Chapter 34 When You Learn to Swim
When You Learn to Swim
Ihad his number dialed with my finger hovering over the call button.
I spent the night shaking, crying, and dialing Elena’s home phone countless times without ever sending it through. I called Mama, and we talked for a while—she calmed me down even at a late hour. Still, she kept telling me to ‘ask Vitali, ask Vitali’ because she thought he could do anything too.
Vitali wasn’t due back for two days. More, if another flower delivery came.
That’s why I didn’t think, and did something I would later regret.
I pressed the call button.
It rang.
“Katya,” Misha said flatly. Greeting, question, and swear word all at once.
“Mish, I’m sorry to call so early…”
“Everything alright?”
“No,” I squeaked, and then inhaled sharply, trying to keep it together. “Listen, can you find people? Missing people?”
The other end of the line remained completely silent.
“Misha?”
“I don’t know, Katya. That’s not something you should mess with. When people disappear, it’s not usually a happy ending.”
“Please…” I was desperate and not afraid to admit it.
This was Elena. And, if I were being honest, it was also my guilt because a lot of time had gone by, and I hardly noticed her absence.
Not only did that make me a terrible friend, but a terrible person too—I’d known she wasn’t doing well, but much like everything else, it was easier to be blind. “Please, Misha.”
The phone scratched with a deep sigh.
“I swear I spend more time on you than anyone I actually fuck. This is why I pay girls. I’ve got a busy day, but if you can be ready in an hour, I’ll be in the neighborhood. Two rules—you aren’t allowed to complain, and you’re not going to tell Vitali.”
I’d have to figure out who I was lying to later. “Alright. Where are we going?”
“To see the only person who can help you. You’re going to ask Sergei.”
I didn’t want to see Sergei. Even at the time, I knew it was a mistake, but my heart was breaking, and the notion that I could do something for Elena wouldn’t leave my mind.
He picked me up within the hour, so I didn’t have time to regret my decisions until later.
“I’m not about to question who you’re looking for, and you’re not going to tell me,” he warned. “It’s none of my business unless Sergei makes it my business.”
“Not Vitali?”
He chewed on the ever-present cigarette in his mouth. “I don’t work with Vitali anymore.”
Oh.
“Why?” A stupid question, considering the last few days, but we were speeding through the streets with nothing to look at but sad, gray buildings, and any distraction was a good distraction.
“I’ve told you before. I don’t like to shoot. If things come up, alright. I’m a team player, but Team Vitali has been a bit much lately.”
“Because of…” I cleared my throat. “Me?”
“Don’t think yourself so important. There was some personal business, sure.
But Sergei wants the Chechens gone, and that’s not looking pretty.
Vitali has been refusing jobs out of the country—because of you, and yes, that part is your fault—so he’s being repurposed.
But stuff’s brewing with or without him, so I moved to collections duty. Want to know something funny?”
It wasn’t going to be funny, but I nodded anyway.
“This whole thing has been happening for a while, he and Musa both fight dirty, and—”
“Who is Musa?”
“Blyad, if you’re going to interrupt, I’m making another rule for the car. Musa is the Chechen Bratva’s Sergei. They’ve been mildly petty, but since the war ended, things have gotten more heated. Then, Sergei decides to light sparklers at Elit and offs Musa’s oldest—Dmitri.”
We made a great buddy-cop comedy duo, because he was right, that was sooo funny.
Wait…
Alright. There was more than one Dmitri in the world.
But there wasn’t. I didn’t see him at Elit, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there.
I definitely saw Lyosha.
Misha glanced at me, noting the pause. “Some of the showy ones take on Russian names so more social clubs are open to them, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Elena knew Dmitri…”
“I swear to Christ, Katya. Now you don’t get to hear the funny part. Hang on…”
He slowed, the full whites of his eyes showing underneath the heavy brows—staring. A police car had pulled over a green Moskovich on the side of the road, and the driver was outside, standing between a policeman and the trunk. The other officer was pacing with a phone to his ear.
“Sykin son…” Misha muttered and grabbed his cell, dialing impressively fast with just his thumb. It only rang once. I couldn’t hear who was on the other end. “Ey, one of ours?”
He read off the Moskovich’s license plate, then listened.
The driver spread his hands defensively, and the policeman shouted.
“Aha,” Misha said, and hung up.
The officer’s back was to the pale-yellow, Soviet-era-painted building with bare, frosted birch branches arching overhead.
Small birds hopped to and fro across them, and flew off all at once when Misha’s gunshot knocked the cellphone out of his hands and took half his face with it.
The next came just as suddenly, taking the second policeman down.
Our car was moving before his body hit the snow, and I didn’t want to look in the side mirror because there was nothing good back there.
“I suppose that means ‘one of yours?’” I said quietly.
“Rule one.”
“Right.”
“Anyway, Sergei bought Elit so Musa couldn’t go and pay his respects.”
“Was that the funny part?”
“Supposed to be, but you ruined it.”
We made two more stops, and I waited in the car while Misha ducked in and out of shops, the plastic bag in his hands getting heavier and heavier.
Stacks of money greeted me when I peeked inside.
There was something comical about him using a bag with a cartoon dog on the side to do his ‘collections.’
When we finally pulled up to our destination, I had a baggie of fried chicken and a bottle of Pepsi in my lap, and just enough patience left to revisit why I’d come as we made our way down a foul-smelling staircase into a basement set of apartments.
This visit wasn’t nearly as official, but Sergei still knew I was coming.
He just didn’t deem the appointment worthy of putting on real clothes.
So, my reception with a crime mogul featured a stained wife-beater and over-tight Adidas stuffed in a chair at a paisley kitchen table.
No sign of the two families he supposedly had hidden away somewhere.
I set the chicken down as a peace offering, but kept the Pepsi because I didn’t want him deciding I needed more juice. The only person who could tell me what to drink was Vitali.
There had to be a mental illness connecting that thought to the shiver between my legs.
“Long time no see, Katya,” Sergei greeted me. “And how are you doing? How is the family?”
“Doing well,” I said, and Misha nudged me to sit down. To my relief, he didn’t leave me alone and plopped down on the chair to my right.
“Ah, good, good. I was a bit worried about you for a minute. I heard what happened. Your bruises are healing nicely.”
“Thank you, I’m fine, really.”
“Wrong place, wrong time, isn’t that what they say?” He inspected the chicken, then took a loud, soggy bite, and didn’t bother to finish chewing before he said, “What can I do for you?”
“No one has seen my friend in three weeks, and I know you have resources to find things out,” I started, “so I wanted to ask if there was anything you could do to help me?”
“Mrrpf…” He chewed, ending with a slurp of fat. “You’re not asking Vitali? I’d think repayment is a bit more… worked out between the two of you.”
“He’s gone, and I just found out.”
“A hurrying broad is a laughing stock, Katya,” he said. “Ever hear that saying? I don’t entertain requests.”
“Misha said—”
“If Misha wants to ask around, he can ask around.”
Misha made it clear that he did not, in fact, want to ask around with a throaty grunt.
“What’s her name?” Sergei asked. “I know it’s not a ‘he’ because Vitali would be the one who’d make ‘em disappear!” He laughed, looking to Misha, who gave exactly three polite, unenthusiastic chuckles.
“Elena Olegova, she’s my age. Blond, pretty.”
“Pretty isn’t good for disappearances,” he said. “Life is easier for ‘pretty’ until it isn’t. She mixed up with anyone?”
After what Misha said about Dmitri, I wasn’t so sure how much I could safely divulge. The rules weren’t clear about sides, and she did mention her ‘lovers’ telling her secrets… Sergei might have been the one who’d taken her. That should have occurred to me sooner.
Oh, I was such an idiot. Dumb Katya. Should have waited for Vitali, didn’t, and now I had to watch the toad-man gobble fried chicken in bare-lightbulb lighting of a basement kitchen, and think of a way to leave.
“She had friends with money, but I haven’t talked to her in a long time, and I don’t know who she kept in contact with.”
“Friends with money,” he repeated. “Misha, do we have friends with money who like pretty blonds?”
“Almost all of them.”
“Maybe you can ask around, see if anyone has seen an Elena. Now, what do I get out of these inquiries, Katya?”
Not a place in heaven, that’s for sure.
I hadn’t actually thought of what I had to give him…
“I can pay?”
He snorted, bits of food at the corners of his mouth dislodging onto his shirt. This time, Misha laughed too.
“You can pay me out of my own accounts, you mean?” Sergei hooted. “Where do you think Vitali’s money comes from if not out of the Fund? I know you’re not strutting the streets with your narrow hips and pulling in the cash.”
My hips weren’t that narrow… were they narrow?
I looked down.
“Alright, Katya. Since you’re part of the family and all, I’ll give you the discount,” he said, graciously shaking his head at that imaginary offering I wasn’t giving him. “We can talk payment later.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he didn’t let me.
“Now, now, don’t panic. I’m a respectful man. I won’t ask for anything extravagant. Wouldn’t take advantage of our explosives engineer and his woman like that. I’ve been very good to Vitali, and he can vouch for it—and I am sure he will when he’s done with Baranov in a couple days.”
Baranov… no, I didn’t want to know. I told Vitali I didn’t want to know. But God—did he really abandon me the day I lost my virginity to him to do that? For three days? Sergei baited, and I bit that hook with fervor.
“Where is he?”
Misha hissed beside me, but it was too late.
“Just outside of town.” Sergei shrugged. “We don’t have the best relationship with the police in the city, and certainly not after what he pulled—” he barked a laugh “—on Saturday night. Would you like to see him, Katya?”
The hook flung me out of the water and onto dry land. The worm was gone, and I didn’t want to be there anymore, but it was too late.
“No, thank you, I’d like to go home.”
“Nonsense.” He stood and began shoving things around on a cluttered counter.
“To hren with this…” Misha muttered, then louder, “Maybe you leave her alone? I’ll take her home.”
“No, no, she’s a big girl, and she came here on her own—no one made her. If she wants to get her feet wet, might as well learn to swim.”
I wanted so badly to swim away.