Chimera

by Rob Thurman

  Of course he remembered. What had it been? Four, five days ago? “Well, it’s not the type of job where you give two weeks notice and they throw you a going-away party. Konstantin, the man I worked for, wasn’t exactly boss-of-the-year material. He could’ve made things difficult for me if he’d wanted.” From day to day it was hard to guess his mood. From distantly amused to coldly murderous, Konstantin was rarely predictable in the depths of his violence. He wouldn’t have hurt me, not once he heard my reasoning. He still respected Anatoly too much for that, but he could’ve slowed me down while I laid it all out. That I couldn’t afford. “So, I simply took off. Disappeared. I could always explain myself later if I needed his help. I show up with my missing brother, Anatoly’s lost son, and all’s forgiven.” Leaning my head back on the seat, I massaged the back of my neck. “But on the day I left, someone killed Konstantin. Shot him. For his ex-bodyguard, yours truly, that doesn’t look too good.”

  “Won’t your uncle Lev believe you’re innocent?”

  “Do you?” I asked lightly and far more casually than I felt.

  There was a moment of thought, the sounds of shifting blankets, and then, “I do. You don’t seem to like hurting people. You’re good at it, but you don’t like it.” His voice dropped to a barely audible murmur. “Not like Jericho.” A hand came over the seat before I could comment to thrust a capped and newly warm bottle into my hand. “Here. There’s no room back here.”

  Right. Sure there wasn’t. But encouraged by his belief in me, I decided I could probably put up with a little urine. Putting it in our trash bag for later disposal, I returned to the conversation. “Uncle Lev will know I didn’t do it, but that doesn’t matter. If we’re there more than a day or two, it’ll get back to Miami via the grape-vine, and Konstantin’s son will send some people after me. They won’t be as scary as Jericho, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do us some damage all the same.” Damage was a nice euphemism for “kill us and dump us in the harbor.”

  “All right. That makes sense, I guess,” Michael accepted doubtfully. Cheek to cheek with him, a sleek ferret head poked free of the blanket to fix me with a nearsighted glare. “But it’s still cold. And it’s still your fault.”

  “The logic of a true student of the sciences,” I grumbled, but I started the car and set the heater on high. “We’ll find someplace to clean up and head to Lev’s. That reminds me; I have something for you.”

  He took the glasses I retrieved for him from the glove compartment. I’d lifted them yesterday at a gas station. With cheap wire rims, the lenses were tinted tawny brown, but not nearly as dark as most sunglasses. Michael would be able to get away with wearing them inside without raising any eyebrows.

  Releasing his death grip on the blanket, Michael turned the glasses over in his hands. “What are these for?”

  “Your eyes,” I said matter-of-factly. “You can deny you’re my brother until the end of time, Misha, but if Uncle Lev sees your eyes along with the blond hair, he’ll have something to say. And we don’t have time to get into that with him.” Nearly twenty years older than Anatoly, Lev was basically retired. He had a few of his old crew who still hung around, but they were like him, in their early seventies and not as quick with the brass knuckles as they used to be. They might put a crimp in Jericho’s style, but they wouldn’t be able to hold him back for long.

  I could see that Michael wanted to say something. Eyes distant under the fringe of unruly hair, he chewed at his lower lip before opening his mouth, only to shut it again. “Something wrong?”

  He shook his head slowly at the question. “No . . . no. I’ll wear them.” Slipping them on, he raised both eyebrows. “How do they look?”

  “You’re practically a movie star there—Brad Pitt all the way.” The glasses did work well enough at obscuring the differing color of his eyes, making them both appear an indistinct color, maybe brown, maybe hazel, maybe gray. “Just keep them on. Hey, we could always dye your hair again. There’s a whole rainbow of colors out there we haven’t touched on.”

  He promptly retreated back into the blankets. “And let’s keep it that way.”

  “No guts, no glory, kid.” The car had warmed up and I plowed it through the drifting snow. Not only would Lev be glad to see me, but he would feed us breakfast as well. It had been just over a week since I’d tasted home-cooked food, but it felt like years. I was looking forward to eating off china instead of from a paper bag.

  By the time we swept through the wrought-iron gates that guarded Uncle Lev’s house, we were fairly presentable courtesy of the now-familiar gas-station-bathroom sponge bath. Michael was in jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt, the dressiest thing we’d managed to pick up for him along the way. I’d put on a black shirt and a pair of gray slacks that were miraculously unwrinkled from a week in a duffel bag. We weren’t exactly suave by any means, but neither did we look like we were living out of our car with nothing but a ferret and a half-empty jar of peanut butter.

  I didn’t recognize the guy at the guard shack, and he fixed me with a suspicious glower until he received the all clear from the house. I was unimpressed. From the size of his gun, he had something to prove; at least Michael would have said so.

  Parking the car on the rosy brick drive that circled before the front of the house, I climbed out into the lazy drizzle of snow. I shoved my chilled hands into my jacket pockets and started around the car. Michael joined me and stood looking up at the house with a slightly awed expression. It was something to see; there was no doubt about that. Three stories high with a multitude of leaded glass windows and masses of winter-brown ivy, it could’ve been shipped stone by stone from jolly old England. There were even miniature gargoyles on the roof that spouted water nonstop during the rainy season. It was a testament to the overblown, and Uncle Lev through and through.

  As we stood at the door, I gave Michael a last once-over. “You ready? Comfortable with the story?”

  He didn’t appear nervous, but considering the past ten years of his life, this was definitely small stuff and not to be sweated. “Nephew of the girlfriend you don’t have. Fairly simple. And if I forget, I’ve written it on my hand.”

  I almost looked at the palm he overturned, but caught myself at the last minute. “To think I took a bullet for you,” I snorted as I pressed the doorbell. “And this is the thanks I get. Lip from a snot-nosed kid.”

  Looking over at me, he haughtily pushed up the glasses with one meticulous finger. “The privilege is all yours.”

  I swallowed the automatic groan that came to my lips as the door was thrown open by Uncle Lev himself. “Stefan, krestnik. My absent godson come home to roost,” he crowed as he pounced on me. Well, pounced can be a relative term when it’s applied to a man just shy of three hundred pounds. Pudgy hands seized me and patted me vigorously on the back before giving my cheeks the same treatment. “You’ve cut your hair. Finally, and after all the times Anatoly nagged at you.” He beamed at me and ran vain hands over his own hair. Slicked back and shockingly black for a man his age, it must have left a nice charcoal imprint every night on his pillowcase.

  “Yeah. It just got to be too much trouble.” I reached out to sling an arm around Michael’s shoulders. “Uncle Lev, this is Michael. He’s my girlfriend’s nephew. I’m running him up to see New York for a few days. She insisted. Male bonding and all that.”

  Black eyes glittering with good cheer, Lev took Michael’s hand and pumped it. “Nice to meet you, young man. Come in. Come in. You delicate sunbirds can’t handle true weather.”

  In the cavernous foyer, I shook the snow out of my hair and took in the vision that was Lev Novikov. It was barely eight o’clock; yet he was already dressed in a snowy expanse of shirt with suspenders of deep blues and purples. His tie matched perfectly and the creases in his pants were knife sharp; at least they were until they reached the swell of his stomach. Both chins were damply clean and gleaming with aftershave. He was a big man, but Lev had made his way through four wives,
all of whom had adored the overgrown cherub up to and even after the divorce.

  “You’re looking good, Uncle,” I said, grinning. “Working on wife number five yet?”

  He returned my grin with a sly one of his own. “I’ve a few damskee ygrodnik in mind, angels all.” Clapping his hands, he went on briskly. “Now, you’re just in time for breakfast, and I’ll hear no arguing on the matter.”

  Behind him an unassuming figure stepped forward to take our jackets. Dressed in dark gray, he wasn’t British and his name was Larson, not Jeeves, but he fulfilled Lev’s desire for a butler all the same. He’d worked there nearly twenty years and had seen things that guaranteed him a paycheck miles above that of any other domestic servant.

  We walked across marble floors in the traditional checkerboard black and white and found ourselves in a dining room in royal reds and rich gold. The table was already set for three. No time had been wasted once the call had been received from the guardhouse. There were servers massed with eggs, sausage, bacon, and fried potatoes. There were also plushki, a type of cinnamon bun, and bleeny, Russian pancakes with honey and jam. Crystal pitchers of orange, raspberry, and apple juice topped it all off.

  “Sit, boys. Sit.” Lev waved an expansive hand. “Stefan, tell me what you’ve been up to. Are you still doing byk duty? Tschh, you could do so much better than . . . ah . . .” He gave Michael a glance and finished circumspectly, “You could do better. I wish you’d let me pull some strings for my favorite godson.”

  He had to know Konstantin had been killed. Lev might be retired, but he’d have to be in the ground not to have heard that news. This was his way of hinting around for a bit of private discussion time.

  “I think it’s safe to say those days are behind me, Uncle Lev,” I said neutrally as I took a seat and began filling up my plate as my brother did the same beside me. It would be best to keep up the pretense that Michael was in the dark when it came to my career, at least as Lev knew it. Muddying the waters was the last complication I needed at the moment. “We could talk about it after breakfast, if you want.”

  “Good.” He poured himself a glass of juice. “It’s always a smart thing to keep your options open, Stefan. Your father would be the first to say.”

  “Speaking of which”—I swallowed a bite of bleeny that melted in my mouth like spun sugar—“have you heard from Anatoly? I’ve been trying to contact him.”

  “No, no. Haven’t much expected to, what with . . . you know.” He waggled long curly eyebrows that bunched and leaped like black and white striped caterpillars.

  The feds. I nodded and stabbed a fork into a piece of sausage. “I know. I was just hoping.”

  “I’m more than happy to step in until your father can be here, krestnik. That’s what godfathers are for.” His large head turned to take in the sight of Michael already cleaning his plate and loading up with seconds. “Look at the little ytenok go. You’ve a man-sized appetite in that skinny body, little one.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m a growing teenager.” He said it so earnestly that I was forced to smother a grin behind a swallow of coffee. That grin turned into a silent groan as I saw a small furry head peek from Michael’s jacket pocket. I should’ve known he wouldn’t leave his beloved vermin in the car.

  The rest of the breakfast passed amiably. Uncle Lev told me his daughter was expecting twins and that his son-in-law still wasn’t half good enough for her. Considering he’d broken the legs of one of her boyfriends while she was in college, it was actually high praise. He also laid out his plans to travel to Europe in the summer on a three-week singles cruise and invited me with arm-waving enthusiasm. I said, politely, that I would think about it. After we had finished plundering and pillaging the table, I sent Michael off to one of the entertainment rooms while I got down to business with Lev.

  The minute Michael disappeared out of the dining room, Lev leaned his not inconsiderable weight back in the chair and folded his hands over the girth of his stomach. Lips pursed, he shook his head woefully. “Stefan, Stefan, Konstantin could be a real zasranees ; no one knows this better than I. But tell me you didn’t pop one in the back of his head.”

  I pushed my plate away. “Uncle Lev, you know better than that.”

  Shrewd eyes measured me and then he sighed. “I do. You’re smarter than that and also a little too soft, I’m thinking.”

  Unoffended, I let the corner of my mouth quirk upward. “Is that right?”

  “Now, my boy, don’t take it badly. I always thought you too good for this life. You and your brother, God keep him. Same as my Katya. Your father and I have worked hard in this country. If you choose a better life, how could we not want that for you?”

  I wasn’t sure Anatoly completely agreed with him, but I nodded nonetheless. “I’ve pretty much decided you’re right. I thought I’d take a little time off. This trip came up with Michael and seemed perfect. I know Konstantin would give me grief about it. He thought I was a little soft too.” I gave a humorless smile. “So, I went without telling him, and then I found out he was killed the day I left. Talk about some shitty luck.” The last portion was the only truth to my tale and more true it could not have been.

  As stories went, it was thin, thread-fucking-bare, in fact. And I wasn’t sure if he would buy it or not. I know I wouldn’t have and Uncle Lev was certainly more devious minded than I was. He’d had nearly a half century more practice. Either way, after a hissing exhalation of doubt, he let it go. “So, you want I should straighten this out for you, Stefan? Call Konstantin’s boy to stop being a moodozvon and look elsewhere for the shooter?”

  “He wouldn’t listen. Fyodor has even more balls than Konstantin and a whole lot fewer brains. But if you want to try, I’d be grateful. Just wait until I leave, okay? I wouldn’t mind more distance between him and me before you call.”

  “Fedya always was stubborn.” He clucked his tongue against large, overly white teeth. “He’ll take some convincing, of that there’s no doubt. But I’ll keep working at him until he comes around. Now, what can I really do for you, Stefan? I know you didn’t stop by just to have me intercede on your behalf. You wouldn’t give Fyodor the satisfaction. You’re a little stubborn in your own right, krestnik.”

  “Me, Uncle Lev?” I spun a fork in a lazy circle on the cherry surface of the table. “Say it ain’t so.”

  “Ahhh.” He shook his head and flapped a hand. “I may as well be talking to my third wife and she was deaf as a stone.”

  “She must’ve been. She was married to you after all.” I grinned at his growl and ducked my head beneath the swat he aimed at it. It had always been harder to reconcile Lev than my father to the world in which they lived. I’d been sixteen when I’d finally caught on to my father’s business. I’d had my suspicions since Lukas’s disappearance; the men who’d shown up in the house during that time had had a rougher edge to them than the usual guards who had patrolled our grounds, and that was saying something. But I hadn’t come out and asked the big question until two years later. My father concluded if I was old enough to ask, then I was old enough to hear the answer.

  It hadn’t surprised me—not for a second.

  My father had fit into that picture with ease, but I’d had more trouble pushing Uncle Lev into it. He was jolly, cheerful, coddling, more like a Jewish mother than a Russian gangster. It was similar to having schizophrenia, trying to balance the doting adopted uncle and the man who postponed a meal only if he had to personally kill someone. At sixteen I tried not to think about the latter. At twenty-four I still tried, but with much less success.

  “Actually, Uncle Lev, I need to borrow some money. Once I drop the kid off in New York with his relatives, I’m going to take a vacation. Wait until things cool down or until you talk some sense into that asshole, Fyodor. I had some with me, but . . .” I tugged a short lock at the nape of my neck and groaned. “I was robbed. By a girl, a pregnant girl, can you believe it?”

  Lev laughed, his belly rippling with good cheer and go
od food. “You’ve always been such a sober young man since . . . since the trouble. It’s nice to see you joke.”

  “Yeah, I wish.” Glumly, I dumped the fork onto my cleanly polished plate. “She and Bubba Shitkicker cleaned me out. I’m lucky they left me my nads.”

  That was apparently more entertaining than my developing a sense of humor. He chortled until his face turned beet red and I honestly feared a massive coronary wasn’t far behind. “A girly. A pregnant keykla. Ah, Stefan,” he choked out.

  “Jesus, it wasn’t as if I could shoot her,” I protested darkly.

  The color intensified to liver purple and he had to sip at his half-empty glass of juice to recuperate. He sputtered and wheezed for several moments before wiping his perspiring face with his silk napkin. “No more, Stefan. No more. You’ll be the death of me with this. How much do you need?”

  “Forty, fifty. How ever much you have to spare.” I handed him a fresh napkin to replace his soaking one. “Michael and I need to get back on the road within the next hour or so.”

  In your ordinary family, asking for so much might be suspect. Uncle Lev didn’t think twice. He could drop three times that on a Friday night in Atlantic City and not blink an eye. “I’ve sixty-five in the safe I think.” He finished mopping at his neck. “It’s yours. But I want you and the boy to stay for lunch at least. Such a skinny pateechka. He needs fattening up and I want to catch up on old times with you, Stefan. It’s been, what, two years now? Shameful behavior, ignoring an old man that way.”

  I recognized the unrelenting glint in his eye and gave in as gracefully as I could. Four or five hours wouldn’t hurt, and it would be a chance to unwind in a place of relative safety, even if for just a short time. “Okay, okay. We’ll stick around for lunch. Maybe I’ll kick your wrinkled old butt in a little poker.”

  “Ha,” he barked gleefully. “If you remember a tenth of what I’ve taught you, you can keep the sixty-five. No payback. No interest. Consider it a late Christmas present.”