He shook his head, annoyed, an anger still whipping in his eyes.
The other guy drew a black iPhone from his pocket.
"What the hell you doing?" the guy in the driving seat asked him.
The guy said nothing. He tapped in his six digit PIN and unlocked the iPhone's screen, tapped the 'contacts' icon and began scrolling down through the list. He past Adamczuk and Arshavin, then a Kanchelskis and a Kuznetsov, and scrolled on down toward the bottom of the list. There weren’t a lot of contacts on the list. Maybe only eight or nine.
"Salenko, what the fuck are you doing?" the guy asked him.
"Calling Polanski," he answered.
"The fuck you are," the guy shouted and snatched the cell phone from his hand.
"Fuck you doing?" Salenko snarled. “Polanski said it before himself. Anything goes wrong, we call him.”
"Don’t be ridiculous. Not for something like this. And what am I doing? I’m keeping you alive, asshole," the other guy sneered, then added, "Calling Polanski," and shook his head.
Salenko’s eyebrows narrows over the bridge of his nose. He flicked his head backward toward the back of the car. “What do you suppose we do with Zurawski in the back?”
“Fucking leave him. Let him sleep it off.”
“Leave him?” he replied, incredulous. “You seen the state of his face?”
The guy in the driving seat shook his head. "How long you been in America?”
"What?”
“How long?”
“Couple of months, why?" Salenko answered.
"And how long you been doing this for?"
"Must be seven or eight weeks.”
"Seven or eight weeks," the guy repeated, in a condescending tone.
Salenko said nothing.
"How long do you think I've been doing this for? How long you think I’ve been collecting for Polanski?" the guy asked him.
Salenko shrugged.
"Longer than you."
"And?"
"And, in that time, you know how many times I've called him from a scene to give him bad news?"
Salenko thought about it for a beat, then shook his head. How would he possibly know that?
"Never," the guy said to him.
Salenko said nothing.
“Not even once,” the guy added. "And that's exactly why I'm still alive and breathing. And making tens of thousands of dollars. So, you're calling nobody, never mind Polanski," he said and laid Salenko’s iPhone down on the center console.
"Well, what do we do about this, then, Arshavin?" Salenko asked him, thinking that in the last two collection runs he had been a part of, everyone had paid up.
"We wait,” Arshavin replied.
"Wait?"
Arshavin nodded. "And, then, we do what has to be done." He pointed out the windshield in the direction of the salon.
Salenko’s eyes followed his finger.
That was when they saw the big guy who claimed he was security leaving the salon ahead of the attractive blonde-haired woman. They watched her get in to her car. A white Peugeot RCZ parked up by the curb right outside the salon. And they watched him cross the street and get into a black Chevrolet Camaro parked just a few cars down the road. They sat in silence, heating whirring and blasting warm air across their faces, watching, as Beck and Naomi’s cars sprang to life. Engines running and headlights on. They watched them wipe the snow from their windshields with their wiper blades, then they watched the white RCZ move off from its spot. It eased away from the curb and drove toward them, continued past and U-turned at the intersection with Grand Central Boulevard, then came back down the road toward them and drove on past down Woodward Avenue. They watched it pass the the black Camaro which, then, moved away from the curb as the white RCZ drove past and followed it south toward Detroit city.
Arshavin nodded and drew a matte black Zippo lighter from his inside jacket pocket and turned to Salenko. “You got a smoke?”
Salenko drew a pack of cigarettes from the front pocket of his jacket and took two cigarettes from the pack. He gave one to Arshavin and slipped the other one into his mouth, then tucked the pack back into his pocket.
Arshavin flipped the Zippo’s lid and flicked its flint wheel with his thumb. The Zippo sparked a hissing blue flame that cowered against the tremor of the hot air blasting from the Impala’s dashboard vents. He lifted the lighter to his mouth and held the flame against the tip of his cigarette. It singed and lit up orange as he took a deep draw on the cigarette’s butt. A swirl of smoke eddied from its tip, up past his dark venomous eyes. He handed the light to Salenko.
Salenko did the same with his cigarette and handed the light back to Arshavin, but he didn’t tuck it back into his pocket. Instead, he held it in his left hand and unlocked the Impala’s trunk with his right. He eased the cigarette from his lips and blew a plume of white smoke over the car’s grey dashboard. It swept over the speed gauge and ducked over the hot air blasting from the vents.
Arshavin, then, turned his head and looked at Salenko with a malevolent look in his eyes. He took another draw on his cigarette, then eased it from his lips, blew another puff of white smoke over the dashboard and smiled. It was a grisly grin. “Let’s go send this bitch the message,” he said, pausing and sucking in a deep, haughty breath while staring out the front windshield at the salon. “That nobody disrespects Vladimir Polanski.”
FIVE
Vladimir Polanski was sitting on an oxblood leather Chesterfield sofa inside a dimly-lit, sound-proofed room with his right leg crossed over his left. He was a fairly tall and fat man, about six-two and about three hundred pounds, all of it pure flab. He was wearing a black American cut suit with big padded shoulders and a black open-collared shirt and matching black loafers that had been polished to a shine. His trousers were an inch shorter than they needed to be at the ankles and exposed a vibrant pair of magenta-colored socks.
He had a round, red and oily-skinned chipmunk-cheeked face with dark narrow eyes. They were hooded by excess skin that folded down from his brow bone to his eyelash line. He had short dark hair which he had waxed and swept over to the left side of his head and the sort of long and protruding aquiline nose that made drinking from a champagne flute almost impossible. And, yet, almost defiantly, in his right hand, he held a glass of champagne. The dim eyeball lights overhead reflected off the flute's sparkling clean rim and the polished tips of his toes. It also shone across his oily forehead.
There were three men and two women in the room around him. Two of the men were thickset and foreign-looking. They were wearing black ribbed puffer jackets, over plain black v-neck t-shirts, black loose-fitting jeans and black heavy-duty steel toe-capped boots. Their chins were clean shaven, their cheeks were hollow and their noses were hard. Their eyes were steady. They had the tough, stern-faced look of doormen. Eastern European doormen. Black earpieces were fixed to their left ears and their burly arms were folded across their abdomens. They both had short dark hair that was undercut at the sides and swept back with a comb. They stood by Polanski's side on either end of the oxblood Chesterfield. Their names were Kuznetsov and Kanchelskis.
The other man in the room was in an entirely different position to Polanski and the two other men. He was slightly older than them, for a start, maybe somewhere in his early forties with a head full of flat dark hair that was greying at the sides. He was down on his knees on the hard marley floor, kneeling in front of Vladimir Polanski's feet. The guy was barefoot. He was wearing light blue and white striped long pyjamas and his hands were zip tied behind his back.
The two women were beside him. One of them was his wife. She looked to be somewhere in her late thirties, maybe thirty-seven. She had long dark hair that was tied back in a pony tail and she was wearing nothing but a light pink silk night dress and a worried-looking frown on her unblemished face. Just like her husband's, her hands were also zip tied behind her back.
The other woman in the room was a child, a frightened little five-year-old girl. Sh
e was the bed-clothes-wearing couple's daughter. She was small and thin, fragile and gentile, and she had long black hair tied back in a pony tail, just like her mother, held in place by a thin pink bobble. She, too, was wearing bed clothes. A long-sleeved pink pyjama suit. Her hands weren't bound. No, no. They were free and shaking, tightly clutching a fluffy brown teddy bear. Her bottom lip was quivering and her little button nose was red and running. She wasn't possibly old enough or mature enough to comprehend the gravity of the situation, but she knew her mommy and daddy were in real trouble. That was for damn sure.
Vladimir Polanski looked deep into the little girl's red, frightened eyes and took sip of his champagne. He savoured the light fruity flavor of the bubbles as they rushed across his tongue, flicking his eyes from the child to her mother and, then, over to her father kneeling on his floor at his feet.
"Where's the rest of my money, Mr. Heaton?" he asked him, speaking in a deep-sounding voice with a hint of a Polish accent.
"I don't have it," the guy answered, in a timid, mousy voice, not once lifting his eyes from Polanski's polished black right shoe. It was level with his face and only about an inch or two away.
At first, Polanski said absolutely nothing. He just started down at the man and took another sip of the champagne. It wasn't a gracious sip, not like the way women do it at parties and swanky cocktail bars. His nose was far to big for that. But all the champagne went where it was meant to go. He swallowed it down and, then, slowly swirled the light gold, bubbly liquid around and around inside the flute. He flicked his eyes up and down Heaton’s pajama-clad frame and grimaced, uncrossed his leg and placed his right foot firmly down on the floor about eight inches from his left. Then, said, "That's...unfortunate."
"Please," Heaton, pleaded. "I've already given you three thousand dollars."
Polanski took another awkward sip of champagne. "Mr. Heaton," he began. "You and I both know that three thousand dollars isn't enough. Which is precisely why you're here."
"Please?" Heaton pleaded, again, looking up at him, fright in his eyes. "I'll do anything. Just let my family go."
Polanski shook his head. "You're short. A thousand dollars short, to be precise. You should have already done everything. You should've conducted more x-rays or filled more teeth, because three thousand dollars isn't nearly enough. You know that. And I know that."
Heaton glanced at his family, a fearful look in his eye. He bit down on his bottom lip and shook his head. Looked Polanski straight in the eye. "Please," he said to him, for a third time. "I've given you all we have. Just give me a chance. I'll get you the rest. There's some investment bonds that I could sell. But I can't do it tonight. I'll need to call the broker. I can do it first thing tomorrow. I'll only need two, maybe three more days?"
"Investment bonds? Polanski asked and cocked his head, a curious expression on his face, looking as if he was actually thinking about Heaton's offer. "I thought you just told me you had already given me all you had?"
"I did," Heaton said, agony in his voice and tears in his eyes.
“So, now you’re lying?”
“No.”
“It sounds that way.”
“No. Please. What I meant is, I’ve given you all the cash I could get my hands on quickly. I didn’t expect to be short. It just, sort of, happened. And I didn’t know that until it was too late. The bonds would've taken longer to sell. But it's doable. I could clear, maybe, another eight hundred dollars." He paused and glanced at his daughter. She was trembling and crying with fear. "Please just take them and let my family go. I'll make up the shortfall next month. Please?"
Polanski shook his head. "Eight hundred bucks? That's not enough. And, anyway, you know the payment schedule and you know the consequences, Mr. Heaton."
Heaton said nothing. He just shook his head left to right, listening to his wife and daughter sob. He could no longer bear to look their way. None of this was really his fault, but as his family's provider, he felt responsible. It was just an unfortunate situation that had taken a turn for the worse.
Polanski reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and drew out a black iPhone, which he unlocked and opened its photo gallery. "You know the consequences, Mr. Heaton," he said, again, and smiled. Then, turned the phone around to show him a photograph on its screen. "Which is why we've already burned your dental surgery to the ground."
Heaton grimaced and stared at it for a long couple of seconds, then looked down to the floor, sadness in his eyes. Aside from his family, his home and a few hundred dollars in bonds, his dental practice was all he had. He couldn't handle looking at the sight of the flames roaring up through its roof. He thought about studying at college. And his first job. Then, the day he had remortgaged his four bedroom home on the southwestern side of Detroit to put up the collateral to buy out his mentor, a man named Gordon Bennett, a man with whom he had honed his craft, a man he thought of like a father. He remembered Bennett handing him the keys, a delighted smile on his face, the proud thought of passing on his practice to a safe pair of hands burning bright in his mind. Then, he thought of his surgery burning to the ground. Everything he had worked for, everything he really had, everything he loved, aside from his family, having gone up in smoke. Tears spilled over his bottom eyelids.
Polanski smiled and took another sip of champagne, then turned the phone around and tucked it back into his pocket while watching Heaton cry. He took great pleasure in seeing a grown man weep at his feet. It made him feel in utmost control. Powerful. Amazing. Invincible. He sucked a satisfied breath and smiled a malevolent grin. "You know the cost of doing business in my territory," he said to Heaton. "And three thousand dollars, quite simply, isn't enough. Now, it’s time to face the music."
"No. Please?" Heaton pleaded, his eyes wide as alien saucers, while shaking his head, almost defiantly.
Polanski took the second last sip of champagne in the flute, savoured its flavor, then handed it to the guy on his right. He glanced at the guy on his left and nodded.
It was the guy named Kanchelskis. He nodded and unfolded his arms. Stepped backward and leaned down and lifted a baseball bat from the floor behind the oxblood leather Chesterfield.
Heaton's eyes widened even farther when he saw it. It was made of solid wood with a black rubber grip; forty-two inches long and about two and a half inches in diameter around its barrel. A barrel that had the signs of heavy usage: scuffs and chips and dark red splodges of blood stained into the grain of the wood all around.
"Please? Don't do this", he pleaded to Polanski. "Mr. Polanski, please? I'm begging you. I'll get you the money. Please?"
"Here you are, Boss," Kanchelskis said, in a thick deep Russian accent, a voice withered by a lifetime of guzzling straight vodka, and handed Polanski the bat.
Polanski flicked his eyes along every inch of the bat's barrel, then looked at Heaton, a wicked half smile on the left side of his face and a sinister anarchy roaring deep in his eyes. "You've already had your chance to do that," he said to him. "And you've failed."
Heaton shook his head. "No. No. Please?"
Heaton’s wife shook her head, too. “Please don’t do this,” she said.
Their daughter cried.
Polanski grinned. "And, now, because you failed, your daughter is going to pay the ultimate price."
"No!" Heaton's wife shrieked, then shuffled along the floor toward her daughter, as if trying to wrap her arms around her, to protect her, even though they were zip tied behind her back. She whimpered and cried and looked up at Polanski. "Don't you dare touch her, you bastard."
Polanski looked into her eyes and grinned.
She turned her head and looked at her husband and pleaded. "Tom, do something. Please!"
He shook his head, agony on his face, tears in his eyes. He was powerless to do anything. And he knew it.
His wife knew it, too. But, still, she pleaded in hope. “Tom. Please?”
Polanski stood up and walked toward the little girl, twirling the
bat in his hand. The outsoles of his shoes clip-clopped on the hard marley floor.
"Don't you dare do this!" Heaton’s wife screamed, following his every step with her head, not once taking her eyes from the baseball bat he was twirling with his hand. "Don't you dare..." She broke up into tears.
Polanski raised the bat and flicked his eyes her way. "Don’t worry. Your turn is coming," he said and smiled.
She sneered at him, hyperventilating, her eyes following his footsteps, as he moved closer toward her daughter. "Get away from her, you bastard! Get away!" she screamed, then looked round at her husband.
It was an expecting look, like she was willing him to bust free from the plastic zip ties and stand up and slap the monster down.
But he couldn't. He couldn't do a thing. He just looked back her, anguish on his face and apologies in his eyes, mouthing, "I'm sorry," crying, knowing fine well what was about to happen.
Polanski stepped around the the side of the little girl and stopped about a foot behind her left shoulder. He slipped the barrel of the bat over her right shoulder and leaned forward, his head now down by the side of hers, and whispered in her left ear. "What's your name, sweetheart?"
"Daddy!" she cried.
"I love you, honey," Heaton called, his bottom lip quivering, tears streaming down his cheeks, looking straight ahead, unable to bring himself to look her way.
Heaton's wife writhed and grunted and groaned. "Don't you dare touch her. You hear? I'll kill you my damn self!"
Polanski cocked his head toward her and grinned, a delighted spark in his eyes, then looked back at the little girl and said, "I asked you a question."
The words hissed off his tongue like the sound of a snake’s breath.
The little girl sniffled and sobbed.
Heaton's wife, watching on in horror, a thousand different expressions of anger sweeping across her face, inadvertently answered the question for her. "Don't you tell him, Emily. Don't give that man a word. He's bad to the bone. The kind you don't ever look at and you don’t ever talk to. You hear?"
Easy Money Page 5
