip of vodka, swallowed it without any reaction. “Personally, I don’t care if I never see Marcus Thanos alive again.” He shook his head. “I don’t care to see him dead, either. The guy was an asshole, and he did something very stupid. That’s why your government is after him. But they aren’t the only ones.”
“If you don’t care, why are we all here right now?” I said.
He waved his hand through the air. “I’m part owner of this club. I can be here whenever I want. Now, all of you drink.”
Lexi grabbed her glass and drank the contents in one gulp. She grimaced against the burn, slammed the glass back down on the table. “Cut the act, Kozlov. You told me you had more for me. Well, what is it? Don’t tell me we wasted our time coming out here tonight.”
Kozlov sat there for a few minutes after finishing his drink. He stared at the empty glass in his right hand. I had the guy wrong from the beginning. He wasn’t merely a hired hand performing routine security for a millionaire businessman. And he wasn’t the typical KGB thug, either. He ranked somewhere above median level on the power and influence scale, but I couldn’t determine how high, and within which organization.
In years past, I’d have used my network of contacts to cobble together a dossier on him. Everything from two seconds ago to twenty years before he was conceived. I wanted to know who his parents were. Who their parents were. The more information I had on hand, the better I could assess and deal with the situation. That was impossible tonight. We were walking around blind here. And it seemed every thirty minutes a new revelation arose that changed everything.
I was only waiting for the next bombshell to drop on my head.
Turned out, I didn’t have to wait too long.
“I’m going to take you to meet someone,” Kozlov said after several silent minutes. “Let’s go.”
37
Kozlov led us through the network of corridors downstairs to a basement. It was dimly lit with overhead yellow lighting wrapped in small cages that hung from the ceiling. The floor was concrete. There were drains set every ten feet or so. It looked like a great place to kill someone, then go about dismembering and dissolving their bodies. Aside from a hint of mustiness, I didn’t pick up the scent of any chemicals or decomposing bodies. Bear glanced over at me, his brow furrowed. He was on high alert. I knew the narrow hallway we were walking through wasn’t his favorite place to be. I gave him a quick nod, patted my pistol through my jacket.
Kozlov stopped, turned around. “Coats?”
“Upstairs,” Lexi said.
He nodded, held up a finger indicating for us to wait, then he disappeared down the hallway. The echoes of his footsteps dissipated.
“I don’t like this,” Bear said.
“Relax,” I said. “They wouldn’t kill us here.”
Bear reached through the few inches that separated his head from the ceiling and rapped his knuckles against it. “Concrete. Ain’t no one hearing anything through that.”
“Nothing’s gonna happen, Bear,” Lexi said. “At least not here. So save some of that energy for wherever we’re going.”
Kozlov returned with black tactical jackets draped over his arm. He handed one to Lexi, then Bear. “Sorry, this might be a little tight for you. I don’t have bigfoot sizes.” Then he held one out to me. “In case you want to fit in with your friends. You might find it useful later.”
I grabbed the jacket and folded it up. No point in taking off mine and showing off how easily accessible my piece was.
Kozlov pulled a set of keys from his pocket and turned. “All right, let’s go.”
We exited the basement and hiked up a narrow set of cracked and rickety stairs. A light set atop a black pole provided enough illumination to keep us from falling over one another as we stepped into the alley. Ice covered the concrete landing, nearly sent Lexi crashing backward. Bear reached out and steadied her.
Kozlov continued toward a black Escalade.
“Man, I really gotta trade my ride in,” Bear said. “Maybe get me a big ole’ sedan. Cruise in s
tyle, you know.”
“Let’s keep the noise down,” Kozlov said. “While my office is safe, I can’t possibly know who might be listening out here.”
It was a good point, and we knew right then and there the rest of the trip would be taken in silence.
We entered the vehicle, Lexi in front, Bear and me in the middle row captain chairs. There was plenty of room for both of us. Kozlov started the engine, blasted the heat, turned the radio volume up a couple notches. It was some crazy Russian techno song I’d never heard before with too much bass and a simple repeating melody interspersed with vocals I couldn’t understand.
I leaned over to ask Bear to translate, but thought better of it. The longer they weren’t aware that he understood Russian, the better. It was bound to come in handy at some point.
We drove through the city, away from the lake, and merged onto I-90 west. Kozlov settled in with a line of cars going fifteen over the speed limit in the far left lane. We drifted further west. The concrete jungle gave way to the suburbs and eventually the countryside appeared. Soon we were headed due north, skating along the outskirts of Rockford, Illinois before crossing the border into Wisconsin.
The highway led straight to Madison. What had seemed an innocent attempt to hide two days earlier with Lexi now took on a new possibility. In an hour I’d know.
We pulled off the highway ten minutes after crossing the Wisconsin state line. Kozlov drove into a brightly lit gas station parking lot, pulled up next to a pump. The air that entered the SUV as he exited gave me a jolt of energy. The door slammed shut. Kozlov walked around the back of the vehicle, phone to the side of his head.
“Who you think he’s talking to?” Bear said.
“I’d guess whoever we’re gonna go see,” I said.
Lexi looked back at me. She glanced away as soon as I made eye contact.
“Anything you want to tell me?” I said.