by Ed Kovacs
For a moment I felt lost in her beautiful emerald eyes, tranquil as a Caribbean lagoon, weakening my will to survive. I thought maybe I deserved what she was trying to give me. But that was my negative ego talking and I instantly cast that thought aside. I didn’t want to die, but for some reason, I didn’t want to kill her, either. An untenable position that I needed to rectify in the next few seconds.
I remembered the karambit in my front waistband. My weak-side hand was stronger than hers, so I brought our hands down toward my belt. Her eyes flashed a recognition that I was up to something as the tanto edged closer to my neck. All I needed was to get my index finger into the hole on the karambit’s handle and then pull up sharply. The blade would automatically open and slice right into her belly. I could gut her.
I felt the tip of the tanto touch my skin. This was a slow-motion race now. One month ago, I would have already put this killer down. Instead, because I had let myself go to seed, because my thinking was clouded, because my reaction times slowed, because I now second-guessed my use of violence, even to defend myself, she was about to win the race.
My left hand touched the karambit, but I felt the tanto pierce my skin. A good tanto is a nasty thing, and when the point entered a human neck it was like the last period in a biography. I could only spit in her face as a statement of contempt for her and everything she stood for.
Then a puff of red exploded from her forehead, her green eyes rolled up in her head, and she slowly slid down to the floor.
Behind her stood a slender Vietnamese-American woman in diamonds and a black cocktail dress, an LBD, actually, that hugged her perfectly proportioned form like a long-lost lover. Her makeup, silky hair, and nails were perfect as usual. She looked like a million dollars but was actually worth thirty million. Using a black gloved-hand, she held a .22 revolver with a sound suppressor, smoke spiraling out from the business-end. Conventional wisdom states that revolvers can’t be silenced, but the KGB and the CIA had long ago done just that, with a special design to prevent the sound-causing exploding gasses from escaping the cylinder. It was bad form, after all, to leave spent shell casings on the ground, as semi-autos did, if one could avoid it.
I teetered against the half-demolished kitchen island, a disoriented, light-headed, bloody, broken mess, shot in a couple of places and bleeding heavily from knife wounds in several more, but all I could manage to say in a whisper was, “Thanks for stopping by.”
“I heard you want to talk to me. Make it quick,” said New Orleans CIA Station Chief Twee Siu.
I had plenty of questions for Twee, but instead of quizzing her, I collapsed to the floor.
It’s embarrassing passing out in front of a beautiful woman before exchanging contact information, but so be it. I woke up surrounded by coppers in the ER at Touro, still the only functioning hospital for adults in the city of New Orleans one year after the killer Storm came to town. There was no sign of Twee. Honey held my hand as they wheeled me into surgery, and I could see that she’d been crying.
I was actually in fair shape. I’d lost a good bit of blood, so I got a few units. Just before the anesthesiologist, who was listening to techno pop on his MP3 player, put me under, I reminded them I wasn’t there for a sex change or a vasectomy. That got a smile from the head surgeon, who said he was going to remove four shotgun pellets from my thigh, one a bit too close to the groin for any man’s liking. I’d also lost a small chunk of meat from my left calf—a round from the blond guy I hadn’t realized I’d taken. The doc said he would stitch up the deeper knife wounds, bandage the others, tape my broken fingers onto splints, pull the fléchettes of granite out of my face. The neck wound wasn’t very deep and somehow hadn’t hit anything vital, so he said I was one lucky sucker. I told him not to bandage the graze on my scalp because it might interfere with my social life. I had more instructions for him, but they put me under just to shut me up.
I eventually found myself in a private room requesting a whiskey and a smoke from a pretty, shapely black nurse who’d brought in my personal effects. I’d asked for her cell-phone number too, but before she could respond, Honey barged in and the nurse departed.
Honey pretended she hadn’t been worried about me. “I’m not sure if you’re worth all the trouble you cause.”
“I’m definitely not worth it. Do we know if there are more of these people?” I asked.
“We don’t.”
“Russians?”
“Russians. The chief is pissed. You were shot in the line of duty, meaning he can’t fire you. No one can, ever. It’s a free lifetime pass. And you’re a hero.”
“I’m no hero. I got my ass handed to me.”
“Your call to dispatch? It was recorded; all incoming calls are. They re-broadcast it on the police frequencies. Fifty squad cars from all over the city were racing to your loft while they listened to the shootout. Word spread fast you took out two professional assassins.”
I started to say something about Twee killing the woman, then stopped. “Was I found with a twenty-two pistol in my hand?”
“Well, yeah. You took it from her and shot her, right?”
I hesitated answering. I couldn’t lie to Honey, but I had a problem here. Twee Siu had saved my life. She must have put the gun in my hand after I passed out to keep her participation unknown. So if I told what I knew, I’d be ratting her out. I’d saved her life once, and now she’d returned the favor. It wasn’t for personal glory, for trying to take credit for killing two assassins; I simply couldn’t dime Twee out.
Practical matters also needed to be considered. Since I sought her help, why piss her off?
And in a larger sense, I owed her, even before the events of today. Twee had entered my life when I was practically destitute in the wake of the Storm. Even though she had used me like a dishrag, the result of our association had created the new St. James. I’d become the most sought-after private investigator in New Orleans and had earned a ton of money. Twee Siu had been the catalyst for it all.
“I don’t have any memory of shooting the Russian woman.” I could parse words with the best of them, if given the chance. I wasn’t lying to Honey by saying this, I simply withheld pertinent facts.
“They cut a hole in your roof with a chainsaw to get in. They were waiting for you. You don’t remember anything?”
“I remember plenty, but I was bleeding out, I was disoriented. I have no memory of shooting her.” I hated misleading Honey; I’d tell her the truth eventually. “Who’s handling the crime scene?”
“Lieutenant Carondolet handles all officer-involved shootings, but the chief—”
Honey and I were distracted by a commotion just outside the door to my room, as the unmistakable voice of Kendall Bullard seemed to be arguing with the police guard. Honey crossed to the door, gestured that it was okay for Kendall to enter, and the UFC fighter hurried into the room holding a laptop.
“I know you too mean to die, Coach, so I weren’t worried ’bout that. But this, you gots to hear now.”
“What is it?”
“From Brandt’s office, those boys who work for him, ’bout fifteen minute ago.”
“The bugged computers of his staff, yeah?”
Kendall nodded, then clicked on an audio file on the laptop and we all listened.
“Things are getting too weird around here, Mario. I mean, I didn’t sign on for this.”
“Why, what just happened?”
“I was in the general’s office to have him sign these contracts when he got a call on the encrypted line. Pelkov demanded the general give him five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of credit because two of his people had just been killed by Saint James.”
“What?”
“No kidding. The general told him to piss off and train better assassins next time.”
“Jerry, you need to forget you heard that.”
“I need a new job, is what I need.”
Kendall clicked off the recording.
“That settles it.”
I swung my legs over the side of the bed. The deep cuts hurt the worst, like I could still feel the blade slicing through me. “I need some clothes.”
“You’re in no condition to—”
“I need my truck too. The big one, not the Bronco.”
“Hey cowboy,” came a voice from the doorway.
Detectives Mackie and Kruger entered the room.
“I don’t even want to ask where you got that recording. But you’re not in this alone. Every homicide dick in the city has been in fifth gear for the last three hours,” said Mackie, short and stocky like a fireplug. He wore the same flattop hairstyle he’d had since high school. “Even the nightshift crew came in.”
“The shooters were checked into the Embassy Suites. Posed as a vacationing couple from Poland. Flew in yesterday. We ran their prints and they had a couple local arrests up in New York City,” said Kruger, a lean, shrewd detective, who didn’t hesitate to light up a cigarette even though we were in a hospital.”
“Remember all the New York cops who were down here after the Storm helping us out?” asked Mackie.
“Yeah, there were hundreds of them. They stayed for a couple months,” I said. “The department issued a special patch in honor of that.”
“Well, I got to be good buddies with a detective from their Russian-mob unit in Brooklyn. I called him and told him these perps tried to take out one of our guys. Turns out there’s a secret grand jury up there that had authorized a wiretap on a Russian-mob nightclub owner. The mobster got a call two days ago from Grigory Pelkov requesting two ‘units’ be sent down here to mop up a spill. Pelkov specifically requested ‘Nati.’”
“‘Nati’ is the nickname of the Amazon you capped,” said Kruger, tapping cigarette ash into a bed pan.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “and Detective Baybee, it’s time for an unfriendly drink with a fat-ass Ukrainian.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It violated procedure that I wasn’t sitting at a desk shuffling paperwork until the officer-involved shooting investigation finished, but everyone, including the crime-scene ramrod Lt. Carondolet, knew Honey and I were on special assignment reporting directly to the chief, so screw procedure. Honey wanted me to stay in the hospital, of course, but hospitals aren’t places to get well, they’re places to get fixed, and I done got fixed good enough.
I took a peek through a window, watching as the chief held a press conference on the front steps of Touro, announcing that an NOPD detective had been seriously wounded while taking two highly dangerous killers from out-of-town off the streets. He adroitly spun my near-death into another triumph for the department. Pointer will have a career in PR waiting for him somewhere, whenever he finally gets the boot.
Meantime, a convoy formed up in the rear of the hospital. A uniform delivered my special-occasion truck to one of Touro’s back doors. Painted in the black and gold of the New Orleans Saints, the Ford F-350 dually featured a five-inch lift, long bed, extended cab, oversized tires, custom heavy-duty bumpers, and a massive wrap-around front grill guard. It was a monster and I felt mean.
Kendall had gone ahead to reconnoiter with high-powered binoculars and checked in with two pieces of information: a moving van was loading up furniture, and Pelkov had a special guest for a late lunch in the sun room.
Honey and I hit the front gates to Grigory Pelkov’s Uptown mansion at about thirty-five miles per hour. I disliked having to scratch the paint on my truck but I enjoyed the look on the face of the Russian security guy as he leapt clear of my charging behemoth, trailed by eight PD units. A couple of movers carrying an antique chest out of the house did a double-take as I veered off the curved flagstone drive and drove right for the converted atrium. I guess I was pioneering a new take on the no-knock warrant we had been given.
I’d cased Pelkov’s house well the day I broke in; I knew where he’d be sitting for his lunch, so I had a good idea of what I had to do. And that meant pedal to the metal, right into a corner of his damn sun room. Glass, wood and red brick showered one end of the room as I powered the big diesel rig indoors, crushing tables and chairs underfoot.
Pelkov and Nassir Haddad reacted as I’d anticipated: the big flinch as we crashed through the flimsy wall and drove into the room, followed by frozen shock as Honey and I hurtled out of the truck holding pistols, one gun pointing at each of their heads. I tried not to limp as I approached their table.
“Gentlemen, mind if we join you?”
I sat uninvited across from the two men, just as three bodyguards, including the bald Neanderthal Sasha ran into the room.
“Tell them to drop their weapons, turn around, and lace their fingers behind their heads.”
Grigory thought about it, then gestured, and the men complied. As Honey confiscated their guns, a couple of uniforms entered the room, cuffed the three men, and took them away. When Mackie and Kruger entered, Honey patted down Pelkov, removing his cell phone, wallet, and other items. We all watched as she used a pocket-size SIM-card copier to download the contents of his phone, including deleted texts, to a USB drive.
Cell phones had been found on the two dead assassins, and Honey wanted to try to make some connections with the Buyer’s Club. She repeated the process with Haddad.
“I don’t think you—”
“Shut up unless I ask you a question,” I said to Pelkov.
Haddad had the sweat-beads thing going on his upper lip again. And his blinking eye-thing kicked in. Using my left hand, since my right was too banged-up, I kept the Glock aimed at Pelkov’s forehead as I reached over to grab his champagne coupe.
“Celebrating?” I asked.
“Yes, we get to leave this toilet-bowl city.”
“No, you don’t, because I haven’t flushed you into the sewer yet.”
“What can you do to—”
I flung the champagne into Pelkov’s face, and for the first time he dropped his mask of invincibility.
“I said shut up unless I ask you a question.”
I nodded to Honey, and she disappeared with Mackie and Kruger to search the house and seize whatever evidence would reasonably fit within the scope of the warrant, especially the one million in cash in his desk. Two uniforms stepped into the room and took up positions in the doorway. It was understood by every officer in the department that I was given a free pass to get in some licks on Pelkov. And while I didn’t feel all that great, I just might, depending on how the interrogation went.
I slid passport photos of the two dead Russians over to Pelkov. Detectives had found passports and other items in the hotel room the assassins had checked into. He examined the pictures dispassionately.
“Know them?”
“No. But girl is hot.”
“I can arrange a meeting. You can have the roll-out tray right next to hers in the autopsy room. I have to admit, she’s a good-looking corpse. Her breasts are real, not fake.”
It was in his eyes. A flash of something. Pelkov did his best to remain stoic, but something had changed as if his inner dialogue was processing potential eventualities. And he was angry. I liked that.
“Now what’s this I hear about you arranging for a Russian hit team to kill me? I thought we were pals.” I poured myself some bubbly and took a sip.
He looked askance at the mess in the room and at my looming, parked truck. “Why you don’t just knock?”
“Don’t make me remind you again that when I ask you a question, you need to answer it.” I said it slowly and with a distinct lethality.
“We not in Saint Petersburg. I don’t know about hit team.” He looked away.
“You’re not the best liar Ukraine has to offer, are you? You told me you weren’t buying weapons here in New Orleans, but you’ve been buying them every Saturday night for the last year out at Michoud. That’s why you moved into this house. You’re making too much money; you can’t afford to leave. Did you and Chu have a bet as to which of your goons would knock me off first?”
The hint of a smile appeared on his
lips. “Not bad idea. But until two minute ago when you drive into my house and point gun at me, why I want to kill you?”
“I’m shining a light on you maggots. I’m shutting you down.”
Grigory laughed heartily, long and hard. “God, I love innocence. I wish I had some. So does Nassir, is why he like young boy and girls. He wants their innocence.”
Nassir’s eyes drilled into Pelkov, but he said nothing. Pelkov looked at me.
“You think you will shut down American defense industry selling its merchandise?”
“Of course not. I’m simply herding the jackals out of my town. But a few like you will stay here and get stuffed and mounted for display.”
Pelkov seemed to be working hard at keeping his cool now. Time to make my move.
I slid him a photo of the GIDEON sample. He studied it, then handed it to Nassir, whose hand shook as he held the photo.
“Tell me about this.”
“Some kind of metal or something,” said Pelkov. “I don’t know this. Nassir?”
Nassir shook his head and handed the picture back to me.
“Come on, you’re a smart guy; you know what it is,” I stated, never taking my eyes off Pelkov.
“Okay, you investigate murder of Del, so I see maybe now. This something he sell?”
“You tell me. He certainly had plenty to sell. I’m guessing he bought some things, too. Including from you. Why else would he have a roomful of Russian weapons stashed away?”
Pelkov looked over to Nassir. The Egyptian said, “Barter. When Del had clients who wanted low- tech goods, I traded with him. Kalashnikovs for computers or boots for burst transmission radio sets.”
“You keep military goods on your ship?”
Nassir shrugged, but I caught his eye with a hard look. “Yes, I do,” he said, with his crisp British- accented English. “Unlike most arms dealers, I maintain a healthy inventory.”
