Loose Cannon

by Sidney Bell

  Church cried, “Matvey, don’t tell Ghost. Promise me you won’t tell Ghost!”

  He wasn’t sure what Ghost would do if he found out, and even if he was smart enough to let it go, Church couldn’t stomach the idea of Ghost blaming himself for getting Church the job. Tobias would find a way to blame himself too, though there was zero logical reason for it. And Miller? He’d be worried when Church didn’t come back. He’d probably think Church ran again, and wonder what he’d done wrong, and that was unforgivable. Just the thought had Church’s belly seizing up, and he flashed on that brief hug in the living room when he’d had Miller close and warm and caring, and everything in him twisted with longing and fury—

  There was a quick flash of Russian from Mama.

  Matvey responded, also in Russian, and Church had all four brothers on him now, one on each limb, dragging him to a set of stairs, no doubt leading to the basement, and he couldn’t breathe, fuck, if he could get one of their guns, maybe, but his arms were gripped tight.

  Mama said something else and everyone stopped.

  Church gasped for air, tried to think, but all he had was a round robin of Miller and Ghost and Tobias in his head, and the Krayevs weren’t using fucking English, so it wasn’t like paying attention was gonna get him anywhere anyway.

  The world shifted, and it took him a second to realize they were putting him down.

  Church ended up on his knees, arms yanked behind him at such severe angles that his ligaments and tendons felt on the verge of snapping, and he couldn’t bite back the pained groan as Mama crouched in front of him.

  “Ghost got you the job?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “You are good friends with him?”

  He pressed his lips together.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I’d like to talk to him. You call him, get him to come here.”

  “No.”

  “You both go. Safe. Alive.”

  “No.”

  “This is a good deal,” she said. “This keeps you alive. I want only to talk to him. You like talking. My son tells me you’re very chatty.”

  “Not when it matters.” Church didn’t have the first clue what her interest in Ghost was, but fuck if he’d help her. She had the eyes of an insect, and he didn’t want her anywhere near Ghost.

  “You’re willing to die for this? Stupid boy.”

  “I don’t turn.” He wasn’t sure if this was a test of his ability to keep his mouth shut or not, but it didn’t matter, because the answer didn’t change. “You’re not getting to him through me.”

  For a moment he thought she’d tell them to shoot him in the head after all, or maybe she’d take the gun and do it herself. All her brutality showed clearly in her bony face, poisonous and barely muzzled. In that moment, she terrified him.

  Finally she said, “All right. New deal: you live, and you tell him about this. All of it. You give him my name. Yelena Krayeva. Mama Krayeva. Yes? So he knows the favor I’m doing him.” She said something in Russian, and one of the brothers grabbed a sheet of paper and a pencil. She scrawled out a note, then folded it and pushed it into Church’s pocket. “Give that to your Ghost, keep your mouth shut about what you’ve seen, and you can go. You can even keep your job.”

  He frowned, searching for the hook. He glanced down at his pocket, feeling the paper against his hip like a brand. “I don’t—”

  “It’s a cell number. In case he needs something.”

  “Like what?”

  “That’s between Ghost and myself.” She tilted her head. “I won’t do or say a thing unless he contacts me. I don’t want to hurt him. I want to be his friend.”

  As if this fucking spider had the first clue what friendship was. He couldn’t help testing the hold on his arms as he thought about it, but it was nervous twitching more than an earnest attempt at escape. He didn’t know what to do. It seemed so harmless, but he wasn’t that dumb. Somehow this would cost Ghost something—there were strings hanging off every part of this deal.

  She rose. One of her knees popped. “It’s not like I can’t have Motya do it. You lose nothing by saying yes, and you get to live.”

  She could have Matvey give the phone number to Ghost along with an explanation, and Church couldn’t see how his continued involvement would contribute to screwing Ghost over, but then, he was more than a little panicked, so maybe he still wasn’t thinking clearly.

  “That’s it? Give Ghost your number, tell him what happened and keep my mouth shut?”

  “You’ll keep working at the bakery, of course.” Her tone suggested she was doing him a favor, but he knew it for the order it was.

  “You won’t call him or do anything to him?”

  She said something in Russian, and Matvey said, “She gives her word. You can trust it.”

  The piece of paper in his pocket could be on fire, it felt so hot.

  “Okay,” he whispered.

  “Good,” she said.

  The Krayev brothers let him go, and he dropped to the floor, all his bones and muscles limp as a puppet’s.

  * * *

  Matvey gave him the rest of the day off, and it wasn’t nine yet when Church was ejected from the Buick on the street corner near the bakery. He stood there for a good ten minutes, staring around him, only vaguely aware of the world at large. The bustle of morning commuters, the singing of birds, the over-bright sunshine. Church might as well have been living in a cartoon, it all felt so fake. He’d nearly died. The world had, for all intents and purposes, nearly ended for him.

  And no one else had noticed.

  Without any real thought, he found himself dialing his phone. When Miller answered, Church couldn’t get any words out at first.

  “Church? Are you there?”

  Hoping he sounded normal, Church said, “Hey. Yeah, I’m here.”

  “What happened? Are you okay?”

  So much for normal. Suited the rest of his life so far, though.

  Still, Church’s head wasn’t in good enough shape that he could talk about what had happened without freaking out, so he went for a tiny fib. “Angry at a customer. Could you just talk for a few minutes?”

  Miller only hesitated for a second before saying, “The shipping database is a mess. It looks like a drunk person hacked into it. I’ve been working on it for an hour, and the only thing that’s changed is that now I want a drink.”

  Church closed his eyes. He listened as Miller rambled on, describing all the ways the database was horrible and ridiculous, and the day slowly came back into focus.

  Eventually, Miller said softly, “Better?”

  “Yeah.” Church took a deep breath. “Better. Thanks.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No. Later maybe. I’m gonna come there. To the store, I mean. I’ve got the rest of the day off, I just have to make a stop first. If that’s okay?”

  “Of course it’s okay. I’ll see you soon.”

  They said their goodbyes, and Church lingered on the sidewalk for another minute, settling down that last little bit before he headed for the nearest bus stop.

  After thirty minutes on the 15 and a short walk, Church pounded on a gray door until Ghost answered, blurry-eyed, sleep-tousled and wearing black pajama pants.

  “You better be here to warn me about the fucking zombie apocalypse or I’m going to kill you and go back to bed,” Ghost threatened.

  “I think I screwed up,” Church said.

  Part Two

  Chapter Ten

  After her sons had gone, Yelena Krayeva went downstairs and took the winding hallway to her cramped office. There were no windows and only enough space for a desk and, on either side of it, two chairs, but she preferred it that way. After all those years of suffocation locked in the t
iny house in Erie, she’d developed a mild phobia of enclosed spaces, and she’d chosen this room with an eye toward subduing that fear. It meant withstanding a constant, low hum of panic beneath her skin, and though she was weary and irritable by the end of each day, she was also rich in triumph.

  Now she lowered herself into her chair, the springs squeaking. It had been an interesting morning.

  She’d nearly given up on Ghost. It’d been over a year since she made the initial offer and been desultorily, if politely, rebuffed. He didn’t trust her. She supposed she understood the impulse, even if nothing else about him made sense. For women, whoring was reasonable—there were few enough opportunities for a woman, especially if she was uneducated and poor, and men were easy and stupid for pussy, so there was power in it if a woman had a good backer to protect her. But for a man, whoring was a base thing. Even uneducated and poor, he had the benefit of being male, and that was a priceless commodity. Why didn’t Ghost get a job in a factory, since he had the choice? It boggled the mind.

  She’d had her eye on him ever since he refused her, but kept her distance, not wanting to spook him. If he’d felt comfortable enough to refer a friend to Motya for a job, she’d done well.

  She’d had no choice but to release the loudmouth; the threat that she would’ve killed him and had Motya pass along the cell number had been an empty one once she’d learned of the connection to Ghost. If she’d been Larry, she would’ve used Ghost’s friend against him, made a move both brutal and fast. But Larry was bones and rot now, proof that his methods had been flawed, and he’d never been too smart anyway. She had to be cleverer than that. Threats wouldn’t get her what she wanted, which was nothing less than Ghost’s full, willing compliance. If she made an enemy of Ghost by hurting his friend, he would be forever searching for a way out—or a weapon. For the task she had in mind, that would leave him with too much power over her.

  So how to do it?

  She tapped one boot heel against the wooden floor as she considered.

  She would call the release of the loudmouth a gift, and leverage it into a kind of bond between her and Ghost. She would say, I let your friend live because I have a business proposition for you. If you say yes, there is great benefit to us both.

  He might say yes. She doubted it, but she didn’t pretend to know his mind.

  Heavy footsteps in the hallway alerted her to Aunt Polya’s presence. “Come in,” Lena called, and the door creaked open. The old woman lowered herself into the other chair with a low hiss of breath—she would need hip-replacement surgery soon.

  “You’re supposed to avoid stairs,” Lena said in Russian.

  Aunt Polya gave her a baleful look before saying, also in Russian, “You should smack Vasya.”

  “Yes.”

  “Drugs,” Aunt Polya added, sniffing, her lip curling. “No honor, that one.”

  “Ego.”

  “Hmm. You’d think he was the son of That Ugly.”

  Lena rocked back in her chair. “That Ugly” always referred to Larry, whom Aunt Polya hated so potently you’d think she’d been the one to marry him.

  “And,” Aunt Polya went on, “Vasya’s too American. All the boys are. I remember when men were providers, worthy of having their women spend their lives in support of their dreams. Now it is all cars and getting rich and using girls. And Vasya is getting quite fat, you know.”

  “I know.”

  Lena’s sons were a topic that exhausted her.

  She’d left the village in Siberia to study at the Institute in Moscow, and arrived in the city idiotic as a hen, confounded by the size of the buildings and the twisting streets. She’d lost her innocence in pieces—stolen first by a man who used words of love to obtain sex, and then by the viciousness of Russia’s temper towards an unmarried pregnant girl. She hadn’t realized how much innocence she’d had left to lose until she followed the advice of the toothless old women back home who’d guided her to the golden land of opportunity, America, where the men were both softer and crueler and a husband held all the cards.

  She’d had such plans for her children, and the decent men she would raise them to be. She’d been a fool.

  Vasya was arrogant and fell prey to his emotions when he should think, Grisha was lazy and too happy, and while she loved Motya more dearly than the others, his good heart would’ve been better served had he been born to another woman. Seryozha, who might’ve been useful—being smart and creative and reliable—lacked ambition. He’d be a bus driver or a postman if left to his own devices. And then there was Yasha, her idiot son the sheep, polite and bland as wallpaper, with bad teeth from eating too much sugar.

  If she was honest, sometimes she forgot about Yasha.

  Sweet enough as boys, but predictable, disgusting men all of them, although, barring Vasya’s most recent surge of rebellion, obedient to the last. She wasn’t sure they were worth the toll they’d had on her life, but they were family nonetheless, and part of the business.

  If Vasya had his way, that business would take a path she couldn’t allow. She didn’t come here to become like the men who’d taken so much from her over the years. She didn’t raise her son to become such a man, either.

  “Tell Vasya the drugs are done,” she said. “He has three months to end it or I will.”

  “Why don’t you tell him?” Aunt Polya sucked her teeth in irritation. “He’ll only lie to me. He watches too much TV. He thinks because I am old that I’m stupid and will believe his lies. If he’s rude, I might smack him and then he’ll pout all through dinner.”

  “Feel free,” Lena said. “But if it comes from you, the others won’t be watching so close. Three months. If he hasn’t withdrawn by then, I’ll—”

  She didn’t know what she’d do. Vasya had been getting bolder in the past two years. A public rebellion meant she’d have no choice but to put him in his place, and it was only a matter of time before he became frustrated enough to risk it. She wanted time to think about how to handle it. He was her son, and it limited her options, but she couldn’t allow him to threaten her authority. It would send a dangerous message to their enemies, make them think she was weak. If she was soft on her son, they would see only a woman when they looked at her, not a competitor, and that put them all at risk.

  It couldn’t be allowed.

  She’d given up too much to build this life, and for that to continue, she needed her son in order.

  She also needed Ghost. She couldn’t threaten him, but perhaps there was another way.

  “Get Kellen before you talk to Vasya,” Lena told Aunt Polya.

  “You have an idea?”

  Lena felt the walls press in on her and forced herself to stay still, to milk the strength from the hardship. “A man who chooses to live as Ghost does has secrets. I wish to learn more about them.”

  * * *

  Much later, after Church had spilled the entire story, once they were both staring at the scrap of paper with Yelena Krayeva’s cell number on it, Church stammered again, “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t touch Ghost—neither he nor Tobias ever touched Ghost first—but he wanted to. He wanted to feel Ghost’s skin, warm and alive, and hear Ghost say you didn’t betray me.

  What he got was “Shut up.”

  Close enough. He exhaled. “What does she want?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Ghost said, but Church suspected Ghost knew exactly what Yelena Krayeva wanted. “But if she gave her word, I think I’m all right for the moment.”

  “You know, our ability to speak is what separates us from the animals. You could try talking to me.”

  “What separates me from the animals is the fact that I don’t eat my own shit,” Ghost replied, smiling sweetly and with zero sincerity. “But you do you, Churchy.”

  Church cursed under his breath. He wasn�
�t going to get any more out of Ghost, that much was obvious. “What should I do?”

  “Nothing.” Ghost’s hand landed on Church’s forearm. The sweetness was gone. All the walls in Ghost’s expression went ironclad, and Church couldn’t miss the intensity in his stare. “You do nothing. Nothing illegal, nothing stupid, nothing argumentative. Do you understand? You go to work, you go home, you’re the model employee. You’re out of this.”

  “I got you into—”

  “This isn’t about you.” Ghost pulled his hand back. “They could give two shits about you as long as you keep your mouth shut. I don’t have to tell you not to go to the cops, do I?”

  “No.” Church scowled, a little offended. “I’m not an idiot.”

  “Tobias will try to make you.”

  “Then we can’t tell him. Sure, in the movies I could take down a whole crime family by my lonesome, but in the real world I’m a kid with a juvenile record who saw a bunch of drugs in a room once and visited an old Russian lady’s house. It’s not like the cops will worry about protecting me until the trial comes, if there is one. Vasily will shoot me and bury my body in a field. Besides, that’d screw Matvey over and I don’t want to do that—he stood up for me.”

  But even as he wound down, he pinched the bridge of his nose because it didn’t sit right.

  “What?” Ghost asked.

  “I’m just... I wanted to be better than this now. I want to be the good guy.”

  Ghost didn’t answer for a minute. Finally, he said, “Be the smart guy instead. He might be an asshole, but he’s the guy who lives. Go home, go to sleep, and in the morning, you go to work like it never happened.”