ROMAN #2
He nods. “Good. Then you’re awake.”
We spread everything across the table. Bay Fourteen.
Oleg’s old channels. Arkady’s calls. Old Brighton contacts.
Three names that led nowhere yesterday and might still lead nowhere today.
The point isn’t inspiration. It’s movement, keeping myself busy.
If I keep working, I don’t have to think too much about Katerina’s mouth or the way her daughter tucked herself against my side at lunch like I belonged there.
Mikhail opens the first folder. “Arkady’s still dirty, but not in the way we hoped.”
“No link to Oleg?”
“Nothing solid.”
I look at the page in front of me. “What about the phone call that rattled him?”
“Burner. Dead by midnight. We traced it to a club manager in Queens who swears it was borrowed and has suddenly remembered religion.”
“That’s helpful.” I look up. “Which club?”
Mikhail slides a sheet over. “Black Room.”
I’ve heard of the place. Everyone knows the place. Dark velvet, overpriced vodka, bad lighting, worse men. “Does Arkady go there?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you think we can find any leads over there?”
“Possibly,” Mikhail says. “There was some chatter there after the pier incident.”
“Interesting, and it’s Arkady’s favorite spot.”
Mikhail sighs. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think the old fool is involved.”
“That’s for me to decide,” I say.
He cocks his head. “Are you sure this is about your father?” His words stop me in my tracks.
“Yes, what else?”
Mikhail has the good sense not to argue with me, nodding.
By eleven, I’m in the back booth of Black Room watching Arkady Belov pretend he still has enough money to take up space properly.
The club is built to flatter weak men. Everything is dim enough to hide age and expensive enough to make them feel chosen. Red light, dark liquor, women in black moving through the room with practiced boredom. The bass is heavy enough to blur conversation unless you lean too close.
Arkady is doing exactly that.
He’s in a corner booth with two younger men and a woman who looks as if she’d rather be anywhere else. He keeps touching his own tie and smiling with too many teeth, which tells me he’s nervous even before he glances over his shoulder the third time.
But he’s a problem for later.
The floor manager spots me within a minute and goes pale.
Good.
I don’t smile when he comes over.
“Roman.”
“Let’s walk.”
He obeys.
I take him through the side corridor toward the staff office. No one stops us. No one wants to. By the time the door shuts behind us, he’s already nervous enough to start talking before I ask a question.
“I’m looking for a man, Savenchko,” I say.
The manager smiles. “Many men have crossed this threshold, it’s hard to keep track of everyone.”
“This one is special, and it’s pissed me off.” I block his path with my body and the man gulps. “My pier was attacked, and I need to find out why.”
“Savenchko hasn’t been here in weeks.”
“Not good enough.”
He stops.
I let him sweat for a second, then say, “Start again.”
He licks his lips. “He was here last Thursday. Used the back room for twenty minutes.”
“Name.”
“I don’t know.”
“You do.”
He winces. “I know a nickname.”
I wait.
“Grisha.”
I don’t recognize the name immediately. “What did they talk about?”
“I wasn’t in the room.”
“But you listened at the door.”
He hesitates. Wrong move.
I step closer, not threatening, just close enough that he can stop pretending we’re having a normal conversation.
“I heard the name Oleg,” he says quickly. “And Jersey. And something about moving a shipment before it was noticed by the wrong people.”
My heart thrums. This is it. After so many years of chasing after a shadow, I’ve finally found him.
So, Oleg is in the city? But why?
“What about that man over there?” I ask, pointing at Arkady.
“Belov?” the club manager says. “Is the old fool involved in this mess too?”
I give him a look. The manager sighs. “I never saw them interacting. Belov is mostly caught up in poker and girls. He likes them young.”
I wince in disgust. Didn’t expect any better from him.
“Okay what else?”
“He was spooked,” the manager says. “Not drunk-spooked. Real spooked. Kept asking if anyone had seen him come in. Kept saying he should’ve left the city when he had the chance.”
That sounds like Oleg.
A man who spent his whole life confusing cowardice with timing.
I ask a few more questions, get a street in Red Hook, a warehouse that used to belong to one of Oleg’s shipping fronts, and a marina name I haven’t heard in years.
Once we finish up, I wait.
Mikhail is at the bar. Two of my men are near the stairs. I wait until Arkady excuses himself and heads for the private corridor before I follow.
He hears me before he sees me, spinning around to meet my gaze. “Roman.”
“Arkady.”
He smiles, and the smile is a mistake. “Enjoying yourself?”
“No.”
That wipes it away.
We’re alone in the corridor except for the bass thudding through the wall and one girl at the far end fixing her lipstick in a mirror and pretending she can’t see us.
Arkady clears his throat. “If this is about lunch, I assure you, Sergei arranged that, not me.”
“I know.”
His brows lift.
That’s the truth. He’s too stupid and too eager to be the architect of anything. He may know things. He may carry messages. But he’s not the center of this. He’s one more greasy little satellite.
I step closer. “So let’s make this simple.”
Arkady swallows. “All right.”
“Stay away from Katerina.”
The relief on his face is almost insulting. “That’s all?”
“For now.”