by Jonas Saul
Yuri pulled out a small box and set it on the table. From inside the box he lifted out a fat cigar. After lighting it, he dropped the box back inside his suit jacket pocket. He puffed the cigar to life and gazed at Darwin through the smoke. “Are you threatening me?”
“No. I’m threatening those three behind the bar. Miklos and I started a fight a few weeks back. I was trying to finish it before they interrupted.”
“I know about that fight. That’s why I brought Miklos here today. I needed to see it for myself. The rumors about you could be all lies.”
“Don’t believe all that you hear. I’m newly married, looking to spend a quiet life with my wife. It’s you and your kind who keep getting in the way.”
“That is too bad.” Yuri dragged on the cigar and blew the smoke sideways. “Was it that shit Cavendish that gave you the brass knuckles?”
“Yes. My turn. Where’s my wife?”
“There are four weapons pointed at you at all times.”
“Where’s my wife?” Darwin asked again, this time louder.
“I have no idea. Probably with Arkady. He’s skipped town.”
Darwin wanted to dive across the table and jam the cigar into one of Yuri’s eyeballs.
“Then who are you?” Darwin asked. “Why are we meeting? Why are you wasting my time?”
“Because I’m the only one who can get you your wife back.”
“How’s that?”
“I want Arkady. Since I believe he has Rosina, and you want her, we have a mutual goal. Arkady won’t kill her if he thinks he can still get to you. At the same time, he won’t walk into a meeting with me. He knows I’ll have him executed for what he has done to my town.”
“Toronto’s your town?”
“Toronto has always been a city that’s too big for one family—until now. Arkady was my last problem. He has hurt the Italians badly and now the Triads. Once he’s gone, Toronto is mine.”
“And you think I want to help you?”
Yuri tapped ashes off his cigar. He gestured at one of the men by the bar. “Two vodkas.”
His attention back on Darwin, he said, “Reason number one, you don’t have a choice. Reason number two, Rosina.”
Darwin waited. The small shot glasses of vodka appeared before them. The man set the bottle on the table close to Yuri.
“Drink.”
Yuri picked his glass up and drank it all down.
Darwin glanced at the glass and decided to go for it. He needed a drink. When he was finished, he slammed the empty shot glass down as hard as Yuri did.
“Good,” Yuri said. “Now we talk like men.”
Yuri poured more into both glasses. He set the cigar down and steepled his fingers.
“Darwin, I’m a patient man. It’s a discipline. You learn it in prison. Patience allows you to think, strategize. Are you patient, Darwin?”
“Sometimes. But when it comes to Rosina, never.”
Yuri smiled this time. The tension in the room felt lighter. Darwin’s pulse slowed, but he stayed alert, ready.
“When I grew up in Russia, we didn’t have much money. My father left my mother to raise us. We had rats in our small one-bedroom apartment. I watched while my mother would strangle the rats with her bare hands to protect us.”
Yuri took another swig from his glass. Darwin left his untouched. One was enough. He couldn’t get drunk.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Yuri asked.
“Yes. You learned at an early age to protect what’s yours by strangling the rats.”
“Very good. In Toronto, I’m trying to build political and financial connections. I’m running a business. I can’t do that with renegades like Arkady causing too much attention.”
Darwin waited.
“The Gambino and Fuccini Families needed to be reduced or removed because they were directing subordinates to use intimidation and violence to collect a mob tax from me here in Toronto. I tasked Arkady to handle it. I understand you got in the way but ended up helping the cause. For that, we drink.”
Darwin guessed that Yuri liked to hear himself talk.
“People asked who you work for. The FBI is stymied by you. The media call you The Blade, even though, as I understand it, you have a phobia of knives.”
“Not anymore.”
“How’s that? They can cure phobias?”
Darwin turned his head far enough to show Yuri the stitches.
“They operated on you to remove a phobia?”
“No, I banged my head after Arkady tried to kill me. It caused swelling on the part of the brain that handles phobias. They seem to have disappeared.”
“Well, well, that’s good news because I wouldn’t know what to expect when I introduce you to The Scythe, my main executioner.”
“The Scythe? And why would you introduce me to him?”
Yuri nodded while he poured more vodka. “He’s back at the house. You’ll meet him later.”
“You don’t travel with him?”
“No, he likes to stay hidden nowadays. He gets queasy around food.”
“What? Queasy around food? Why?”
“He got shot a couple of times in the gut. Lost part of his stomach and his ability to eat certain foods. Half the time he ends up in the hospital on an IV if he eats the wrong thing. Scy worked himself up so much about food that he can’t even be near it anymore. He juices.”
“Juices?”
“Yeah, fruits and vegetables in a juicer. That’s how he gets his nutrients. Once in a while there’s the odd thing he will eat, but …”
“What does he eat?” Darwin asked, genuinely interested.
“I don’t think we’re here to talk about the eating habits of my employees.”
The three men stood idly by, lingering behind the bar.
“What next?” Darwin asked.
Yuri turned and addressed one of the men. “Go check if Miklos is still with us.”
Darwin had momentarily forgotten about Miklos.
The tallest of the three men sauntered down the restaurant toward the back. He stopped and knelt down.
“Barely. His pulse is slow, but he’ll make it.”
“Finish him and clean it up.”
The man pulled a long blade that glinted in the light from above him. His arm stroked across the front of Miklos, near his neck, back and forth a couple of times.
“He’s gone.”
“Good. Clean it up.” Yuri said to Darwin, “He worked for Arkady. I only brought him under my fold as your first test.”
“Thanks for thinking of me.”
“As soon as they clean up the body, we’ll leave.”
“Where are we going?”
“You will be a guest in my home until word reaches me of Arkady’s location. Then you will set up a meeting with Arkady and I will swoop in,” he made a flying gesture with his hand, “and finish Arkady as my mother did to the rats.”
“What if I refuse to help you?”
“You will die a very painful death. One only the devil could enjoy.”
“That doesn’t leave me many options.”
“No, no it doesn’t.”
The cigar had gone out due to lack of use. Yuri tried to light it again.
“You want to know the irony of my situation?” Yuri asked.
“Of course. Since I walked in tonight, that was second on my list of things I wanted to know.”
Yuri stared at him. “Do you find the sarcasm keeps you alive?”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?”
Yuri blinked. He drank and placed both hands on the table. “The American government paid for the flight that brought me over here from Russia. Can you believe that?”
“Nope.”
“I’m a vor v zakonye, which means thief in law.” He unbuttoned the top of his collar shirt and pulled it open. “See this giant eagle tattoo on my chest?” Yuri looked down, then back at Darwin. “This shows my status as a vor. We’re sworn to abide to a code, or what w
e call human law. Never work a legitimate job, or join the army. Never pay taxes and never help the police in any way for any reason, except to trick them. Back in the days of the gulag, the Russian prison system before the 1960s, vors had a secret language that even the authorities couldn’t decipher.”
“Impressive.”
“Is that disrespect?”
“No. I’m serious. It really is impressive.”
Two men lifted Miklos’ body and carried him to the kitchen door.
“When I was twenty-two-years old, the Soviet Union released me from prison, early I might add, and stamped my passport, Jew. That allowed me to leave the USSR. I was flown to a transit camp near Rome, which was operated by the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society. After four months, in 1982, the American government paid for a flight for me to New York. Isn’t that something?”
“Why tell me? How does this get my wife back?”
“I’m killing time. We don’t open the front door until I am sure you weren’t followed and the blood has been cleaned up behind me. Also, I’m telling you this so you understand that it was the American government, along with the Canadians that allowed us Russians to come here and flourish. I want you to know that the people you pay taxes to did this to you and your wife.”
“Interesting rationale.”
“In the Russian prison system, the authorities beat you before they interrogate you. They put dirt in a sock and whack your kidneys until you urinate blood for days. Once a man has done time on the Arctic Circle, what can the spineless North American legal system do to us? The Russian Mafia now operates in more than fifty nations. We’re smart, we’re organized and we don’t care what the fuck happens.” He gulped the rest of his vodka down and slammed his glass on the tabletop again.
The effects of the little vodka Darwin had were seeping into his consciousness.
“You see what I’m saying to you?” Yuri asked.
“This isn’t a job interview.”
Yuri frowned. “What?”
“You gave me an impressive résumé, but I’m not hiring. I work alone.”
“What are you talking about?”
A man stepped up to Yuri and whispered in his ear. Yuri nodded.
“Stand up, Darwin.”
“Where are we going?”
Yuri got up stepped away from the table. “Am I going to have to always ask you things twice?”
“This is my second time. Where are we going?”
Yuri waved his arm. “Get him to his feet. I’m tired of talking to him.”
Two men moved behind Darwin and grabbed his arms to lift him up. The other man was mopping the floor where Miklos had once been.
Before Darwin knew what they were doing, his arms were wrenched behind him and some kind of twist ties were wrapped around his wrists.
“Hey, what the …”
He was shoved down onto the table, his face almost connecting with the plate and leftover pasta. An odd thought struck him about how he thought the Italians were the ones who ate pasta and not the Russians.
A black cloth hood came down over his head.
“I can’t fucking see,” he shouted.
“You won’t have to see where we’re going,” Yuri said.
It was dark and he wasn’t panicking. This was the first time since he could remember that the darkness didn’t cause him to become violently angry. It scared him, too, because that anger was what saved his life in the past.
They pulled him up to a standing position.
“Are you going to be quiet while we walk you out the back door?” Yuri asked.
“I don’t have ESP.”
“ESP?”
“Fuck, for a top Russian gangster, you’re not that bright, are you? It means, I can’t tell the future—”
Something hit him in the back of the head so hard, before his eyes rolled back, he was already out.
Chapter 5
When Darwin woke, the hood was gone and his hands were free. The sun shone through a window high on the wall.
He was in a basement of a house, as far as he could tell. Vents hummed, pumping air into the room. The room’s walls were made of glass or a thick plastic. A toilet sat in one corner.
He lifted up onto his elbow and examined his wrists. Small chafe marks were left behind from the twist ties. The back of his head was sore, but at least whatever hit him missed where the stitches were.
He rolled off the small mattress—a padded mat—and planted his feet on the floor. His head throbbed, but not as bad as when he first woke in the hospital.
The four walls of the square prison appeared to be the same length. A small vent the length of an average ruler was situated in the top corner of the wall above his mattress. There was no door.
This is fucked.
He got up and walked the length of the closest wall, running his hand along its surface. Then the next wall. No indents or hinges where a door could be found were evident.
On the other side of the glass, the room appeared to be a normal basement. A set of stairs led up and out of the darkness. The only light came from the small rectangular window at the top of the far wall of the house, on the other side of his glass prison.
A wave of lightheadedness hit him, and he walked back to the mattress and sat down. After a moment, he lay down.
A door opened in the other room. Light spilled down the staircase. Someone descended the steps. A large man in a suit that was two sizes too small stopped at the bottom.
“Good morning,” he said, the voice metallic through the walls. Somehow the room amplified the speaker’s voice from the outside. “How are you feeling?”
Darwin stayed quiet. He wasn’t in the mood for chatting with the pain throbbing in his head.
The man walked away and disappeared behind a wall. When he returned, he had a white sock in his hand. He stopped on the other side of the glass and peered in at Darwin.
The light in the basement increased as the door opened again. This time, two men came down the steps. After a moment, all three stood outside the glass wall staring in at Darwin as if he was a caged animal in a zoo.
The first man pushed a button and the wall in front of them began sliding sideways.
So there’s the door.
The big guy eased out of his jacket and stepped inside the glass cell. The two men pulled large guns and cocked them.
“What’s this?” Darwin asked.
“Your first day.”
“Like in high school? Initiation?”
“Sort of. Get up.”
Darwin hesitated, but then realized that this was a man whose patience shouldn’t be tried. He rolled off the padded mat and stood.
“Turn around. Face the glass.”
“Why?”
The two guns rose in unison.
“I get it,” Darwin said. “Yuri kidnapped me, brought me all the way here to use me as bait for Arkady and now you’re just going to shoot me. Is that it? Your orders are to walk down and kill The Blade?”
“No. Our orders are to teach you what life is about.”
“And you’re an authority on that?”
“In this house, I am. These men have orders to shoot to wound if you try to fight back. Now turn around or prepare for your first bullet.”
Darwin met the gaze of all three men. Then he slowly turned around and waited.
He couldn’t believe how painful the first blow was. The sock felt like it was filled with coal as it came down again and again on each side of his spine. He yelled out like a house cat being tortured and dropped to the floor as his knees caved under the pain. On the ground, writhing, he received a couple of more hits and then it stopped.
When they were done, the three men retreated and slid the glass wall back into place, leaving Darwin alone, face down on the cold floor. His heart raced, lungs expanding and contracting. He was afraid to move in case something was broken.
Then he had a sudden urge to urinate. He waited, tried to calm his breathing, and held his bladd
er in check. He would go when his heart rate calmed down and his breathing was more under control.
What the fuck was that all about?
