“I understand,” I replied. “I will talk to you tomorrow, Pakhun. Avtoritet.”
I directed the last to Lev with a slightly bowed head. Nicolai’s eyes tracked me at a slow burn on the way out, but this time, no one tried to stop me from leaving.
Chapter 24
I reeled all the way back to my apartment and took the long way home, driving around and around the neighborhood in agitation. If I was pulled over tonight, I’d lose my shit. I’d kill a cop and end up in Wisconsin somewhere. At least it wouldn’t be Thailand, but Vassily would still be stuck in Miami: addicted, alone, with Nic’s forces arrayed against him, surrounded by strangers. He’d be dead within the month. It was one thing to tell him to get his crazy-making ass out of my house and clean himself up, quite another to be on the other side of the world, and probably never to see him again.
We had two choices. We got our asses out of New York, or I got really powerful, really fast. And then what? Kill everyone that hated me, and rule over a graveyard out of spite?
I was exhausted, wrung out from days of stress and strain. I went home to clean up before going to Mariya’s to break the bad news, and found two letters in the letterbox and a package on my doorstep. The package had no address on either the back or front and no stamp. I sniffed the paper: it smelled like Crina’s perfume. One letter looked like it had come from Lev’s office, dropped off by a courier while I was still out. The other was the telephone bill, now well overdue.
The package was large and thick, but surprisingly light. I had not been expecting a package. I unwrapped it outside slowly and suspiciously, but relaxed as a red cover came into view. A post-it was tacked to the front.
“I promised I’d get this for you,” the note read. “Sell it if you have to. And stay alive.” Crina had signed her note with three suns, almost like a personal sigil.
It was Das Rote Buch. I smiled despite myself and tucked it under my arm while I looked at the other, unmarked letter. A slip of paper with an address written in Lev’s deeply slanted hand: 14b Grove St. It offered both satisfaction and confusion. The address was a safe house in Bushwick, which must have been where they were taking Vincent. But why was he confirming it for me? Out of respect? Consolation?
Jana’s mysterious L, the name she hadn’t written, was still in the back of my mind.
I took the book inside to the den, sat down, and savored the rest of the unveiling. Even though it was just a copy, it was beautiful, hand-bound, an authentic replica of the old German journal Jung had used to record his innermost revelations. I turned it, breathed in the scent of new ink and leather, and sighed as the muscles relaxed along my spine.
Tongue humming, I laid the book out on my knees and turned the first page. My eyes lit on some of the brightest, most stunning images I’d ever seen: beautiful illumination enmeshed with pages and pages of elegant German calligraphy. It looked like something from another time, and the illegibility of the text made the images stand out all the more. Mandalas wove into themselves with fearsome complexity; a many-footed snake ate itself as a naked man looked on in terror. What caught my attention and held it was a singular image of a tree that looked vaguely like a Joshua tree, some kind of succulent plant with diamond-shaped leaves. The tree that Vincent had tried to draw so poorly in his diary was splendid in this painting, framed against a night sky with the moon—or was it the sun?—glowing trapped within the loose cage of its branches. It shone with a radiant corona that should have been impossible to depict in paint, framing a huge fruit-like rind that hung from a stout branch. A humanoid shadow was visible through the skin of the fruit, which was partly enfolded by the tree’s branches just like the way a woman would embrace her own pregnant belly. The figure within was poised like a dancer in mid-air, hands lifted, hair flung up in an arc.
I pulled off a glove, blew on my hand until my fingers were dry, and reached out to stroke the image, tasting the crisp rasp of parchment under skin. I’d heard the book was beautiful, but beauty wasn’t all I could appreciate. I felt like I was looking back on a photo of a time long past, of seeing something ancient and non-human rendered by human hands. It was as if Jung had painted something that was not actually from him, something that didn’t belong to any of us... and with that, a new gravity settled over my shoulders. I didn’t fully understand the implications of the Fruit being here in New York, but Jana had wanted it enough to torture men to death for it. She had been working for someone, someone who had given her tacit approval to move heaven and earth for this thing. What if they got it? And if the Manellis had it, what would they use it for? It was only a matter of time until they figured that out. And then, what? Would there even be a New York to come back to, if Carmine was able to utilize the power of this primordial artifact?
And as I wondered, I had to ask myself: was I any better than he? A year ago—hell, a week ago—I probably wouldn’t have wanted this sort of power for my own ends. But my first thought had been to attack the men who threatened and insulted me, to bring magic to bear on them. If there had been anything left in me - anything at all - I'd have set the VIP suite alight and burned myself with them out of spite. What would happen if someone like me harnessed the kind of magical power that Jana and Yuri had hinted at?
My eyes burned with fatigue. There was no way I was going to make it to Mariya's. I fed Binah and went to bed. I slept a deep, dreamless sleep, and when I rose in the evening, I drove straight to my adopted sister's place. Her car was in the lot next to Vassily’s. I took the steel steps up the back of the building to her door, fist lifted to knock—except the door was already open and, where there had been a lock, there was only a blasted, gaping hole.
The world contracted into a small square of focus. My eyes throbbed. No. No one knew where Mariya lived… no one knew Vassily was there. Surely not. Acid rose in my throat. I reached back and drew my gun. “Mariya!? Vassily!”
No one answered me. I pressed the door in, the gun raised, and was greeted only by the smell of rotting meat.
I stepped inside, numb with disbelief, and looked around. The living room was trashed. A small cloud of flies had gathered in a lazy procession near the unmoving ceiling fan. Other than their hum, there was no sound. The kitchen was laid out for snacks: crackers, cream cheese, a pitcher of blended juice that had separated in the heat of the day. I sniffed it. Apples, carrots, and beets, with the fizzy tang of early fermentation. That meant it had been sitting here all day… while I was sleeping.
I turned from the living room. My face tingled as I half-ran, half-stumbled to Mariya’s room. Neither she nor Vassily were there, but the place was torn up, littered with broken glass and bloodstained sheets. The next door I threw open was the bathroom.
She had been in the shower. The vase she kept on the windowsill was smashed across the floor, blue plastic poppies and daisies flung in a spray over the wet tiles. Mariya had fallen against the back wall. Someone had turned the water off: the tiles were painted with dried gore. Her eyes were wide, fixed and empty. Even in death, she looked surprised.
“Mariya.” Fingers hovering, mouth dry, I was paralyzed in front of her. The tall, commonsense woman who’d raised us, the closest thing we’d had to a mother. Dead.
It took every ounce of restraint I had not to touch her. Instead, I clutched at myself, struggling with waves of agony that wracked my body and twisted my hands into painful claws. The color seemed to drain from the room, while denial beat at me, and then, grief. Horror. Rage. I didn’t want to search the rest of the house, look into the other two bedrooms. I didn’t want to find Vassily there.
Heaving, shuddering, I wrenched myself from the doorway into a forced march. Fear doesn’t change reality, I silently chanted to myself. Fear doesn’t change reality, and it never would. If Vassily was in there, he’d be dead whether I saw him or not.
My feet were heavy, but I was becoming numb to the smell of death. Rage was overwhelming despair. I didn’t want a gun in my hands: I wanted a drill, a saw. Weapons of horror
and torture. Revenge was something I could fixate on, and it was the certainty of cold, bloody revenge that drove me on to throw open the next door, and the next.
Every room was empty and clean. It was almost worse than just finding the body.
Vassily hadn’t called. Hadn’t raised an alarm, nothing, and the scene was cold. I went back to Mariya’s bedroom and scanned it a second time, this time for the small details I might have missed. The bed was a mess: there was blood on the carpet, but not enough for a death. The dresser had been tipped over, a lamp thrown… and a white envelope had been set down, almost invisible against the tumbled pillows at the head of the bed.
I ripped the top off the envelope and unfolded the note inside. It was rough, a small slip torn off from a piece of plain copy paper. “We know who this guy is. Bring Vincent. Crows Mill Rd Woodbridge T.Ship TransCorp parking lot 3am 8/16 or we kill him and send the tape.”
The hand was blocky, rough and practical, flat-bottomed, the handwriting of a killer. I stared at the paper, turned it over, and then held it up to the light. No fingerprints, and I’d bet no hairs or trace evidence would be found. The gun that had been used to kill Mariya was long gone.
In the pictures, the world’s gas men—whether they be Mafia or Organizatsiya or Cartel—are always sparing the women and kids. That was another Hollywood fantasy. As far as the average killer was concerned, women and children were just collateral. The guy who did this didn’t know what kind of person my adopted sister had been. He didn't care. She was in the way.
Horror dawned as the involuntary memory of myself, staring down at Semyon, filtered back into my memory. “We always have choice,” I said. What choice did Mariya have? What decision had she made, that lead her to die like this? The decision to take care of me, all those years ago? To take her coke-addled baby brother, and nurse him back to health?
Good GOD. What the hell had I done?
What the hell had we done, all of us?
My hands were shaking as I folded the note and put it in my pocket. Then, I holstered my gun and straightened my shirt, making my way out of the house, down to my car. The gray humid sky beat down on the back of my neck. It was going to storm, and the whole parking lot smelled dead. I turned on the air conditioner and found myself unable to move.
I had no one I could call for help. Not a single one of those fuckers in the Organizatsiya. Even if Nic hadn’t set this up—and I wasn’t sure if he had or not—he’d still be happy to know that Vassily was gone. I didn’t want to try Lev—he’d been there, listening to Sergei chew me out. He hadn’t joined in, and had even tried to help in his own way, but he hadn’t disagreed. Maybe it's just because Sergei was right. I was weak, at least compared to him and Carmine. But if there's one standout in all the things that piss me off... it's betrayal.
“I don’t want to do this,” I said aloud. “I don’t want to be like them. I don’t.”
But Kutkha didn’t have to descend from on high and tell me what I already knew. Vassily’s mother and father died for the Organizatsiya. Syoma Lovenko had stolen a transport plane from Vladivostok and flown it to Japan to escape the Soviet Union and used the proceeds to buy his wife, eldest son, and widowed mother through the Iron Curtain, like some kind of fucking superhero. We lost them both to a plane crash, and Sergei didn't shed a damn tear at their funeral. Syoma Junior had died soon after arriving here, suicide by cop. Antoni, the second eldest and first born in America, died in prison after being arrested for his work in the protection racket. Lyosha died in a firefight. Then, there was my own family. My mother, the gentle pianist, a Jewish girl completely unprepared for life with my father, was a distant mystery even to me. When I tried to remember the circumstances of her death, there was nothing but the deep black. No one had ever told me her story. No one had ever bothered to find her out.
Just because Sergei and the Organizatsiya had furnished my cage didn’t make it any less of a cage. Even if I let Vassily die, consigned him to his fate and the Fruit with him, what the hell was I going to do? Go to Thailand and train locals to deal drugs, protect gambling rackets, and raid villages for their children? The cold certainty of the action I needed to take fell across my mind like a shroud. Without a word spoken between my Neshamah and me, we were in instant agreement. I turned the engine, backed out of the lot, and drove the short distance home.
Binah was meowing at the door as I fumbled with my keys. She leaped into my arms from the floor as I went inside, scrabbling around my face until she hung over my shoulder. I let her stay there while I got the tools I needed. Rope, chloroform, a clean kitchen rag. When it was time to go, I set her down in the kitchen and rubbed her ears. She watched me with her big silver eyes while I filled up two bowls of chow and a big dish of water, and left the window ajar. It wouldn't be too easy for her to open it up, but if I didn’t come home, she had enough time to figure her way outside. If she had a bit of me in her, she'd do alright out there in the city as long as she could stay ahead of the pound.
I emerged into a brooding summer wind. The change had come and turned the sky dark, and the storm wind whipped the collar of my shirt with gusts of salty, metallic-smelling air. I set my tools down on the passenger seat and made a token effort at concealment with the towel. The trunk of my car was always lined with fresh garden plastic for occasions like this. Kidnappings, body transport, scene cleanup… the hardware store carried all the things any gas man needed for his day-to-day business.
The safe house on 14b Grove Street was deliberately unassuming, indistinguishable from the many small row houses that crowded this part of Brooklyn. I parked outside in the No Standing zone, the closest place to the door. No one was outside. I carried my pistol down low, out of sight, and knocked with the other fist. My hands were sweating in my gloves, but my mind was ticking over like a slick engine while I ran through the many variables this snatch-and-run likely entailed. Vincent would have two guys guarding him here. They usually used a girl to answer the door, but this time, no one answered. I rapped the door again, twitchy, and looked up and down the cracked asphalt of the street. Crows called lustily out towards the rising moon, but there was no warning amongst them, no agitation. No one answered this time, either, so I holstered my gun and tried the door. Naturally, it was unlocked.
Cautiously, I slunk into the entry and down the narrow hall. Two guys I recognized from the AEROMOR Dockers Union were crumpled on the floor of the living room, handcuffed to the radiator. A golf club had been thrown carelessly from them, not far away. I crouched to look at them: they were both breathing, but one guy’s hair was matted with blood. When I pushed it back, I found a lump the size of a tennis ball.
A notebook had been left in the middle of the rumpled sofa bed, a comp book just like the one I’d found at Vincent’s house. I thumbed it open at a dog-eared page and read through it without expression.
“I know he’s coming for me no matter what. I spent too long fighting to become who I am, and I’m not gonna lose it all on my family’s altar. Count me out. I'd rather get fucked in the ass than stay on this sinking ship. Carmine doesn’t have a reason to chase me anymore. Sorry.”
I threw it before I realized I’d done it. The book hit the wall with a sharp bang and bounced to land on one of the muzhiki. He groaned, shifting on the floor as I stalked out, slamming the front door behind me on the way to the car.
There was only one option left to me.
If I added driving time, I had two and a half hours to spare before I needed to be at Woodbridge. At home, I shaved, changed clothes, and added weapons more easily concealed to my outfit. A garrote, knives. I kept the gun—they’d take it off me, and that was fine. I considered Kevlar but decided against it. I ate a bowl of kasha, the universal comfort food of Eastern Europe, and spent half an hour in meditation. And then I left my home again, for the last time, driving towards the ocean with a cold heart and a hot stomach. My mind was buzzing and blank as I passed through the tollway and burst across the bridge towards New Jersey
.
When I pulled into the lot where the exchange was meant to take place, I still had forty-five minutes to spare. A single pickup was waiting for me. He flashed his lights, and I flashed mine and then turned the engine off. The pickup door opened, and my chest knotted and braced, muscles armoring with tension. It wasn’t a go-between that stepped out: it was Vassily, clambering down and shuffling out from the side of the car with a grimace of pain. From where I sat, I couldn’t see the driver.
I wasn’t incautious enough to open the door, so instead, I rolled the window halfway as Vassily approached. He looked exhausted, his eyes ringed by huge bruises, his skin clammy and pale. He had a new gunshot injury, a torn sleeve where a bullet had skimmed him. Otherwise, he looked remarkably normal for a man who had been kidnapped after the brutal murder of his sister.
“I knew you’d come.” The relief was plain in his voice. “Where’s Vincent? The driver says I can walk if you send him out across the lot.”
“Vincent ran.” My tongue felt heavy in my mouth. “He's not a Wise Virgin any more, but you need to tell them that I can do it. I’m what they need. I’ll trade myself if they let you drive away.”
Vassily nodded, as if in a daze. He straightened, swayed, then turned and limped his way back across the lot. I watched his slightly bowlegged swagger from behind, drew my gun under the shelter of the dash, and prayed to God, or GOD, that my aim was true.
Vassily leaned across the seat and spoke to the unseen driver in the cab. He couldn’t be the only one there, watching the trade take place. I looked around through my windshield and windows but couldn’t pick out anything in the gloom. As the conversation dragged on, I found myself wondering: was Vassily complying so readily because he had a backup plan or because deep down, he was as mercenary as every other gangster in New York?
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