Still, it wouldn’t be hard for someone to track their movements, Sam figured. It didn’t matter where you went. Odds were better than even that you’d be caught on at least one video camera, and probably many more.
She met up with Dan near the concourse exit. They hailed a cab and rode to a car rental place on the other side of town. It would’ve been much easier just to rent a car at the airport, but they figured there was liable to be less surveillance in an out-of-the-way place.
They wasted no time. They drove to the floral shop. The address was on the Russian business card that Sam found in the sock of the man she killed on the banks of the Danube. Asshole number three, she reminded herself. The third man she’d smoked in Budapest.
The shop was near the city’s center, on a long block full of buildings built in a different era, when bricks were more expensive than the people who laid them. It was the closest thing any American city had to authentic charm, to a permanent sense of history, uncontrived and genuine and real. Sam loved it. She made a mental note to book a weekend in Boston with Brock. Sex and sightseeing would be the only items on their agenda.
“You with me?” Dan asked.
“I’m sorry. Did you say something?”
“Yes. I said that I don’t like the vibe.”
“Are you serious? It’s gorgeous here.”
“I wasn’t referring to the tourist appeal. I don’t have a good feeling about our plan. Sure you won’t reconsider?”
Sam shook her head. “We could watch this place 24/7 for a year and not learn anything. These aren’t stupid people.”
“Even with everything that happened in Hungary? You mowed a few of them down.”
Sam chuckled. “Especially with everything that happened in Hungary. They’re going to lay lower than ever. They don’t want trouble. They’re in business, just like everyone else. They want to get paid, not arrested. It’s tough to make a profit from prison.”
“So our plan is to waltz in and say ‘take me to your leader’?”
“Pretty much. Unless you have a better idea.”
“Surveillance. Read their email. Listen to their phone conversations.”
Sam shook her head. “These are old school knee-cappers. And they’re licking their wounds. They’re not going to be tweeting about their next hit, or posting shit on Facebook. They’re going to stay hunkered down.”
“If you say so, boss,” Dan said, doing a respectable job of parallel parking in a narrow slot half a block away and across the street from the floral shop. “But aren’t you afraid they’ll recognize you?”
Sam smiled. “I’m counting on it,” she said. “Just keep your phone on and your pistol handy.”
Sam checked her own gun. One in the chamber, eight more in the magazine, safety clicked off, a spare magazine tight against her ass in her jeans pocket.
She opened the door and climbed out of the car, tossing her Homeland ID onto the empty seat behind her.
“Sam, please be careful,” Dan admonished.
“What is it with you guys?” she asked. “What makes you think I’m not going to be careful?”
“I don’t know,” Dan said. “Had any near-death experiences lately?”
“Smartass.”
“How long?”
“How long what?”
“How many minutes do you want me to wait until I come after you?” Dan asked.
Sam eyed him. She considered a testy retort, then reconsidered. It wasn’t a bad idea. Russian gangsters weren’t nice people. “Thirty minutes,” she said.
“Fifteen.”
“Fine.”
Sam closed the car door and crossed the street.
Sam walked into the floral shop. It was just like all the other floral shops Sam had visited. Which wasn’t a large number. She wasn’t really into flowers. They reminded her of weddings and funerals and half-assed apologies.
She made a show of looking around, affected a frown, and moved forward to talk to the clerk. “I haven’t really found what I’m looking for,” she said.
“What are you looking for, ma’am?” the clerk asked. Her accent was thick, as Russian as borscht, murky as the Caspian Sea. The woman had Slavic cheekbones, just like the goon in seat 32A.
Sam smiled. It felt like the right place. “I’m looking for something very specific,” she said.
“Are you sure we carry it?” the clerk asked, turning her head sideways and squinting her eyes slightly, the universal sign of wariness.
“Maybe you don’t,” Sam said, “but my friend was very specific.”
“Your friend recommended us?” The words were delivered in English via Moscow, just on the edge of intelligibility.
“Very highly,” Sam said, turning to face the video camera. She wanted to be sure they knew.
“What is it that you need?”
“I need help solving a particular problem,” Sam said.
“Wedding? Funeral?”
Sam shook her head. “Nothing that simple,” she said. “Something more complicated. Something requiring… Strength. And resolve.”
The clerk shook her head. “I cannot help you.” The h in help was hard and comical. Like an old Communist caricature.
Sam put a look of disappointment on her face. “That’s very upsetting,” she said. “I was told that you would be able to help me, that you were the people I needed to see.”
She let the silence ring out.
“I can’t help you,” the clerk repeated.
“I brought cash.” Sam peeled off a hundred from a roll of bills in her pocket. She laid the money on the countertop.
Sam watched the battle behind the woman’s eyes. The clerk wanted the money, but didn’t want the strings it came with.
Sam used silence as a weapon.
Ultimately, the woman took the bill and stuffed it into the cash register. An employee, Sam thought. Not an owner. Not empowered to pocket any proceeds from the side business. Which was really the main business. Flowers were a show. Plausible deniability.
“Thank you,” Sam said. “I was told I could count on you.”
“Go out the front door. Turn left, walk three doors down, and go inside. It will be unlocked. You will wait there. Someone will find you.”
“Thank you very much,” Sam said. She walked out the door.
She looked nonchalantly down the street, toward the parking spot Dan had found.
But Dan was gone. The rental car was nowhere in sight.
It could be either good or bad, she decided. Maybe he was doing a damn good job staying out of sight. Too good, maybe. So far out of sight that he wouldn’t be able to respond to a situation in time to make any positive difference.
Or maybe something had happened. Dan was as reliable as the sunrise, as certain as death and taxes. He wouldn’t screw up.
Or maybe she had just looked in the wrong spot. Maybe he had repositioned. If so, he’d surely have let her know. She checked her phone.
No messages.
There’s never any reason to worry until there’s a real reason to worry, someone had once told her. And even then, worrying was counterproductive. It made you tense, which made you slow and stupid and vulnerable. Sam took a deep breath and continued down the street.
She counted the doorways on her left as she passed. The first two were shops, similar to the floral shop in vibe and disposition. Immigrant-owned. Maybe controlled by the same Russian gang. Those things tended to be territorial. Parochial. Organized crime wasn’t a socially inclusive enterprise.
The third doorway was nondescript. There was no sign above it. Just a number: 1037. She texted the address to Dan, which made her feel a little silly. Asking for help clashed with the self-sufficient ass-kicker self-image she had constructed and cultivated, but she was entering a building full of an unknown number of assholes, and you really couldn’t argue with the numbers. Especially unknown ones.
Sam tried the door. It opened into a long hallway that wrapped around the side of the buildin
g to the back. The only door was at the far end, on the left side of the hallway. She surmised that a cluster of residences lined the backside of the shopping center. The building was made of brick, classic Boston, and probably zoned for mixed-use. Shops in front, apartments in back, maybe apartments overhead as well.
Sam’s footfalls echoed in the hallway. The interior was bare, sparse, dark, and dingy. It smelled of dirt and mold. The floorboards creaked beneath her. The gloom was already gnawing away at her confidence, and she felt fear nibble at the edges of her thoughts. A human thing. Inconvenient and uncomfortable, but largely unavoidable. She walked quickly and confidently to overcome the effect.
She arrived at the end of the hall and tried the door. Also unlocked. Sam turned the handle and walked in.
She waited. She checked her watch. Patience was certainly a virtue, but it wasn’t one of hers.
She busied herself studying her surroundings. The room was unfurnished but for a table and two chairs. The windows were new. Other windows on the street had old glass in them, wavy and uneven from the inexorable assault of time. But not these windows. New, straight, and thick. Sam rapped her knuckles against the glass. Three-quarters of an inch thick. Bulletproof.
Escape proof.
Sam’s pulse quickened.
She surveyed the rest of the room. There was a door on each side. She’d walked in through the door on her left. The one on the right was closed.
Both doors opened inwards, which was unusual. Security demanded that external doors swing outward, so the bulk of the door frame stood between an intruder and the inside of the room. You’d have to kick the doorframe free of the wall to break in, or hack all the way through the door itself.
But the effect was the opposite in this particular room. Break-ins weren’t the concern, because the doors were mounted the opposite way. They were designed to prevent people from breaking out.
Well, Sam figured, gangs didn’t take over the neighborhood by being nice. Overt resistance was bad for business. Therefore, it was dealt with harshly. Probably in rooms just like this one, Sam thought. Built to keep both people and noise inside. Scream all you want, the Russians probably taunted their guests, because nobody can hear you.
Five minutes passed, then ten. Sam checked and rechecked her sidearm, making sure the pancake holster under her jacket was unfastened, allowing the fastest draw her neural speed would allow. She controlled her pulse by controlling her breathing. Deep and slow, over and over, clearing her mind of fear and bullshit. Only this moment exists, she told herself. Be awake and aware. Not afraid.
Finally, footsteps. Heavy. Made by a large person with long strides, maybe wearing boots.
The door handle turned, the door squeaked open, and a small giant walked in. Six and a half feet tall, Sam guessed, probably two-fifty. Slavic cheekbones. Just like 32A. A family business.
“You asked for help.” It was a statement, not a question. The man’s voice was low, gravelly, barely more than a growl. Thuggish. Again by way of Moscow.
Sam gathered herself. “Yes, that’s right. I hope I’ve come to the right place.”
“What is your problem?”
Sam smiled. “I have a number of them. But only one of them needs your help.”
The big Russian didn’t say anything. If he was amused in the slightest by Sam’s attempt at humor, he hid it well. His face remained impassive, inscrutable, big and foreign. Mean, in an innate way.
“I’m interested in a particular kind of physical labor,” Sam said.
“With guns?”
Sam shook her head. “Blunt objects would be best,” she said.
“How many people?”
“Just one.”
“A man?”
“How did you guess?”
“Pretty woman always have man trouble. Hold your hands up. I check for a wire.”
Sam did as commanded. The big Russian did as threatened. His thick, meaty paws spared no inch of Sam’s body. He touched her in sexual places, but his touch wasn’t lascivious. It was professional. He liberated her Kimber and her cell phone and her wad of cash and her spare magazine. He placed them all on the table.
“Satisfied?” Sam asked.
“Who sent you?”
“No one.”
“Who told you to come here?”
“A friend. Someone I trust. Someone who had a problem like mine. They said you handled it quite well.”
“What is the name of this friend?”
“They asked me to keep them out of it,” Sam said.
“How do I know you are not cop?”
“I suppose you don’t.”
The big Russian eyed her carefully. “You have gun.”
Sam nodded. “For protection.”
“From your problem,” the Russian concluded.
“That’s right.”
“Why not take care of problem yourself?” the big man asked in his thick accent, nodding at her gun.
Sam shook her head. “I can’t. It wouldn’t be self-defense.”
She could see the wheels turning inside the Russian’s head. His face lost a little of its impassivity. He was calculating, ciphering, weighing pros and cons and risks and rewards.
She nodded toward the roll of cash. “I can pay you.”
The Russian nodded. “Of course. Everyone can pay.”
She had no idea what he meant by that.
She also had no idea whether her story was compelling. It wasn’t much of a story at all, really. A friend sent me. People in the Russian’s line of work probably heard that line an awful lot. But it was probably true more often than not. Goon squads couldn’t exactly advertise in the paper. Or on Google. It all had to be by word of mouth.
The Russian reached a decision. “Wait here,” he said. “I will talk to my boss, and he will talk to you.”
In one swift, practiced motion, the man collected Sam’s cash, pistol, and phone from the table. “Boss has very strict rules for meeting,” he said. “No gun, no phone.”
Sam stared at him. Not an unexpected set of conditions, all things considered. Meeting with a mid-level manager in a crime syndicate wasn’t an insignificant event for either party. If you were in the life, your life was in danger by definition. Nobody in his right mind would accept a meeting with an armed stranger.
Still, her heart rate jumped. She couldn’t help but wonder whether she had miscalculated.
The big man left the room, closed the door behind him, and left Sam in silence.
Five minutes passed, then ten. Perhaps the boss was in a meeting. Perhaps he was indisposed. Perhaps they were debating internally about whether to take on the business.
Fifteen minutes went by, then twenty. Sam grew restless.
At thirty minutes, she decided to leave.
She tried one door, and then the other.
They were both locked.
Sealed like a tomb.
29
It was a foolish idea and Nero knew it. But there weren’t any good ideas floating around, and he had to do something. He had no money, no place to stay, no clothes, no food. And he had no friends he could call upon for help, because the feds undoubtedly had everyone in his life staked out and under surveillance.
So he waited until dark. He hopped back on his stolen motorcycle, chose a serpentine path to the highway, accelerated up the on-ramp, and headed north toward downtown Denver. He exited at the loop, C-470, which wrapped around the city. He took it west and exited at a street called Santa Fe, named for the railroad tracks laid in the Wild West days, which paralleled the street all the way through town.
Traffic was sparse, particularly by large city standards, but there were still too many cars out for Nero’s liking. He was driving without a helmet. It wasn’t illegal in Colorado. But it was stupid, and it left his face exposed, which made him feel vulnerable. Like somebody might recognize him. Or like he might be caught on camera, like the kind at every intersection.
Nero’s time on Santa Fe Boulevard l
asted until a street named Bowles, which he took west to a boulevard called Federal, which he followed further north. The neighborhood had been suburban at one point. But no longer. It had changed color, from middle-class white to lower-class brown. Nero could see the change as he traveled further north, further toward the center of the city, further toward the old section of town.
He was headed for his uncle’s house. His uncle was a drunk and a degenerate. The old bastard sipped away his unemployment check, watching the Price is Right, trying to solve the Wheel of Fortune, shouting out answers to Jeopardy questions. Nero had every expectation that his uncle would be passed out, drunk. Which suited Nero’s plans perfectly.
He turned west off of Federal onto a street called Arizona. The houses were small, built in the forties and fifties, made of brick, with small yards, large satellite dishes, and an assortment of disused cars and appliances strewn haphazardly about.
He drove past a religious high school. It had also opened in the fifties, ostensibly during the time when the neighborhood was nice, white, and suburban. But the middle-class white kids had evidently grown tired of a thirty-minute commute from suburbia to the barrio for math and dogma. Either that or God had fallen on hard times, Nero surmised, noting the graffiti on the walls and the faded “closed” sign on the fence.
Nothing stays the same. Everything changes. And rarely for the better. The neighborhood suited his drunken uncle perfectly, Nero figured.
He stopped one block west of his uncle’s house. Nero had no intention of approaching from the front. He figured doing so would be the height of stupidity.
He figured the whole thing was the height of stupidity, really. Stupid, but necessary.
But he vowed not to take any unnecessary risks. The last thing he wanted was to find himself back in captivity. As a detainee, as Special Agent America had said. No way out. Nero shuddered at the thought.
He wasn’t interested in his uncle’s house nearly as much as he was interested in the backyard. Or more precisely, what was buried in the backyard. A coffee can. Containing no coffee.
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