Dark Eyes

by William Richter

  Brown shrugged as if the decision to take Sophie’s life was nothing remarkable, the cost of doing business. “Remember who it was that first brought you to me? Sophie. Girl with a habit is easy to use that way. But she started missing her crew—by then you’d kicked her out—and it made her a little crazy. She was gonna track you down and tip you off to what I was doing, so …”

  “You fucking asshole,” Wally seethed.

  Brown ignored Wally’s rage. He stopped for a moment and listened. The sounds of gunfire from the woods had stopped. He continued walking, urging Wally and Claire along with him. Claire was in terrible pain, the blood from her wound now dripping down onto the white snow. The three of them reached the beach of Coecles Inlet; the Hatches’ dock was far off to the left and the pristine sand of the Mashomack Preserve to the right.

  “Where?” Brown demanded.

  Claire weakly pointed to the spot where a stone jetty reached into the inlet. The three of them slogged along the sand, Claire struggling even more now. Brown was oblivious to her suffering.

  “You know what I’m most proud of?” he said. “The stone—the alexandrite. I pocketed that when our ATF team tore through Klesko’s St. Petersburg apartment, long ago. I’d been holding on to that for sixteen goddamn years—little bit of a retirement bonus for myself—but then I realized what a fine investment it would be to put it in that file, Wally—to get your imagination going. That hurt, but it was worth it. Just like the picture of Klesko, the psycho bad guy, to add a sense of urgency. Of course, I had no idea he’d actually show up, but that worked out fine too. Klesko lit a real fire under your ass, am I right? Had to get to your mama before he did?” Brown chuckled again, immensely proud of himself. “And all along you had the cell I gave you—with GPS. I’ve had my crew on your ass for weeks; of course, never close enough for you to spot them.”

  When they reached the jetty, Claire steered them inland again, following the line of the jetty to the denuded brush just ten feet from the edge of the beach. Partially buried in the sand was a woven steel cable, rusty from decades of exposure, which had once been the anchor of an old pier. Claire traced the cable for ten more feet, then got on her knees and began to dig underneath it. The ground was frozen on its surface and brutally difficult to penetrate. Claire was struggling for breath now and ghostly pale.

  Wally dropped to her knees beside Claire to help dig. As she dug, Wally observed her mother and became even more anxious.

  “Mom?”

  “I’m okay,” Claire said, and tried a reassuring smile for Wally, unsuccessfully.

  “Keep going,” Brown said. “Slow and easy. I saw that shit you pulled with Klesko. One goddamn twitch and you are both dead.” He scanned the woods, now growing anxious as the moment he had been working toward drew near. It had been several minutes since there had been gunshots behind them.

  Wally kept digging, and within five minutes she was over two feet down in the soil and sand mixture. Her fingers scraped on the top of a plastic container.

  “Easy …” Brown cautioned her.

  Wally reached down into the hole and grabbed the plastic container, then stood up with it in her hands. It was not large—a pint at the most—but through the translucent blue plastic it was easy to see that it was almost full of pebble-size stones.

  “That’s what I’m talkin’ about, little sister,” he said, his voice reverting to the Harlem street accent he used for his role as Panama. “Gimme here.”

  As she stared at Brown, a strange smile came to Wally’s face—as if she had a secret. She raised the container up, holding it beside her ear, and slowly shook it. It made the sound of a large baby rattle, hundreds of pebbles plocking loudly against the walls of the plastic. The sound seemed to mesmerize Brown, for a moment. Wally went on, shaking the container harder, filling the air with the rumbling of the stones.

  “Enough,” Brown commanded her, and reached out for the container.

  Suddenly he felt the muzzle of a gun against the back of his neck and heard the click of a hammer being drawn back. He stopped speaking.

  “Agent Brown.” Atley spoke calmly. “Detective Atley Greer.”

  “Listen, Detective,” Brown said in a reasonable voice, Atley’s gun still pressed into his neck. “Maybe we could discuss an option that would benefit both of us. …” Atley quieted him by jabbing the muzzle of his gun more insistently.

  “Don’t make a stupid mistake,” said Atley. “I’ve called it in … it’s over.” Atley looked past Brown to Wally and Claire. “Is she all right, Wallis? I’ve called her injury in too—they’re scrambling a medevac.”

  Wally tossed the cache aside and knelt down by Claire, who was looking worse now.

  “Mom,” Wally said, “you’re going to be okay….”

  For just a moment, Atley was distracted by the interaction between mother and daughter. Brown took advantage and spun suddenly around, whipping Atley’s gun aside with the barrel of his shotgun, which he then pointed at Atley’s face. He was ready to blow Atley away, but a gunshot rang out from behind Atley. A bullet hole appeared in Brown’s forehead and the life was gone from him instantly. As Brown dropped to the ground, Atley spun around and raised his own weapon again, but two more shots came, striking him in the arm and his ribs on the left side. Atley dropped to the ground, still alive but clenched in pain as he gripped his own wound.

  It was Alexei Klesko who stood above Atley, gun in hand, winded and with fresh wounds, but still alive. Tiger was at Klesko’s side, also hurt; he bled from gunshot wounds near his ribs and lower leg.

  “Daughter,” Klesko said to Wally, pleased with himself despite being in obvious pain, “tell your American friends: never fight a Russian in the snow. You see? How many empires of the world must learn this hard lesson?” Klesko gave a swift kick to the body of Agent Brown. “ATF? Kiss my ass …”

  Klesko stepped to where Wally was crouched at her mother’s side.

  “Give them,” Klesko said, his voice a primal growl as he pointed at the plastic container

  In sudden burst of rage, Wally grabbed the container and hurled it at Klesko. It hit his chest and the impact popped the lid open. Several hundred small stones flew out of the container in every direction, with a few dozen dropping to the ground at Klesko’s feet. He bent over painfully and pulled up a handful of them, examining the treasure with emotionless objectivity. They were clearly just stones from the beach, worthless.

  “Of course,” he said with a strange sort of resignation, and passed the handful to Tiger. “My son, I leave you this. Your future.”

  Klesko chuckled. Tiger let the stones spill through his fingers and glared at Klesko.

  Turning away from his son, Klesko took a deep, slow breath, relishing the feel of the cold air in his lungs, then stepped forward until he was standing above Claire.

  “Yalena …” he said, then raised his gun at Claire, pointing it directly at her face. “Now, your future …”

  “No!” Wally shouted, positioning herself between Klesko and her wounded mother. “It’s over! Leave her alone!”

  Klesko barked a sardonic laugh.

  “You think I cannot kill my own blood?” He pointed his gun straight at Wally’s face, but at that moment Atley rose from where he lay bleeding on the ground and launched himself desperately at Klesko. The two men struggled for a moment, but Atley’s wounds were greater and he didn’t have the strength to take Klesko’s gun away. Klesko freed one arm and elbowed Atley in the solar plexus, dropping him once again to the ground. Klesko used the butt of his gun to knock Atley unconscious.

  Klesko raised his gun once more, aimed it at Claire, and was about to shoot, but a blast sounded beside him and the left side of Klesko’s chest exploded from the single shot, close range. The woods were silent for a moment as Klesko remained standing, looking startled. He gazed down at the gaping wound to his chest, now spurting blood. With disbelief, his eyes followed the only possible trajectory of the shot to Tiger, who stood beside him wi
th his smoking gun still raised. The young man stared unapologetically at his father, watching almost without expression as Klesko dropped to the ground beside Agent Cornell Brown.

  Sirens could be heard in the distance. Wally turned to Claire, whose face was now a ghostly white. She was barely holding on to consciousness.

  “Mom!” Wally cried, wrapping her arms around her mother’s neck.

  “My girl.” Claire smiled weakly. “We’re together.” Claire looked up and her eyes met Tiger’s. He stood six or seven feet away, keeping his distance. Claire raised a hand and waved Tiger over to her. For a moment he did not move, but then slowly he shuffled over, shy and awkward, and knelt down beside his mother and sister. Something had changed Tiger; like a revelation, his anger had melted away. Tiger seemed suddenly to be no more than a boy, the sad and lonely child who had been left behind so many years ago.

  “I can’t believe it,” Claire said, beaming. “I never thought this could come true. We’re all here. Moyi dyetki …” My babies.

  “Mama. …” Wally was barely able to speak, tears spilling down her face.

  “No, baby,” Claire said. “I’m so happy.”

  With all the energy she had left, Claire began to sing softly, in Russian. As she sang, she cast her eyes back and forth between Wally and Tiger. “Puskai prïdet pora prosit’sia, drug druga dolgo ne vidat. …”

  Wally began to join in, singing quietly along with Claire, “No serditse s serdtsem, slovno ptitsy, konechno, vstretiatsia opiat …”

  Claire smiled as she heard the words of the song from Wally’s lips. “I sang the song the day I left you, Valentina. Do you remember what the words mean?”

  “No.”

  Claire looked from Wally to Tiger. “Your brother will tell you,” Claire said confidently, and then she began to sing the song again, one line at a time, “Puskai prïdet pora prosit’sia …”

  Tiger sat motionless and quiet for a moment, overwhelmed. Claire waited.

  “How swift the hour comes for our parting,” Tiger translated, the words barely more than a whisper as his eyes met Claire’s as she sang on.

  “Drug druga dolgo ne vidat?”

  “No more to meet—or who knows when?”

  “No serditse s serdtsem, slovno ptitsy …”

  “But heart with heart must come together.”

  “Konechno, vstretiatsia opiat …”

  “And someday surely meet again.”

  It was there now in Claire’s eyes, a look cast lovingly between her two children that told them who they were and where they belonged; they were hers and she was theirs, all together finally. Reflected in her mother’s gaze, Wally saw herself, as if for the first time.

  And then Claire was gone. Wally dropped her head to Claire’s chest and wailed, grasping her dead mother in her arms desperately, as if struggling to pull her back into life. She stirred from her grief only when she became aware of the sirens in the near distance and then the approaching thunder of the medevac helicopter that flew low beneath the clouds overhead. Wally lifted her head, her eyes red from crying, her shirt stained and wet with Claire’s blood. Tiger stood frozen in place, overwhelmed and feeling every kind of pain at once. Wally looked Tiger in the eye with desperate urgency.

  “My brother …”

  “Sestryichka,” he answered. Little sister.

  “Run,” she said.

  With those words, Tiger’s awareness of his surroundings—and his situation—came rushing back, and reality took hold again. Tiger stuffed his gun under his belt and, with one last glance to his sister, bolted into the woods. Within seconds he was out of sight, disappearing under the dense curtain of snow that continued to fall.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Wally stayed home alone at the 84th Street apartment for three days. She slept a lot, ate almost nothing, and cried her share. In between, when she felt strong enough, Wally went slowly through her mother’s private things, looking for any information about the woman she had known as Claire Stoneman. As Wally reflected on the last eleven years of her life, she assumed there must have been clues that Claire was not who she claimed to be but also—in the great irony of Wally’s young life—exactly who she had always claimed to be: Wally’s mother. But there were no clues. Yalena Mayakova’s transformation into Claire Stoneman had been complete, leaving no traces at all.

  At four o’clock in the afternoon, on her third day alone, the house phone rang and Wally picked up, surprising herself.

  “Yeah.”

  “Miss Stoneman—”

  “Stop it, Raoul. I’m still just Wally.”

  “Okay. Wally, someone named Natalie Stehn is here.”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

  Wally didn’t feel like company, really, but she was grateful to Natalie—her mother’s and now Wally’s lawyer—for all the things she had done and was still doing on Wally’s behalf. After the incident on Shelter Island, Wally had been questioned by both local and federal authorities for over twelve hours, with a Social Services caseworker waiting in the wings to take Wally into custody. Natalie Stehn had shown up and bulled her way into the interview room, armed with a document that declared her to be Wally’s legal guardian, signed and notarized several years earlier by Claire Stoneman. Once her custodianship had been established, Natalie had demanded Wally’s release and had brought her home to 84th Street. Natalie had offered to stay with Wally, but Wally had insisted on being alone.

  The doorbell rang and Wally opened the door for Natalie, a smallish woman but very forceful and direct. She gave Wally her own version of a sympathetic smile, but touchy-feely was not Natalie’s style.

  “How are you, Wally?”

  “I’m okay. Come on in, Natalie.” They sat on the soft couch in the living room, Wally tucking her legs up under her robe, Natalie sitting squarely upright. “I want to thank you again for the other day,” Wally said. “I’d be in juvie right now if you hadn’t shown up.”

  “Just my job, but you’re welcome. Is there anything you need right now? Money? You still have the credit card, right? You can get cash with that?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Okay,” Natalie said, and pulled a file from her valise. “Any order you want this stuff?”

  “Johanna.”

  “Right,” Natalie said, and leafed through the file. “The doctors still have her in a medically induced coma while she recovers from massive trauma. As I said before, the staff say it’s a miracle she’s still alive, but at this point they’re fairly optimistic about a recovery.”

  “When can I visit her?”

  “They’re going to wake her up in two days—probably—depending on her progress.”

  “Okay. I want to be there when that happens.”

  “Right, I’ll keep you posted as I keep in touch with the medical staff.”

  “Jake and Ella?”

  “My guy found them.” Natalie leafed further into her reports. “It looks like things went pretty much the way you hoped, the two of them together at that residential facility, Neversink Farm.”

  “Good,” Wally said. “And the place is okay?”

  “Yeah, my guy says it checks out. Nice clean farm, animals, a lake. Here’s a random detail: apparently they’ve already put Jake in charge of a pig named Titan, a massive boar, and the kid seems happy about it. Ella is learning to cook.”

  Wally was pleased with this outcome. She figured these were perfect assignments, a recalcitrant beast to match Jake’s own aggressive nature and Ella in a kitchen with lots of food.

  “It sounds like a good situation,” Natalie continued. “I think my guy halfway wanted to live there himself. So, how would you like to proceed, as relates to those two?”

  Wally had given this a lot of thought. “Jake and Ella deserve a chance to make their own way,” she said. “That’s what I want to happen. And we can be, like …”

  “A safety net?”

  “Yeah, a safety net. I like that.” Wally smiled, imagining Ella and Jake on a fl
ying trapeze, Jake hurling Ella up in the air and catching her again. She’s watching over you. … That’s what Ella had said about Wally’s Russian mother, and she had been totally right about that. Magical Ella.

  Natalie turned a page in her file and sighed. “Tevin.”

  “Tevin.” Wally nodded, her smile evaporating.

  “My guy has looked everywhere, and the only relative he’s found for Tevin is an aunt whose last known residence was in Nashville. No current address for her yet. Tevin’s remains are still in the city morgue, but the coroner has released them to be claimed.”

  “We can claim them?”

  “We can get a court order for that. My suggestion? I can make arrangements to have his remains cremated, and you can take custody of him. That way, over time, you can decide how you want to memorialize him. Maybe at some point with your friends Jake and Ella, maybe with Tevin’s aunt when we find her …”

  “That sounds right, Natalie. Let’s do that.”

  “Good. Now, we haven’t talked about this yet, but on a hunch I set the wheels in motion for you to petition for emancipated minor status.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what I thought. So we’ll set aside the estate issues until after you’re emancipated; that’ll make things simpler. As executor of your mother’s estate, I’ve done some preliminary work with an accountant. I can tell you that your mother was a very successful woman, as you know. Once everything is settled, you’ll assume ownership of this apartment—it’s paid for in full—and of various assets, both onshore and off. Claire was a shrewd businesswoman. Money will not be a problem for you, Wallis, unless of course you go meshugeh, which, once you’re emancipated, will be entirely up to you. Good?”

  “Yeah, good. Thanks, Natalie.”

  “So, I know this is a difficult subject for you. I had a fairly long conversation with your father.” There was an awkward pause. “Jason, I mean. Obviously.”

  “Okay.” Wally’s heart hardened at the mention of his name.

  “You know he’s been here in town since he heard about everything. You haven’t returned his calls.”