Chapter Twenty-Two
In which the past starts to catch up with Alec.
Lancashire, the Lee Ville / Davies server farm building site…
Standing over the pit, looking down into a bit of a nightmare, Bob Dobbins, Lee Ville’s handpicked foreman sent all the way from Saugus, MA to run things, was glad the workers were mostly gone. He waved off the few men who had remained, ignoring the fire suppressant equipment they had carried.
The fire had put itself out almost immediately, thanks to how wet the sticky black ground was in the area and the steady rain that had been pissing down on them since the whole rotten project had started.
Most of the crew had never returned after running for their lives from the smallish explosion that had scooped out a large portion of the only almost completed structure on the build.
“I still think we should call emergency services,” one of the local men working on the build, whose name Bob hadn’t bothered to learn, called out to him.
“No one was hurt, right?” Bob didn’t bother to look at the man, but rather kept his eyes on the pit, as if waiting for what he was looking at to change. Or to disappear. Or to prove it was a figment of his overworked brain.
“It's a fucking miracle.”
“Then let's not question the ways of the Lord. The rest of you take off. Take tomorrow. Take the day after. With pay.We all need a rest. Send Elkins over before you go,” he added, never looking up. He needed his chief of security, also an old hand on Lee’s projects, though not one that Bob had worked with previously. Lee had said Elkins was a “difficulty” specialist, whatever that meant.
Hell, he needed a fucking drink.
There were soft, English grumbles from the remaining workers but no one was going to argue with paid days off and they were gone in moments.
The explosion had been the infamous final straw after a series of construction mishaps that had plagued the build for weeks. Ever since the Davies side of the collaboration had stepped away from the project, leaving Lee Ville to run things as he liked. Which was too fast and on the cheap.
Supplies that were not up to spec led to collapses of walls and electrical fires. Shifts being extended to the point where the work that was done by the exhausted crews often had to be started over from scratch by the next crew, putting them further behind than they would have been if they hadn’t been pushed into longer hours in the first place. Smaller issues caused contracts broken with local businesses in order to work with more ‘economical’ suppliers from overseas had meant they were working around delays of needed parts and equipment.
For the first time the work site was quiet and there was a soft, cheeping birdsong that could be heard, that had been suffocated by the sounds of the machines and the earth being moved.It came closer and the tiny bird that produced it landed on one of the tumbled down bits of wall next to the pit, cocking its head side to side.
Another bird joined the first, and then a third. A little choir in a broken church.
It was kind of pretty .
Bob knew how cheaply - he would say efficiently - Lee liked things run, even by those standards the project had devolved into chaos. Normally the things they built didn’t start to glitch and fall apart until after they were done building them. But something about this site, about the whole project, had gotten into Lee’s head in a way that was driving him from being greedy to being erratic or worse.
And now…
“You wanted me, Dobbins?”
Elkins appeared at Bob’s side, startling him so badly that he almost pitched headfirst into the pit.
At least he wouldn’t be lonely down there.
Unlike most of the Lee Ville security Bob had worked with, Elkins wasn’t a big ex-cop with uniform, a bit of a belly, and a touch of jaded swagger. Elkins was tall and slender, always dressed in an impeccable suit of undertaker black, his light brown face expressionless, his deep voice not merely calm, but sounding as if he’d had all of his emotions surgically removed.
More than any of that, there was just some intangible thing about Elkins that made Dobbins - hell, the whole crew - feel like a monkey who knew there was a massive snake nearby that they couldn’t see but could sense.
Bob started to make a little speech. About his loyalty to both the company and to Lee personally. About how he was a person who could keep secrets. About how he had been keeping secrets for years. But that he had always thought that knowing where the bodies were buried was a metaphor.
Instead, he just pointed downward.
Hands behind his back, Elkins leaned forward. “Hmmm. Dobbins? Go back to town, I’ll call you when I need you.” He turned his head and looked at Bob.
Bob nodded. But he wasn’t going back to town. He was going back to Saugus. He was changing his name, his wife’s name, and their kids’ names. He was moving to Alaska. He was running and would be happy to keep running because he had a feeling the only reason he wasn’t joining the bodies in that hole in the ground right then was that Elkins wanted to talk to Lee first.
James Elkins took photos of the bodies as a group and then individually, climbing carefully down into the pit to ensure picture quality.After, back out of the hole, he used a very highly placed connection from his days as a fixer for a cartel in Albania cross-referenced with another former coworker in Sydney and was able to identify the two men whose faces were still mostly intact.
All of this happened in less than fifteen minutes. James, despite a lack of ego, did take a certain amount of pride in being the sort of person that no one in their right mind would ever keep waiting. That, in fact, most people would happily move past the speed of light to do whatever he asked so that they could get away from him as quickly as possible.
After confirming his intel with a quick check-in with a reporter who was an expert in Italian crime families, James sent the images and his information to Lee Ville.
Moments later, he received a call back. An excited babble of words, half in a bad version of a Texas accent, the rest in a tense but more natural Boston Brahmin one, fell out of his phone. After he let Mr. Ville wear himself down, he responded.
“Yes, sir.I agree. I think this is just the opportunity we have been hoping for. I am reasonably confident that soon Mr. Davies won’t be our problem any longer.”
After listening to Mr. Ville’s triumph for a few moments more, James prepared to sign off, then added, “Also, I think it would be best if I terminated Mr. Dobbins’ contract… Of course, very qu ick, sir.”
Fiadh…
Dmytro Kovalenko was one of a type of criminal Ihad dealt with many times and always enjoyed my association with.He was a throwback, a pirate at heart who would rather be raiding forts, firing blunderbusses, and finding secret islands and lost coves, yet had, in a very practical Ukrainian way, accepted his fate of being born into an era of satellite tracking and identity theft. I was certain he knew my friend Viktoria, which I planned on confirming as soon as I could.
He had arrived at the Davies Family Ziggurat somewhere before dawn, with a bottle of cheap, black rum and a worried look on his face, banging on the door and shouting in Ukrainian, a language that I knew all but none of, though I could recognize.
Apparently Alec knew enough and recognised the voice, so rather than pulling a gun and going down to shoot whoever was making the ruckus, he had rubbed his face hard, and told me to stay in bed whilst pulling on the designer jeans and henley (yes, there are such things as designer henleys, costing hundreds of euros, fuck my life) we’d left on the floor earlier.
His revelation, his choice to share with me a thing he didn’t have to, a story that was clearly choking the life out of him, had led us to bed and to an act that was closer to love-making than either of our cold hearts had probably come before.Afterwards we lay in each other’s arms and spoke about inconsequential things. Our favorite books and snacks, what we liked to do on a quiet Sunday morning, the first bands we’d ever followed as if it were religion, ending up falling asleep in a comfortable knot of limbs.
I gave him a minute's lead before ignoring him and getting dressed myself.
From the stairs I could see and hear him speaking Ukrainian, trying to calm down a man who looked like he had a bear somewhere in his 23&Me profile.
“What’s the rumpus, then?” I asked, not ashamed to be nosy even if it wasn't always the safest way to live.
“I thought I told you to stay in bed,” Alec frowned at me, even as the other man pulled his features into a charming smile.
“We’ve clearly not met if you think you have a say over anything I do.My name is Fiadh Cassidy,” I said to Alec, putting out my hand to shake.
He ignored it with a scowl, whilst the man I was assuming was a friend or at least a close ally, stepped forward.
“Alec, yakyy u tebe mylyy hist, how lovely you are ,” he said over his shoulder, before taking my hand and bowing over it. “Pardon the interruption, Madam Cassidy, I am afraid it couldn’t wait until a more civilized hour.”
Before he could plant a kiss on the back of my hand, Alec busted between the two of us, unlinking our hands in the process, whilst walking towards the kitchen, “I need a cappuccino or five, and you can probably use one, too, Dmytro, if you’ve been drinking that sweetened paint thinner all night. I don’t suppose I can keep you away, short of violence, can I?” he asked me rhetorically so I didn’t bother to respond.
The only thing in the kitchen that Alec knew how to use was the massive, vintage brass espresso machine that had its own counter and a specialist that came over from Milan once a month to give it tune up and cleaning.
God save us from the rich.
It did make a very fine coffee, though.
We sat about the kitchen table, a piece of furniture Alec had never used himself before I came to stay with him, each with a steaming cup. Dmytro doctored his with rum, gesturing to each of us with the bottle .
I took a tot and was a bit surprised when Alec said no, based on the story we’d heard from Kovalenko whilst he had been making his caffeinated magic.It was enough to make an angel do a shot and the good Lord knew that Alec was certainly from the other place.
It was the story of a legitimate businessman - whatever the fuck that might be - who had been trying to make contact with the darkest part of the organized crime world for several weeks but had been having little luck. He wanted to outsource a bit of murder that needed to not look like a murder, since when he’d tried using his own people for the job they had fucked up it good and hard.
Our ol’ friend Leevil stank to high heaven of being chaotic and more trouble than he was worth. Even members of the filthiest, evilest, or most desperate criminal organizations out there would have nothing to do with him. Hell, even the Graham family from Greenock who were properly terrifying and would do just about anything for the price of a case of Irn Bru and a carton of smokes shook him off.
Which was why it had been a right shock to the criminal underworld to find out that the Bonadonna family of Sicily had taken up his contract. The rumor mill - criminals talked too much, a problem I had in my organization as well, especially with the Scottish twins - also implied that they would be coming for Alec soon. And were doing the work at a bargain basement price, as well.
That last bit had caused a sourly offended look to cross Alec’s face, which had been blank up until then. He sipped his coffee, breathing hard through his nose like he was a wolf, scenting where hunters might be coming from.
“Why would they be doing that, then? Are they some up and comers trying to make a name by taking out a bigwig in the UK?” I asked.
Dmytro shook his head, but before he could answer Alec spoke. “No, the Bonadonnas are an old crime family, small but successful. They are famous for wet work and make most of their fortune by using their family port to smuggle in illegals.People coming by way of North Africa who think they are paying for a way into a better life but who are then sold into what is basically modern slavery by the Bonas. Lots of other mafias, cartels, hell, even call center operators, supply their labor needs that way. It is especially useful for people making money in industries that are dangerous to the employees making their goods.”
Salty spit flooded my mouth as my stomach roiled at the idea of what was the fate of those poor, probably starving, people simply hoping for a small chance to have a proper kind of life.
“Does Lee Ville buy from them?” I asked. It didn’t seem like the moment for cute nicknames.
Alec shook his head. “No, that would have shown up when my people investigated his corporate practices. He’s a sickening bastard, but it would be business suicide to do that sort of thing. Having a thin sugar coating of respectability and paying lip service to unions and local governments by making jobs for those local economies makes it easier to work and do as he wants in whatever area he is building in.”
Hooray for Lee, the sweetheart. Though even I had to admit that a horrible job you could quit was better than a deadly job that you couldn’t.
“If they don’t have a previous relationship then why would this Bonadonna family work with him?He doesn’t strike me as being good for their business.”
“The bodies, of course.” Dmytro was filling his now empty cup to the brim with rum.
“What bodies? ”
“Dmy-”
Before Alec could cut him off, Dmytro said, “Your Mr. Ville found the bodies of the Bonadonna soldiers that Alec buried at the work site, and someone who works for him was smart enough to know who they were.”
Now I was going to be sick.
“Your server farm.”
The tension between Alec and me was like an entire wall had been built between us.
“Dmytro, would you give us the room?”
“Ah. I cause trouble when I meant to help a friend. Sorry, Alec. I need to get back to my crew, anyway. I’ll send word if I find out more.” Then Kovalenko emptied his cup. “Miss Cassidy, meeting you has made this cold morning warm.”
Then he tousled Alec’s hair, which he was distracted enough to allow, and let himself out.
We were silent for a long time, staring at each other. Magda came in, saw us, and backed out. Then Noreen did the same. I can only imagine what the energy of the place was if it scared Satan’s Little Princess out of the room.
“What do you want me to say?” Alec finally asked.
“Nothing. I knew who and what you were from the start. I guess I am wondering who you might be now.”
He kept looking at me, those great green eyes of his impenetrable, beautiful and chilly. I wanted him to speak, wanted some enchanting, captivating magic to come from him that would make me forget that he was my enemy. The enemy of everything that I thought was vital to the world and the people in it.
Which was why I knew I loved him. Because I knew those words, those lies, existed, and I was willing to hear them.
Respect, though, he stayed silent.
I stood, the scrape of the chair on that marble floor so loud in the quiet. “I had best be getting back to the farm. Da’ll be missing Noreen, and I have yet to explain my deplorable taste to Grandad. See you later, Godking.”
He let me get all the way to the bedroom I was using and halfway packed before he stopped me.