Michael and Charlotte backed quickly away from the scene on the street, working their way through the gathering crowd.
Sirens blared in the near distance. The older officer, now on the pavement, his face and hands covered in blood, raised his weapon and fired at Aleks, but the shot went wide, smashing into the side of his sector car. More screams as Aleks came in low and kicked the weapon from the man’s hand. It skittered beneath a parked car.
Aleks, clearly disoriented, spun in place, the huge knife in front. He backed toward the SUV. On the sidewalks people were running, scattering. Aleks spun 360, looking for Michael in the hysterical crowd. He found him nearly fifty feet away, separated by scores of people.
Aleks and Michael looked at each other. A pair of sector cars were now just a half-block away. They would be on the scene in seconds, weapons drawn.
Aleks jumped back in the SUV. He put it in reverse, floored it, burned white smoke from the tires. He backed up all the way to 94th Street, and spun out, nearly causing an accident. Seconds later the SUV was gone.
Michael turned, continued up the avenue, as quickly as he could without running. Charlotte did her best to keep up. When they got to the alley, he scooped Charlotte into his arms.
They ran down Roosevelt Avenue – Michael all the while waiting to hear footsteps behind him. Moments later they came to the Junction Avenue subway stop, and boarded a train.
FORTY-SIX
She was handcuffed to the inside of the car door. She held Emily’s hand, tried to focus. There had been many times in her career when chaos ruled the ER, when the waiting room was full, as were the four bays. Blood, bedlam, misery, pain. Dealing with it was a matter of triage, a process of prioritizing the injured for treatment according to the seriousness of their condition.
That’s what she had to do right now. She knew what she wanted – for all of this to be over, for she and the girls and Michael to be safe – but that was the end of things. She had to figure a way to get there.
She had to prioritize.
The horrors were compounding. First Kolya, then Detective Powell. Then the police officers on the street. She had heard the sirens before they had gone a block. She envisioned the next few minutes, the image of the police surrounding them, guns drawn. There was the possibility that none of them – Aleks, Emily or herself – were going to survive.
Barreling down the street, running both stop signs and red lights, sending cars careening, Abby could smell the brute rage coming off Aleks. The steering wheel was sticky with drying blood. He drove quickly but expertly through traffic on 94th Street toward Lamont Avenue.
Abby heard the sirens closing in. Just a few blocks away. When they reached Lamont Avenue Aleks pulled the SUV down an alley, behind a four-story apartment building. He cut the engine.
The police cars passed the alley, the sound reverberating between the brick walls. Aleks got out of the SUV, left the door open, began to pace. His eyes were manic, crazed.
“Where is he going?” he screamed.
Emily started at the sound. Abby put her arm around her daughter. “I don’t know,” Abby said.
“Where is he taking her?”
Aleks swarmed to the front of the SUV. He stared up at the sky for a moment, thinking. The sound of a slamming door behind the building made him spin on his heels. Abby tried to see what was happening, but because of the handcuffs she could not turn all the way.
“He will not take my daughter!” he yelled.
Abby now saw someone walking up the alley. There were two other cars parked in the back. A delivery van for the auto parts store on the corner, and a late-model Lincoln.
As the man approached, Abby saw that he was middle-aged man carrying a bag of groceries. He stopped and stared at Aleks, perhaps debating about stepping in and speaking to this demented man yelling at the woman and child.
In an instant Aleks was across the alleyway. The man went pale. He dropped his groceries.
“What are you looking at?” Aleks screamed. “Do you have business with me?”
“I’m not . . . I don’t –”
“No you do not.” Aleks looked up the alley, toward the street, back at the man. He pointed at the Lincoln. “Is this your vehicle?”
The man just stared. Aleks drew his knife. He held the tip beneath the man’s chin. Abby could see a slight trickle of blood.
“No!” Abby screamed.
“Last time. Is this your vehicle?”
The man’s eyes rolled back. Abby knew the signs. She feared the man might be going into shock. “Yes,” he said softly.
“Give me the keys.”
The man slowly reached into his pocket. He pulled a few things out: a handkerchief, a pack of gum, a few dollars in cash. No keys.
Aleks spun on his heel, swung his leg around, kicking the man in his chest. The man slammed against the brick wall, and folded to the ground. Aleks took the knife, sliced open the man’s pockets. He soon found the keys, then dragged the man behind the dumpster. He returned to the SUV, pulled all the bags from the back and put them in the Lincoln. He unlocked Abby’s handcuffs, picked up Emily. They got in the Lincoln.
Aleks cuffed Abby to the door handle, then jumped in the vehicle. He started the car, studied the GPS screen on the console. Something seemed to register. He tore open the bag on the seat, pulled out the files he had taken from the house. Abby saw the phases of her life flash by. The deed to the house, her nursing certificate, her marriage license. Soon Aleks took out a photo. He scanned the document, then punched numbers into the GPS.
He pulled into traffic.
Abby knew where they were going. Aleks was not going to give up. Neither was she. She would find her moment.
FORTY-SEVEN
They took the subway to the 82nd Street station, where Michael flagged a cab. When they arrived at their destination, in Ozone Park, Michael paid the fare, looking up and down the street. They had not been followed.
He took Charlotte’s hand in his. Before she got out of the cab, she put something in the pocket of her pink fleece jacket, something she had been holding.
“What do you have there?” Michael asked.
Charlotte took the item back out of her pocket, handed it to her father. It was a carved marble egg. Michael angled it to the sun to get a better look at the intaglio. It was a bizarre tableau – chickens, ducks, rabbits, and a needle.
“Where did you get this?” Michael asked, although a dark feeling inside gave him his answer. She had gotten it from Aleks.
Charlotte just shrugged.
“I’ll keep it for a little while, okay?”
Charlotte nodded. Michael closed the car door.
Michael and Charlotte approached the side door of the house on 101st Street– a two-story 1920s colonial, maroon siding over beige stone. Michael pressed the doorbell next to the casing. There was a small camera overhead watching them, along with a pair of heavily built men leaning against a car across the street. The men were smoking, chatting softly, watching Michael and his daughter.
After a few seconds the door opened, and Solomon Kaasik welcomed them inside.
MICHAEL HAD NOT SEEN Solomon in almost a year. He had been in Chicago attending a five-day conference the day Solomon was released from Attica.
On the occasion of his release, Michael had sent Solomon a case of Türi – the exquisite Estonian vodka – along with a gift basket from La Guli’s. They had spoken on the phone twice, both times ending the conversation with Michael’s promise see the man soon and resume their monthly chess game. One day led to the next, months passed, and Michael had still not seen his father’s oldest friend, the man who had avenged the murder of his parents when society could not.
He was not prepared for what he saw when Solomon Kaasik opened the door.
Solomon was dying.
THE TWO MEN WORDLESSLY embraced. To Michael, Solomon felt like dry kindling. Michael had been meaning to call, to come by. Life takes over, he thought. Now it had taken everythin
g.
He looked at Solomon. What had once been robustness and health was now the pall of the grave. He had lost seventy-five pounds. His face was thin and pallid, gaunt. In the corner of the room, next to an easy chair blanketed in an afghan – an afghan Michael remembered his mother knitting for Solomon when he was sentenced to Attica – sat an oxygen tank.
“Mischa,” Solomon said. “Minu poeg.”
My son.
“This is my daughter Charlotte,” Michael said.
With great effort Solomon got down onto one knee, holding Michael’s arm to steady himself. Charlotte did not shy away from the old man.
“Say hello to Mr Kaasik,” Michael said.
“Hi,” Charlotte said.
Solomon considered the girl for a few moments. He put a knotted finger to her cheek, then stood up again. It took three attempts. Summoning all available strength and dignity, Solomon moved, ghostlike, unaided, across the room to his kitchen. He turned to Charlotte. “Would you like some juice?”
Charlotte looked at her father. Michael nodded.
“Yes, please,” she said.
Solomon opened the fridge, removed some freshly squeezed orange juice. He poured a glass with a trembling hand.
WHILE CHARLOTTE SAT AT the dining-room table, crayon in hand, a sheaf of blank paper before her, Michael spoke to Solomon. Beginning with the murder of Viktor Harkov, continuing to the horror he had found at his house, and ending with the bloody confrontation on the street.
Solomon looked out the window, at the traffic on 101st Street. He glanced back at Michael. “The man from the motel,” he said softly. “This Omar. Where is he?”
Michael told him.
Solomon rose, walked to the door. Michael heard the old man speaking to someone. A moment later Michael saw one of the men who had been in front of the house get into a step van on the street, take off.
Solomon returned. A long silence passed. Then, “What are you going to do, Mischa?”
Michael did not have an answer.
“I can put a man at your side,” Solomon continued. “A very experienced man.”
Michael had thought about this. Indeed, it was probably one of the reasons he had reached out. He decided against it. He knew that these were hard, violent men, and he could not take the chance of a confrontation.
“No,” Michael said. “But there is something you can do for me.”
Solomon listened.
“I need to know if someone knows this Aleksander Savisaar. I need to know what I’m up against.”
“Savisaar.”
“Yes.”
“He is Estonian?”
“Yes.”
“Alt eestlane?”
“I don’t know.” It was true. Michael did not know if Aleks was born in Estonia or not.
Solomon closed his eyes for a moment. Michael looked at him, remembering for a moment how big the man once was, how he had filled a room, his thoughts. He struggled to his feet, this time allowing Michael to help him.
“I will make a call.”
Solomon moved slowly across the room, to one of the spare bedrooms. He closed the door. Michael looked out the window. He saw no police cars. He looked above the buildings, toward the skyline of the city. His wife and daughter could be anywhere. New York had never seemed larger or more forbidding.
Although it was probably only ten minutes, it seemed like an hour before Solomon returned. His face looked even more bloodless, as if he had received some terrible news. Michael was not braced for this.
“Did you find anything out?”
“Yes.” Solomon crossed the room to his bookshelves. “This man is from Kolossova. He was in the army in the first wave in Chechnya.”
“And lived to tell.”
“And lived to tell,” Solomon repeated. “He is well known in eastern Estonia. A roimar. My cousin has had dealings with him.” Solomon turned, supported himself against the bookcase. He looked Michael in the eye. “There is no easy way to say this.”
“Then I suggest you just say it.”
Solomon took a long moment. “Charlotte and Emily are his children.”
Michael felt hot and cold at the same time, dizzied. Every slot in which he had tried to fit the events of this day now made perfect, horrifying sense, a wisdom he did not want. Aleksander Savisaar was here to take his daughters back. “Are you sure of this?”
Solomon nodded gravely.
Michael got up, began to pace. He considered that this news provided one thin ray of light, as discomforting as it may be at its core. If Aleksander Savisaar believed Emily was his daughter, perhaps it meant he would not harm her. On the other hand, it made Abby expendable, but maybe not until he got to where he was going.
“They say he consorted with a girl in Ida-Viru County,” Solomon continued. “An ennustaja. She bore him three children, but one was stillborn.”
The facts roared through Michael’s mind like a runaway locomotive. Three place settings. Three candy bars. Three everything.
“An ennustaja?” Michael asked. “A fortune-teller?”
Solomon nodded.
Everything began to fall into place, all the explanations of how Charlotte and Emily were far more in tune with each other, far more perceptive than even the brightest twins. Could it be that the girls were prescient, just like their biological mother? Had they inherited this? Was clairvoyance their legacy?
Ta tuleb, Michael thought. He is coming.
They knew.
“There is more, I’m afraid,” Solomon said. The words chilled Michael’s blood.
Solomon turned, unsteadily, and made his way over to a glass-enclosed bookcase. In it was a collection of leather-bound editions. He opened the case, searched for a few seconds, then removed a small, scuffed book. He leafed through it, then turned to Michael, a thousand miseries in his damp eyes. “Koschei,” he said. “Do you remember the story?”
The name was familiar to Michael. It walked the far horizon of his childhood memories. It had something to do with a boogeyman.
“It is an old tale,” Solomon said. “I used to read it to you when you lived on Ditmars. You got scared, but you never wanted me to stop. The story of Koschei the Deathless was your favorite.”
Bits and pieces of the tale came floating back.
“You used to think Koschei lived in your closet. You used to wake up your parents every night with your nightmares. Then your father and I rewired the closet and put that light fixture inside. You were never afraid again.”
Until now, Michael thought.
“What does this have to do with this Savisaar?” he asked.
Solomon seemed to choose his words carefully. “He is insane, Mischa. He believes himself to be Koschei. He believes he is going to live forever. And it has something to do with the girls.”
Michael tried to process it all. He remained silent. Now that he had an idea what this was all about, he might find a way to fight it.
Solomon nodded. “What can I do for you, Mischa?”
“I want you to watch Charlotte. I can’t think of anywhere in the world where she would be safer at this moment.”
Solomon turned to the window, made a signal to one of the men on the street. The man got on his cell, and within thirty seconds a car pulled up, and two other men got out. They walked toward the backyard. Solomon turned back to Michael, reached into his pants pocket, handed Michael a single key. “You will take this car. It is the silver Honda, parked three doors down.”
Michael took the key, stood, pulled off his oversized raincoat. “I could use some clothes, too.”
Solomon pointed to one of the bedrooms. Michael rose, crossed the room, opened the door. Inside, stacked floor to ceiling, were a hundred sealed cardboard boxes: electronics, small appliances, expensive liquors. Michael found a box of Guess jeans, rummaged through them until he found his size. There were also a dozen boxes of Rocawear hoodies. He found his size, slipped it over his head. In the corner of the room was a flat screen TV, tuned t
o channel 7, volume low.
The news came when Michael was at the door. It was a breaking story. His heart fell. Beneath the talking head was a headline.
QUEENS PROSECUTOR SOUGHT IN HOMICIDE
Onscreen was his “executive” photo, the one taken by the office, the one that was featured on the DA’s office website. Next to it was a live shot of his house. A pair of Eden Falls sector cars flashed their lights.
Michael walked out of the bedroom, sat on the chair next to Charlotte’s. He looked at the table. On it was the piece of paper she had been working on, practicing writing 0 through 9. The numbers were all drawn in precise rows. The sight of his daughter’s diligent work almost made Michael break down. But there was something else about the drawings that caught his eye, and his attention. Charlotte had used two different crayons drawing the numbers. In all four rows of numbers, all but two of the numerals were drawn in black crayon. The only two numbers drawn in red crayon were the 6 and the 4.
Michael sat on the chair next to Charlotte’s. “That’s very good,” Michael said. He turned Charlotte’s chair to face his. “Honey, I need to go out for awhile. Onu Solomon is going to watch you.”
Although Charlotte had never met Solomon, Michael’s use of the Estonian word for uncle, and its affection, was known to her.
“Is that okay?” Michael said.
“It’s okay.”
Michael held his daughter close. “My big girl.” He sat back, looked her in the eye. “I’m going to go pick up Mommy and Em, and then we’ll all go out to dinner. I won’t be long at all. Okay?”
Charlotte nodded. She then reached over, picked up the page with the numbers, handed it to Michael. Michael looked back into her eyes. She seemed to drift, to be in some sort of trance. He had seen this before, usually at a time when she and Emily were separated.
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