Chapter Twenty-Five
In which it’s another dark night and past time for a certain dark deed.
Andrey…
Iris telling me her story seems to have lanced a deep, emotional wound.
Not completely. That may never go away. But she feels lighter in some way, and she laughs during dinner when I tell her about one of our clients who came in, essentially buried in dogs.
Eight vile Chihuahuas who would yap and howl during our meetings.
Because she was Maksim's and my father's great aunt, we couldn't fire her.
"That's so epic. Death by dog hair," she slaps the table, still giggling.
"Poor Mr. Charles." We talked through the moussaka course, followed by the shrimp saganaki.
Iris is lovingly nibbling her way around the baklava when she says, "There’s nothing better than when Chef Tess goes on her round the world sprees.
This is better than almost anything I ate in Athens. "
"I must go to a meeting tonight, darling. I can’t get out of it." Her face falls before she musters up a smile.
"No one expects a Russian Bratva to keep 9 to 5 hours," she says. "I understand. There's a book for next fall's Core Strategy and Omnichannel Marketing class that I really need to finish before I take it. I’ll keep busy."
Rising, I take my plate and hers to the sink as she gathers up the serving dishes. The domestic moment is doing nothing to stop the fury cycling through me. A text from Trofim before dinner turned the food to ash in my mouth.
Trofim: Another two girls and a boy were found dead down by the Red Hook docks. Same kill signature as the last two discoveries.
Andrey: I've waited too long to handle Marshall. He's out on parole and the fucking detectives didn't notify us?
Trofim: He was bailed out yesterday by someone with deep pockets.
Andrey: Pull everything Kolya can find on his location. He might head back to that shit heap he owns in Parkchester. Find me something.
Our hacker Kolya's brilliance pays off and I have a location by the time we're cleaning up the dinner debris.
Kolya: This one is harder, boss. His building has new fortifications and there's at least twenty guards. Here's his approximate location.
He sends me old building plans of the rat's nest Marshall is squatting in, circling the entryways and exits and the tower where the soon to be horribly dead Marshall should be. He loves looking down on the filthy, broken streets, surveying them like a king in his castle.
I'm going to hang his intestines up like Christmas lights.
Iris is waiting for me by the elevator. She's never come to say goodbye before. "Good luck tonight. Try not to murder any of your cousins."
Thinking about Marshall, I can at least answer her honestly. "No cousins. I promise, wife."
Kissing her lush mouth is always a destination of its own, not just something to do on my way to another part of her. Iris wraps her arms around my neck and hugs me, pushing her breasts into my abdomen. When I squeeze her ass, she goes up on tiptoe, moaning into my mouth while I suck on her tongue.
That flame of rage in me is building, though. After a couple of savage prods from it, I pull away reluctantly from my malen'kiy tsvetok.
"I have a question," she asks just as the elevator doors open.
Gripping the metal, I force myself to turn. The need to get into my car and drive to another man's execution is almost painful at this point. "What's that?"
She nods at the flower arrangement. This week, it's pale lavender roses and a darker purple for the irises. "You always order this flower arrangement. I just wondered why?"
I tell the truth. "I thought it would feel like part of your sister is here with you."
Seizing my jacket, she pulls me down. "Stop being so sweet. You're making me feel all unsettled."
She's still kissing me between her words, though. So, I choose to ignore her request. "Be good." I run my fingers through her long hair. "Melina and Av are here in the security apartment if you need them."
"I was about to say, 'you be good, too' until I realized how hilarious that sounds." Iris grins, fastening her sharp little teeth on my earlobe. "Just be safe."
After changing into my "work clothes," dark jeans, boots and a black t-shirt next to the truck I'm using tonight, I throw my head back and breathe in the city. Car exhaust, a neighbor's BBQ dinner. Undernotes of black tar and sticky blood.
Someone's always bleeding in Manhattan.
There's a feeling here, too. Anticipation, like the night is holding its breath, waiting to see what I'll do.
I run through my intel on Marshall again as I drive.
I've made two attempts to carve this motherfucker into a rib roast. He's been far too fortunate both times.
Once, I was interrupted by a burglary in the building next door to him.
We own much of the NYPD police force, but there's no reason to chance an encounter.
The second time, one of his wild-eyed cult members threw herself, screaming, between us.
She scrabbled at me, nails scratching down my face, and before I could quickly knock her out and finish my work, he was gone.
Marshall is a coward who’s always happy to let someone else take the hit for him.
The recent spate of teenagers disappearing from his flock has sent even his most devoted members scuttling away. He's never made it a secret that he feels their lives are his to give and take. All Marshall has now are his paid guards.
The full moon looks indifferently down on me as I cruise the street behind Marshall's rotting castle.
I chuckle slightly. Only one week until my nomination.
Mixing nights like this with my new day job as a Justice of the New York Supreme Court will be more challenging. I do enjoy these ironies. Trofim was agitated when I refused to bring him on this excursion, but I've studied this place already.
Most of his guards are circling the building on the ground, two are inside, down in the kitchen.
There's one key advantage to this block.
The moldering apartment buildings and shaky-looking houses are all built very close to each other.
It will take nothing to get to the roof of the apartment building next to his house and take the jump.
There's a flat stretch of roof there crowded with noisy HVAC equipment that I'll land on and then a few short steps to the tower, while his guards mill around beneath us like ants.
This rush of fury is cleansing. Every cell inside me feels bursting with energy, muscles tightening, and a huge grin stretches across my face. I know it's unsettling. I've seen enough terrified responses.
Of course, they could also be from the gigantic fucking knife I'm holding in my left hand.
There's always backup: two handguns, a flashbang grenade, sleeping gas and poison gas.
But the KA-BAR blade always feels so right in my hand.
I run lightly up the fire escape for the other apartment building, passing one open window where the old man inside must see me climbing up the fire escape steps, but he doesn't raise his eyes from his TV.
It's a moment to cross the roof, and five minutes more to check guard rotations and passing traffic. My leap is a little tricky, but I land, staying low to see if there is enough noise to have alerted anyone. No one raises an alarm.
This building is an old brownstone with towers flanking each side. I'm sure it was beautiful once, with tall windows, iron gates and a dream of being something majestic. In the tower, the windows are glowing with blue-white light from the computer screens and a flickering TV monitor.
A toilet flushes and Marshall walks back into the room, scratching his ass, really digging in deep.
He's not in bad shape, and until you know that he's a rapist and a murderer, he's not unattractive.
Marshall has an inexplicable charisma that draws the lonely and desperate to him long enough to suck them into his cult and drain all of their finances.
All I can see when I look at him are wet, rubbery lips, spread into a vicious grin.
I catch sight of a couple of the computer monitors and what he's looking at makes me want to kill him that much more brutally, and the rage sears through my bloodstream. I'm ready.
Breaking a window means noise, it's easier to cut it out of the rotting wooden frame. He must see my reflection on the TV screen because he spins and he's holding a gun. "You really thought I would let you get the drop on me again?" Marshall grins.
My balaclava is pulled up and I'm wearing a stocking cap. He doesn't know who I am, but he knows he's seen me before.
"What do you think you can do with that little gun?
" I ask, moving slowly to his left. He points the gun at me and shakes it warningly.
I'm amused to see that he doesn't have his finger on the trigger, the fucking idiot.
He's drunk tonight, which feels almost unsportsmanlike, but this is my window of opportunity.
"They found three more of the children you slaughtered.
" I say, continuing my circular stroll. "And yet, someone is still bailing you out.
" I keep my hands loose and open, and oddly, he seems comforted by this because his hand holding the gun drops just slightly.
"You have no fucking idea." He gives me his grotesque grin. "Someone important. Someone way high up in the government has taken an interest in me." He lifts his head proudly, and it's all I can do to not slash his throat now so I don't have to listen to his whining voice.
"Who would that be?" I have another blade in the sheath under my forearm. It takes just a quick hand motion and it will be flying across the room and into his chest before he can even get his finger in the trigger guard.
But not yet.
Whoever bailed him out had no problem paying the five hundred-thousand-dollar bail. He's twitching, his bloodshot eyes darting to the security monitor. It shows me all the guards are still downstairs.
"No, really," I say, nauseated that I'm having a conversation with this troglodyte. “You snagged a big fish, who is it?"
Now his hand is up, gun pointed straight at me and his finger headed for the trigger.
"I think I'll just kill you instead," he laughs, a little excited, like a child on Christmas morning.
My knife is out of the sheath and buried in his gun hand before he can finish his sentence.
He screeches and drops his gun. It doesn't go off because the fuckhead left the safety on.
It takes a second to duct tape his mouth shut. When I pull out my KA-BAR his eyes widen, terrified, and he shakes his hand frantically. I draw long, vertical cuts on his arms and over his stomach, listening to his wails behind the tape.
"I'm going to take this tape off now," I'm leaning close and his stench of body odor and expensive but bad cologne hits me.
"When I do, you're going to tell me the name of your new sponsor. If you hesitate, my first move will be cutting off your dick.” He whimpers, tears in his eyes.
"The second will be gouging out your eyes.
It won't kill you, but you’ll wish it had. Are you ready to talk?"
Marshall is nodding, sweat flying from his face, and I put my hand under his jaw, ripping off the tape. Drawing in a compulsive heave of breath, he stammers "I can't tell you. You'll kill me. She'll kill me."
She?
My knife runs slowly down his neck and over his shoulder. I have a list of suspects, men rich enough and stupid enough to do business with garbage like Marshall, but a she?
"You'll never guess," he says in a child-like cadence. "You'll never guess but I'm gonna be her head supplier. I'm gonna rise in her organization and while she's being the good girl, I'll be the bad, bad man."
I hear the scrape of a shoe, probably close to the landing on the second floor. With a muffled curse, I slap the tape back over his mouth and get to work, causing the maximum possible amount of pain in the short time I'm given.
By the time the footsteps approach his door and there's a cautious knock, Marshall is in pieces.
I left his eyes open, and his severed head propped up so that will be the first thing his unfortunate guard sees.
Wiping my blades on his filthy clothes, I'm back out the window as the door opens and I hear the first shout.
It's an easy leap back over to the roof of the apartment building and I'm down the steps, then strolling down the alley.
Making my way to the truck, I'm smiling as I hear all the shouting from Marshall's supremely useless guards.
Still covered in blood and bits and pieces of Marshall, I make my way home.