The Beauty of Bucharest (A Clean Up Crew Thriller Book 1)

by S. J. Varengo

  “My picture? How would she get my picture?”

  “The same way I got hers!” Nicole said, impatiently pulling out her phone and punching the photos icon. Three pictures of Ileana at the restaurant appeared. “Remember when I pulled out the phone to check my hair?”

  “Ooohhh! You were actually taking her picture! Damn, Cole, you’re really good at this shit!”

  She shoved the phone back in the purse, making sure it did not interfere with the gun. “I’m about to fail miserably if I lose this woman. You have to go back to the room. No bars, no candy stores; don’t even stop to listen to a street musician. Puh-leeze! I’m begging now, Dan. I’m literally begging you.”

  He stopped walking. She did not. “Okay,” he said from behind her. “I guess I’ll see...” she could no longer hear him.

  The whole encounter would make her feel terrible in a little while, but right now, she flushed it from her thoughts. She adopted the fastest pace she could achieve without actually running. It wasn’t helping her gain any ground, but it was keeping Ileana from further separating herself also. And, she had to concede, there was very little chance the giant woman would be aware of the tail at this distance. Thanks for that, Dan, she thought.

  The street where the colossal bank stood was Strada Lipscani, and when Ileana reached it, she turned right, away from the BNR. Nicole felt a twinge of panic as her target passed out of sight and allowed herself fifty yards of a near-jog. As she approached the corner, she slowed to her rapid walk stride and was pleased that her breaths were still steady and slow. She didn’t expect the brief run to elevate her functions, but the rising anxiety over losing sight of Ileana threatened to do so. As she rounded the corner, she let out a sigh of relief as she spotted the blue head climb down a set of stairs, which she assumed must lead to a basement apartment. Nicole continued toward the spot, raising an eyebrow as she did. There were many shops along Lipscani, and above most there were nicely renovated apartments, some of which upon rapid inspection might have been well appointed enough to satisfy the upscale tastes of the flesh peddler sufficiently to serve as a hideout. There were many with large windows that revealed open-style spaces decorated in an urban modern style, some of which had balconies with ornate wrought-iron railings. But Ileana had bypassed all of these for stairs leading down to...

  Nicole stopped and read a sign in front of the stairs: “Nu intrați ... Catacombele ... Pericol.” She translated aloud to herself... “‘Do not enter, catacombs, danger.’ What the fuck?” She peered down the short stairway, where she could see the ancient arches of the entry area, with many reinforcing steel bars propped up at seemingly haphazard angles. She also saw that there were numerous paths Ileana Gabor could have taken but was pleased to see that she had apparently stepped into a small puddle at the base of the steps and a few resultant footprints pointed to the one she’d taken. She waited a beat, then followed.

  For a solid minute, Dan simply stood and watched Nicole move quickly down the street, growing smaller and more distant by the second. Those words clanged like a cheaply made bell in his head: “small and more distant.” It was an apt description of how he was regarding his wife at the moment. Well, the more distant part anyway. She was still basically the same size. He let out a snort and turned away so that he couldn’t see her anymore. Damn her and her “cleaning,” he thought. What the fuck? What the actual fuck?

  He looked across the street and saw the sign for Club Goblin. He could, even from this distance, hear the throb of the music coming from inside. Nicole’s warning was fresh in his memory. It had probably been a trap. Could the woman have really set him up to go in the club and get his ass kicked? Or worse? Why? Why bother with him, a retired software executive? Did she think he was the one she needed to be worried about? I could very well be, he thought. For all she knows. But they hadn’t really done anything that should have made her suspicious. They’d asked the host about the table. He’d asked where the men’s room was. His date had ditched him. Not really things that scream, “Hey, I’m here to kill you.”

  But then again, he realized in a moment of interrupted mental fog, when you did what this woman did for a living, you were probably pretty suspicious of everyone. Maybe she had set a trap for him. Maybe she just didn’t like his face.

  Regardless, Dan was feeling like another drink was a fabulous idea, and the draw of the beat was strong. Maybe he’d stick his head in the door. If no one snapped it off, maybe the rest of his body would follow and he’d have one more before heading back to the room like a good little puppy. Taking a deep breath, he stepped off the curb and crossed the street.

  The nearer he got to Club Goblin, the stronger the throb of the bass became. He could feel it in his chest, like a fist pounding against it. Just as he was about to reach for the door, it opened and a laughing couple in their late twenties stumbled out, almost crashing into Dan. They looked up at him, then at each other. They burst out laughing and stepped around him. Dan could not shake the feeling that they were laughing at the old man coming into a bar filled with much younger patrons, but maybe it just struck them as funny that they’d narrowly avoided bowling him over. Whatever the case, he grabbed the open door and stepped inside.

  The decision began to feel like a bad one almost immediately. No one murdered him, so that much was good, but the DJ’s sound system was playing dance-pop, something Dan did his level best never to listen to, and it was so loud that he immediately began to feel overwhelmed by the noise and the bass beat felt almost strong enough to make survival questionable. Big surprise, he told himself. It was assaulting you from outside. Did you think the volume was going to decrease once you came in? There were also far too many people for the relatively small size of the club. He knew nothing about zoning regulations in Bucharest, but he had to believe this crowd exceeded the legal limit. And he was correct in his assumption that the average age of those gyrating on every available inch of floor space all around him was considerably younger than he was. Judging from the hip hairstyles and avant-garde clothing (Fucking weird clothing, Dan mentally characterized it), he doubted very much that anyone in here gave two shits about thirty-year-old American TV, and would not celebrate his connection to Shotz Brewery. He hesitated for a moment longer, then turned and walked back out of the bar.

  He hadn’t seen the man seated about halfway down the packed bar, wearing sunglasses and sipping a ginger ale. The man didn’t immediately seem out of place, save for the fact that he wasn’t dancing and was probably a few years older than most who were. The sunglasses didn’t really even mark him as odd; many men and women were wearing them, either because they thought it made them look cool or to protect their eyes from the bright disco lights and occasional laser that cut through the smoky air like upside down searchlights and sniper rifle sights. No, Dan had not seen him, but the man had definitely seen Dan. He’d been instructed to look for the American man and he now studied his phone to compare the man’s face with the one Ileana had texted him. Same guy all right.

  But as he was preparing to stand and make his way toward him, he saw Dan change his mind and walk back out. The large man hesitated a moment, then sat back down. No point in following him. His orders had been to take him out if he came in to drink. He tapped his pocket and felt the EpiPen-like stick inside of it, filled with a solution of good old potassium cyanide. The man would have felt the slight prick of the needle, but in the dense crowd would probably have been unable to determine its source, and by the time he began looking around, he would have already been dying. He’d have to remember to dispose of it before he accidentally jabbed himself.

  The whole thing seemed trivial to him now, and he sipped his ginger ale. The wording of the order from his boss gave him the wiggle-room he needed should she question him later. “Kill him if he gets close enough to you,” she’d said. The American hadn’t, so he didn’t. Case closed.

  Back out in the cooler, much more breathable air, Dan decided that the bar in their hotel would serve h
is needs much better than the matchbox-sized dance club. Walking back toward the Red Angus, he hailed a cab, which ignored him. Then he waved to another and was relieved when it screeched to a stop to let him in. He’d quickly given up on pronouncing the street names in Bucharest, but Nicole had made him repeat the hotel name a number of times until she was confident he had it right. “Anthanee Palace Hilton,” he told the driver, who grunted in acknowledgment and started off.

  Dan was cycling through a series of emotions as he sat in the back of the cab. He was still not convinced that Nicole wouldn’t be safer with him by her side, regardless of what situations she was in. The hairier they might become, the more she needed him, as far as he was concerned. But he also realized that he had no clear idea of how to process what had transpired in the steakhouse. There was no logical reason for the woman to have approached him, unless she was the sort of carrion-eater who liked to swoop in on jilted men. She’d obviously observed Nicole’s departure while he was in the men’s room, a trip Nicole had insisted upon. But she’d left immediately after giving him the disco recommendation, so that was obviously not the case. Maybe she’d hoped to meet up with him at the Goblin, but he hadn’t seen her trademark blue coiffure in there. He chuckled quietly to himself. In that crowd, even a six-foot-tall woman with bright metallic blue hair might not be easy to spot immediately, and he hadn’t stuck around long enough to give the place a thorough scanning.

  Maybe she had been there. So what? It was not like he’d have done anything with her. Even as pissed as he was at Nicole (Was he pissed? He wasn’t even sure anymore), he wasn’t about to cheat on her. Especially with a woman that Nicole might have to kill. He laughed again. That would tidy things up if he had considered an indiscretion. If Nicole was going to kill her regardless... excuse me... Clean her regardless... Dan thought there was not likely to be any bad consequences. Not for him anyway. Maybe the blue lady would consider Nicole killing her a bad consequence.

  The driver had taken a much more direct route back to the hotel than they’d taken to the restaurant, and Dan was soon over-paying him and nodding to the doorman as he entered the hotel, fully expecting the man to say something about Laverne and Shirley as he passed by. Thankfully, he merely tipped his cap and said nothing.

  Once in the lobby, Dan stood still for a moment, looking first at the elevators, then at the entrance to the bar. He could just as easily go upstairs and pull something from the mini-bar. He assumed that even in Bucharest, the single-shot bottles of liquor in the tiny fridge were insanely overpriced, but that didn’t really matter. The issue at the moment was that he felt like being taken care of. Even the act of twisting the top off a little bottle seemed like too much was being asked of him. He angled left and walked into the dimly lit bar.

  Unlike the Goblin, the hotel bar was sparsely occupied, with far less polluted air, and quiet piano music was being played by a guy who looked an awful lot like Mr. Green Jeans from the Captain Kangaroo show of Dan’s youth. It took him a moment, but he eventually recognized the song as Billy Joel’s ballad “Just the Way You Are.” As Dan sat at the bar, not worried about strategic location without Nicole with him, and ordered a neat whiskey, he racked his brain to remember the name of the actor that had portrayed the beloved, low-key character. Lumpy something. Burnham? Barenboim? He gave up after a brief struggle, and smiled as the bartender, a fellow who didn’t look like anyone, set his drink in front of him.

  The bartender wiped a few spots in Dan’s vicinity, then moved away and left him to himself.

  As he sat, Dan realized he was still in the throes of the emotional cyclone that had been powering up again since his fourth drink at the steakhouse, just before the woman had come over to talk to him. He’d read Cole’s text while walking back from the men’s room, so he’d known by the time he sat back down that she was gone and wasn’t coming back. He’d glanced at the Blue Woman, as he was now calling her, saw that she was still there, and began to wonder why Nicole would have left if the woman hadn’t. As he was swigging his third drink, he guessed she was probably outside somewhere, waiting for the woman to come out, and briefly thought about looking for her. It occurred to him, though, that if Nicole didn’t want to be found, he probably wasn’t going to be able to do so.

  It was about then that the emotions started to kick into high gear.

  He’d accepted the truth about Nicole. Well, he’d told her that he accepted it anyway. That was good enough for now. So if he was willing to do that, why wouldn’t she be willing to accept his help? Why did she feel like she had to insulate him from what he now knew was happening?

  It wasn’t fair.

  Still, he must have thought there was some logic to not arguing harder he accompany her when he’d literally stumbled upon her across the street from the Goblin. At first, he hadn’t even been sure it was her, what with the brown wig. But it hadn’t taken him long to determine that it was. He’d been looking at that face for twenty years, and different-colored hair wasn’t going to fool him. Maybe the ... what was the word? Mark? Maybe the mark wouldn’t recognize her. But he had. He hadn’t even had time to tell her that the wig was a huge turn-on. As he held up his already empty glass for a refill, he realized telling her that at the time probably wouldn’t have been wise. But as he’d stopped walking and let her move away, something inside of him had to have realized that was the correct thing to do. Why else would he have done something that felt so wrong? Letting his wife go after that woman alone felt like... a betrayal. He was doing what she wanted him to do, but in doing so, he was letting her down.

  He found himself whispering the lyrics to the song Lumpy was playing. “I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times. I’ll take you just the way you are.” Jesus Christ, Billy, he thought. I think this might be a little much even for you.

  It was all a little much. Much too much, in fact. He quickly finished the second whiskey, and realizing that he’d now polished off six... (seven?) drinks, he paid his tab, left a large tip, and walked, a little unsteadily, to the elevator.

  Once he made his way to the door of room 808, he inserted the key card, three times actually before getting it right, then walked to the bed, where he fell tree-like, and lay on his face with his feet dangling off the bottom. He wasn’t so drunk that he was going to remain like that, but for the moment, it seemed like the best plan. After about thirty seconds of having his nose smashed into the mattress, with the accompanying difficulty in breathing, he realized that even this was a mistake. He sat up and commenced an epic struggle to remove his shoes, thinking, I cannot do a goddamn thing right tonight. Once they were finally off and thrown unnecessarily half-way across the room, he did a backwards shimmy onto the bed, eventually lying with his clothes still on and his head just south of the pillow. The TV remote was right next to his hand, and he grabbed it. Pushing the power button, he was immediately greeted by the words “Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!”

  “Oh, Christ!” he moaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  7

  Hot Pursuit in Cold Tunnels

  There were exactly zero things that Nicole liked about the catacombs of Bucharest. They were cold, damp, and possessed as wide a bouquet of aromas as the world’s best-stocked florist, if the florist had specialized in blooms called “mold,” “mildew,” “thousand-year-old-corpse,” and, of course, “nice, fresh human waste.” But worst of all, its ancient construction seemed to have been built with sound amplification as its primary goal. Nicole felt that every time her foot touched the uneven flooring of the underground passages, it sounded like a clap of thunder.

  But she was probably being overly sensitive. After all, she had surprised Dan by wearing rubber-soled black flats on their date, the shoes she preferred for the purpose of clandestine pursuit. Remembering the look on his face as she was slipping them on stung her, because it brought him back into her consciousness, and she needed him out of there now. She needed to focus on two things only: remaining silent a
nd hoping Ileana did not do the same.

  The security chief, Nicole was now certain, was at least aware at some level that something was amiss. A woman in her position had to be paranoid, had to assume that anything out of the workaday was a potential threat. And while other people had probably requested the table (and been politely been told no), the combination of that, Dan’s pathetic attempt at concealing the fact that he was trying to look at her, and Nicole’s departure while Dan was in the men’s room was apparently enough of a red flag that she’d sent him to Club Goblin for some, most likely evil, reason. She prayed that Dan had heeded her warning and gone directly home.

  It also meant she suspected Nicole was following her now. Because leading her into the catacombs would have been a very effective way of setting her up for an ambush.

  Nicole was not the least bit concerned that Ileana Gabor had picked up her tail. She was far too good at the game for that. No, if she thought she was being followed, it would be her instinct, her experience, and her carefully crafted neurosis. But not having been actually seen didn’t really protect her. Because if Ileana was listening to any of those internal sounds, she didn’t really need to hear an external tip-off to decide it was a good idea to lay a trap.

  There was the possibility that Nicole had caught and was exploiting a nearly miraculous break and that this was the way to Grigorescu’s hiding place. She only wished that her gut were telling her that.

  But sadly, that was not the message at all.

  Trailing Ileana had been easy for only a few moments. The puddle at the base of the entry stairs allowed Nicole to determine the first passage she had selected, but the further into the catacombs she went, there were fewer spots of water, and the giant woman didn’t seem to have shown the courtesy of walking through the one or two she did see. So rude!