Rasputin's Bastards (40 page)

“Don’t know who you can trust these days,” said the smaller man. He looked over to grey-hair. “Isn’t that right, Jack?”

Grey-haired Jack nodded. But he didn’t take his eyes off Shadak. His eyes scanned down his torso — probably, Shadak thought, checking him out for weapons. He didn’t blame him. Jack was one of Gepetto Bucci’s boys — and the whole gang of them had just discovered the biggest mystery of their lives here: a ghost hotel. Lights on, sheets turned. But empty. Whole staff gone AWOL. Not a guest in the place.

Shadak remembered the argument he’d had with old Bucci, when he’d first asked him to send someone over to the Emissary Hotel on Broadway:

“What the fuck you want to go to a fuckin’ dry cleaner’s for?”

“It’s not a dry cleaner’s. I need you to go to the 14th floor of the Emissary and find an old Russian named Kolyokov. I think maybe he is gone. If he is — I want you to bring some people to me.”

“There ain’t no 14
^th
floor there. If it’s the address I’m thinkin’ of, it’s a fuckin’ dry cleaner’s. Not even Russian. I think it’s maybe Korean. Japa-fuckin’-ese. Fuck do I know? Does a shitty job and there’s no more than four fuckin’ floors in the whole building. Maybe you got the address wrong.”

“It’s the right address.”

“I’m telling you: you’re wasting a favour.”

“A favour is mine to waste.”

“Up to you.”

“A
favour
. You owe me.”

“Fuck. All right, but you’re a fuckin’ idiot.”

“It’s important.”

“I get that sense, Amar. We’ll take care of it. I’ll send Montassini this afternoon.”

The telephone conversation he had just before he got on the trans-Atlantic flight to New York, not two days after the first, had a remarkably different tone to it:

“You weren’t fuckin’ kidding.” Bucci was giggling, like a kid who’d just found pirate treasure. “It’s there all right. It’s a fuckin’ ghost hotel. Never fuckin’ heard of it before you called me. Must have driven past it a million fuckin’ times — never saw it.”

“I’m coming out. Where shall we meet?”

“You’re comin’ out? Well fuck — I’m at the hotel right now. Trying to figure out what the fuck’s going on.”

“We have something in common then.”

“Fuckin’ right.”

Jack got into the small elevator with Shadak. Pressed
18
. “Mr. Bucci’s stayin’ in the bridal suite,” said Jack. Shadak took a step back — the old gangster was standing a bit too close, even for the tight elevator.

“You wear a lot of cologne,” said Shadak.

“You like it?” Jack gave Shadak a funny look.

“No,” said Shadak. He smiled, exuding all the good will and warmth that he could muster after seven hours in an airplane seat. “It makes me want to cut your fucking throat you piece of shit funnyboy.”

Jack took a step back and looked at his feet. Maybe, thought Shadak, he was thinking about the stories they told about him. The things he’d done to some of the others. That would be good.

The elevator lurched to a stop. Somewhere in its guts, a bell chimed. Then the door opened to the corridor of the 18
^th
floor. A brass plaque announcing the bridal suite was fitted on the wall opposite them.

“I can find the rest of my way without you,” said Shadak. Jack didn’t argue. The door slid shut, and Amar Shadak set off to meet his nominal partner Gepetto Bucci on his own.

“You okay? You don’t look so fuckin’ good.”

“I swallowed the wrong way,” said Shadak. He set his bag down by a pressed-board wardrobe, and smiled at Bucci. The Italian looked older today, and smaller. His white hair, normally plastered back over his skull, was a bird’s nest. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes floated in the middle of raccoon-dark pits. The spot on the left side of his skull where the hair wouldn’t grow anymore was white as bone. He didn’t smile back.

“Sit down,” he said.

The old man was not alone in the bridal suite of the Emissary Hotel. There were three other guys there — two of them playing cards, another one back in the kitchenette, a cell phone at his ear. He was wearing a bright red Trekker’s Outfitting Co-op T-shirt. Shadak didn’t like it. He didn’t stop smiling, though.

“Can we talk alone?”

“Sit
down
,” said Bucci. “No. Ordinarily fine. But not today. This place is too fucked up. It’s like a fuckin’ horror movie this hotel. You gotta observe the rules. Send a guy off into the crapper by himself, he’s likely to get his nuts ripped off with a fuckin’ weedwhacker, you know what I mean.”

Shadak didn’t, exactly. But he was used to that with Gepetto Bucci. He sat down. The two guys playing cards ignored him. The idiot in the TOC shirt turned away and whispered into his cell phone. Shadak decided he would keep his eye on that one.

“This is not a haunted hotel,” said Shadak. “But it’s good to be careful. How long have you been here?”

“A day and a night. When I heard back about how things went with your job — couldn’t believe it. So I sent some of my guys out here. Take a better look.”

“And they found this place deserted.”

“Deserted.” Bucci snorted. “Ali fuckin’ Baba’s cave, that’s what they found. Yeah — no one was here. But we got into the safe — took a look at what they got goin’ on in the basement. Fuck, Amar. Who is this Fyodor Kolyokov guy anyway? How long did you know about this place?”

Shadak didn’t answer. The guy at the phone was writing something down now. He was shaking his head.

“No fuckin’ guests — no fuckin’ staff. But cash — cash by the fuckin’ boatload.”

“Did you find the isolation tank?” said Shadak.

“You mean that UFO. Roswell thing on the 14th floor? Yeah. It was in the room with the two people we got for you.”

“And Fyodor Kolyokov was nowhere to be seen.”

Bucci made a face. “No. Not exactly. But what with everything in that basement — it’d be easy to make him go away.”

Shadak looked at him.

“Acid baths,” said Bucci. “There’s this room next to the laundry — with big bathtubs like in hospitals. Whole wall covered in brown fuckin’ jugs of hydrochloric acid. Place stank, too. Easiest fuckin’ thing, to take your pal Fyodor Kolyokov down there and make him disappear.”

“Yeah — like almost happened with fuckin’ Leo,” said one of the card players.

Shadak ignored him for now. “So you think Kolyokov is dead then,” he said.

“Don’t you?”

“I do think that. But I value your opinion.”

Bucci steepled his hands and frowned. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think he’s dead.”

“What about Kilodovich?”

“Kilodovich?”

“Alexei Kilodovich.” Shadak fished into his pocket and pulled out the old Polaroid — taken in better days, in the back of a Soviet jeep outside Kabul. They were both grinning like schoolboys, and they weren’t much older than that either. Bucci finally cracked a grin when he took the picture.

“Look at you,” he said. “Little fuckin’ Amar. That is you, right?”

“It was some time ago,” said Shadak. “Kilodovich is the one beside me.”

“Figured that out.” Bucci handed it back. “Never seen him. ’Course, judging from the time that picture must have been taken, he could have grown himself a new face by now. But I told you — ” the smile slid off his own face, like a sheet of ice from a sharp awning “ — nobody was here when we came.”

The TOC man put down the phone. “Hey,” he said, to Bucci. “We got another message.”

“Yeah? Excuse me for a second, Amar.” Bucci shifted around in his chair. “Montassini?”

“Montassini.”

“Where is he now? He get to fuckin’ Halifax yet?”

“Didn’t say where exactly. But I don’t think he’s in Halifax. Said he was on some kind of satellite phone.”

“Satellite phone? Fuckin’ Montassini! On a fuckin’ satellite phone! So anybody could be listening! Where the fuck is he?”

Shadak leaned forward with interest. “Halifax,” he said. “Satellite phone . . .
Montassini
. . .” He snapped his fingers. “Ah! Wasn’t Montassini one of your Capos — one of the people we agreed you should send here for my favour? What has this to do with a satellite phone and the city of Halifax? Tell me what is going on here, Gepetto.”

Bucci turned to look at Shadak. He lips curled to say something — then he saw Shadak’s smile, the implicit menace of his Turkish associate’s chillingly accommodating demeanour.

“Take it easy,” said Bucci. “Don’t go fucked up on me, Amar. We’re talkin’, all right?”

“I’m not getting fucked up,” said Shadak. “Tell me about Montassini.”

“Yeah. Montassini. Complicated story. But I was gonna tell you about it. ’Cause I value
your
opinion on the tapes.”

Shadak raised his eyebrow in a question.

“Leo Montassini’s a solid guy. Not too much up here, you know what I mean. But yeah — he led the team in to bring you your people. Took ’em to the landing strip — put ’em on the plane. Just like he agreed. Only thing was, when that was done, he tells Jack and Nino — the boys what were with him — he’s going to take a leak. Fine. Happens to the best of us. While they’re waiting, he fucks off in the van. Leaves ’em at the airfield, nowhere to go. I gotta send out a fuckin’ car to pick them up, same time as I’m sendin’ more people out to this place. All the time, I’m wondering what the fuck’s with Leo? I’m getting concerned, you understand — that Leo’s workin’ some kind of racket. Tryin’ to fuck me over. I don’t take kindly to that kind of thing.”

“Understandable,” said Shadak. “I don’t take
kindly
to that sort of thing either.”

“Fuckin’ right. So I put out the word that Leo Montassini should be brought straight to me should he turn up. Word comes to me just about right away, from a business associate of my son’s who runs a sandwich thing in the Port Authority Bus Terminal. That he sold Leo a pastrami eggplant deal just an hour ago. That Leo looked kind of messed up. And that he looked like he was on his way somewhere. Fuck, I think. Bastard’s leavin’ town on me. I’m just about ready to put out the word on him — when I get another call, from the Co-op — about a message on the Complaints Line.”

“The Complaints Line?”

“It’s a line we got in there in the, what do you call it?”

“The Collective Office,” said the guy in the red Trekker’s Outfitting Co-Op T-shirt.

“Fuckin’ Commies,” said Bucci. “Couldn’t just call it the Assistant Manager’s office, like every other camping store.”

“You were saying about the Complaints Line? What exactly is it?”

“Just what it sounds like,” continued Bucci. “Whenever a customer gets pissed that the Pel-flex on his coat leaks in rainwater or his Maglite let him down in a fuckin’ spelunkin’ trip, he calls that line. Gets a message where he leaves a number and says why he’s so pissed about our products. We got a guy who checks out those complaints regularly — makes ’em go away. He also checks for other messages, which me or one of mine sometimes leave. Who’s gonna tap a fuckin’ complaint line, right? It’s like that old rule — what is it?”

“Hide in plain sight,” said a card-player. “Right.
Hide in plain sight
. Get it?”

“Sure,” said Shadak.

“All the same, messages on that line intended for me or my associates shouldn’t go into too much detail. Short and vague. That’s supposed to be the rule.”

“And Leo Montassini, I take it, left you a message that was neither.”

“Fuckin’ mind reader,” said Bucci, looking levelly at Shadak.

“No.” Shadak folded his hands. “No mind reading.”

“Whatever. Yeah, he left me a message. A whole series of messages, all of them way too specific — went on for the length of the tape. I tell you something, if I didn’t see this place — ” Bucci waved his hand over his head to indicate the hotel “ — I’d have thought Leo just went off the deep end.”

“Do you have the tapes?”

Bucci nodded. “Yeah, we got some of the tapes here — the first tape. There’s more at the store.”

“What is on the tapes, please?”

Bucci made a small smile. “Nothing about that guy in the picture, that Alexei Kilodo-fuck, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“I assumed that,” said Shadak, “because you would have said something earlier. But what was so strange on these tapes, that you think your trusted Captain went off, as you say, ‘the deep end’?”

Bucci snorted. “What wasn’t strange about them?”

One of the card players looked up. “Like a fuckin’ horror movie,” he said.

“What the fuck do you know?” said his opponent. “Deal.”

Bucci shrugged.

“I’d like to hear the tapes, please,” said Shadak.

“Yeah,” said Bucci, “I thought you might.” He turned back to the card players. “Hey! Get the fuckin’ tape deck out here. You heard our friend here! He wants the show!”

“I am calling,” said the disembodied voice of Leo Montassini, “to complain about these fuckin’ boots you sold me. They leak and shit, and they aren’t warm like you said they would be, and they don’t fit like they did in the store. You send this complaint straight to the fuckin’ top. You got that? Straight to the fuckin’
top
.
Top
. You know what I mean, right?

“Okay. Now you listening, Mr. B? It’s Leo here. First off, let me say I’m sorry I had to leave Nino and Jack like that at the plane. Can’t fuckin’ explain it. Hope they got home okay. I couldn’t stay with those guys any longer. Like something’s callin’ me. Someone’s callin’ me. From the sea . . .

“Look. Main thing is, I think I’m on to something. I think I know where Kolyokov is. You want to pay attention to this, boss. Those guys — Nino and Jack — even you, B. — I don’t think any of you would understand. It comes from listening to the sea — inside that tank they got at the hotel, in that Russian fuck’s room. I stuck my head inside that tank, and it was like sticking my head outside the tank. Like it went on forever . . . And I heard him, boss. I
heard
him.

“I’m usin’ up space on your tape. I’m callin’ you from the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Just want to let you know where I am. Now I’m gonna tell you how I got here.