The Survivor: A Novel Part 14

"Nate," Pete said, his eyes gla.s.sy. "Can I talk to you a minute?"

"Of course."

He gestured toward the garage, and Nate stepped out after him, puzzled. Once the door had closed behind them, they faced each other in the quiet.

"Look, Nate, I'll be honest with you." Pete shifted on his feet, uncomfortable.

"What, Pete? Spit it out."

"The guy, when he grabbed my arm, it was like I was a doll. I mean, Ukrainian gangsters. This is real."

"I know."

"And I mean, this is your mess, Nate. I've cleaned up after you before. But I don't know..."

"What?" The light from the garage-door opener clicked off, leaving them only with a faint throw of moonlight through the window. Nate could hear Pete breathing, see the outline of sweat on his cheek. "I don't get it. What are you saying?"

Pete cleared his throat. "I mean, what did you get me into here, Nate? It's your mess."

"Yeah. Yeah, it is."

"When Sally died, I barely came back from it. It took me months just to notice that the f.u.c.king sun was still in the sky, you know?"

"No one's gonna die here, Pete. Not Janie, not Cielle."

"I don't know that I could get through something like that again." More breathing. Something jangled in his hand, and Nate saw he was making a fist around his car keys. "I just moved in two and a half months ago."

"Wait," Nate said. "No. No, no, no-"

"I can't do it, Nate. It's not my mess. I paid off the mortgage here before things got tough financially-"

"This isn't about money, Pete. They love you. Janie loves you. And Cielle-think about how she feels about you. You have to stay."

"And I love them, too-" His voice broke in a half sob. "I'll go with nothing. They can keep it all. But I can't leave them knowing they're ... you know. Alone."

It took everything Nate could muster to hold his mouth closed. Teeth clenched, lips pressed. And then he felt all the anger and tension leave, deflating him.

"Okay," Nate said. "I got it."

"I mean, you're in the middle of it anyway. You might as well-"

"Pete. I said I got it."

"Tell them. Tell them I love them. And I'm sorry." Pete shifted the keys in his hand, his face narrowed with grief. He shuffled to the car, cast drawn in to his stomach protectively. His fingers pulsed, and the car chirped, and when he ducked in, Nate could see in the dome light that he was sobbing silently.

The garage door whirred up, and Pete backed out, and then the door closed and Nate stood there until the overhead light clicked off again. He took a deep breath, his lungs aching. Blew it out. Went inside.

Janie sat cradling Cielle on the couch. They looked up, faces drawn. "I heard the garage door," Janie said. "I thought you left."

"No." Nate bit his lower lip. "Pete."

Janie's face broke.

Nate couldn't stand to see her grief head-on. He studied the tips of his shoes. "He loves you both very much. But it's a lot to handle. Too much, probably, for anyone." He couldn't believe he was defending the guy. "And he wanted to make sure you were taken care of financially, the house at least. He was broken up. He cares about you a lot, that much I could tell."

When he finally dared to lift his head, Janie had composed herself as best she could. For the moment she and Cielle were holding it together, but they looked utterly sh.e.l.l-shocked.

"My G.o.d." Janie blinked, tears finally spilling. She stroked her daughter's hair. "We're all alone in this."

Nate could hear the faintest click of the kitchen clock. "I'm still here."

Their faces showed that to be scant consolation.

Chapter 20.

Pa.s.sing a strip mall on a busy street in Tarzana, Nate spotted the illuminated sign with glowing ornate letters: NEW ODESSA. Pavlo Shevchenko's suggested meeting place. Granted, Nate was a few days early, but it was his best bet to find the man, and in light of Yuri's attack they had business to discuss. Janie was okay with holing up behind locked doors, 911 ready on speed dial. Vowing to check in on them later, Nate had stopped off at his place to pick up his gun and his medication, the two essentials he'd require moving forward.

He flipped a U-turn, the Jeep rattling into the lot, and parked at the far end. He popped the glove box and reached for the Beretta, but as soon as his hand touched the cool metal, something made him look up and across at the restaurant. A done-up middle-aged couple, the man with a cheap suit and skinny tie, the woman in a slinky sequined dress, approached a large oak door. A vast bouncer emerged from the shadows of the awning and patted them both down thoroughly, the diners submitting readily to the search as if it were a commonplace prelude to a meal. Nate looked back across at his hand buried in the glove box. Then he moved it from the stock of the handgun to the pill bottle. He gulped down his nightly dose of riluzole and antibiotics, adding Advil in response to the complaints of the st.i.tched wound in his shoulder.

His heartbeat reverberated in his palms, his neck, matching the taps of his steps across the parking lot. As he neared the awning, the bouncer loomed.

"I'm here to see Pavlo Shevchenko," Nate said.

"Spread arms."

Nate complied.

The man's paws groped Nate's sides, his belt line, squeezing each leg and sliding from groin to ankle. As he knelt, his pant cuff pulled high, exposing a gun barrel strapped to the ankle. Satisfied, he rose and checked Nate's chest and stomach, presumably for a wire, untucking and lifting Nate's shirt without a trace of hesitation. "Come."

Nate followed him into a dim lounge, dense with smoke and sweet perfume and the tang of pickled fish. Couples and groups of men crowded the tables, animated voices speaking what Nate a.s.sumed was Ukrainian. A glimpse through velvet curtains revealed a brick-walled banquet hall to one side, a makeup-intensive singer swaying and crooning lyrics in a foreign tongue as partygoers slow-danced drunkenly, holding each other as if in grief. A momentary disorientation washed over Nate; he had stepped through a portal into a foreign country.

The bouncer put a broad hand on the small of Nate's back, steering him forcefully through. A table in the rear corner was framed by several pillars, affording it relative privacy and clear place of distinction. Drawing into view at the table's head, bent so his elbows framed his plate, was Pavlo Shevchenko. He wore a dark suit, slightly dated in style, with a thin, expensive-looking dress shirt. Hunched protectively over his food, chewing, he looked lean and hungry, his face angular in the faint light. His eyes lifted to freeze Nate in a cold stare.

Across from Pavlo in the other seat of honor sat a heavy older man, thick-lipped and wearing an expression of general displeasure. The rest of the chairs were occupied by men wearing velour warm-ups and chunky gold Rolexes, sipping vodka from weighty shot gla.s.ses. Right out of central casting. None of the henchmen from the warehouse were in evidence. Tyazhiki. Shadow people.

The bouncer had a brief exchange with one of the men, the words sharp. Pavlo interrupted, addressing Nate directly. "You have accomplished my task already?"

"No. I need to speak with you. About what happened tonight. At the house."

Pavlo leaned back, crossed his arms. "Sit." He gestured at the man beside him, who vacated his seat obediently. Nate slid down into the chair, the bouncer sidling behind him out of his line of sight. At the table's center stood a slender bottle of vodka.

Pavlo gestured at the man at the other end of the table. "Best Ukrainian restaurant, it is owned by a Georgian. Can you believe?"

Nate took a closer look at the restaurant owner. His jaundiced fingers twiddled with a thick black lock pasted across his forehead, arranging and rearranging it with a vanity befitting neither the matted hair nor his slovenly demeanor. He'd missed a spot shaving, a few coa.r.s.e black threads at one corner of his mouth. The skin under his eyes was dark and flecked with skin tags, textured pouches like oyster sh.e.l.ls. It was a magnificent face. A Depression-era photographer would have turned cartwheels to find such a face on a breadline. He appraised Nate sullenly, silently. Perhaps he did not understand English.

"Eat," Pavlo said. "Blini with red caviar. The Americans have with black caviar to spend more, but is better with red." He gestured at a mound of small half-moon dumplings beneath a dollop of sour cream. "And varenyky. Small, not like big China potstickers. Eat. You work for me now. One of my a.s.sociates."

"I'm not hungry," Nate said.

Pavlo remained perfectly still, hands frozen at the sides of his plate. "The Georgian will be insulted that you do not eat."

"Then he'll have to be insulted," Nate said.

A chilled silence. The others set down their utensils.

"Your man came to my wife's house," Nate said. "He broke the hand of-"

Pavlo slid his plate to the side. "You did not make call to police. You did not break our arrangement. That is only reason your daughter still breathes."

Nate's gaze moved to a steak knife just beyond his elbow. Pavlo's eyes followed his stare, then rose again to his face, unconcerned.

"This man who called police, next time we will kill him. We know where he called. We know who he spoke to. His protest, it has been misfiled by police. We own many police. You do not know which ones in which departments. Every time you make phone call, you play Russian roulette with your daughter. Is this clear?"

"I will do what you want me to do. I will get you what's in that safe-deposit box. If you stay away from my family."

A glint of st.u.r.dy Soviet dentistry. "It is not anymore your family."

"Don't f.u.c.k with them."

Pavlo set his hands on the table's edge. Pushed back, his chair chirping on the faux-marble floors. He stood.

The men at the table were on their feet swiftly, even the Georgian. Nate became aware of uniform movement in the s.p.a.ce all around him, and when he turned, his skin p.r.i.c.kled at the sight. Every diner in the restaurant had risen, even those in booths, bending with difficulty from the effort. Their gazes stayed carefully forward, not fully turned toward Pavlo. Napkins fell from laps. The strains of music drifting in from the banquet hall only underscored the abrupt silence in the restaurant proper.

Nate, the only person sitting.

He had never seen anything like this. A headache thrummed at his temples. Every sense heightened. A spoon clattered to the floor across the restaurant; to Nate it sounded like drumsticks beating a snare.

Pavlo made a slight gesture with his hand, and the diners somehow noted this and rumbled back into motion, sitting, pouring wine, resuming conversations. His focus swiveled to Nate.

"You come here for strelka. Meeting. As if you are my equal." His voice, raised for the first time. Up until now he'd conveyed all his power and menace with little more than a whisper.

"I will teach you who I am." He pulled at his thin dress shirt, b.u.t.tons popping off one after another, skittering across the table. At first his skin seemed bizarrely dark, but as his shirt fell away, Nate realized: It was covered with blue, slightly blurred tattoos. Pavlo lifted a thumb to a rose needled into the base of his neck. "My initiation." An eight-pointed star came next, just below his collarbone. "This says I am vor. Professional. I do not belong to myself. I belong to a code. To a world of thieves. I have no family but them." Below the star, a church with multiple domes. "And here. Each dome a trip to the Zone." He shed his jacket, his finger jabbing into a tattoo on his shoulder: a hand holding a tulip wrapped three times in barbed wire. "Convicted underage for robbery. Three years spent. Each barb on the wire one month. And this"-a cross and shackles with numbers and Cyrillic lettering-"second trip. Corrective Labor Colony Number Six. Here, isolation cell, Block Seven."

Nate said, "Look-"

"Close your mouth."

The sudden rage severed the words in Nate's throat.

Pavlo indicated a tattoo of a wolf with a bare-toothed scowl. "My promise to avenge those who put me inside." He tore his shirt off altogether, pointed to a gnarl of scar tissue in his side. "Derybasivska Street in Odessa. Stabbed." He translated a Cyrillic scroll across his ribs. "'Mother, do not cry for me any longer. Let me be dead to you.'" He turned around. Two eyes on his back required no explanation, but he indicated an eagle on his shoulder blade. "This shows escape from Vorkuta Camp. And this"-a quarter-size patch of shiny skin-"a.s.sa.s.sination try in Kiev."

Nate risked a glance around the restaurant. Everyone eating and talking, dutifully ignoring what was happening in plain sight. Dozens of witnesses, none of whom would see a thing. He moved to rise, but a vise grip crushed his shoulders, sinking him back into the chair. The bouncer, breathing down on him.

Pavlo slammed his hands on the place mat in front of Nate, silverware and gla.s.ses jumping on the starched white tablecloth. Nate strained to lean back, but the pressure on his shoulders was unrelenting. Pavlo pointed at the fingers of one hand, ticking off each ring tattoo. An asterisk in a circle. "Fatherless. I become thief because of broken home." A white cross on a dark rectangle. "I survive the crosses. Solitary." A skull within a diamond, split by bars. "I serve in prison for violent criminals only."

Leaning forward, he gave off a waft of spicy cologne and old-fashioned shaving cream, the smell of a man from another era. His face inches from Nate's. His eyes fluttered closed. Words tattooed on his lids. "'Do not rouse me.' For this the p.r.i.c.ker insert a spoon beneath eyelid to firm it for needle." Pavlo straightened. One loafer hit the floor, then another. Shackle tattoos on his ankles, words on the insteps. He translated: "'They drag me under armed guard.'" Pavlo tore at his belt violently. His pants fell, exposing boxer shorts of a blue that matched the ink decorating his flesh. His kneecaps sported stars. "I kneel before no man. And last."

With dread, Nate watched Pavlo's hands move to his boxers. Tattooed thumbs hooked the band and slid them down to midthigh. Nate shoved back violently in the chair, but the man whose seat he occupied stepped in to help the bouncer hold him in place.

He flushed, skin on fire. He felt like a child, utterly and comprehensively overpowered. The stink of the herring on the table was making him queasy. In the background he could hear the clink of silverware against plates, no one daring to stop eating.

Pavlo fisted Nate's hair with both hands and forced his face toward his bare thighs, toward the private smells of musk and talc.u.m powder. The swollen bud of his head nudged out from a nest of gray wire. Cyrillic lettering low beneath his belly b.u.t.ton. Pavlo leaned over, teeth clenched as he hissed the translation: "'Let them hate as long as they fear.'"

Anger burned in Nate's chest, evaporating any panic. He braced a foot against one of the table legs and shoved with all his might. The table skidded a foot or so, plates and gla.s.ses jumping, and the two men holding him down lost their grip. Nate twisted up and away from Pavlo's grasp, but then the bouncer palmed his head and slammed it to the table. A cool ring of steel pressed against his temple, and he heard the soft click of the gun c.o.c.king.

"You want to do it?" Nate said. "Then do it. But quit wasting my time with the freak show. I've got a job to do."

A view of Pavlo, offset by forty-five degrees. Nate felt as though his skull might collapse from the pressure of the giant hand. One finger smashed his nose, another smeared his lips to one side. Vodka glugged unevenly from the toppled bottle.

Pavlo studied him calmly as he looped his belt, b.u.t.toned his coat.

The spilled alcohol was making Nate's eyes water. "Pull the trigger," he said, "or get off me."

The Georgian had barely moved. Overflowing his chair, now displaced from the shoved table, he uttered his first words in broken, barely intelligible English. "Take him into kitchen. I will haff cleaned up."

But Pavlo gave a small shake of his head, the ring of steel lifted, and the pressure came off Nate's temple. He straightened up.

"You are as crazy as Chechen n.i.g.g.e.r," Pavlo said. "I have seen many men in many circ.u.mstances. And you, my friend, are not correct in your head."

This, Nate thought, from a man nicknamed Psyk.

"We will see if you are still wise enough to fear." Though his pants were now buckled again, Pavlo set a hand above his groin where the slogan was tattooed.

"If you want any chance at getting what's in that safe-deposit box," Nate said, "then keep out of my way. And stay clear of my family."

"I will give you and family s.p.a.ce if you obey. But we will be watching. You have four days. And then"-Pavlo made a quick slashing gesture across his stomach with the blade of his hand-"sffft."

He pointed toward the door and sat down again at the strewn table.

Nate felt all eyes on his back as he threaded through the tables, his step quickening as he neared the big oak door and the fresh nighttime air beyond.

Chapter 21.

Nate faced Janie across the kitchen counter, her hands cupped around a mug of chamomile tea. She'd drawn all the curtains, he'd checked all the rooms, and for the moment it was just them again in their old house, their daughter upstairs. But now, he realized, it was probably time for him to leave.

He got up from the barstool, withdrew the Beretta from the waist of his jeans, and set it carefully on the counter. "If they come again. You're here with Cielle."