Hard Line

by Sidney Bell

  “Brothers. They’re nicknames, though. I don’t know what they’re short for, but my friend said that Seryozha’s the smaller guy, and that he’s really smart. He said not to underestimate him.”

  “And your friend knows this how?”

  Tobias reached over and turned off the recorder. “If I tell you about crimes, will you go to the cops?”

  Sullivan dragged a hand through his hair, the strands tangling around his fingers. “To be clear, I have zero legal obligation to report criminal activity I stumble across during a case. I’m not law enforcement. That being said, if keeping my mouth shut will get someone hurt, I’ll sing like the proverbial canary. I have ethics.”

  “You care more about people getting hurt than seeing bad guys go to jail,” Tobias clarified.

  Sullivan frowned. “In the general sense, yes. In the specific sense, it depends on the situation.”

  Tobias huffed a breath. “Are you going to turn my friend in or not?”

  “Did he kill someone?”

  “No.”

  “You sound sure.”

  “I am sure. He wouldn’t do that.”

  “Sexual assault? Torture? Kidnapping?”

  “Torture? Are you kidding? No.”

  “Not even a meth dealer? No one likes meth dealers.”

  “Not even Vasily Krayev.” Tobias’s chin lifted. “Not anybody. But I’m not sure about everything that he had to do to stay safe, so... I mean, there might be smaller stuff. I don’t know.”

  “I’m not worried about smaller stuff. We’re good.” Sullivan restarted the recorder and picked up a pen. “Start at the beginning.”

  It took about an hour from start to finish. Without using Church’s name, Tobias explained his hiring at the bakery owned by the youngest Krayev brother, Matvey, a good man who wanted to live outside of his family’s criminal activities. He talked about how the older Krayevs had brought their clumsy, burgeoning meth business into Matvey’s bakery without his consent, resulting in Church’s subsequent, accidental witnessing of some very illegal drug-related behavior. Cue a landslide of harassment from the oldest Krayev son, the now-deceased Vasily, who’d had a temper problem the size of a moon crater, and the eventual involvement of the Krayev matriarch, who had agreed to let the situation resolve without murder in exchange for Church’s silence about the meth and a favor from Ghost.

  “There’re five Krayev brothers?” Sullivan asked, making notes. “Well, four, now that Vasily’s dead?”

  “Yes. But Matvey’s not going to be a problem. He’s a good guy.”

  “And this matriarch—”

  “They called her Mama.”

  “Right, she’s in charge, huh? Do you know her real name?”

  “Give me a second.” Tobias texted Church: What was Mama’s first name?

  The response came gratifyingly fast: Yalena? Yellena? Something like that everyone called her mama tho and fuck, you better be careful.

  Tobias sighed and passed the message on.

  Sullivan kept writing. “But you don’t know the specifics of what happened between Mama and Vasily and your buddy?”

  Tobias jerked a shoulder. “I just know that on that last day when everything happened, Vasily went after my friend. Mama stepped in, Ghost agreed to do a favor for her, and neither me nor my friend have seen Vasily or any of the other Krayevs since.”

  “Hmm.” Sullivan stared at his notes. “This was eight months ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it was around this time that Ghost moved into the new condo?”

  “Not long after.”

  “Think K in his phone stands for Krayev?”

  “I don’t know. I think so, but...”

  “But not sure. Fine. And you have no idea what the favor was?”

  “No.” Tobias licked his lips. “What do you think?”

  “I think we’re going to need to be careful.”

  “I mean about Ghost. All of this is definitely connected to him being gone, right?”

  “Well, I don’t buy that he suddenly fucked off to San Diego to visit Sea World.” As he spoke, Sullivan tugged one of Tobias’s bags of chips out of the grocery sack and opened it, popping a couple in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

  “Help yourself,” Tobias said dryly.

  Sullivan blinked down at the bag in his hand as if he wasn’t sure how it’d gotten there. “Oh. Yeah. Well, maybe people who live in glass houses full of blackmail shouldn’t throw stones at a little casual potato chip theft.”

  “It’s fine. Just go on.”

  “So Ghost is either on the run or he got grabbed.” Sullivan spoke with his mouth full. “But if he was grabbed, I don’t think the Krayevs took him.”

  “You don’t?”

  “The Krayevs came to Ghost’s place for a reason. One of them stuck his head into the room while we were in the closet, right? Not long enough to find something, but long enough to see that someone wasn’t there.”

  “They were looking for him, too,” Tobias said slowly. “Maybe that’s why one of them hung around for a while. Waiting to see if Ghost would show.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What’s next?”

  “Next I want to know how Ghost and the Krayevs are related to a dead housekeeper and a missing girl from 1992. Any thoughts on that?”

  Tobias shook his head. “I have no idea. There was never any mention of any of that.”

  “I’d like to talk to this buddy of yours anyway,” Sullivan said. “Can you arrange for him to meet me?”

  “Not going to happen. I’ll ask him whatever you want, but I’m not telling you his name or how to reach him. Consider me your contact.”

  Sullivan’s jaw muscle worked, but all he said was, “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  Sullivan reached into the grocery sack again, helping himself to a bottle of iced tea. “In the meantime, let’s talk about Ghost. What’s his legal name?”

  Tobias’s brain shorted out for a good five seconds. Finally, when Sullivan’s eyebrows were halfway up his forehead, Tobias admitted, “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know your best friend’s name?” Sullivan’s tone was flat.

  “His name is Ghost. That’s the name he likes. It’s the one that matters.”

  “Not when it comes to finding him,” Sullivan said. “But let’s move on. Don’t suppose you know his social?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Date of birth?”

  “January 30th.” This, at least, Tobias was certain about. When they were in Woodbury, there’d been a cottage party for Ghost on that date.

  “Year?”

  Tobias shook his head. “I’m not sure. He claimed he was fifteen when we first became roommates but his age tended to change based on what he wanted at any given moment. It’s either ’96 or ’97, though. I’m pretty sure.”

  “Why were you roommates?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why don’t you let me make that call?”

  Reluctantly, and with the same hot flush of embarrassment he always felt speaking about it, Tobias admitted, “We were in a residential treatment program together. I was eighteen, he was a few years younger.” He could feel Sullivan’s attention like a physical hand on his skin, picking at him, searching for weaknesses.

  But all Sullivan said was, “So he’d be twenty now, assuming he told the truth about his age.”

  “Yes.”

  “Has he lied about that sort of thing in the past?”

  He lies about everything, Tobias thought bitterly. “I’m not sure.”

  “Any other addresses he’s lived at?”

  Tobias rattled off the one for the gray dump Ghost had stayed at before he moved into the Riviera condo, but he didn’t know any others. “Will that help?”<
br />
  “Probably not. Leases aren’t like mortgages; it’s a lot harder to find out who’s paying the bills when names aren’t part of the public record. But neighbors might—”

  Tobias shook his head. “He’s not very sociable. They won’t know anything about him that I don’t.”

  Sullivan nodded. “Have any pictures of him?”

  “No. He doesn’t like having his picture taken.”

  “Parents’ first names?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where’s he from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where’s his family from?”

  Tobias’s face burned. It was humiliating, knowing how much of his life he’d given to Ghost and how little Ghost had given him in return. Tobias knew it was wrong to think that way, that secrets and intimacies couldn’t be bartered, couldn’t be demanded in equal amounts, not when different people had different needs and different abilities to trust, but it had never been so baldly shoved in his face before.

  “Don’t know that either, huh?” Sullivan asked.

  “No.” Tobias hated how hoarse he sounded.

  “What about that shoebox back at his place? Would we find anything helpful in there?”

  Tobias shook his head. He’d seen inside the box only once, when by chance he’d been standing close by enough to see a staff member search through Ghost’s things when Ghost had been brought in for his third or fourth visit to Woodbury. The box was filled with assorted odds and ends—pictures cut from magazines, a broken piece of pottery, an old necklace with a broken clasp, a worn rubber stamp, amongst other things—but only Ghost knew their meanings.

  “Let’s go back to this treatment place. What were you two there for?”

  “It’s not related,” Tobias gritted out.

  “We don’t know that. You might have details about Ghost’s life that you don’t realize are—”

  “It’s...it was a long time ago.”

  “That doesn’t matter—”

  “He was a kid. I was practically a kid, and he’s three years younger.”

  Sullivan chucked his pen on the table with enough force that it bounced to the floor. “Why the fuck does Mama need a favor from a twenty-year-old street kid? You really think it’s unrelated to the sort of shit that gets a guy in trouble with the system? Use your head.”

  Stung, Tobias jerked back. It wasn’t the way Sullivan had spoken to him—which seemed reasonable, considering how they’d gotten to this point—so much as that Sullivan was right. Tobias hadn’t thought it through. Finally he said, “He was there for prostitution. But I don’t know the specifics. I don’t know why that would matter to Mama.”

  “You said you’re his best friend.”

  That one cut deep, and Tobias spoke more sharply. “I am.”

  “But you don’t know anything about him.”

  “I—I know other things. Things that won’t help us here, that’s true, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know him.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t lie.”

  “I’m not lying!”

  Sullivan opened his mouth, paused, and then closed it again. He studied Tobias for what felt like a long time before he finally—and very gently—asked, “What can you tell me about him, Tobias?”

  He’s beautiful, Tobias wanted to say. He’s smart and sarcastic and surprising. He saved me once, back before we were friends, simply because he could and I needed it. Where other people are soft, he’s hard. Where other people are dull, he’s sharp. He’s like the knives he uses, and he always wins. I know he doesn’t care that much about me, but it’s still more than anyone else gets from him, and that has to mean something, doesn’t it?

  But in the end, all he could manage was a soft, “He doesn’t need me, not the way I need him. He doesn’t need anybody, but he lets me stay.”

  Something in Sullivan’s expression shifted, a minute twist that meant oh, I get it.

  “It’s not like that,” Tobias said, weary at the very idea. “I told you, we weren’t in a relationship, and I’m not in love with him.”

  Church had once accused him of being in love with Ghost, and Tobias supposed from the outside that it probably looked that way. Heck, there had been moments when Tobias had wondered it himself, but after weeks of examining the feeling, he’d come to the conclusion that the phrase in love was fundamentally untrue. The better word would be crush, and even that was misleading. It was the sort of crush teenagers got on their teachers, the sort of crush that you looked back on later with a cringe, painfully aware of all the reasons why you should’ve known better, thankful that you’d dodged a bullet.

  Yes, he found Ghost fun and intriguing. Yes, he laughed more around Ghost, who was canny and witty. And he’d be lying if he said he didn’t think Ghost was attractive.

  But in all honesty, what he most frequently felt around Ghost was the anxiety of knowing he had to make Ghost happy so Ghost would want to stay. When he was successful, Tobias felt a profound satisfaction at being worthy. But in a dark, secret part of his heart, he resented having to earn Ghost’s presence over and over. In that part of his heart, he harbored a sharp, potent anger that he could never just be enough.

  No, it wasn’t love. It was addiction, and it wasn’t even Ghost he was addicted to. Tobias was addicted to being chosen, and being chosen by someone like Ghost, who found so few people worth his time, was the best high of all.

  Chapter Eight

  “That’s enough to find him, isn’t it?” Tobias asked, as if he thought Sullivan could just enter a street name and a last known address into a national database for missing hookers and get what they wanted.

  “Not remotely.” Sullivan turned the recorder off and put it away. “We’ve got a couple of options. I’d like to go through Ghost’s phone to see if we can’t find out who some of these numbers belong to.”

  Tobias pulled a face but took Ghost’s phone out of the duffel. His fingers clenched around the casing for a moment before he finally held it out. “You can track them down with just the numbers?”

  Sullivan took it. “Can usually get at least a billing address or a name. The real question is what to do once we know. We could start calling people to ask them about when they last saw him, but the ones most likely to know something useful are people we’re probably better off avoiding at this point. Like K, for example. I’m assuming that’s a Krayev, and that means balancing the gain against the potential bad of letting them know someone’s peeking into their business. Plus, anyone we talk to might contact Ghost. Could be good if he needs help, but...”

  “But if he’s running, he’ll go deeper into hiding,” Tobias said.

  “That’d be my guess. If there’s nothing else, that’s what we’ll do. But for now, you go do whatever you do, and I go to my computer and run a bunch of searches.”

  Tobias frowned. “I’m going to help.”

  “This kind of research is a one-person job with a million little details to keep track of, and explaining everything will just slow me down. It’s a bunch of database reading. And I have other cases to work on. You have homework anyway, don’t you? Don’t you have classes today?”

  Tobias took a second to respond. “But Ghost could be hurt or...there’s got to be something I can do. Isn’t there a place I could... I don’t know, go look around? Like in the Russian district or something.” He paused. “Does Denver have a Russian district?”

  Sullivan didn’t miss Tobias’s lack of answer about school, but he was too busy trying not to tear at his hair like a deranged person to deal with that at the moment. “Hit the brakes, Kamikaze.”

  “But—”

  “Hey, shut it for a second, huh? Listen to me. I’m invoking rule number...” Sullivan tried to remember the order, then shrugged. “I forget which one was which. But the one about you having initiative. That’s the o
ne I’m invoking.”

  Mulishly, Tobias’s jaw set. “I don’t think—”

  “You’re gonna go insane if you keep this up. I understand you’re worried, and I know it’s hard not to think about all the horrible things that could be happening to your friend, but you’ve got to be patient. Rushing will lead to mistakes and missed threads and possibly getting us or Ghost hurt.”

  Which was possibly a bit manipulative, but if it got the guy to chill, he’d use it.

  The skin around Tobias’s eyes tightened. “Sullivan...”

  “No. There’s only so much that can get done in a day. We need realistic expectations for what we can accomplish at any given moment.”

  Tobias sat there vibrating for a good ten seconds, before all of the energy abruptly rushed out of him. “I feel so helpless,” he whispered, staring at the floor, and against his best efforts, some of Sullivan’s anger wavered.

  “You’ll get your chance,” Sullivan said grudgingly. “And we’ll meet up again tomorrow.”

  “Right.” Tobias nodded. “Tomorrow.”

  * * *

  When he got back to ASI, Sullivan began researching Tobias Benton.

  He was twenty-four, had been born in the States, and had been adopted by Haitian immigrant physicians—Mom worked in a clinic that catered to impoverished families and Dad was a famed oncologist. They were both active with several charities, as were their children, and there were multiple photographs of ribbon cuttings and benefit dinners with the family. Tobias stood out as the sole white member; fewer publications and articles made note of the fact than Sullivan’s cynical side would’ve expected, focusing instead on the impoverished backgrounds of Tobias’s siblings. Typical media narratives.

  Sullivan rocked in his chair and gnawed on the end of his pen, Sleater-Kinney’s “Modern Girl” blaring through his earbuds. Why would a Haitian couple who later adopted five children of Caribbean descent start by adopting a white baby boy from the States? Unlike their other children, Tobias would’ve almost certainly been adopted and given a good start in life—racism and American homogeneity being what it was, a healthy white baby boy simply wasn’t going to languish in the system the way that traumatized black children from an impoverished nation would. So why would doctors who clearly valued helping the people who slipped through the cracks start with Tobias?