by Dylan Rust
26
Igor was in the club’s bathhouse.
His eyes were closed.
He was trying to relax.
Nothing the man had told him made sense.
Was he an assassin? Was he telling the truth about who his uncle was? Who was the girl?
He heard footsteps. He opened his eyes. It was the oaf, Aleksander.
“What do you want?” Igor said.
“I came to check you on,” Aleksander said. “When I heard you were attacked. I was scared.”
“My father survived many attacks. I should get used to this. I should be flattered.”
Aleksander chuckled, remembering all the times Sergei had thwarted assassination attempt after assassination attempt on his life. “It’s true,” he said. “I’m glad your safe. I heard you kept him alive.”
“Yes.”
“Where’d you put him?”
“In the cage with the cop.”
“The cage with the cop? Why?”
“I want him to soak in the blood of the dead cop. I want to break his will, his spirit to fight.”
“Blood?”
“I killed the cop.”
Aleksander’s jaw dropped. “Igor,” he said. “I told you not to do that. The commissioner will not be pleased.”
“I’ve already talked to Sasha. She says the commissioner is on his way to the club right now. I will tell him myself. I will also remind him that we have a video of him and a very little girl.”
“You’re taking risks,” Aleksander said.
“The man I just invited into my office tried to kill me. I feel like I need to take a few risks. I don’t even know who he is.”
“What happened? When did he try to attack you?”
“It’s when I gave him the reward. He snapped. Something inside of him changed. I saw it. He killed four of my elite guard. Good men. Tough men. If not for the gas vents in my office. I would have been dead too.”
“I’ll contact my men on the street. We will get to the bottom of this.”
“Good.”
“And what of the girl he tried to save?”
“She’s in my office. She’s tied up.”
“Are you going to kill her?”
“Not until I find out who he is. They must know each other.”
Aleksander’s phone rang. He answered.
Igor dipped his head under the pale blue water. He was feeling better. Once the commissioner arrived and he was assured that the dead cop would not be a problem, he would feel even better.
Aleksander hung up.
He looked at Igor with a worried expression.
“We’ve got big problems.”
Igor’s heart rate picked up. His muscles tensed. He rubbed his brow.
“What now?”
“Blocks away from The Dacha House. Our scouts spotted a suspicious van. They followed it for twenty minutes when one of the occupants got out.”
“And?”
“Our men say he was a federal agent. They got his wallet and his gun. His name is Tom Dunce.”
Igor screamed. His voice echoed throughout the large open cavern. He smashed his hands into the water and thrashed them around like a petulant child.
“What the fuck do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I’ll go see them. I’ll find out what’s going on. Apparently, shots were fired.”
“Well, this night could not be going any worse.”
Igor grabbed a bottle that was resting on the side of the pool and opened it. He took a swig from it.
“This man… This… Jack Spade. He’s connected to them,” Igor said. “I know it. He’s working with the feds.”
“You think so?” Aleksander said.
“Don’t be an idiot. Of course, he is. The fucking audacity of those scum. I knew that dead body on Shooter’s Island was going to come back and bite us in the ass.”
“It’s a big problem. We can’t have federal agents snooping around.”
Igor got up out of the water. He grabbed a towel and dried himself. “I’m going to go pay the girl a visit. I want this problem solved now. When the commissioner arrives, send him down here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Igor’s mind raced. The possibilities. Federal agents? The Blade? What the hell was going on? He got dressed and walked up to his office. He could hear her screaming.
Good, he thought. She was awake.
He opened the door.
She was tied to a chair. A ball was stuffed in her mouth.
He walked to his liquor cabinet.
He poured himself a drink. He stopped half way. He shook his head. He’d do coke instead. He needed the energy. He needed to be awake.
He walked to his desk and opened one of the drawers. He pulled out a small plastic bag of coke and did a line.
That was the trick.
He felt better.
It was time to get to the bottom of this mess. He’d question her first. Once he got her to talk, once he was sure about who Jack Spade was, he’d go back and kill him.
27
Jack looted the bodies of the men he’d killed. He grabbed a keychain and the two Makarovs they were carrying. He also grabbed an axe that was on the wall.
He figured he’d need it.
He inspected the room. The women in the cages had to be the ones Igor was smuggling. Agent Osgoode would be happy to hear the news. He walked up to a couple cages and tried to open them with the keys. He tried to free the women. None of the keys worked.
“Fuck,” he shouted. “Any of you girls speak English?”
There was no answer. They were scared. They’d just witnessed him kill a man.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I’ll come back. I promise. I’ll help you.”
One of the women stood up. She walked to the edge of her cage. She stuck her hand out. “Help me,” she said. “Don’t leave us.”
Jack held her hand. “I’ll come back and free you. I’m going to kill the man who put you in here.”
She cried as he let go.
Jack walked to the only door in the room and opened it. It led to staircase. He walked up the stairs and opened a door at the top.
He was in another room. There were four computer servers inside. They were loud. The big fans inside each server buzzed. The room was small. There was a long tunnel opposite the entrance to stairway. He walked to the tunnel. It was lit by small lamps that were hung along the ceiling. The walls were rocky and moist. He heard vehicles drive overhead. He was under the street. He figured he was across the street from the club. He figured he was under the church.
He was right.
At the exit of the tunnel was another door. Jack had to go through seven keys on the keychain to get it to open.
He pulled it open. Something was blocking his path. He pushed it. Whatever was blocking his way through the door had wheels. It rolled. He walked through the door. He was in a janitors closet. The door was being blocked by a large storage unit packed full of cleaning and pool supplies. The room was small and there was another door only four feet from the last.
Jack unlocked it and pushed it open.
He was in the basement level of The Dacha House. He was in the bathhouse.
That was why the the NYPD raids in the past had found nothing. Everything that could incriminate Igor wasn’t held within the club. It was under the church.
There was a man in the pool.
His back was turned to Jack. He hadn’t heard him enter.
He was smoking a cigar and drinking whiskey. Jack figured the man wasn’t Russian because of his choice of drink.
He aimed one of the Makarov’s at the man’s head. He walked up to him slowly. He could hear voices. They sounded distant enough. Still, he had to be careful.
The man heard Jack’s steps.
“Igor,” he said, not turning around. “Igor come into the water, it’s perfect. What took you so long?”
Jack took a few more steps toward the man.
“Igor?”
“Don’t move,” Jack said.
The man jumped back. Water splashed. He reached for his gun, which was resting on the side of the pool. The fat jiggled on his body. The gold chain on his neck rattled.
“You’ve gotten fat,” Jack said.
He wanted to shoot the man. He knew who he was. He was his captain when he was a detective at the 77th. He was now commissioner of the NYPD.
He pulled a bullet into the chamber.
The man stopped scrambling. “What do you want, Jack?” he said.
28
“Get out of the pool,” Jack said.
NYPD commissioner Hugo Green got up out of the water. He stubby, short legs were shaking. He followed Jack’s instruction. He knew who Jack was. The two of them had a long history.
“You piece of shit,” Hugo said. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I should ask you the same thing.”
“Fuck you!”
Jack walked up to Hugo and put the barrel of the Makarov against his temple. “You make a loud noise again and I drop you dead right now. I do what I should have done years ago.” Jack waved the gone. “Go over there.”
Hugo walked to the area of the bathhouse that Jack had waved the gone toward. It was dark. It was in shadow.
“What are you going to do me?”
“Nothing,” Jack said. “But when this is all done, I’ll make sure the the feds know all about your little visits to The Dacha House.”
“You think the feds will stop Igor,” Hugo said. “You don’t understand. He won’t be stopped. It’s better to just accept him. Work with him. He can…”
Jack whacked Hugo in the head with the butt of his gun. He grabbed Hugo’s weight and slowly placed him on a wooden bence that was in front of a series of lockers. If any club staff came down and checked on him, they’d just think that he was sleeping.
He’d deal with Hugo later.
Elaine was all he could think about.
If Jack was going to walk back up to the club. He’d need a change of clothes. He opened up the lockers until he found one that had some clothes in it. He put them on. They were a little short in the arms and legs and big in the waist, but they would have to do. He stuffed the Makarov’s in the inside of his new suits jacket and he carried the axe in his left hand.
He left the bathhouse.
Just outside was the elevator.
He hit the button and waited.
The door dinged. There was a man inside. He was dressed like a bellhop. When he saw Jack he panicked. He tried to close the door.
Jack rushed him with the axe in his hand. He put the blade close to the man’s neck. He looked at the elavator buttons. The highest it would go was the ground floor, the mainhall.
“Take me to the mainhall.”
The man nodded.
Jack pulled the blade back.
The elevator rose then stopped.
The man opened the door to the elevator. Before he left, Jack turned to the elevator operator.
“If Igor finds out you let me up here, he’ll kill you and your family. Don’t say a word.”
The man nodded. He was shaking, cold. As Jack left the elevator, the operator closed the doors.
The club was even busier than earlier. With the poker tournament complete, the DJ on the stage could play his music as loud as he wanted. Jack could feel the bass in his chest.
He walked through the club. No one paid much attention to him. Club security wasn’t on alert and the guests were either all too drunk or too drugged to notice. Jack pushed his way to the staircase that would take him up to the second and third floors.
Two guards were at the staircases base.
Jack walked up to them and used the butt of the axe to knock them both out.
No one noticed.
He was quick.
People were dancing, the other guards were more focused on other matters.
Jack dumped the bodies behind the velvet drapes that hung from the ceiling.
He ran up the stairs.
He stopped.
It was her.
She recognized him immediately. She pulled out her M&P 40C and fired.
Jack jumped into one of the rooms on the second floor.
Fuck.
“What’s the meaning of this?” a man said.
Jack turned around.
An old fat naked man was pushing himself up from a bed. Two young naked women ran to the corner of the room and cowered. The man was the mayor of the city.
Igor had the mayor, too?
“Mayor Thompson,” Jack said. “Looks like I’ve caught you in a vulnerable situation.”
“What is the meaning of this?” The mayor walked up to Jack.
Jack grabbed him and placed the gun to his head. He turned around.
Sasha burst into the room.
“You move, I pull the trigger,” Jack said.
“Why do you think we care about the mayor?”
“Because I know what you’re doing,” Jack said. “I know why Igor is smuggling all these women into the city. He’s recording high profile club patrons with them. He’s blackmailing them.” He gestured to the security cameras all over the the room. “That is it isn’t it?”
“Very smart,” Sasha said.
“You can’t have me kill the mayor. You’ll lose an asset.”
“You won’t kill the mayor.”
“Fuck you, I won’t. I want my sister,” Jack said.
He shot the mayor in the leg.
The mayor screamed.
“Please, Sasha,” Mayor Thompson said. “Do what he says!”
The mayor’s fat, greasy rubbed against Jack. The blood from his leg pooled on the floor.
Sasha licked her lips.
“We’ve got ourselves in the quite the bind, Mr. Spade,” she said.
“Get me my sister or you lose your asset in city hall.” Jack pressed the barrel of his gun against the mayor’s head. He didn’t feel bad doing it. Corrupt pieces of shit deserved everything they got.
“Okay,” Sasha said. “I’ll call Igor.”
29
Elaine woke up. She was strapped to a chair. She couldn’t move her arms and legs and she didn’t know where she was. It was dark and cold. Her memory was foggy. Did she see Jack? Was that him?
A door shut.
“Hello,” she said. “Who’s there? Jack?”
“No.”
It was him. The monster. Igor walked inside the room. He sat down at his desk. He looked at Elaine and smiled.
“Don’t worry, darling,” he said. “I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to talk.”
“Stay away from me,” she said. “You fucking creep!” She tried to pull herself out of her bonds, but they wouldn’t loosen. She almost tipped the chair she was in over.
Igor laughed. “Oh please,” he said. “I’m not a creep. I’m just a business man.”
“Where am I? Where’s Jack?”
“We will get to all of that, darling.”
He pulled out the GLOCK 17 and placed it on his desk. He then opened a drawer and grabbed a cloth. He got up from his seat and walked to the sink in the far corner of his office. He dampened the cloth and wiped his face. He picked up a knife and looked at his reflection in the blade. He checked to see if there was anything in his teeth.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m ready.”
He walked up to Elaine, the knife was still in his hand. He pulled her head back and placed the blade at her neck.
“Please,” she said. “Please don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
Igor touched the blade against her skin.
She winced. She braced herself for pain.
Igor pulled the knife back. He walked around her. “Like I said, I’m not going to hurt you.”
Elaine didn’t trust him. She knew better than that.
“What do you want?”
“We will get to that
,” Igor said. “Patience, darling.”
“What is this?”
Igor walked up to her and pulled her hair back again, exposing her neck. He touched the blade of the knife against her skin.
She screamed.
He pulled the knife back.
Elaine breathed heavy. She was disoriented. She wanted the nightmare to end.
“I have a man in a cage. His name is Jack Spade. You knew him. Who is he? Why did he try to kill me when he saw you?”
She did see Jack. It was him. She wasn’t dreaming. She shook her head. “Let me go and I’ll tell you,” she said.
Igor chuckled. “That’s not going to happen. Don’t be silly. You’ll be on a boat headed to Ukraine soon.”
Elaine spit in on the floor. The glob of clear, phlegmy mucus absorbed itself into the Persian rug.
“That is going to be difficult to get out,” Igor said. “That is not nice.”
“Let me go,” she said. “Please.”
He walked up to her and grabbed her hair again. This time he placed the blade against her ear.
“Tell me or lose your ear.”
She sobbed and said, “I thought you weren’t going to hurt me.”
Igor laughed. He pulled the knife back.
“I won’t,” he said. “I can’t damage the goods.” He walked back behind his desk and sat down. “I want to know who the man is,” he said. “It’s rather simple. The sooner you tell me, the quicker his death will be.”
“He’s my brother,” she said. “He’s my brother.”
Igor gave her an odd look.
“Your brother?”
“Yes,” Elaine said.
Igor threw his hands up in the air and burst out laughing. “What a stupid son-of-a-bitch. How did he know you were in my club?”
“He was in Jimmy’s when your men grabbed me.”
Igor scratched his chin. “That was him? My men told me they killed him. Fucking liars.”
“Please,” Elaine said. “Please just let me go.”
“You’ve been a good girl. You can sleep.”
He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a needle. He walked up to her.
“Please,” she said. “No!”
He stabbed the needle in her arm. She was asleep in seconds.
