by Dylan Rust
He had has hands in the pockets of some very big players. After she saw him on stage with the mayor and commissioner, Claire knew she had to throw out everything she thought she knew. If Igor had kompromat on the mayor and NYPD commissioner, then he most certainly had kompromat on bank CEOs or even the Manhattan DA.
Because of this, she had to start at the beginning.
She had to start at Loscovitch Logictics. She must’ve missed something.
She stared at the breakdown for two days. She didn’t leave the motel room.
Frustrated, she turned on the television. That’s when she saw on the nightly news a report about Luke Luka’s funeral. It was to be held the same day as the funeral for the cop Jack had allegedly killed: Lieutenant Ivan Rivers.
She knew she was going to get no where without help from the bureau. But the only person she trusted was the assistant director, and even in that case, she didn’t know how much she could trust him. She decided to head to Luka’s funeral and watch the assistant director from a distance. When every one left, she would confront him, but only if she was sure that he was safe.
She picked up her binoculars.
The priest said a few final words and they lowered Luka’s coffin. The crowd dispersed. The assistant director hugged Luka’s mother and then made his way to his car.
He didn’t drive away, though. He waited. He sat there for over an hour. When the parking lot was empty and everyone who’d attended Luka’s funeral had left.
Claire got out of her car and walked up to the assistant director.
“Agent Osgoode,” he said. “Why are you following me?”
“I… you son of a bitch! You said I was dead!”
“I figured you were alive,” Clarence said. “Like Tom, I hadn’t seen your corpse yet.”
“Why have you said nothing to media? What is going on?”
“Because I want Igor to believe he’s won. I wanted to see where the chips would lay,” Clarence said. “Nothing has seemed right about this investigation from the very beginning.”
“I agree with you on that,” Claire said.
Clarence opened the door of his car. Claire drew her gun and aimed at him.
“Put down your weapon, Agent Osgoode,” he said.
“I don’t know if I can trust you.”
“If I was going ro kill, I would have by now. I saw you in your car with your binoculars during the entire funeral. I’m surprised you’ve managed to survive this many days on your own.”
Claire lowered her weapon. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“I understand. It’s been a stressful week.”
“What do we do now?”
“We do nothing,” he said. “I’ve got a new group investigating The Dacha House. We’re planning a secret raid. It will happen in one week. You should stay low. Stay low until we bring Igor down. I don’t want Igor to suspect a thing.”
“The women are in a basement in the church across the street from the club,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“Jack told me.”
“You’ve talked to Mr. Spade?”
“He saved my life. One of Igor’s men tried to kill me.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“I couldn’t.”
“You’re not making my life easy.” Clarence rubbed his brow. “I think Tom is alive, too. It’s imperative that neither of you come to the bureau’s office. If he reaches out to you, make sure that you tell him that. If you want to help, stay low. Stay out of the way. You’ll jeopardize the raid. Where are you staying?”
Claire gave him the address of the motel.
“Good,” he said. “Stay there. I’ll send someone for you when this is all over.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Just promise me that you’ll save those women.”
“If you stay out of way, we will.”
Claire walked back to her car. She got inside and breathed a sigh of relief. At least Igor didn’t have the assistant director.
She pulled out of the cemetery parking lot. She thought about going back to the motel, but if what Clarence said about Tom was true than she thought about checking out his apartment. Tom wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. If anyone was going to walk back to their apartment and be oblivious to the threat posed against him, it would be him. She’d check out his apartment. She’d see if he was still alive.
For for the first time since the night Jack walked into The Dacha House, Claire thought she had a legitimate chance at saving those women and bringing down Igor.
54
Claire lifted up the collar of her coat. She walked down the street toward Tom’s apartment. It was busy. New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade had just started. There were hordes of people dressed in green and drunk out of their minds. The sounds of the crowd was a cacophony of deafening noise. Empty beer bottles, red plastic cups, and vomit littered the streets.
Claire used the chaos to her advantage. She’d picked up a green hat and a sparkly green shirt from a convenience store earlier that day. She blended in to the crowd.
Two young girls dressed for weather fifty degrees warmer walked past her. A group of young men, their eyes glazed from drink, chased after them. They ran down the alleyway Claire had found Tom’s body a week before. They hid behind the same dumpster that Tom had vomited and bled behind and began to make out.
Claire crossed the street and walked into Tom’s building.
His father must have been wealthy.
His building’s lobby looked expensive. It looked like the lobby of the Four Seasons. It was immaculate. Her eyes had to adjust to the bright gold color of everything. It threw her off.
She walked up to the front desk and spoke to the concierge. She kept her head down low so as to now to reveal her identity in case the concierge recognized her from the news.
“Is Tom Tom in?”
The concierge gave her a sorrowful look. “I’m sorry, dear,” he said. A tear formed in his eye. “Bless his heart. Tom isn’t in. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you a friend of Tom’s?”
“An associate,” she said.
“Did you not hear the news?”
“News?”
“Tom is dead.”
“That’s horrible.” Claire feigned a look of sadness. She didn’t have to try hard. She was sad. If Tom didn’t come back to his apartment, then he would most certainly either be dead or in Igor’s clutches.
She thanked the concierge and left the building.
She thought it odd that there wasn’t much of an NYPD presence outside of Tom’s apartment, but she accounted that for the fact that he lived in central Manhattan. It was busy. They couldn’t shut down a building like that for an investigation.
She walked back to her car.
She stopped.
Four men in dark leather jackets were standing outside of it. They looked like they were waiting for her. Their heads were all shaved. They looked like Igor’s men.
She turned around.
Maybe they hadn’t noticed her?
She ran.
After four blocks, she stopped and caught her breath. Her ankle still hurt. She needed to pop a few more pills. It was either that or she needed a drink. The idea of a cold beer sounded nice. She smiled.
She was outside of a bar. Rory O’Malley’s. She walked inside. She’d ask for a glass of water and take a pain killer.
The bar was loud, aggressive, and full of patrons that were beyond drunk.
A loud man with a green mohawk grabbed her by the waist.
“Hello, little sweet thing,” he said. He belched.
She pushed him away.
“Aw, come back now.”
She disappeared into the crowd and made her way to the bar. She ordered a glass of water. The barkeep gave her an odd look. He hadn’t heard someone order water all day.
Claire waited for the water to arrive.
She looked around the bar
.
She saw them.
The men standing around her car. They were in the bar. They had spotted her. They’d followed her.
She put head down and grabbed a green cowboy hat off a drunk girl dancing with a pasty white meathead. The drunk girl didn’t notice.
Claire pulled the hat down over her eyes.
The men who’d followed her were standing by the entrance of the bar.
They were looking around.
They didn’t know where she was.
There was four of them.
One of them walked toward her. He was going to notice her. She needed to act.
She turned around and kissed a man.
He stuck his tongue deep into her mouth. Her motioned it around. She wanted to gag.
She pushed him back.
Of course it was him. The mohawk.
“Ah, so you did miss me,” he said.
“Thanks,” she said. She pulled away. She needed to go.
The mohawk grabbed her by the arm.
“Don’t leave,” he said. “Let me buy you a drink.”
“Let go of my arm,” Claire said.
“Let me buy you a drink.”
“Let go.”
He leaned in toward her. “You’re not getting the hint, honey.”
Claire kneed him in the groin. She made sure to follow through with all of her weight. She wanted to burst the little bits of manhood he had hidden down there.
He fell to the ground. His hands holding his balls. His face red.
She walked to the entrance of the bar. The man who’d followed her were in amongst the crowd. She picked up her pace.
“Hey,” the mohawk screamed. “That bitch just hit me!” He pointed at Claire.
He couldn’t have picked a more perfect time to scream her name, as just at the moment he began to yell, the music in the bar went quiet. Every one in the bar heard his shout. Everyone turned around and looked at Claire. The men who’d followed ran toward her. They pushed people out of their way. The bar broke out into a massive fight.
Claire ran.
She managed to get out of the bar unscathed.
She ran down the street. She ran back toward her rented car.
55
Claire blew past stop sign after stop sign. She even drove through a couple red lights. She just needed to get away.
The men who were after her were on her tail.
They were in black SUVs not dissimilar from the ones that had stopped the bureau’s van in Little Odessa. They were closing in.
The St. Patrick’s Day parade was making traffic a nightmare.
She needed to take more risks. She couldn’t risk capture.
She cursed herself. She shouldn’t have gone to Tom’s. She should have known better. Of course Igor’s men were waiting for her.
They’s been pursuing her for thirty minutes. They were well outside of Manhattan. They were in the Bronx.
The streets were far different in the Bronx. The tall buildings of the central city had dispersed and were replaced by small town houses and four floored office buildings.
She hit the lip of the street, causing the front right hub cap of her rental to shoot off. She forcefully took hold of the steering wheel and regained control, shaking her head. Ahead of her was a gas station, a mechanics shop and a fast food joint. Behind the fast food joint’s parking lot was a series of backyards, demarcated by chain link fences. On the other side of those yards was the road to the freeway. If she could somehow drive through those yards and get onto the freeway, she might be able to get away. She might be able to lose them.
If she lost them, she’d drive back to the motel in Brooklyn.
She sped up and dodged traffic left and right. Drivers honked, screamed, and pedestrians on the street recorded the chase on their cell phones. The chase would be a viral hit any social media service they uploaded it on.
She pulled into the fastfood joint’s parking lot and honked at a family that was in front of her. A young pregnant woman was pushing a stroller and a man, presumably her husband, was holding a young boy’s hands. The man flipped Claire the bird and stopped in front of her car. He was screaming at her. He slammed on her hood.
Claire looked in the rearview mirror. The SUVs were close. She pulled out her gun and aimed it at the father.
“Get out of the way,” she said. “I’m a federal agent. I need you to move.”
The father’s face turned white. He picked uphis son and got out of Claire’s way. The pregnant woman with the stroller screamed at her husband.
Claire’s slammed on the gas.
Her rental bashed through chainlink fence after chainlink fence. Her windshield became littered with laundry, tree branches, and metal. She honked madly as she drove through the backyards. She needed to make sure that whoever lived there knew to get out of the way.
A woman in one of the houses heard the ruckus. She walked outside and saw her backyard torn to bits. Her laundry poles were knocked over, her dog house was flattened, and her grass ripped up. Her dog, Jojo, was beside her, panting. He was fine. She walked outside and stood in the middle of the wreckage. She looked down the pathway of destruction and saw a small car driving through her neighbors yards. Jojo barked. But there was more noise.
She turned around, screamed and froze.
Like a squirrel caught in headlights, she didn’t know what to do.
Two SUVs skidded to a stop in front of her. They were inches from hitting her. Jojo attacked one of the men who’d gotten out of the car. The man shot the dog.
He whimpered.
The woman ran toward the man in a fit of rage. That dog was all she had left.
She clawed at his face. She ripped at his clothes.
He punched her in the head, lifted up her body and took inside her house.
Claire saw it all from her rearview.
If not for that dog and women, the SUVs would have caught her.
She drove through the last backyard and turned onto a small street that led to the on ramp of the freeway.
She merged on it and drove to Brooklyn.
The rental’s bumper scraped along the freeway and one of its tires was flat. The paint on its body had peeled away and there were noticeable dents everywhere.
It took her thirty-seven minutes to get to the motel.
The trip was peaceful.
The sky was dark and the motel parking lot was empty. Claire pulled in and got out. She ran up the steps to the second floor of the motel. She pushed open the door to her room. The lights were off, but something was wrong.
“Hello?”
She hit the light switch.
Four men, dressed in black, wearing balaclavas were holding shotguns.
“How?” she said.
The men laughed.
Claire reached for her gun.
One of the men fired their shotgun.
Claire frooze. She checked her body. She wasn’t hit.
There was a hole in the roof. Dust, bits of plaster and drywall fell from above.
“Drop your weapon,” one of them said.
Claire dropped her gun. She was in shock. She couldn’t think. The assistant director was the only one who knew she was at the motel.
She felt betrayed.
“Kick it over,” another man said.
Claire kicked her gun toward them. She couldn’t get away from Igor. His grip over the city was complete.
The assistant director was in his pocket as well.
She’d been lied to.
“Igor wants to see you.”
“Fuck Igor,” she said. “Fuck all of you!”
“Stupid bitch.”
One of the men walked up to Claire and hit her in the head with the butt of his shotgun.
Claire’s world went black.
She was in Igor’s hands.
56
They pulled the hood off her head.
Her eyes adjusted to the light.
There he was.
He was smiling.
She’d spent months looking at his face. She’d studied every contour, every freckle, every mole. She knew the way his left eye was smaller than the right when he smiled. She knew his cheek bones were high and sharp. She’d never seen him in person.
She’d figured that when she finally did, he’d be handcuffed and in an orange jumpsuit.
She’d never expected to see him like this.
Claire was in Igor Grekovitch’s penthouse.
She was in his torture room, as he called it.
She was sitting in the large wooden chair Jack had been sitting in a week earlier. She looked left and right. She couldn’t run. Five of Igor’s most loyal men stood behind her. They were holding their weapons.
To calm herself down she studied each of the men in the room. She took her situation as an opportunity to learn more about the Grekovitch Gang. She’d had spent months studying Igor. During that time, she’d researched the networks and internal structures of the Russian mob in and outside of United States. No one in the FBI knew the internal structure of the Grekovitch gang.
But that had now changed.
“Are you nervous?” Igor asked.
Claire stared into his eyes. She wanted to act tough. She wanted to be like Jack, but she couldn’t speak. She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
Igor laughed. His men did, too.
“Relax,” Igor said. “You seem nervous.”
Claire fought through her panic. She mustered up the strength to say, “What do you want me with me?”
“You killed a dear friend of mine,” Igor said. “A close friend. You killed one my spies.”
“The man who tried to kill me on the street?” Claire asked.
“No,” Igor said. “Not the man.”
“The woman? In the morgue? She was the one of your spies?”
“Yes. The woman in the morgue.”
Claire knew what Igor was referring to when he called the woman a spy. Like most Russian gangs, the Grekovitch gang was structured with Igor at the top and his two spies just below him. Igor was the boss, he was the papa, the pakhan. From early in the investigation, Claire assumed that Igor only had one spy in his gang, his father’s right hand man; Aleksander Putzky. But she was wrong. He had two. Sasha, the woman Jack beat in the poker game and the woman she killed, was his second spy.
