A Welcome Grave lp-3

by Michael Koryta

We crossed the empty room and went past the stage and the rear bar and found a set of twin doors beside it. The voices were louder now. I let my hand drift back to check the Glock, then shoved through the doors with Joe behind me.

  Three men at a table and one standing, everybody turning with hostile looks when we entered. There were decks of cards on the table, but nobody was playing; one cigar leaked a thin trail of smoke into the air. I didn’t know any of the men by name, but the one on his feet—a shorter guy with the flat face and beefy shoulders of a small, muscular dog—was familiar. I’d seen his photograph during a briefing with the FBI a year earlier.

  “You got business here?” one of the guys at the table said. He had a deep cleft in his chin and steel-colored hair that clung to his head as if he’d just climbed out of a pool. “Or you in the wrong place, want to excuse yourselves and get the hell out?”

  Joe moved around beside me, and now a chair creaked as the only man with his back to us turned all the way around.

  “Looking for Thor,” I said, as if that were a perfectly normal thing for strangers to be doing in here.

  The man on his feet said, “No Thor here, officers.”

  “We’re not cops.”

  “No? Then I won’t need to be polite again. Take off.”

  He had the heavy Russian accent that Thor spoke so carefully to avoid. His nose was crooked, and there were scars above his lips and beside his eye, a face that had taken plenty of beatings and probably enjoyed every one, seeking the violence out like an alcoholic who’ll drive thirty miles to find an open bar for one more drink.

  “We’re not cops,” I repeated, “and Thor knows us. So does Belov.”

  “If you’re such good friends, you’d know how to find him.”

  “Call him,” I said. “You get in touch with him, I’ll tell you my name, and you can let him make the decision. But I need to speak with him.”

  “People who need to speak to Thor know how to find him, asshole. And if they don’t, and Thor needs to speak to them? He finds them. You get the idea? Now get out. We aren’t open yet, and this is a private room.”

  I shook my head. “Maybe I’m not making myself clear. This matter I need to discuss, it’s the sort of thing that can get police involved. Thor finds out he could have avoided that, but then you screwed it up? I don’t think that’ll make him happy.”

  “Go get your police and tell them to blow me. You don’t walk in here and make threats like you know somebody. You don’t know anybody.”

  “Want to ask Thor about that?”

  “Don’t need to.” He walked over, moving slowly as he shoved between us, letting his shoulder hit Joe’s. Joe stifled a wince at the contact, trying not to show the pain. I caught it, though, and so did the Russian. He stood in front of Joe, his face level with Joe’s chin, and smiled.

  “Sore?” He reached out and delivered a short, chopping punch with the heel of his hand, catching Joe right on the damaged tendons of his shoulder. Joe grunted with pain and took a step back, and the Russian laughed.

  “Do not come in here with a weak old man and give me orders,” he said, and then he stopped talking when I punched him in the side of his jaw.

  I heard chairs scraping on the floor as the men at the table got to their feet, but I didn’t look at them. The one who’d hit Joe had taken my punch well and spun back to me. I met him with my right elbow, pivoting to generate the power, like a left-handed baseball swing. The elbow caught him on the side of his mouth, and I felt the sharp edges of his teeth against the bone. He staggered and then fell, and when he did I stepped clear and drew the Glock in time to stop the rush of the man who’d been seated with his back to us. He was almost on me, and when I turned my gun was a foot away from his face.

  The two others were on their feet, the one with the cleft chin holding a chair in both hands, ready to swing it. Joe had his gun out, too. They looked at my gun and his, and then the chair hit the floor and they all took a few steps back. If any of them had a weapon, he hadn’t cleared it in time, and now it was our show.

  “Maybe you didn’t understand me when I told you this was important,” I said. “It’ll be important to Thor, too. When we’re gone, feel free to call your boss. You tell Belov that one of your dumb-ass buddies assaulted a man named Joe Pritchard today, and then you see how pleased he is.”

  None of them spoke. There was fury in their eyes, the look of violent men who’d just lost a confrontation and would not soon forget it.

  “Now,” I said. “I will ask again—how can I find Thor?”

  There was a pause. The one on the floor had struggled back to his feet, blood streaming out of his mouth. He was feeling his teeth with his thumb. I hadn’t looked at my arm, but there was a warm wetness of blood on my elbow, trickling down the forearm, a souvenir from those teeth he was checking on.

  “You know Cujo’s?”

  This came from the one with the cleft chin. Cujo’s was another bar, less than a mile away. I’d never been inside, but I could picture the sign, the face of a snarling dog.

  “I know it.”

  “Go there.”

  “That’s where Thor is?”

  “Most likely.”

  “I’d like a phone number.”

  “For Cujo’s?”

  “For Thor.”

  “He does not use phones. Go to Cujo’s.”

  I wasn’t convinced that Thor didn’t have a phone, but it wasn’t impossible, either. He liked to keep a low profile.

  “All right. We’ll go to Cujo’s. And if we don’t find him there, we’ll come back. With Belov.”

  It was an empty threat, since Joe and I had no idea how to locate Belov, but it was the best I had. I took a few steps back, moving toward the door without lowering my gun. There would be a weapon somewhere in this place, and I didn’t want to give them the chance to move for it.

  The Russian I’d hit suddenly sucked the blood off his lips, tilted his head back, and stepped forward to spit on me. Before he had the chance, Joe whipped his good arm around and drilled him in the center of the forehead. He still had the gun in his hand, and the sound of metal on bone made everyone in the room stiffen. Instead of bringing his head forward to spit, the Russian kept going backward and hit the floor for the second time. I had my back to the double doors by then and pushed through them, Joe stepping out with me. We moved quickly through the main room of the bar, guns out, but no one followed.

  “You pop him because he hit your shoulder?” I said.

  “No. That was for the weak old man comment.”

  It took us ten minutes to get to Cujo’s. I’d remembered it being on Carter Road, but it was actually on West Fourth, tucked along the bend in the river. From the parking lot you could look up and see the Eagle Avenue lift bridge, and just beyond that the brick chimneys of the old waterfront firehouse, built decades earlier to deal with lumber fires. On another day, I would’ve stood there and taken it in, the little patch of cracked asphalt offering a perfect vantage point of the river that had allowed the city to thrive. Today, the only reason I scanned the area surrounding the parking lot was to look for cops.

  Below the SNARLING DOG sign, on a board decorated with red-tinged drops of saliva from the beast’s jowls, were the bar’s hours: OPEN 4:00 P.M. DAILY.

  “Places around here seem to have private hours for Soviet nationals,” Joe said.

  “I’ve noticed that.”

  There were a couple of cars and an old truck in the parking lot, but no one was outside. I took my gun out of my holster as we approached the door and held it down against my leg.

  “Going in a little strong, aren’t you?” Joe said.

  “I don’t trust that guy at the River Wild. Maybe Thor’s here, maybe he was setting us up.”

  “Same thing I was thinking. We go in here and get into the same situation we did in the last place, then what? Keep crashing into bars all day, waving guns and asking for Thor?”

  “It’s the way to get her back, Joe. The
police are not going to know how to find Doran’s partner, even if they believe my story. Thor will.”

  “Then we better hurry up and find him.”

  The door was unlocked, and I pushed it open and stepped inside. No overhead lights were on, but there were neon signs scattered around the walls, casting the room in a crazy variety of colored lights.

  “No friendly faces,” Joe said.

  “No faces at all.” I took three more steps into the bar and heard the door slam shut behind Joe just before someone looped a length of chain over my head and pulled it tight.

  The immediate, jarring power of the man behind me lifted me onto my toes and yanked me backward. I got the fingers of my left hand between the chain and my throat, but it did no good; the metal links tightened into my flesh and I felt my air supply give out, the breath already in my lungs the last I would taste until the chain loosened.

  The Glock was still in my hand, but when I lifted it and tried to turn it my attacker knocked it free in one easy blow. Then I clutched at the chain with both hands, gagging, as someone in a sleeveless T-shirt moved forward from behind the bar. I saw him wind up, pulling his fist back as he ran at me, and I had enough time to tighten my stomach muscles before he hit me. Even with that, the blow seemed to shatter my insides. His fist came up into my solar plexus, knocking breath I couldn’t waste from my lungs. The forced reaction was to try and draw in a harsh gasp of air, but the chain around my neck kept me from doing that. I lost my breath and tried to take more in at the same time, and that pain was unlike anything I’d felt before, an internal tearing sensation that rode from my abdomen to my throat.

  The room disappeared into a set of dancing diamonds, and then the chain loosened around my neck and I was thrown to the floor. I didn’t even have a chance to gather myself before the chain connected with the side of my head, knocking me prone. My lips removed a smear of dust and grime from the floorboards as I slid across them.

  I was only vaguely aware of a shaft of light passing in front of my face, feeling no pain in my skull yet because I was so focused on trying to bring some oxygen into my lungs. As soon as the shaft of light moved over the floor, though, the assault stopped. I heard voices I didn’t understand, people talking in Russian, and I lay there on the floor and brought in slow, painful breaths. Dust and dirt filled my mouth each time I inhaled, but air had still never tasted so sweet.

  Once I was sure I could breathe again, I rolled onto my side and propped myself up on my elbow. Blood was running down the side of my face from the spot where the chain had hit my head. I wiped at it with one hand and then sat up and looked around the room. Joe was back by the door, held by a powerful-looking man who had his arm wrapped around Joe’s throat, a gun pressed to his head. The two men who’d attacked me were standing in the middle of the floor, chattering in frantic Russian with the man who’d just entered the bar, spilling the light into the room. I blinked a few times, trying to clear my vision, as the new man snapped something and a second later Joe was released. I still couldn’t see him properly in the dark, but I knew the soft, steady voice, even when it was speaking Russian.

  We’d found Thor.

  35

  A moment later Thor was kneeling beside me, his fingers moving through my hair, studying the wound.

  “Scalp always bleeds,” he said. “It is not bad.”

  He turned and spoke in Russian, and the man in the sleeveless shirt hustled behind the bar and came back with a towel. Thor put it in my hand and pressed it to the side of my head.

  “You can stand?”

  “Yeah.” I wet my lips with my tongue. “We tried to find you at the River Wild. Your boys down there set us up, I guess.”

  He nodded. “I was told what had happened and where they had sent you. I was close to this bar. You are lucky that was the case.”

  “I guess so.”

  “To go in there and do that . . . it was not wise.”

  “Didn’t figure it was a particularly brilliant move, but I had to find you. It’s bad, Thor. The—”

  “Do not talk here.” His voice left no room for argument. He straightened and then offered his hand to me. I took it, and he lifted me back to my feet.

  “We will leave,” he said. “You will drive, and then we will talk.”

  I followed him back to the front door. Joe looked unharmed. They’d apparently held him so he could watch while they whipped my ass around the room. Maybe when that was done, he would’ve gotten to enjoy the same treatment. I could finally see the man who’d looped the chain around my throat—a pale ape with tattoos all over his arms and even on the sides of his neck. Thor guided me toward the door and then stepped away. He reached out and took the man’s face in his hand, squeezing the sides of his jaw while he whispered something in Russian. He didn’t seem to be exerting real force, but the muscles in his hand and arm had gone tight and the man with the chain was squinting, his eyes beginning to tear. He made no attempt to resist, though. Thor whispered to him for a long time. When he finally released him, the man kept his eyes on the floor. Thor opened the door and held it while Joe and I walked through and back into daylight.

  “You all right?” Joe handed me my gun.

  I took the towel away from my head and looked at the dark red stain.

  “Yeah.”

  “Still bleeding pretty well.”

  “It’ll stop.”

  It was late morning now. Amy had been gone for five, maybe six hours at the minimum. A lot could happen in that amount of time. They could have taken her out of the state, thrown her in the back of a truck and started to drive, be hundreds of miles away from us by now and still moving. That wasn’t the worst scenario, either. Just the worst I could let myself consider.

  The door opened again, and Thor joined us outside and pointed at Joe’s Taurus.

  “That is your car?”

  “Yes.”

  “We will go in that. You will drive, and you will tell me what is happening that made you do such foolish things.”

  Joe got behind the wheel, and Thor motioned me into the passenger seat, then sat behind us. He was dressed in dark jeans and a black jacket, and I didn’t have to study the jacket for any bulges to know that he was wearing a gun underneath it. He had gloves on, too, even though it wasn’t nearly cold enough to warrant them. I could see Joe’s eyes on the mirror, trying to look back at our passenger. I waited until we were out of the parking lot to speak.

  “I know who was extorting Alex Jefferson. His name is Andy Doran, and he’s working with whoever Jefferson hired after you turned him down. He was hired to kill Doran, to eliminate the problem for Jefferson, but instead this guy joined up with Doran. He saw more money in that, I guess.”

  The streetlight ahead went yellow, and Joe made a right turn to avoid it, driving without purpose but wanting to stay in motion.

  “They kidnapped a woman today.”

  Thor slouched in the seat and watched the street go by. He did not react to my words. Did not look at me.

  “She has nothing to do with this,” I said. “Absolutely nothing, Thor. They kidnapped her because they know what she means to me. I’ve got to find out who Doran’s partner is, and then I have to find him. This has to happen now.”

  “And you think I know who he is?”

  I shook my head. “No, but you know the man who might. Whoever put Jefferson in contact with you, this attorney you told me about, he might know. It makes sense that if Jefferson relied upon him once, he would have gone back to him. I need to know who that man was, and I need to see him.”

  “I have told you before that I do not wish to be a part of this. The police found me over a mistake. I do not want to see more mistakes.”

  “You’re more a part of it than you realize. Did you know there’s a warrant out for my arrest? They think I killed Jefferson. Actually, they think I arranged the murder. You’re the one they’re looking at for the killing, Thor.”

  “This Doran, he is the one who killed him?”<
br />
  “He says he didn’t.”

  “Then who?”

  “I don’t know, and right now I don’t care.” I lowered the bloody towel from my head, the wound finally beginning to clot, and twisted so I could face him. He hadn’t changed position, hadn’t so much as shifted since settling into the seat, but I saw that his gloved hands were clenched against his knees.

  “I’ve got to get Amy back. That’s her name. Amy Ambrose. She’s an innocent in this, Thor. Other than making the mistake of knowing me, she’s got nothing to do with any of it. And they’ve got her right now.”

  I was trying to keep my voice even, calm, but it wasn’t working. I knew Thor could hear the change, and when I looked back again his ice blue eyes searched mine.

  “Help us find him, Thor.”

  It was quiet. I knew better than to say anything else. He was considering, and all we could do was wait. It was as I had told Joe earlier—we were operating in a darker world now, and Thor was the guide we needed.

  “This will not be an interview, the sort of thing you do in your investigations,” he said at last. “We will get the information that you want. But not in the way that you are used to getting it. And if we do get the name, if we do learn who is involved in this, he will not be the sort of adversary you have dealt with before. He will be a professional at his job, and his job will be killing. This is the situation.”

  “I understand that.”

  He held my eyes for a long time, so long that I had to look away. Then he told us where to go.

  36

  The attorney’s name was J. D. Reed. He was not, Thor explained, the sort of attorney you approached to draw up a will or defend you in a small claims lawsuit. He was a mob lawyer, a con who’d passed the bar. Reed’s specialty wasn’t criminal defense, as I’d imagined, but tax law, or actually tax fraud. He got his start cooking books for a small-time hustler who owned a few bars around Cleveland. One of the bars was the River Wild. That was where Reed fell in with Dainius Belov, who eventually bought the place. The attorney wasn’t a member of the Russian mob by any stretch of the imagination, but he helped them, saved them dollars and eased them out of legal trouble at times. His contacts grew, and before long he was as connected to the organized crime scene as anyone in the city, a dirty lawyer who floated between the Russian mob and the Italians and any number of hustlers and cheats. The positive side about being so openly corrupt was that his network expanded easily. If you were dirty, and needed an attorney who was willing to help you along those lines, J. D. Reed was often the first name suggested. The criminal business world is not that different from the legitimate—word of mouth is key.