“How much did you pay for the girl at your house?”
Keats sucked his cheeks in tight. “None of your fucking business, Caldwell, and I treat her like a goddamn queen, so get the smug, self-righteous look out of your eyes before I knock it out. I don’t view it as buying, I look at it as rescuing. You wouldn’t believe some of the horror tales Irina has told me about where she’s from. Would make your ball hairs stand at attention.”
“I need to talk to her.”
“My Irina?”
“No, this girl.”
“Why?”
“Because I stared into her sister’s dead eyes.”
Keats flapped his hand, batting the thought away. “You don’t know it’s her sister.”
“You didn’t see the dead girl. They could be twins. I owe her.”
“You owe her jack shit. The world’s an unpredictable and crazy place, Jake. For the life of me, I never understood why you feel the maddening need to take responsibility for everything on the planet. Besides, she doesn’t want to talk to you, anyway.”
Alina latched onto a grey-haired man in his sixties who dressed as though he wiped his ass with hundred-dollar bills. If someone snagged her before Jake could talk with her, any potential backdoor lead to Langston would be out the window. There had to be a way.
He spun to Keats. “Can you, like, borrow her or something?”
“This isn’t Rent-A-Girl. She isn’t a couch you can put on layaway.”
“But you have some pull with these guys, right? I mean, get me an hour. Act like you’re interested in buying her.”
Keats pulled a cigar from his jacket pocket and snipped off the end. He jammed the stogie in the corner of his mouth while fishing a lighter from his pocket. “Forget it. I brought you here out of the goodness of my heart. I’m not buying you a girl.”
“Come on, man. She could lead me to Langston, and I could still hook you up with Garvan Connelly. Think of it as an investment in your future.”
“What can Garvan Connelly do for me?”
“A well-established distribution network in the Ozarks for starters. Pretty much a guarantee Shane Langston, or any other scumbag like him, won’t be nipping at your boot heels any time soon.”
Keats rolled the cigar as flames licked the end, tendrils of smoke wisping from the ignited leaves. “You’re gonna ride this horse till it collapses, aren’t you?”
Jake set his jaw. “Yup.”
“Goddamn it. Hold on.”
Keats crossed the room and bent to the ear of a heavy-set man with tufts of hair sprouting from the sides of a bowling ball head. He ticked his head toward Alina and slipped a wad of cash into the man’s palm. The man refused to look at the cash, leaning back from it like the bills were covered with shit. Keats said something else, the man’s eyes shot wide, and he stuffed the bundle in his pocket. Keats nodded toward an empty booth in the far corner of the room, and Jake meandered over as the man made his way toward Alina.
Jake slid along the smooth leather across from Keats. “We good? He seemed like he didn’t want to do it.”
“I had to up the ante and promise to put in a good word for his daughter at this private college she’s trying to get into.”
“You have pull at a college?”
“The dean owes me fifteen grand. I got plenty of pull. This better turn into something. We have her for thirty minutes.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Alina sat across the booth at Keats’s side, bringing with her a whiff of lilac that waged a battle with the sweet stench of cigar smoke. Jake rested his elbows on the table. She smiled the perfect smile, but the light didn’t reach her jade eyes, her seeming pleasure at being in their company a definite act. He couldn’t blame her. Her stiffened back flattened into the rear of the booth as if she posed for a portrait.
“We just want to talk to you for a few minutes and ask you some questions.”
Her plump lips drew flat. “You said before. I am no interested in answering questions about Garvan.”
“What are you interested in?”
She cut a look over her shoulder to ensure they were isolated. “Security. Reason I come to the United States in first place.”
“And being auctioned off to some random stranger is your idea of security?”
“It is better than home. In Kiev, we have nothing. Sometimes days without food. Mother get sick and my sister and I forced to dance in club to buy medicine and food for mother. Factory workers pawing us like we in petting zoo. It was revolting.”
Jake leaned in. “So how did you end up here?”
Alina plucked the drink from Keats’s hand and swirled the liquid, watching it wash over the top of the high ball cube. “Are you going to provide security, Jake?” She took a sip and licked her plump lips.
A bit over the top, but still sexy. The move forced unwanted heat up Jake’s neck. “Maybe, if I get what I’m looking for.”
Her eyes probed Jake’s face for a moment before she drew her tongue back past her lips. “And you want information? Nothing else?”
“Just answer a few questions.”
Now it was her turn to lean forward. “May I ask you do something?”
“Depends on what it is.”
“Put palms face up on table. Please.”
Keats offered nothing but a double pump of his caterpillar eyebrows, but Jake flipped his palms up. Alina’s fingers danced along the lines of his hands, sometimes peering at them, sometimes into his eyes. After a minute, she wrapped her strong hands around his wrists, her touch cool against his warming skin, and she closed her eyes and sucked in several exaggerated measures of air.
Jake felt her grip tighten and relax. “Well?”
Lines appeared in her brow. “You are a hard to read. Much emotion fighting each other. And I am usually very good.”
“You’re psychic?”
“Runs in family. Mother was strong with it. Me, not so much, but I still see things.”
Jake didn’t believe in psychics, palm reading, or any such mumbo jumbo, but he was curious. “What do you see with me?”
Her lips pursed together. “Happy and sad. Love and loss. Joy and pain.”
Generic bullshit. “Every human on the planet has that.”
“You have past you run from but cannot get away from. And you want to tell me something, but also don’t want to tell me.”
Jake shot Keats a sidelong glance, whose eyebrows rose high enough to touch his hairline. The image of her dead sister appeared in his mind again. “You’re very perceptive.”
She jerked her hands away like she’d touched a hot stove, her eyes filling with tears, limbs tensing. “Oh no. It is Ulyana, isn’t it?”
“Who?”
She hitched in quick breaths. “My twin sister. You see her. She is dead, is she not? I saw it.”
Jake sunk back into the booth. Even if he didn’t believe in the paranormal or psychics, he’d seen some spooky stuff with twins. He once teamed up with a goon named Vincent Macabe on a collection job a few years ago. In the middle of beating the crap out of a guy who owed Keats a couple of grand, Vincent doubled over clutching his gut. They later found out someone stabbed his twin brother in New Orleans at the exact same time. Weird.
He pushed Keats’s drink to her, and Alina downed it in a single gulp, her hand trembling. “We didn’t know who she was, but there was no mistaking you were related when I spotted you dancing at The Asylum. I’m very sorry.”
“How did she die?”
“You don’t want to know the details.”
She slammed the glass on the table, eyes bloodshot and burning. “Tell me.”
Jake swallowed, reluctant to give her the bad news. “Strangled.”
“By who?”
“A friend of Garvan Connelly’s named Shane Langston. I’m trying to track him down to make sure he doesn’t do this to anyone else again. But to do it, I need your help. Will you talk to me?”
Tears streaked her pretty face. “Ho
w I know this Shane will not come for me next?”
Jake chewed his bottom lip for a moment. “I don’t think he will. I think your sister was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I think Shane is responsible for putting you and your sister in this situation.”
Alina slipped the napkin from under Keats’s glass and wiped the running mascara from her eyes. Marco spotted her from across the room and wove his way through the crowd toward them. Shit.
“Alina, help me find him. Tell me how you and your sister got here. And if you could hurry, it would be great because the big-ass bouncer heading our way would like nothing better than to put my head through this table.”
She caught the eye of the approaching Marco and offered a dismissive wave of the hand. Marco stopped in the middle of the floor, crossed his arms, and burned a hole in Jake’s skull with his stare. “Get me out of here, and I tell you everything you want to know.”
Jake’s near-empty wallet burned in his back pocket. “I can’t. I don’t have that kind of money. Couldn’t you—”
“Maybe you can’t.” She rolled her head to her left to Keats. “But he can.”
Panic dripped from Keats’s tan face; an emotion Jake had never seen Keats display. “I can’t…I mean, why would I…goddamn it. I already have a girlfriend. I want another one like a hole in my head.”
Alina’s eyes flew wide, like a puppy in a store window. “Please. The old man who wants me is no good. He has very dark aura. I think he would do terrible things to me.”
Keats’s lips disappeared in a line. “Maybe you don’t know anything. Maybe you’re looking for someone to get you out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself into.”
She turned back to Jake. “Please. For me. For my sister. I can help you.”
“Come on, Jason,” Jake said. “What do you say?”
Crimson creeped up Keats’s neck. “Are you out of your mind? You expect me to shell out twenty grand or more so she can tell you a story?”
“She could work for you.”
“How?”
“You saw how she reads people. She could be like your own personal psychic, protect you from people you deal with who have less than noble intentions.”
Keats snarled. “Everyone I deal with has less than noble intentions, you dumb ass.”
“If she doesn’t prove to be worth every penny to you, I’ll pay you back myself. Come on, man. Her sister died and Langston is still out there.”
“No fuckin’ way, Caldwell.”
Jake clenched his fists, eyes darting about, trying to think of something to sell Keats on. “What if she proves it?”
“Proves what?”
“That she can get a read on people. Something that would help you.”
Keats scrubbed a hand over his face. “It would have to be pretty goddamn good.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes, but she better blow my socks off or no deal.”
Jake turned to Alina. “You understand what’s at stake? Jason here needs some good information on a couple of people in here or you go home with the bad aura bald guy.”
Alina stood and smoothed her dress. “I understand. I have done before. Tell me who.”
Keats smirked and scanned the room. “The grey-haired guy in the black jacket with the yellow tie at the end of the bar. And…let’s see. The lady in the silver jacket.”
Alina nodded and wandered toward the man first.
Two tuxedo-clad white-haired men wandered past toward the bar and supplied a fresh cloud of cigar smoke. Jake hated cigar smoke. It gave him a headache. He scooted around to move clear of the cloud and to obtain a full view of the floor. “Who are they?”
“Walter Pyzinski. Runs a small construction front company. Imports illegals from South America along with as much heroin as they can carry in their bodies. Woman is Margaret Urich. Runs political campaigns for the highest bidder.”
“I understand why Pyzinski would be of interest. Why her?”
“Rumors abound that she has some strange tastes. Getting those confirmed would maybe give me some leverage over her to influence her candidates.”
They tracked Alina as she laughed and smiled with her two targets, touching their arms, studying their faces as they talked to her. Piano music chimed over speakers set in the ceiling. Jake wasn’t sure Pyzinski was going to let her go, but as Keats received another Scotch, Alina made her way back.
Alina picked the glass from his hands and swallowed half of it, shuddering. “The man moves dirt. I saw big yellow equipment.”
Keats took the glass from her. “He could have told you that and it doesn’t help me.”
“He also moves people. I saw vision of many people inside shipping container. Some dead. He’s is not a good man.”
Keats raised his eyebrows. “Not bad. And the woman.”
Alina shuddered again. “She has a black soul. I saw your American flags and big crowds. I also saw dead girls on slabs, like metal tables from hospital.”
“Did she kill them?”
“I do not know, but she smile at the bodies. I also saw other bald man standing with her, the one I said had dark aura. These are evil people.”
Keats offered a slow, disbelieving shake of his head, his mouth slack.
Jake knew Alina nailed the audition. “Good enough for you, Jason?”
Keats ran his fingers through his silver mane. “Holy shit. Move. Let me go talk to Heinrich.”
Alina slid out and released Keats from the booth. He clipped across the room, almost knocking over a waiter carrying a tray of drinks, whispered something to Marco and moved to the auction man. Marco narrowed his beady eyes at Jake and returned to his perch by the door.
A minute later, Keats returned. “Alright. Let’s go.”
“What did you say to Marco?”
“Who?”
Jake ticked his head toward the door. “The mountain bouncer.”
“I told him he should kick your ass next time you two meet.”
“What did he say?”
“He said ‘tell me something I don’t know.’ Come on, Alina. You can tell us your tale on the way. I hope Svetlana doesn’t kill me when I bring you to the house.”
“Svetlana came from here?”
Keats waved her forward. “In a roundabout way.”
Alina stopped. “Where is she from?”
“Moscow.”
She groaned. “This won’t be good. I hate Russian women.”
Jake gave a crisp nod. “You’ve done a good thing here, Jason.”
“Maybe I should let Marco kick your ass now.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The smell of Willie’s blood lingered in Shane Langston’s nose as he drove, his hands gripping and releasing the steering wheel, reliving the tackiness of his skin against the blade of the butcher knife. The muffled screams of Willie and his girlfriend battled for dominance in his head against the beat of the song on the radio, so he turned the volume down. He’d taken his time with the knife. A cut in Willie for each day Shane spent in the hell-hole prison. In the end, there wasn’t a lick of skin not covered in crimson. Except for his face. Shane wanted Jake and Bear to be able to recognize the traitor when someone found the bodies.
It took five hours of winding through back roads to get back to Warsaw, uneventful except for a couple of brief, ass-clenching stints on busier highways when the police drew close. At this stage of the game, uneventful was good, so he stayed off the beaten path whenever possible and formulated the next stage of the plan. He wanted nothing more than to kill Caldwell and Parley and knew he pushed his luck with every minute he exposed himself. But killing wasn’t enough. They had to suffer. His body ached for it.
Cruising through town was a bad idea, but he hoped the tinted windows of the car, a hat pulled low, and the midnight hour would provide sufficient cover. Nothing would be finer than hurting Jake before he killed him, and despite having one of the Blood Devils keeping track on his nemesis’s wife and daughter, they�
��d dropped from the radar once Shane broke out of prison. He’d have to settle for the broken-down sister.
He killed the lights, parked the car one street over, and slipped through calf-high grass growing unabated in front of a darkened two-story. Hopping a chain-link fence, he approached Janey Tully’s house from the rear, hoping she didn’t have a dog. He’d met the woman once while having a beer at one of the local watering holes in town. Years later, he suffered the misfortune of crossing paths with her brother Jake.
Wisps of light burned from the living room as he skirted a grill and reached the back stairs. Through the kitchen window, he spotted a pair of thick legs in khaki trousers splayed from an easy chair. In front of the legs, a television stood on a wooden crate, blaring an infomercial about some miraculous pillow. A hairy limb draped over the arm of the chair with a beer clinging to limp fingers. Whoever slumped in the chair was asleep. Shane watched for signs of movement and seeing none, he crept up the two steps to the back door. The door creaked as he pushed it open and slipped inside.
Encrusted with the remnant of whatever grease-soaked food was served up earlier, haphazard pots and dishes sat piled near the sink. The artery-clogging smell hung in the air like a bad fart. A picture hung on the refrigerator of Caldwell’s sister Janey, an overweight, balding man, and two moppy-headed teenage boys, their faces grim as if they’d been told to look as depressed as possible.
Snores rattled from the living room, battling against the television. Shane didn’t know if Janey or the two boys slept upstairs, but he figured he should take care of the snorer in the living room before he searched for her.
On the counter near the sink, he spotted barbecue skewers, burned crusts of meat still attached. Beside them was a gallon-sized Ziploc bag. He picked up both and slinked toward the figure in the chair, the skewer in one hand and Ziploc in the other, unsure which he wanted to use. In the end, he decided to be resourceful and try them both.
The top of the liver-spotted head slumped forward as Shane creeped up behind him, the bottle in the man’s outstretched hand the same brand as the six empty ones on the fold-up tray near the chair. While one side of Shane’s brain brought up the issue of being out of control, the other turned his mouth to a sneer as he stuck the skewer in his pocket and slid the Ziploc over the sleeping man’s head, pulling the plastic tight against his face.
Jake Caldwell Thrillers Page 94
