Chapter 8
NICO
Marco is in the back room when I come down the back stairs.
He has not slept. Fresh ink on his knuckles. A second shirt already on his chair. Izzy is at her laptop, the mug at her elbow refilled four times.
She turns it toward me before I ask.
“Houston,” she says.
I look.
The third man. The one I asked her to bring me before Friday. Today is Thursday.
Airport footage. Houston international, the terminal exit. Walking through with a duffel and a phone he is going to throw out in the parking lot. The face that has not been on any Bratva payroll in years.
Lebedev asked questions at the port. This one doesn’t ask.
“Yuri Sokolov,” Izzy says. “Velikov network’s wet-work specialist. He retired in 2014. He has not been on a flight manifest in three and a half years. Today he flew Moscow to Frankfurt to Houston on a Canadian passport that was printed in March.”
“He’s not here to ask.”
“He’s here to take.”
Marco looks up from his comms board for the first time since I walked in. “Dante’s been told.”
“Casa Lucia.”
“Closed for the day,” Marco says. “Cassia made the call ninety minutes ago. The therapist who runs Tuesday group is at the satellite property in Algiers. The clinic is running on skeleton perimeter only.”
“Then why is Mila on the drive sheet.”
“She isn’t,” Marco says. “Cassia handled it. Maria walks her down. You drive her to the Algiers property. Forty minutes there, the group, forty minutes back. Sofia in the back. Same route until Magazine Street, new route from there. Two cars.”
“You ran this past Dante.”
“He ran it past me.”
Izzy doesn’t look up. “Sokolov is in a hotel by the airport. He has not moved in six hours. We have eyes. If he moves, you get the call before he is on the highway.”
“Good. Thank you, Izzy.”
I pick up the keys off the table.
“Nico.”
I look at her.
“He didn’t get on that plane to ask three more questions at the port.”
“I know.”
“You should tell her.”
“Not today.”
“Nico.”
“Iz. Not today.”
She does not push. She goes back to her screen.
I walk out with the keys.
The Algiers property looks like a clinic. Casa Lucia looks like a house.
I wait in the SUV in the back lot with the engine off and the window cracked.
The sun comes through the leaves at a late-afternoon angle, and the heat is something you can taste.
Cicadas in the live oak above the car. The pistol under the dashboard sits where it always sits. I am not thinking about it.
I am thinking about it.
Then a door at the side of the building opens. Sofia comes out first with her notebook against her chest. Mila comes out behind her.
I do not get out. Sofia opens the back door for herself and Mila opens the front passenger door for herself. She gets in and pulls it closed behind her, the same way she has since the first drive, without looking at me.
There is an empty paper cup on the floor between her feet that was not in the car this morning. She kept it.
A corner of folded paper sticks out of her sweater pocket.
I do not mention either.
I put the SUV in drive.
We pull out of the lot.
Magazine Street goes wrong at the second light. Marco’s new route. I take a left I would not normally take. River smell when the wind shifts. The dahlias on the corner of Audubon. I have driven this street for years. The streetcar tracks know me. I do not have to think about the route.
Her eyes stay open, fixed on something past the road, not on me. Today her body is awake under the stillness, and I can feel the charge of it from the driver’s seat without once looking over.
The first sign is at Napoleon.
Her knees, which have been angled exactly half an inch toward the gearshift since we left, do not move. The pause is what’s new. Last drive she angled them and held still. This drive she has held the position longer.
The second sign is at Louisiana.
Her hand, which has been on her thigh in a fist since we got in the car, opens slow. The fingers spread.
I keep driving and do not look.
The third sign is at the light before the Pontchartrain.
Her hand lifts off her thigh.
I do not know what is going to land. I do not let myself guess.
The shoulder check. The mirrors. The sedan behind us, one of ours.
The Algiers Bratva property to my right we have been watching for months.
The route home and the contingencies for it going bad.
The pistol under the dashboard. The other pistol in the door.
The light goes green.
Her hand lands light.
The pads of her fingers on my right forearm where the sleeve has been pushed up to my elbow since I started the car.
Her fingers are cool against my skin, the heel of her palm just above my wrist, just below the watch, and the sedan and the route and the man in Houston and both pistols fall back to the edge of the cabin.
The blood drops out of my head and goes south. I am hard against the seam of my slacks.
Madonna.
Two fingertips and a thumb on bare forearm and I am gone.
The SUV drifts two inches before my hands find the lane.
My foot is on the gas and I do not remember pressing it. The SUV is already moving.
I keep my arm still under her hand. I keep my eyes on the road. I drive.
She does not take her hand back.
I do not know which exit I am supposed to take.
I have been driving this route for months and I cannot remember which exit I am supposed to take. The street signs are in a language I read three of and they have stopped being any of the three. My hands take the exit. I do not know why. I let them.
She does not take her hand back and her fingers do not move. Her hand is on me, nothing more. She does not press or squeeze or stroke.
I keep my foot on the gas. My eyes on the road. I do not look at her or at her hand. I do not do any of the things I want to do.
The sedan behind us peels off at the bridge. The civilian sedan picks us up two blocks later. The route holds.
The gate of the compound comes up at the end of the next mile.
The guard waves us through without looking. The gate closes behind us.
The SUV stops at the front door.
She lifts her hand, opens her door, and gets out, Sofia behind her with the notebook against her chest. She doesn’t look back. She walks to the front door of the compound and the two of them disappear into the house.
The door closes.
The skin where her fingers were is still warm. I look at my own forearm. I want her hand back. It is going to stay warm for a long time.
I sit with the engine still running. The cicadas are loud through the cracked window. The shadow of the magnolia branch on the dashboard shifts a finger-width, then another, and the light bleeds from gold to a deeper gold. The cicadas change pitch.
I have not moved. My hand is on the gearshift where it always sits, and the plastic is warmer than it should be. That is the sun. The shadow shifts again and the light moves with it.
I put the SUV in park and turn off the engine, but I cannot make myself open the door. I sit with the cicadas going and the sun bleeding orange across the dashboard, my hand still on the gearshift.
By now she is upstairs with the door closed and the wall at her back, the same as after every drive.
She is in there. All right.
I get out of the SUV, close the door, and walk into the house.