The Altar Girl (20 page)

“My sentence was a bit more justified. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought the Nazis and the Soviets. It had a unit of women who carried out missions of guerrilla warfare. I was one of those women.”

This was not a surprising revelation. There had been rumors that Mrs. Chimchak had been a soldier. A real soldier. But to hear the admission from her lips stunned me nonetheless. I remained quiet. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have anything to say to something like that.

“Remember how I told you that when your godfather came back from Crimea he looked depressed?” Mrs. Chimchak said. “And how he perked up only when he started spending more money a few months later?”

“It’s as though Takarov had something on him. As though he coerced him to be an American distributor for his stolen arts and antiquities—I’m assuming they’re stolen—and then once the money started flowing in—”

“And Takarov died.”

“My godfather became a willing participant. But how could Takarov blackmail my godfather at his age? What could be so embarrassing to an old man with a poor reputation to start with?”

Mrs. Chimchak took a moment to consider the question. “Ambition blinds a man to his age and reputation. So don’t assume your godfather understood how others viewed him. He probably thought he was the only person in the community that knew he once frequented houses of ill repute. And as for the basis for Takarov’s blackmail, we must remember. Time heals all wounds but guilt never expires.”

“Unfortunately, I’m all too familiar with the concept.” I pulled out a pen and pad from my glove box. “Would you please repeat the exact address for that warehouse on Ledyard Street?”

Mrs. Chimchak gave me the number. She told me to be careful and call her after I took a look at the warehouse. She also gave me a final word of advice.

“Remember,” she said. “Black souls wear white shirts.”

CHAPTER 29

N
ADIA ENJOYED THE
trip to the Connecticut shore with her family. Her father was in a good mood. She and her brother dug up soda bottle caps from the sand and tried to get as many different brands as possible. Their mother had made capicola and ham grinders with provolone cheese. She served them with giant pickles the size of zucchinis and chilled cans of Fanta Root Beer. Everyone was happy. On the way home they stopped for hot dogs, french fries, and butter pecan ice cream cones for dinner.

They listened to the Red Sox in the car. It was a close game, tied 2–2 in the ninth inning when the lights went out in Fenway. Why did the lights go out in Fenway? And why was her hair wet? Most importantly, why was she upside down?

The next thing she knew she wasn’t at Fenway anymore. Wait, she thought. She hadn’t been at Fenway. She’d been listening to the game on the radio, hadn’t she? It was so confusing. All she knew now was that someone was carrying her through the forest and rain was pelting her face. She was slung over a man’s shoulder. A woman with the face of a wild boar and the shape of a mutant pear swung a lantern as she marched behind them, a massive knapsack resting on her hunched back. Nadia could hear the man’s lungs heave with each step.

A few steps later Nadia understood. She understood that she’d been dreaming. She hadn’t been to the beach with her family, and she hadn’t gone to a baseball game at Fenway or heard it on the radio. She was still near the Appalachian Trail in the middle of her final night of the godforsaken survival test.

And two strangers had taken her.

CHAPTER 30

L
EDYARD
S
TREET WAS
a half-mile road on the commercial outskirts of Hartford. It was as cozy as the fringe of any urban area, with shot-out lights hanging from abandoned factory buildings and chain link fences surrounding auto body shops and vacant lots.

Access to Ledyard came via the exact same route Father Yuri had taken when he’d whipped my car around the greater Hartford area. I’d driven it by myself and with my father hundreds of times. A left turn beyond Ledyard would point the driver toward Wethersfield and the Ukrainian National Home. A right turn put him a block away from Franklin Avenue and the Italian section of town. That is where Mozzicatto’s Bakery beckoned with fresh cannoli filled on the spot. It was the same bakery my godfather and mother had visited after he’d taken her to dinner. It seemed fitting that the warehouse where he’d stored his coveted merchandise was right smack in the middle of it all.

I took a left onto Ledyard. My car twisted through a ninety-degree curve. The streetlights behind me faded into darkness. A sign for Jarosz Welding on a giant building’s façade appeared to have been stenciled by an intoxicated blacksmith. The road straightened. A custom motorcycle shop, a rivet manufacturer, and a space for lease followed. I couldn’t find a street number on any of them.

I approached a massive quadrangle surrounded by a towering chain link fence with barbed wire. The gate was open. I counted five separate buildings inside the compound. One was a car detail shop. I couldn’t see what the others were. I was about to roll past it when I spotted a row of mailboxes with a series of numbers above them. One of them matched the one Mrs. Chimchak had given me.

The warehouse was one of the buildings in the quadrangle and the gate was open.

I wondered if someone was there right now.

Butterflies swirled in my stomach. I drove through another bend and pulled into the parking lot for Lindo’s Bodywork. I parked behind a row of bigger cars waiting for repair to keep my vehicle out of street view.

I retraced my path along Ledyard Street, hugging the chain link fences. When I got to within one lot of the gate to the quadrangle, I looked around. It was too risky to get any closer. I needed elevation to improve my line of sight.

Rectangular buildings with smooth walls surrounded me. Not a foothold to be found. I glanced across the street. A metal shack housed Pawliczko’s Salvage. A rusty camper stood tall among a parking lot of decaying vans and cars. I darted across the street to the RV, a GMC Eleganza, with peeling white paint and sea foam trim. An uninspiring metal ladder offered me a boost to its roof.

I scampered up the rungs each step faster than the previous. The ladder creaked, groaned, and swayed. When I got to the top I saw human figures across the street. I dropped to my stomach on the roof of the camper. My hands felt as though they’d fallen onto a sheet of used sandpaper. Rust, dirt, and grime surrounded me. Empty cans of Tecate beer formed a pyramid to my right. There had to be fifty of them, or more. A pair of metal beach chairs lay folded beside it. Apparently, the proprietors were salvaging cars at the expense of their livers.

I focused my attention across the street. A door to a prefabricated metal warehouse was propped open by a giant cinderblock. A faint light inside the warehouse illuminated a white, unmarked delivery truck with its back to the loading dock. Donnie Angel’s van was parked beside it. I recognized it by the modified twin tailpipes and the memories they inspired. A German shepherd sat in front of the vehicles, tongue hanging out.

I waited for more than fifteen minutes. Then a man came out of the warehouse and opened the door to the delivery truck. Two other men wheeled a crate out of the warehouse to the edge of the loading dock. Donnie Angel emerged from the warehouse on crutches. One of the men climbed into the truck and helped the other maneuver the crate inside.

Another figure emerged from the warehouse. A dark beret and turned-up coat collar obscured the man’s head, while a bulky winter coat did the same to his physique. It was hard to measure height precisely from my distance and angle. Donnie Angel was six feet tall. That much I knew all too well. The strongest conclusion I could draw was that the man with the turned-up collar was about the same height, perhaps a bit taller. He was remarkable only in the way he moved. More like a mountain lion than a human being, bounding on his haunches with a profound confidence bordering on arrogance.

The two men who’d loaded the cargo climbed into the delivery truck. The third assistant helped Donnie Angel into the back of the van. The German shepherd followed. The assistant closed the door behind them, circled around to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel. The man with the turned-up collar got into his own car, an older American sedan. One by one, they started their engines.

I hurried down the stairs. I watched the vehicles turn toward the gate. As the headlights of the delivery truck swung in an arc toward me, I hid behind the RV. I waited for the second and the third pair of lights to shine, and when I heard the sound of the engines grow faint, I knew they’d driven off in the direction from which I’d arrived.

I ran to my car, started the engine, and raced to the highway entrances on Airport Road. I came up on them so quickly I had to break to make sure I didn’t overtake them. The sedan was in the lead, the delivery truck in the middle, and Donnie Angel’s van brought up the rear. It was the van and its gaudy aftermarket tailpipes that I recognized, yet again. They took the ramp onto I-84 East and drove the speed limit in the far right lane.

I followed the three vehicles into Avon, the tony suburb on Talcott Mountain west of Hartford. It took us an additional twenty minutes to get to their final destination. Two lefts off Route 44 at the top of the mountain left us in a heavily wooded area and off the beaten track. A gate made of cherry wood opened, and they pulled into a massive stone castle.

I continued onward so as not to arouse suspicion, and parked three hundred yards away from the house. Gently pressing my doors shut, I high-stepped it over a guardrail along the curb and descended into the forest that abutted the property. Then I squatted down to my haunches and checked my watch. I needed to wait for rhodopsin to be released in my retina and improve my night vision. Another lesson learned long ago from Mrs. Chimchak during one of the excruciating summer PLAST camps I’d all but purged from my mind.

Five minutes later I began to advance toward the main house through the vineyard. I cupped my hand over my nostrils so the steam fanned out. I hugged the tree line so that the mulch surrounding the trees muffled the sound of my footsteps. A cottage stood on the left, where I guessed they made the wine. A tennis court appeared on the right. I was halfway to the main house when a cat darted across my path, hissing and yowling at me for trespassing. Not a good sign, I thought. Even the cats were on guard for prowlers.

A spotlight burst to life. It shone from my right beside the tennis court. I stayed low and sprinted left across two rows of vines. The spotlight followed in my wake but didn’t shine directly on me. I pressed my back against the far wall of the cottage facing the access road.

A man approached. His footsteps grew louder. He was walking along the far wall. The pace was determined but not urgent. Diligent, but not panicked. This suggested he hadn’t seen me. Perhaps the buyer or Donnie Angel had sent one of his men to walk around the entire property to make sure they were alone. It would have been a worthwhile security measure.

I looked around for a weapon of some kind in case I needed one. I found a rock the size of a baseball. I didn’t see any other option so I grabbed it. It felt ridiculous in my hand. I couldn’t imagine using it to hit a human being. I returned to my spot against the wall of the cottage. The man continued along a path between two columns of trees. He scanned the horizon to each side as he walked like a patrolman. When he got close enough for me to see his face, knots formed in my stomach.

He was one of Donnie Angel’s men. He was one of the men who’d grabbed me, thrown me into the van, and kidnapped me a block away from my apartment.

I pulled my head back, kept my back against the wall. I didn’t move or make a sound. I counted to twenty slowly, each second consistent with one step. My guess was it would take him ten to fifteen steps to walk past the cottage. The five additional steps were insurance. Once I counted to twenty, he would be safely past me and I could take a peek at him from behind.

I finished counting, slid around the cottage to the opposite side, and stuck my head out to catch a glimpse of him.

The man rounded the corner. We collided. Shock registered on his face.

I smashed him in the forehead with the rock. I didn’t think. I simply hit him. Not as hard as I could. I pulled back at the last minute. A dull thud was followed by a muted groan.

Blood trickled from his forehead. I stood there horrified, praying I hadn’t killed him. I checked his pulse. A strong heartbeat mollified my fears as did my memory of what he’d done to me. This man had kidnapped me.

I was about to turn and head toward the house when I caught a glimpse of something stuck in his belt. The item was exposed because his waist-length jacket had hiked up a few inches when he’d fallen. It was a small black gun. I knew nothing about guns. I’d never even touched one. They scared the heck out of me. But I grabbed it anyway. When I reached for the grip, it was an out-of-body experience. I could see myself from afar. Mouth agape I wondered, is she really going to take that gun?

It felt sleek and light and fit perfectly in the palm of my hand. More than that, it felt disturbingly good. It felt right. It weighed less than a pound, I guessed, and was about five inches long. The letters “M” and “P” were etched in the black matte barrel beside the words “Bodyguard 36.” The word “safe” was visible beneath a small button that was pushed up on the left side of the gun. Logic suggested the safety was engaged. The gun would not fire. I could not shoot myself by accident.

To my utter shock, I slid the button down. The word “safe” disappeared beneath the button. Now I could shoot someone, or myself. My nerves stood on edge. I put the safety back on, but to my surprise, I didn’t drop the gun. I kept it. If I needed to ditch it for whatever reason, I could wipe my prints off and toss it into the woods.

A combination of fear, dread, and empowerment possessed me. The feeling was as powerful as the one that had overtaken my senses after I’d cracked Donnie Angel’s tibia with the heel of my foot. I was not going to be intimidated. I was not going to be pushed around by anyone. I’d been a soldier in my mind as a girl scout, and I could be one now, too.

I checked the man’s breathing and pulse again. His lungs filled and his heart beat regularly.

I took off toward the main house, gun in hand.

The van and the delivery truck were parked in a circular drive flanked by two separate three-car garages. It amazed me that someone would need six garages, but I decided that might be exactly the type of person who was interested in stolen art. The rear door of the truck was open as though the crate had been removed. Distant voices echoed from the back of the house. There was no sign of the German shepherd, Donnie Angel, or the mysterious man with the turned-up collar.

I wound my way along a fence made of bushes that lined the far edge of the driveway. The back of the house opened up onto a veranda that led to an expansive pool area. A pair of double glass French doors was open. The voices grew louder as I approached. I snuck around the pool and edged up to the window.

The two deliverymen stood beside an empty crate. An impossibly fit woman of indeterminable age sparkled with joy. Marko had told me that a woman had taken possession of the delivery he’d supervised. They had come back to the same client. The source of her adulation was a five-by-six-foot icon of a medieval knight in a colorful cloak spearing a dragon from atop his black stallion.

A priceless relic, I thought.

The man with the turned-up collar stood next to the proud owner with his back to me, still camouflaged by a coat and hat. I willed him to turn around. He didn’t. Instead, Donnie Angel hopped into the room on crutches. He nodded at one of his men to indicate he needed to speak with him. The nod was in my direction. They both started toward the window beside me and had a brief exchange before they came within earshot.

I ducked down so they couldn’t see me.

Their voices gradually rose as they came closer.

“Where are the shovels?” Donnie Angel said.

“I left them there,” his man said.

“What if someone steals them?”

The man chuckled. “No one’s going to be there this time of night.”

“I hope not.”

“What about Marko?” the man said.

“He’s going to meet us there.”

“You sure he’s going to show?”

“I just got off the phone with him. He’s on his way now. He hasn’t gotten paid. He’s going to show.”

I heard a sound behind me. It was the suppressed sound of a man in agony. Or was I imagining things? I heard it again. I caught a glimpse of a man stumbling toward the main house through the vineyard.