The Necromancer's House (21 page)

Cayuga County Deputy Brant McGowan follows the red Toyota on a hunch.

Just slips behind it as it pulls out of the Fair Haven gas station, decides to try to get a look at the driver.

A child abduction in Syracuse has everybody from here to Watertown on edge. This is the second one in two weeks, but the only one they've got a lead on. First one was an infant snatched from its stroller, just gone and nobody knows when or how, and that was in Red Creek. Mother is the primary person of interest. This time, some creep yanked a toddler off his sister's arm while they were walking back from the park just two blocks from home. The suspect appears in flashes on a security camera, swooping up from his parked red Toyota Prius, the action reminding Brant of a trap-door spider he saw at an insect zoo when he was a kid. Not so long ago. Deputy McGowan is a young man.

So was the perp in the video. Young, and dirty to be in that kind of car.

Deputy McGowan is off duty, coming home from Auburn in his own Saturn—not the kind of vehicle to draw attention, although he would freely admit his sunglasses look a bit coppish.

He doesn't think the driver knows he has a tail.

He's seen maybe three of the distinctive Toyota hybrids in red since he saw the footage, but this is the first one driven by a male. Also the first one that makes his guts crawl. He has only seen the driver from behind so far, sees that it's a bald or short-haired man, indeterminate age. He needs to get up beside him for a proper peek, but the one-lane roads here in farm country won't allow for that unless he goes to pass.

Might as well stick with him for a while.

As it turns out, he sticks with him all the way to Marsh Road.

When he sees the Prius slow down and signal to turn off 104A, he has to decide whether to turn with it; if he does, there will be no ambiguity. The guy will know he's being followed. If it's
the
guy, that is. Most honest citizens don't notice shit unless they've got a good reason to.

He turns, too, keeping a good distance behind, almost letting him get out of sight.

Got a glimpse of him as he turned.

Older guy, big beard.

Too old to be the perp.

But maybe he's not the only one who drives that car.

When the beardy guy turns up the dead-end road leading to the cabins, the game is definitely up; he can't just swivel in there after him. He drives past the turn, pulls in the driveway of a house, sits there until the Toyota is out of sight.

Wasn't there a disappearance out this way, maybe these cabins?

Yeah . . . German tourist or something. State police said they got some weird DNA, but no body, no suspect.

A woman peeps at him through drapes.

He pretends to be checking something on his phone, pulls out, parks a bit farther down.

Heads down the road to the cabins on foot.

Just a guy taking a stroll.

In cop glasses.

I really suck at this.

I left my gun in the car.

I'll never be a detective.

I need a story in case he talks to me.

He sees the Prius now.

Walks closer to the trees, in shadow now, pretends to look at his phone again.

Sees the man getting out.

Kind of a smarty-arty-looking old dude.

Getting something out of the back now.

A cage?

A cage.

With a rooster in it!

Flapping its wings halfheartedly, feathers floating.

The man wrinkles his nose.

Takes the cage in the house.

What does a latte-drinking guy like that want with a rooster?

Should I go talk to him?

I'll say I'm looking for a buddy's cabin.

Bob?

Too generic.

Kyle.

Big guy with a red beard, having a keg party.

He'll hate that, he'll be so busy hating it he won't stop to wonder if I'm a cop, if he's not involved.

If he's not, who cares?

Might tip him off if he's involved.

Looks twitchy, wonder if he's scared about something.

I'd like to know what.

If anyone else lives there, I might see who.

Movement behind him.

He turns around, but whatever it was is still or gone.

Squirrel.

No, bigger than a squirrel.

He looks back toward the house.

All still and quiet.

Don't think anyone else lives there.

This is stupid.

He stands with his arms folded, weighing the pros and cons of approaching the house.

Something weird's going on here, but weird isn't illegal. I don't think this is the guy. And if it is, I'm more likely to fuck things up than make myself useful. Still, I'll tell Syracuse about the car and chicken-man, see if they want somebody on duty to roll by and ask questions.

He senses motion behind him now, turns around just too late again.

Birds flutter near the crowns of the trees.

His hand strays to where his gun should be.

He decides it's official.

He's creeped out.

Hell with this.

He walks back down the road now, feeling watched.

He walks more quickly.

Strong late-afternoon sun, not even close to dark, and he feels like a teenaged girl in a graveyard.

Laughs at himself.

Still walks fast, though.

He sees his car.

Something's different.

I had the window up.

Now it's down.

Did I have it up?

He approaches the car from the blind spot just in case.

Pops his trunk with the fob.

A slate-gray Volkswagen Jetta slides by, the driver eyeing him suspiciously.

He waves without meaning to, an instinct.

Puts on his gun belt.

Feels better.

Looks in the window, sees nobody, relaxes a bit.

Sits down, a chill going through him.

Damn it's cold in here, I was running the air but damn.

Freon leak or something?

He starts the car.

Cocks the mirror to look at himself, thinks he looks ridiculous in his badass shades.

Opens the glove box to put them away and get a piece of gum.

Sees it.

The antler.

He checks his windows and mirrors again to make sure there's nobody near the car, then looks at it again.

It's a goddamned antler, an antler from a young buck.

He nearly picks it up, then thinks about DNA and prints and decides not to touch it until he has a sandwich bag.

It really is cold in the car, cold enough to make him put the heat on.

He closes the glove box and drives off with his sunglasses on, chewing no gum.

The men in the slate-gray Volkswagen Jetta don't talk much.

They are on their way to avenge Mikhail Dragomirov, whom Georgi believes was murdered by a female associate of one Andrew Blankenship, who lives on Willow Fork Road, but whose dwelling should be identified by a turquoise Mustang from the late sixties, what Americans of a certain age call a muscle car.

Sergei Alexandrovich Rozhkov doesn't like this.

He doesn't like Georgi, either.

Sergei is nearly seventy-seven, but still vigorous. Still dangerous. His son back in Brooklyn looks older than he does now, ever since the liver problems turned him the color of bad salmon.

Georgi is not his son.

Georgi is the nephew of an old friend, the kind of friend you do inconvenient things for.

Even when that friend is dead.

Georgi has stumbled into his midthirties, neither fully American nor truly Russian, too scared to join the mob, an honest citizen who doesn't notice shit. The man they passed on the road was a policeman putting on a gun. Georgi looked at him obviously, drawing his attention. Getting his own face looked at. There would have been no room for such a man in the Odessa operation, but that was a long time ago now.

What's more, he's clearly in love with his estranged cousin, the niece, and wants to impress her by killing those who may or may not have killed Misha. The little niece believes it was this Blankenship, a man of small consequence, who killed Misha over a whore, and she won't say how she knows this.

Sergei is all but sure Misha drowned.

It's always this way. When we lose someone we love, we want a villain. What if the villain was the whiskey Misha was drinking and the currents in the lake? He should shoot a bottle of scotch, empty a clip into the lake, and go home.

Misha was a good man, strong at chess, a genius with numbers, but he comes from a degenerate tribe with their best days behind them. Everybody's best days are behind them. The world has become a playground of idiots and zealots, where the ever-shrinking center of reasonable men must work harder and harder to keep the lights on and the bombs from going off.

Sergei wants to go back to Brooklyn and get out of this paradise of horseshit and apples where you must drive everywhere.

He misses the pastrami at the deli on the street full of Greeks.

Now they wind their way up Willow Fork Road, looking for a house that doesn't seem to be there.

“This address she gave us is correct?”

Sergei speaks English because Georgi spends too long searching for his words in Russian and this is annoying.

Georgi answers him in Russian anyway.

“I don't know. She says so, but his address is not listed. The Mustang is known; the . . . what is the word? sales record has been found. On the Internet. And this color, blue-green and bright.”

Sergei says the Russian word for
turquoise
.

Georgi switches to English.

“Yes,
biryuzoviy
. It's an unusual color, and an unusual car. Look,” he says, showing him a cut-out page from an auto sales magazine, a 1968 Mustang circled in red pen, a tiny skull drawn badly near it.

“It's a nice car,” Sergei says.

They come to the end of the road, execute a three-point turn, and go back.

And then, good luck!

The turquoise Mustang appears from a tree-hidden drive that seems to lead to no house; it has to be the same car. And it
is
a magnificent beast. It takes a right onto the road and tears out, using its big, Vietnam-era motor to vault down the winding road. The motor is louder than those in modern cars; it sounds powerful, like a predator. And classic. The man who owns such a car will be good with his hands, a good worker. It occurs to Sergei that he may like the man in the Mustang more than the nephew of his old associate.

But a promise is a promise.

They follow the Mustang out of Dog Neck Harbor all the way past Fair Haven, where it pulls off 104A and parks behind a barn that has been converted into an auto garage across the street from silos. North Star. Nice name.

The driver has already gone into the garage when they pull around.

“Remember,” Georgi says, “he has long black hair like an Indian and he is thin.”

“Am I a man you must say things twice to?”

“Sorry.”

“Let me see your gun.”

Georgi looks around, then removes his snub-nosed .38.

Sergei takes it from him, opens the cylinder, spins it, his heart gladdening at the sight of brass. Shell casings are his favorite jewelry.

“This is ready. Try not to shoot me.”

He now pulls out his own Makarov, flips down the safety, puts it back into his coat.

They get out.

Open the door, walk in like they know what they're doing. Sneaking is for idiots; people who look as though they have a purpose rarely get questioned.

They find themselves in a back room, an employee room of sorts, where a number of heavily tattooed Mexicans sit around a table littered with tequila bottles and half-eaten plates smeared with brown and green sauces.

The place smells like chocolate, cinnamon, and garlic.

Now a voice behind them.

Mexican accent.

“Keep your hands out of your pockets.”

They do.

“Why were you following me?”

“I like Mustangs,” Sergei says. “I was hoping that one might be for sale. Is it?”

Chancho grunts.

The men at the table look at the Russians with eyes like brown stone. Several of them have their hands ominously under the table.

“Why were you coming in the back door to talk about buying a car?”

“That's the way you came in. We wanted to talk to you.”

Chancho grunts.

Gonzo walks in, sees guns, puts his hands over his eyes like the see-no-evil monkey and walks briskly out.

“Why the
pistolas
? You know, it's not nice to bring guns to the back door to ask about buying a car.”

“Please,” Georgi starts.

Sergei says, in Russian, “If you beg I will shoot you myself.”

Then, in English, “This was our mistake. I apologize for disturbing you. With your permission, we will leave now and we will not return.”

“Give me your wallets,” Chancho says. “And put your guns on the table. Like slow, though. Super slow.”

They do.

Chancho looks in the wallets, grunts.

“Lotta money in these wallets. If I still stole I'd be real happy about these wallets.”

The Russians stay quiet.

“But I don't steal, not no more,” he says. “Not money, anyway.”

He takes the driver's licenses out of both wallets, gives the wallets back, always behind the Russians, and they do not look at him.

Now he tosses the driver's licenses on the table. Georgi's lands in pico de gallo.

“My cousins, they gonna keep those. They could be fake, but I don't think so. If something bad happens to me, something
real
bad's gonna happen to you.
¿Comprende, pendejos?
”

“
Ponymayu
,” Sergei says, nodding.

The Mexicans walk them outside.

Chancho asks them to open the car doors.

They do.

Chancho pulls out a large, brutal-looking knife and cuts long slashes in the upholstery. He does this impassively, taking his time, like fucking up car seats is just another service they offer at North Star, like it's something he wants to do well.

He motions for them to get back in their cars.

They do.

“
Adios, pendejos.
And don't come back.”

Before the disgraced Volkswagen pulls out of the North Star Garage, Sergei Alexandrovich Rozhkov looks at Georgi.

“You let a woman tell you what to do, and this is what happens.”

“But . . .”

“Be quiet. Misha drowned. You're an idiot. I'm going back to Brooklyn.”