by Thomas Laird
They were part time lovers. She never stayed the night. He never asked her to. She knew about his taste for young boys, but it served as a sort of turn-on for her, to see if she could sway his lust toward her instead of them. Karin never asked about the boys, never brought the subject up, but everyone knew about Alexei. No one had the balls to bring it up before him, even though some thought his desire for young males might prove very dangerous to the crew. It was an extra danger that they needn’t be exposed to, Karin thought, and many of the crew agreed with her.
Silently.
Alexei was a very attractive man. She’d let him do almost anything he wanted to her. Anal, oral…It was all fine. She’d do whatever they saw, watching porno films together. She drew the line at doing another woman or at having another woman in bed with them. Her sex was strictly with one partner at a time, and she wouldn’t bend to his wishes for a threesome.
There was blood on his face and blood on her torso and blood all over the sheets, but he never suggested they take a shower. That wouldn’t occur to him until his lust for her returned. Then he would lead her into the bathroom, position her facing the showerhead, and he would take her anally. Sometimes she bled there, too, so she insisted that he lubricate himself ever since the incident when he almost tore her open. Then they’d had to go to Emergency at the hospital, and Karin had had a hell of a time convincing the ER doctor that it had been consensual, that she herself had gotten carried away, and yes, she knew she should lubricate him thoroughly before they attempted anal sex again. The doctor believed her, and Alexei learned to use the KY jelly or Vaseline.
He liked to drip hot candle wax on her breasts and her stomach and on her labia. The agony was exquisite for her, and she instigated the masochistic elements of their sex together. It seemed that she came up with something new every time they coupled.
“You will stay away from the cop and his wife,” he told her after they’d showered and changed the sheets. They lay on his queen-sized mattress, her head on his lower abdomen.
He loved to look into her black eyes. They were like the eyes of a predator in the woods of Siberia—a place he had endured for four years back in Mother Russia. He’d been convicted of grand larceny when he was twenty-three, just after he’d got out of the army. Moscow was falling apart and the pickings were easy, but he’d been caught by the militia anyway and sent to the cold hell of the country’s northernmost reaches.
Her black eyes were pure and empty. He loved coupling with Karin because she had heat but no real passion. She could have orgasm after orgasm, but he didn’t think she registered pleasure the way a normal woman would.
She was an assassin, and a very successful assassin at that. She’d had no misfires or failures that he was aware of. All her targets went down, went down quietly and professionally.
But now she had the scent of this cop Parisi and his wife in her fierce, predator’s nostrils, and Alexei wasn’t certain he could call her off. He’d sent her the detective’s way in a fit of anger. The Homicide had loosed the Italians after him. He had threatened Alexei in front of his own men, and it was a matter of time before the FBI and the Chicago Police got together for Alexei’s lynching.
People were cracking all around him, and he feared the crumbling courage of Wade S. Hansen most. Hansen was a wild card. He was not one of them; he was an outsider, an anglo and an alien. He could not be trusted, even though they were in the Anderson bombing together.
First it had started out simply. Alexei would muscle Gary Merton and his colleagues at Glamour Enterprises. The deal was about simple protection. For two million annually all of their properties in the Loop would become bomb-proof.
Then Merton refused to pay. So Alexei procured the fertilizer in the drum—it was just as he had researched with the Oklahoma bombing of the Federal Building. It didn’t take much doing to recreate that explosion in Oklahoma City. He bought the drum in a small town named Mokena, southwest of the city.
Wade S. Hansen had no knowledge of Grodnov’s threats upon Glamour Properties, so Alexei was very open to Hansen’s proposition of splitting the five million in insurance policies that Wade had gathered on Greta during the seven turbulent years of her marriage to him. And five million was nothing compared to the 50 million she was worth, thanks to her family, the Griersons, who owned several cable TV outfits, seventeen chains of various fast food outlets, and other assorted holdings. Wade inherited the 50 mil, so the half of the 5 million in insurance on Greta’s life was chump change. Alexei never informed Wade that he was going to blow the Anderson Building anyway, since Merton had shown his uncooperative side in refusing the protection, and after the Anderson Building blew, it was amazing how quickly Gary agreed to Alexei’s overtures about preventing any further destruction of Glamour Properties. Wade was his partner, but he made certain that Gary Merton never disclosed that the Russians had made that initial threat on Glamour & Associates. Wade got his wish—the cheating bitch was dead. And at least in the beginning they looked like perfect cover, the Towers in New York on the previous day.
But that had all gone to hell courtesy of this cop prick Parisi. Parisi who would not let it lie the way the Federal police would have had it. It was supposed to be Part Two of Bin Laden’s villainy. All Parisi had to do was accept what his masters had told him to live with. It was the act of terrorists. Let the FBI handle it.
But he did not, and now the scent of the fox was upon Alexei and his crew. Now they were fighting for their very lives, and even the 2.5 million that Wade had handed over wouldn’t be balm for the wounds that Parisi had caused on the body of their organization.
So he became angry and suggested that Karin attempt to intimidate the cop and his wife. Karin, however, wasn’t much for intimidation. She wanted to eliminate the Parisis, get rid of at least their source of irritation.
But Jimmy Parisi was a high profile policeman, now that the Anderson thing had taken a decided turn for the worse. The witnesses, the Grant family, seemed to be under control. The father had killed himself, Grodnov learned from his CPD sources, and the mother and the daughter understood Alexei would come back like their most virulent nightmare if they even thought about giving witness to what happened at the Picasso sculpture. If Alexei went down even for that, he’d become a three-time loser and would go away for life.
He’d spent time in Siberia. He knew what isolation and cold felt like, and he was never going to do it again. It was the way it was for Sergei Chernov, going out in sheets of gunfire. That was the only way they’d put Alexei Grodnov to rest. He’d never succumb to a life in chains.
So he’d unleashed Karin, but she took it too far. Right now he didn’t need to enrage the cops. They were already incensed because of the public sentiment aroused by that little son of a bitch Marty Van Dyke. They’d made one attempt on the newspaperman, but they’d botched it, and now was not a good time for an encore attempt on the redhead from the Herald. The Russians had done well in the dark, in obscurity, but now that they had been dragged out into the light…
Alexei wanted a boy. A young morsel. But he was under constant surveillance, and picking up a homeless young piece would be his ticket to a cage. There was nowhere in this city he could go unfollowed, unattended. He couldn’t shake the FBI and the Chicago Police Department and the INS and the Treasury Department and the Department of Alcohol and Weapons…The list of foes had grown immeasurably since Parisi had taken it upon himself to crusade for the demise of Alexei Grodnov and his cohorts.
He’d given Karin the green light, and even though he’d called her back, he knew that once she was in pursuit of a subject she would not stop until she’d accomplished her task.
*
The Parisis lived in a quaint brick home on the northwest side, she decided. It was a modest home, so neither of them seemed to be taking bribes, like so many others of their police fraternity. Homicides were a bit more difficult to corrupt, Karin knew, so the only way to deal with them was to liquidate them.
; In Moscow it was not unusual for policemen to be assassinated, especially if they refused to take money. Most did become corrupt and mute and blind toward what the Russian mob was doing in that city, but some were headstrong and old fashioned. Honest. There were aberrations in every culture.
She sat in the black Honda for an hour, just watching the house. Then a patrol vehicle drove by, and Karin understood Parisi’s quaint home was being watched and that she better move before she was observed. She knew that the cop had threatened Alexei that she stay away from Parisi and his wife. She knew also that he had called off this contract.
She wasn’t here for Alexei alone. She was here for her life. If Grodnov went down, it was likely that the Chicago operation went down with him. The life here was too good. Two or three assignments a year made her very comfortable financially. She could spend all her time breeding her pitbulls because of her lucrative career as a killer for contract. The pitbulls weren’t for sale. She breeded them selectively and trained them for viciousness, and she made very good money pairing them off against other dogs. The fights were not open to the public. They weren’t back alley affairs. They were events that wealthy suburbanites paid dearly to watch, and they paid dearly in lost bets against Karin’s personally trained canine savages.
Two or three hits a year here in Chicago was very convenient, then. She was a creature of habit, and she did not want to see Alexei go to prison or be killed. It would upset the life she had fashioned here in the city.
She lived in a condo on the far north beach area. The fights took place in the far northwestern suburbs on private land she’d secured from her wages as a shooter or assassin.
No, she was definitely in favor of status quo, and the Parisis were a threat to that comfortable life she had created for herself.
She pulled the black car away from the curb and took off into heavy traffic.
*
Alexei attended the funeral for his lieutenant and friend, Sergei Chernov. It was closed casket because of the numerous gunshot wounds. His head had nearly been blown off, but his face had been demolished altogether, Grodnov learned from the Russian mortician who handled Sergei’s funeral.
A pang of anger swept Grodnov’s frame when he heard of Chernov’s massive wounds. He wanted to send the woman back out into the streets to avenge Sergei on both Parisis, but it wasn’t possible. Alexei could have pointed out all the FBI agents at Chernov’s burial. They all wore navy blue suits, as if they were a sort of uniform. It wasn’t unusual for cops to show up at funerals. Alexei knew that somewhere nearby, photographers with zoom lenses were capturing the faces of all those here in attendance.
They put Sergei in the ground. He’d been with Alexei and with Rustov in the old gang back in Moscow. They had immigrated to America around the same time, all three of them.
Now Grodnov was the only survivor. His best men were dead, and that crazy bitch Karin…Christ knew where she was. She wasn’t home playing with her murderous canines. He knew because he called over there. He had the feeling that she had ignored his orders and was planning something for the cop and his wife.
Perhaps it was time to get someone to eliminate Karin Vonskaya. No one seemed to listen to Grodnov any longer. He seemed as if he were losing control of everyone around him.
There was always a sprint to the Canadian or Mexican border, but Alexei wasn’t sure he could break through the net of cops who were constantly vigilant, constantly watching every move he made.
He began to hate Jimmy Parisi as his only nemesis. It was Parisi who found him when his tracks were hidden beneath the snows of a Chicago winter. It was this Homicide who kept on coming when he should have been fatigued by age and by all the incompetence of other police agencies who were perfectly happy to accept the Nine One One cover that the Arabs had seemingly provided. Why this Italian had to keep scratching at the surface, Grodnov could not fathom.
Jimmy Parisi didn’t drive a black Mariah. He drove some dark colored domestic vehicle. Parisi wasn’t KGB or Militia. He was just an ordinary policeman.
And there they were, standing only a few feet apart, in Alexei’s vision. Standing opposite one another, seeing which one would give ground first.
All this time he could not locate that crazy cunt Karin. She was on the loose, doing whatever she felt like doing, drawing this cop closer to him.
He had survived Siberia. Four years there was like forty years in an American joint, like Joliet, say.
He had survived the KGB and the Militia and the Soviet Union with all its black mariahs searching you out in the early hours of the morning. This could not be it. Only a few months ago business was expanding. The Italians were losing their grip on the city, and Alexei’s fortunes were pointed nowhere but up. Now he was near the end of his tether, it felt like. How could things have deteriorated this quickly?
And where the hell was Karin Vonskaya?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
This past year has been one of siege mentality for me. I lost my best friend and partner, Doc Gibron. They blew a hole in my beloved Loop. And now I feel I am coming to the end of my career as a Homicide detective. I’ve lost one wife, one lover, one great friend and my career, then. You’re supposed to get your mind right, as in the movie Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman, that flick about life on a Florida chain gang. Hemingway called it resigning yourself, in Islands in the Stream.
I can’t get used to change because of my age, most likely. Children can adapt but old farts do it with great difficulty or not at all.
One thing I will never resign myself to is letting murderers skip on their crimes. I have no sense of forgiveness when it comes to taking a human life, so when Grodnov and his buddy Hansen and the other Russian buddies of Alexei decided to blow the Anderson Building down for whatever reasons they really did it for, I won’t let go and I won’t forget about it or resign myself or get my mind right. If this is the last dance, I’ll be on the floor until the music stops, fat lady or no fat lady.
*
We get a false alarm with the baby at the end of the third week of June. We’re watching Full Metal Jacket on the dvd player. My wife was in the Air Force, and I was in the Army, as I said, and we both find the film to be hilariously true regarding basic training. The drill sergeant was the same breed of vicious animal we both had, and it makes us laugh because this guy, Lee Ermy, a real life DI, has it down cold. In fact Natalie starts laughing so hard that she begins contractions. When the contractions become regular and hard, I get us out of the house and on the way to the hospital, St. Anne’s. My mother is watching the little girls, and my elder son and daughter are both out of the house. Mike’s in college and the big girl is married and is in medical school at Northwestern on a full scholarship.
She waits for six hours in the hospital bed, all wired up with monitors on everything. If she farts, they’ll have it wired and measured for velocity. It wasn’t like this for my older kids. Now they invite the whole damn family to be present at the birthing. But by the time we’re ready to call my eldest children, the doctor says it’s false labor and that we should go home.
“No more Full Metal Jacket for her,” Dr. Max Peterson tells her with a grin.
She has a craving for White Castle, so I stop on the way home. It’s three-thirty in the morning and she desires cheesesliders. I almost feel like calling Tommy, but this is his one day off this week.
I order four for her, but she changes the order to eight, an order of rings, an order of fries and a large Coke.
“Jesus, Slim.”
“I know I’m fat. But eating is the only pleasure involved in the ninth month of this pregnancy and I intend to get my money’s worth before I go back into training…By the way, I’m having my tubes tied after this one.”
I don’t have an immediate comeback.
“Okay. Sure, if that’s what you—“
“It’s what the doctor suggested, and it’s what I want, Church or no Church.”
She’s a Catholic and she goes with
me on most Sundays.
“Three is good…Isn’t it?”
“Of course. And I’m not getting any younger. Junior’ll be graduating high school when I’m…Jesus Christ….When I’m seventy-six.”
“You’ll be a spry old geezer then. The mortality rate’ll probably be up around eighty-eight, by that time, and I’m betting you make your mid-nineties. And with Viagra—“
“Please, Natalie. Please.”
The waitress arrives with Red’s mammoth order of food.
“You better not go into labor with all that shit on your tummy,” I tell her.
She grimaces at me.
“Someone’s been following us.”
“What did you say, Natalie?”
“I saw them out of the passenger’s mirror. Black car. Some kind of rice burner, Japanese make. New car, but black, I’m certain.”
The blood rushes to my face, and she sees the scarlet gathering.
“You knew about it?”
“Not tonight, I didn’t. I was too busy with…”
“Who is it, Jimmy? It’s not one of ours, is it.”
“No. It’s one of Grodnov’s. If I’m right, it’s Karin Vonskaya.”
“And she is?”
“She does taps for the Russians. She’s one of them.”
“I never would’ve guessed…Vonskaya,” she smiles.
“She’s an assassin, Red.”
“Really. Like we’ve never dealt with one of those before, no?”
“This one’s different.”
“How?”
“She’s off Grodnov’s leash. She went renegade, according to our Tactical people. Our informants say he told her to lay off ever since I…”
“Ever since you what, Jimmy?”
“Ever since I threatened to kill the both of them if they ever approached you or any of the family…Grodnov had Carlo killed.”
