by Zahra Girard
But here?
Yeah, there’s no great dumping ground. The Russians run the docks, which rules that place out, and practically every other beach spot in Arroyo Falls is filled with surfers or people with dogs that are way too interested in sniffing what’s in the bag that I’m carrying.
Which is why I’m twenty miles out of town, on some rocky outcrop in the middle of fucking nowhere, tossing a severed foot into the water. A fucking foot wrapped in a chopped up hefty garbage back.
It arcs through the air like some black, plastic-wrapped meteor and lands in the water with a great kerplunk.
I watch it go splash into the water and it kinda floats around in a little eddy pool for a bit before sinking into the depths. I use that time to think about my life and what I’m doing tossing feet into the ocean.
I mean, really, what the fuck?
By the time I actually get to Volgograd to scout the place out, I’m in the mood for a drink.
And I swear to Christ, if they try to serve me some watered-down shit, I will starting shooting right then and there.
I get there and instantly start wishing I was back on the rocks by the seaside, tossing tattooed body parts into the water like they’re some perverse messages in a bottle.
This place is a dump.
It makes Reyes Boxing look like a fucking palace.
On the outside, it’s the definition of ramshackle. Rusted, dirty, and looking like it’s about ready to fall down.
Inside, it’s like someone vomited a bunch of red all over the walls and plastered everything with pictures of angry Russian guys with beards and big mustaches and general’s hats. Every space that wasn’t filled up with pictures of Russian men is covered with flat-screen TV showing hockey games wrestling matches or photos hastily torn from titty magazines.
Except they’re not normal titty pictures. They’re weird Russian shit. All the women look sad and mopey and some are doing things you’re definitely not meant to do with your rations of beets and carrots and about half the models have better mustaches than most men can grow.
Even if I wasn’t already planning on killing these assholes, I would be after seeing their disgrace of a bar.
The bartender is some pale, soulless-eyed shit who looks like his father was the abominable snowman. He’s freakishly hairy. And he’s a prick, too — he serves every other person in the bar twice before he gets to me.
“What do you want?” he mumbles, once he finally gets to me. His accent’s so thick and murky I think he might have been born in a Siberian bog.
He smells drunk, too. Like he’s trying to pickle himself from the inside out with cheap alcohol.
“Whiskey. I don’t give a shit what kind.”
The bartender pulls some label-less bottle from beneath the bar and dumps it into a dirty glass.
It bubbles at me menacingly. Whiskey shouldn’t bubble.
I think I might’ve made a mistake.
“Ten dollars. Pay now.”
I sniff the stuff. It smells like drain cleaner. Tastes like what I imagine drain cleaner to taste like, too. But at least it isn’t watered down — it’d be a waste of water to dilute this stuff.
“Ten bucks? For this shit?”
He shrugs like he absolutely does not give a flying fuck.
“That is the price for a non-member. Non-members also must pay up front.”
I hand over the cash. I’m not ready at this point to start any shit because I’m not done scouting the place. Hell, I just got to this lovely establishment.
I find a quiet corner and drink my draino in silence. There’s more Russians here than I thought, but then, they’ve always been like cockroaches — they multiply like crazy once they get a foothold.
I go through three more whiskeys while I scout the place. Even get a nice buzz going, which is the first time since seventh grade that I’ve been drunk on such shit alcohol.
That isn’t the only thing nostalgic about sitting here. It’s been a while since I’ve staked out a place for a hit.
As I’m looking over the bar, memorizing the exits, the placement of the tables, counting the number of track-suited deadbeat patrons, it takes me back to when this was my life; when my greatest rush was those bloody few minutes between the start and the end of a job, when hours or days of planning came to fruition in one violent, gory mess.
On the back of my eyelids — like a movie — I can see how a raid on this place would go down. Every gunshot, every drop of blood, every body. It’s going to be fucking beautiful.
There’s just two problems.
For all the time I’ve been here, I haven’t seen Vladimir. Not that I know what he looks like, exactly. But I know what his type looks like. I know the attitude they project, the way other men act around them, and the way the room seems to slope towards them, like they’re pulling everything around them into their orbit.
My other problem? I’ve got no backup. My partner is rotting in the ground with a nine millimeter-sized hole in his skull.
For a while, I’m staring into my whiskey glass, trying to figure out just how I’m going to pull this job off and realizing it’s going to take a lot of time and planning. And then he finally enters.
Storming through the front door, the room changes the second he arrives. The normally-inattentive bartender has a glass of top-shelf vodka on the bartop before the guy who must be Vladimir is even close to the bar.
Chatter stops and the only sound is the muted babble of the sportscasters on the TV’s.
I keep my head down. I’ve got my target.
“Any word about Yuri, boss?” the bartender asks.
Vladimir pounds his vodka and hurls the empty glass in the bartender’s face. “What the fuck do you think?” he shouts.
So, that was the dirtbag’s name. He looked more like an Ivan to me.
“Sorry, boss,” the bartender says, keeping his head down and filling Vladimir another glass.
“How should we take care of this?” another thug asks. The fact that Vladimir doesn’t assault this one tells me he’s a bit higher on the chain.
“Keep looking. Do whatever you have to do. I want to know what happened to him. If he doesn’t turn up in the next couple days, it’s on that bitch’s head. We’ll get our shit and then every one of you will get a piece after I’ve fucked her bloody. When we’re done with her, we’ll sell her off to one of the fucking whorehouses in Bangkok.”
The look on every single one of these guy’s faces tells me exactly what’s going on in their heads. The slanted smiles, the narrowed eyes, the slight nod.
Every single one of these rat bastards is thinking about fucking my woman. Every single one of these rat bastards is going to die.
It takes everything I have not to start shooting right then and there.
I’ve got another problem, now: time.
I watch and wait while the Russians celebrate the hell they’re going to raise in my love’s life. It takes a while before there’s an opening where I can get up and slink out without raising too much attention. Not that they seem to give a shit, they’re so caught up in drinking and bragging about what they’re going to do.
Outside, the sun’s setting. A deep, crimson orb disappearing into the Pacific.
I get into my car and pull out of the lot. Once I’m cruising down the road, heading to home, I pull out my phone. I dial a number I never thought I’d dial again.
There’s a click.
“Well, well, look who it is. It’s been a long fucking time, Luca. Pops started to think you might actually be dead, that you offed yourself like your fucking brother. You’ve got a lot of guts and zero fucking brains calling me.”
“Enough with the bullshit, Angelo,” I say. “I don’t have the time. I’m calling in every favor you’ve ever owed me. Every body, every job where I saved your family’s ass. How soon can you get to California?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Stephanie
I wake up to some stark words waiting for m
e on my cell phone. We need to talk. Now. Meet me at my office.
It’s Bryan.
It’s not even six AM and the text messages came in an hour ago. He either got up insanely early or was up all night working on this.
Already, I’m feeling a surge of nervous energy and I get dressed as quick as I can.
Bryan’s company, IdentaLock, is based out of some brand-new six-storey office building in downtown Arroyo Falls. There’s hardly a soul in the lobby when I get there, except for a night security guard just leaving his shift and a janitor. Which isn’t much of a surprise considering it’s hardly even six thirty in the morning.
Bryan’s waiting for me, pacing back and forth in the lobby.
“You need to see this,” is all he says, the words exploding out of his mouth before he turns around and starts towards the lobby elevator.
“What is it?” I say, once the doors shut on us.
“This is serious, Stef. You are not safe. I looked up his brother, like you asked, and went through a couple back channels to run some checks into his background, look up any police records, and such. It’s all complicated stuff. But I got the results back early this morning, since some of the records I requested were actual hard copies on the east coast.”
“And?”
The elevator doors open to the fifth floor and he leads me at a frenetic speed to his office, a small windowless closet not far from the elevators.
“Read it for yourself.”
His computer’s already on and I sit down at his desk and start flipping through the information on the screen.
None of it’s good. Nothing is even close to good.
I feel sick.
“You’re sure this is his brother?”
Bryan nods. “Date of death matches up. Location matches up. Name matches up. It’s him.”
“And you’re sure he was a suspect in all of these murders?”
There’s a horrifying amount of case files on my screen.
He gives an exasperated sigh. “Stef, IdentaLock does background checks for Arroyo Falls PD and most of the other police departments in this part of California. We’re tied in to a lot of the databases. It’s him.”
There’s so much of me that doesn’t want to believe the proof on the screen in front of me — that Luca’s brother is a suspect in a score of gang-related murders in New York and is named as a killer for the Durante Mafia family — but there’s a part of me that knows it’s true.
“There’s more,” Bryan says, with a self-satisfied note in his voice, and he leans in to hit a few buttons on the screen. “I kept digging.”
What I’m looking at changes. Instead of reading about Nicolo Moretti, I’m looking at report after damning report about Luca.
Killer.
Criminal.
Liar.
There are so many bodies. Enough to match up to that crude tattoo I saw on his back.
“You looked up Luca, too?” My voice comes out hoarse, strangled.
I’m upset, even though I knew he’d do this very same thing. How could he not?
“Of course I looked him up. I wanted to be sure.”
Even though everything I’m reading confirms what I’ve suspected, there’s a part of me that wants to deny it.
I don’t think my heart can handle this. It’s too crushing.
“None of these say that he was ever convicted of anything…”
He sighs again. “Stef, there’s almost two dozen police reports on murders alone that list him as a suspect. Including this one…”
He his a few more keys and another tab opens. This one lists both Nicolo and Luca as suspects. It happened nearly a year ago. Right around the time of his brother’s death.
I read it over.
I can only get part way through, just past the names of the victims and their ages, before I have to stop. It’s too much.
“This can’t be true.”
“It is.”
“But a woman? And her kid? Bryan, every other victim is a gangster or someone else mixed up in crime. Why would they do this?”
“He’s a murderer, Stef. That’s all you need to know.”
The room feels tight, like with every blink the walls close in further and further, and I’ll be trapped here until I suffocate, facing the awful truth that I happily hopped into bed with a despicable killer.
My stomach heaves. I fight to keep it down.
“You’re in real danger, Stef. You have to get out of town.”
That jolts me and I look back at him over my shoulder.
“Leave town? I can’t just leave dad. And what about the shop?”
“What about the shop? Look, I know you and your dad are having trouble with it right now or whatever, but losing out on some business is better than losing your life.”
I shake my head. “It’s not that simple, Bryan. I can’t just leave. Besides, there has to be more than what’s here. I know him, I know he can’t have done this.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder. For once, I don’t feel like he’s trying to hit on me. For once, he feels just like a friend.
“It is that simple, Stef. You need to get somewhere safe. Look at who he is, look at what he’s done. And who knows what he’s involved with right now? If you don’t get out, soon, you’re going to get really hurt.”
I stare at the screen, and, without thinking I get up and head for the door. The weight of everything I’ve done, everything that’s wrong with my life, is crashing down on me at this very moment.
I’m used to pressure situations; working in the ER, I’d deal with the crazy practically every single shift and twice as much around any holiday. But this? I don’t know how to deal with this shit. No one should ever be in the kind of situation where they even have to learn how to deal with this kind of nightmare.
“Where are you going?” Bryan calls out from his office as I take off sprinting down the hall to the elevators.
I don’t answer. I don’t look back.
Chapter Thirty
Luca
“Mr. Moretti, there’s someone here to see you. Says his name is Angelo and he has an appointment,” Ana Maria’s voice crackles at me over the phone. “Do you want me to tell him to get lost?”
“No, Ana Maria, I’m expecting him.”
“Are you sure? I could make him get lost for you.”
What a way to start my day.
I didn’t want to call this piece of shit back into my life, but I didn’t have much choice. I don’t have much time to finish off these Russians and I need some serious firepower to do it.
“Send him in,” I say.
“He won’t sign the forms. I’m not sending him in. You can either meet him up front, or I’m going to kick him out.”
Jose starts cackling behind me and I’m not even close to being done with my first cup of coffee. It’s way too fucking early for this shit.
I get up and stalk to the front and it is tense as hell as soon as I enter the room. Angelo and Ana Maria are locked in a death stare. She’s got her hands planted on the desk, leaning forward, and I would feel bad for Angelo if he were anyone other than himself.
As it is, I wouldn’t mind seeing Ana Maria kick his ass.
“Let’s go outside,” I say as soon as the door shuts behind me.
Angelo blinks first and fixes me with a smarmy grin. Ana Maria keeps her death-gaze locked on his back while I lead him out to the parking lot.
Outside, I count at least three cars that belong to his group. They’re all-black, tinted windows, and way too nice to belong to anyone who actually goes to my gym. All told, he’s probably got four or five guys with him.
“Good to see you, too,” he says.
Angelo hasn’t changed one bit since I saw him last. Still wearing the same East Coast heir-to-the-mob-boss outfits I remember. Incredibly expensive suit, shit undone just enough to look casual, tie loose. He’s strapped — there’s a pistol on his back, hidden by the suit jacket, and probably another one aroun
d his ankle.
“Thanks for coming,” I say, shaking his hand.
“You didn’t really give me much choice, not with the fucking threats you made. You’re lucky dad’s got a soft spot for you. Especially with the shit that went down with your brother. He sends his condolences by the way.”
“Don’t talk about Nico. He’s got nothing to do with any of this. But tell your dad I said thanks.”
Angelo snorts. “Right. So what is this about? Why does Luca fucking Moretti surface after nearly a goddamn year to call me and a few of his former Family members across the fucking country? You look plenty busy here, man. Got yourself a nice little job, with a feisty little secretary. You know, we looked for you for quite a while, too. Even talked to your family. No one knew you’d come out to California.”
I laugh. “Nonna knew.”
“Really? When I asked her, she told me to — and I’m quoting her, here — get lost before she shoved my gun up my gaping asshole and killed me like my mother should’ve done once she realized I was going to grow up to be the idiot prick that I am.”
“She dealt with three generations of Moretti boys, what the fuck else did you expect?”
Thinking of nonna telling off the Durantes makes me smile. She’s the only one in my family that I told where I’m at, and only then because I knew there was no way in hell anyone could get anything out of her. She’d kick their asses if they tried.
He looks at me, squinting slightly, trying to figure me out. Angelo Durante never was, and never will be, as sharp as his old man, and if I didn’t need his fucking help, there’s no way in hell I’d want him here. But as it is, I have to give him some respect.
“So what’s the deal?”
“I’ve got a problem with some Russians, like I told you. It’s a bigger job than I want to handle on my own, so I called you. I need some muscle, and that’s it.”
He shakes his head. “Do you think I’m some fucking idiot? Remember that job you pulled on that fucking Armenian joint a few years ago? How many of those bitches did you put under? Eleven? Twelve? And now, suddenly, you need help handling a bunch of two-bit Russians.”
