Deadly Lullaby (31 page)

Pacific curves hard left starting at Chambers, and my plan is to stay on it until it straightens across the railroad tracks, then hang a right at Santa Fe. Ahead and to my right is nothing but industrial property that's largely gone to seed, and the few factories that still operate are shuttered for the night; if Donsky or Tarasov's crew catch up to us back there, they could slaughter us with chainsaws and feed our remains to neighborhood dogs and nobody would be the wiser. The commercial end of Santa Fe and Pacific isn't very populated this time of night either, but the street is better lit and dead straight. When we get there I'll push the cruiser hard until we get to a bar or restaurant about ten blocks up.

After taking the Pacific curve on two wheels and grounding out the undercarriage after going airborne over the railroad tracks, I glance at the rearview, then smile at Barzi. “Good shooting, man, look behind us. Nobody's there. We're in the clear.”

Barzi props his AK-47 to the right of his legs, unlatches his seatbelt and swivels to his left toward me, puts both hands on the back of the seat and looks through the busted back window, smiling and nodding; if he'd just hang out his tongue and pant, he'd resemble a happy Saint Bernard. “Maybe Joe and Tarasov called 'em all off already.”

I glance at my watch. “No, that couldn't've went down that fast. Another couple minutes, maybe. But not now.” Breathing much easier, I hang what is comparatively a careful right onto Santa Fe. “That was close,” I say.

“No shit,” Barzi says. “My second close call of the day.” He turns back around in his seat, sighs large, and lolls his head back over the headrest. The fucker's so tall the headrest tops out at the bottom of his neck. “I need a drink,
bad.
” He looks at me. “Why's Donsky so pissed at us?”

“He thinks me and you conspired to botch their raid on that stash house.”

He laughs. “He's that's fuckin'
stupid?
”

I shrug. “
We
know it's stupid, but I can see why he's reached that conclusion. Me and Donsky have a connection in common with Khang Nhou, the Cambodian who owns that place, and Donsky has reason to suspect I've sided with the guy.” I look at Barzi. “In a way I
have
sided with him. Just not in the way Donsky thinks I have.”

Scrunching his unibrow so the hairs bristle and bunch to a peak, he says, “I don't get it.”

“Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime, maybe even tonight. But first I think we ought to find us a good bar.”

“No
shit.
There's a topless joint around Twentieth called Dames 'n' Games that's—” His eyes go wide. “Look out!”

I snap my head to the left just in time to see a reinforced Humvee grill bearing down on us and from the tremendous impact that follows it might as well be a freight train. We're hurled sideways to the right, and the left side of the car lifts off the ground and I turn to the right a millisecond before we slam into a utility po—

I'm…not…unconscious…long…if…at…all.
My…head's swimming…and the left side of…body's numb….Covered in shattered glass…shaking my head, having to force my neck to cooperate, I turn to see Barzi ass-up in his seat, not moving a muscle. He must not've refastened his seatbelt.

The sound of a car pulling up to my left, voices, and I turn to my left to see a green van screech to a halt about five yards away, and the side door slides open and a little fucker jumps out holding a weapon in his hands and…what?…there's a steady tongue of flame licking the air from the mouth of the barrel. There's a tank on the fucker's back….
Shit,
it's a flamethrower, and the little fuck spreads his legs and braces his feet, holds the thing tight to his hip and is ready to spray me in the face when I think
Levitch Latzo,
and throw up my arms and scream,
“Noooooo!”
bracing myself for the most horrible death imaginable…

…but nothing happens…

Lowering my hands, through my tears I see another guy, taller than the first, but skinny, talking to the one holding the flamethrower, and he's holding the smaller one's trigger hand tight. Now he's pushing it upward so the business end of the flamethrower points at the sky. The taller guy has a nice, dark beard, long hair parted in the middle, and as the shorter guy retreats into the van, shaking his head in disappointment, the tall bearded guy steps forward. My brain is scrambled eggs, I know, and there's not a religious cell in my body, but there's a glow about this guy, a charisma, and under the circumstances his resemblance to Jesus is just too much for me not to think
Christ, my savior.

Draping his left forearm on the car roof, he swivels his head in a 180, cocks his ear to listen—for sirens, I guess. Satisfied with his observations, he leans into my window. “I Andrei,” he says. “You Croochie, right?”

“Yeah.”

Andrei nods, starts to say something else, when he winces and leans in closer.
“Ech,”
he says, “do not move,” forms his thumb and forefinger into a pincer, reaches for my left cheek just under my eye, and slowly removes something lodged there.

It hurts, as the saying goes, so good—a sting that replaces a painful, awkward displacement in my cheek, followed by a warm stream of blood dribbling from the wound and down my jaw.

His fingertips bloody, he displays a shard of glass to me before slinging it aside backhanded. He leans back in to me again and wipes his fingers on my shirt before wagging his forefinger in my face. “You lucky fuck. You kill Bulgin. We are to kill you back before Viktor call. Now, just now, Viktor call. Viktor say not to kill you two fucks. He say bring you two fucks to him.” Andrei puts his face so close to mine I smell the liver and onions on his breath. “Viktor say we kill you later.”

All I received on my end when I called Joe thirty minutes ago was the ringtone and that annoying
beep
you hear when the party you are phoning is talking to someone else.

Viktor answered right away, though, when I called him, and listened patiently as I rushed to explain what my son told me happened on Fifty-Third Street. His patience thinned out noticeably when he interrupted me by saying, “Big Son shoot one of my men?”

“Yes, Viktor, unfortunately. At least that is what Chief told him. He did n—”

“And Donsky is now chasing son's car on Pacific?”

“How did you know th—”

“Andrei just call. I call him back now, then call Joe.”

Joe called almost immediately after that, the first words out of his mouth being, “I just got off the phone with Donsky, and Leo's fucking dead.
Dead,
you hear me? Barzi, too. Those cocksu—”

“My son is
dead
? Goddam—”

“Nah, he ain't dead yet, but he will be when we catch him. He and Barzi told Khang about our raid and they crashed it! We lost two million bucks!
Two
million!
”

My thought at the time was,
What about the guys in your crew who died?
and figured it would be a good idea to not point that out to him at that particular moment in time. Instead, I said, “Joe, I just talked to Leo, and he has an explanation for this.”

“You expect me to believe a word that pig says? The fucker works for me, then fucks me over. And why should I believe a word
you
say? Donsky's sayin'
you
could've been the one to tip off Leo and Barzi. You're the only one who knew about it besides—”

“Me, Joe? Rat? How many opportunities to rat you out have I passed up? Listen, do not believe Donsky. Based on what my son told me a few minutes ago, Donsky is just trying to cover Fecarotta's ass. He—”

“Michael? What the hell does Michael have to do with this?”

“Leo got interrupted in the middle of his story, but he can explain, believe me. He called me, see, because—”

“
Hang on.
Viktor's calling.”

While Joe talked with Viktor, I called Leo. No answer.

Joe called back and said, “Viktor's guys nabbed your piglet and Barzi. Meet us at Macky's old place in West Covina. Nobody'll figure we'll be there. We're takin' this clusterfuck to the table.”

Of all the devices the so-called Cosa Nostra employed over the years to maintain control over its rank and file, the one that has changed most drastically is the sit-down. In the old days, wiseguys would get into a beef, and before they massacred each other, the so-called head of the family would call them together to hash it out. The Mustache Pete who sat in judgment had the final say and everybody who came to the table had to abide by his verdict. Everybody knew going in that the aggrieved party with the most muscle would win, that the guy to ultimately get his way at the table would have won it in the streets anyway. The point of it all was that the loser always walked away with a measure of pride and with both balls swinging fully intact.

In the old days, the firm rule was that nobody got whacked at sit-downs.

These days?

Shit, if you want to know just how far the sit-down has deteriorated, consider the one me and my son had with Macky a couple of days ago.

The thing that might determine how this one goes down is the current strength of Joe and Viktor's muscle. All I know is they took a beating downtown, the extent of said beating a mystery to me when I pull into the warehouse parking lot. Parking in the same slip me and Leo used earlier this week, I see Andrei and a runty, redheaded guy standing on the loading dock—the runt being the flamethrower aficionado who burned Latzo and Levitch to a crisp outside the Medusa. They are bathed in dim yellow light, smoking and sulking, and raise their shoulder weapons to their hips when they see me. Andrei deliberately thumbs off the safety to his M16, plainly intending that I make note of it.

There is an Uzi talking to me from the passenger seat—
Are we there yet?
—and regardless of how ready for me these mooks think they are, there is no doubt in my mind that I could roll from my Caddy and hose them down before they knew what hit them. Then what would I do? The warehouse is huge, and I have no idea whether I would find my son or what I would face if I did.

Telling my Uzi to hush—just
hush,
damn it—I step from the car holding up my hands palms out. “I come in peace. Take me to your leader.”

From their sullen expressions, you can safely conclude they either do not understand or do not appreciate the humor in this statement.

Andrei uses the point of his barrel to gesture me onto the loading dock. Both his hands are occupied with his assault rifle, and he talks with his cigarette bobbing in his lips. “Keep up hands and come. We search you.”

Figures,
shit.

His eyes glazed and hungry, wolfish, the runt covers me with his stubby CTAR carbine while Andrei frisks me. Andrei removes the .25 semiauto belly-gun taped to the inside of my forearm, then the Walther P38 tucked in the small of my back. He is running his hand under my balls, telling me I have to remove the brass knuckles hidden in my shorts myself.

Reaching down the front of my pants and into my shorts, I say, “Sure, Andrei, no problem….Hey, uh, where is Leo, my son?”

He inclines his head toward the warehouse behind him. “In there.”

Thanks for the information. “Is he harmed?”

A glare. “Not like Bulgin. Bulgin dead.”

Damn, I liked Bulgin.

I like Andrei, too, but this fact does not stop me from wanting to grab a handful of his beard at the chin and rip his hateful expression over the top of his skull.

The runt would shoot me before I could accomplish this.

The brass knuckles are warm from snuggling against my balls during my trip here and Andrei will not accept them when I offer them up. “Completely understandable,” I say and sling them aside; they are pinging and skidding across pavement just as headlights strafe us from the parking lot.

We all three turn to watch Viktor's Econoline pull in from the street and park in the reserved slip by the loading-dock steps. The side door slides open and Viktor steps out, cuts his eyes at me, then turns to help Joe out.

Their overcoats flapping in the breeze like capes, they make their way up the steps with distinct purpose.

Their arrival threw Andrei off balance; he neglected to search my ankles, particularly the inside of my left one.

Joe wipes his mouth when he gets to me, sighs large and says, “This ain't personal, Babe.”

“Is business,” Viktor says, his eyes having a hawkish cast to them.

“It is personal for me,” I say, inclining my head to my left at the warehouse. “That is my fucking
son
you have in there.”

Viktor says, “Demy and Donsky tell me Big Son kill Bulgin. They drive by in truck outside stash house and son blast his head apart with
drobovik.
”

I squint.
“Drobovik?”

“Shotgun,
stoopid,
” Andrei says.

Maybe I am stupid, but you forgot to search my ankles, Albert fucking
Einstein
.

I say to Tarasov, “Was Bulgin trying to kill him?”

Nobody says anything for a long moment. Viktor finally says, “Son should not have been there.”

“Why
was
he there?” Joe says.

“He has an explanation for that.”

“What?” they both say more or less simultaneously.

I shrug. “Something to do with Fecarotta. Whatever it is, you both owe me the patience to listen to his story, and I want Fecarotta there to get his side of it. If you do not like said story and still want to kill my son, you also owe me the favor of allowing me to walk out with him and Chief. Then we can go to war tomorrow on a level playing field.”

They exchange glances and Joe nods at Viktor, signaling it is his call.

Viktor says, “Listen, I stop Andrei from killing son one time tonight. Now me and you, um, how you say, even Steven?”

“
Viktor.
You owe me more than—”

He halts me with a show of his palm, says, “All I owe to you is promise to listen,
no more,
” and strides past me to the warehouse, his neck flushing scarlet.

Joe summons Fecarotta from the Econoline with a wave of his hand, steps in to me and says, “I'll try to steer things your way up there, but Viktor's got the numbers on his side. It all depends on Leo's story.”

“All I can say is you both had better accept it,” I say, and do not have to say, “
or else.”

Andrei held his M16 to my back during our walk through the bowels of the warehouse and up the stairs to the elevator. He then placed a cocked Makarov pistol to my head for our ride up, a precaution Fecarotta seemed to love, sneering at me the entire while. The one thing the five of us shared in the stuffy enclosed space was claustrophobia and impending heat exhaustion, mumbling and shaking our heads until waves of conditioned air and fluorescent light greet us when the door slides open. Sucking air and blowing—
Whew, Jesus—
we proceed single file down the hall to the conference room next to Macky's old office, Joe and Viktor at the head of the line, with me immediately behind them. Andrei and Fecarotta are at my flank, prepared to blow me apart at the first sign of resistance.

The redheaded runt stays downstairs on the loading dock.

After we file inside, Fecarotta closes the door behind us, leans against the jamb, and crosses his arms over his chest to stand guard. Andrei stands beside him, cradling his weapon.

I stand to the side of the doorway to get my bearings. Donsky is seated to my right at the far head of the rectangular twelve-top conference table, his left hand resting on a gunmetal-gray Glock 40. Sitting two seats to Donsky's right—my left—are my son and Chief, water bottles and two towels soaked with water and splotched blood resting on the table between them. They are both so cut and battered you would think they had just gone ten bare-knuckled rounds against each other, with my son on the losing end of a unanimous decision. They still manage to project small smiles at me.

I say to them, “Hope you two guys feel better than you look,” and sit across from them with Donsky to my right, two empty chairs between us.

Chief nudges Leo with his left elbow and says, “Told you.”

“You did,” my son says, nodding and glancing at me.

Donsky removes his pistol from my reach, places it in his lap, and leans back. He says to Joe, “You didn't tell me Babe was gonna be part of this.”

Joe ignores his statement and sits at the head of the table to my left opposite Donsky. Fecarotta remains standing behind Joe to his right and Andrei moves to stand behind Joe to his left. Across the table to my left and against the outside wall, by the curtained windows, stands another Russian, Remy, a midsized burr-head with a goatee and puffy, slitty eyes. Viktor sits to Joe's immediate right, two empty chairs to my left on my side of the table.

Viktor points his finger at my son and says, “
You
must—”

Joe interrupts him by saying, “Let me handle this, Viktor, okay? You're upset.”

Viktor glares at me, at Joe, and throws up a hand and gives Joe one terse nod.

Joe casually interlaces his stubby little fingers and rests his elbows on the table, his chin about six inches above the tabletop. Ignoring Donsky's statement, Joe says to my son, “Out of respect for your father, me and Viktor have decided to give you the opportunity to explain why you fucked up our operation tonight.”

“There's a bias underlying that statement I resent.”

“Leo,” I say.

“Respectfully so,” he says, shrugging and sipping water. The left side of his face is red and swollen, cut and scratched. He picks up a towel and dabs at a cut on his cheek, inspects the bloody spot and says to Viktor, “Sorry about Bulgin.”

“You
sorry
?” Viktor says.

Andrei says, “
Shit,
” and spits on the carpet.

I say, “Tell them why you were there, kid,” my thought being,
and fast.

My son looks at me, at Donsky, at Fecarotta, then at Joe, shrugs his hands and says, “This young Cambodian girl named Sonita Khemra was murdered the night before last, in MacArthur Park. You, Joe, knew her as Sunny.”

Joe squints as if he could not have heard that right. “Sunny.”

“Yeah, the Cambodian prostitute you were banging almost every night this past week or so. She's dead.”

“How did you know I—Sunny's
dead
?” Joe says, turning to Fecarotta.

Leo says, “You might want to have somebody take Fecarotta's gun.”

Turning red, Fecarotta says, “Nobody's gettin' my—”

“When I want your suggestion,” Joe says to my son, “I'll ask.” To Fecarotta he says, “Michael, you can keep your gun, but don't say—no, don't even
think
—that nobody can take it from you. I can get it anytime I want it.”

“Sure, Joe, sure,” Fecarotta says, wiping his mouth.

“All right,” Joe says, turning to my son. “Prove to me the Sunny you're talkin' about is the same Sunny I know.”

“If I had my iPhone, I'd show you crime-scene pictures”—a nod at Andrei—“but he has it.”

Joe holds up his left hand and
snaps
his finger, opens his hand.

Andrei looks at Viktor, who nods.

Andrei removes the phone from his hip pocket, hands the M16 to Remy, and thumbs the phone's screen for a few seconds. He looks at my son. “This Abel person try to call you many time,” he says, shrugging in a
Too bad
gesture, with my son going, “Oh
fuck,
” as Andrei thumbs the screen some more. Finally Andrei says to my son, “I disable GPS earlier, you fuck. Now I disable out-dial function and email.” He tosses the phone like a Frisbee to Leo…