Under the Skin (3 page)

When they were both dressed, Alexei flicked off the lights and followed Patrick back into the darkened gymnasium. Pausing, he tipped his lover’s chin up with a scarred finger, their eyes meeting in a moment of unspoken understanding. “You know how to contact me,” he said softly, pulling on his gloves and turning toward the back door.

Patrick knew exactly how to contact the Russian, knew that Alexei could contact him just as easily, yet he did not. Alexei had already turned his back so they could go their separate ways when the silence became too much for Patrick. “This won’t always be enough,” he said quietly, though he was sure Alexei had heard him. Pulling up the collar of his coat against the stinging sleet that had started while they were inside, he bowed his head and left the building, heading toward home.

Chapter 2

A
LONE
in his apartment in Bucktown, Patrick poured himself a cup of coffee and grimaced at the pull of bruised muscles as he reached for the sugar on the top shelf of the cabinet. He’d been right about that bruise across his stomach. It had only been an hour and it already hurt like a bitch. Damn Alexei for being a seductive bastard anyway.

He took a sip of his coffee, cursing under his breath when it burned his tongue. That was the way his luck was running recently. And he hadn’t even managed to get anything useful out of Alexei tonight in exchange for their interlude. Not that he went for the information anymore, even if it had started that way. It had gotten far more personal than that, as he’d proven by forgetting to ask for any information before he left.

Taking another sip, he tried to remember exactly how they’d gotten here. It had started five months earlier, in early October, when he’d gotten the call to check out what looked to be a fresh outbreak of gang violence in an area they’d thought was no longer disputed. He’d gone to the hospital where the victims were taken, thinking he’d find the usual black or Latino teenagers. Instead he’d found Alexei Boczar standing over the body of a tattooed Russian.

Despite the warmth of the Indian summer afternoon that had led Patrick to strip off his sweatshirt and tie it around his waist, the Russian wore a dark topcoat over his crisply pleated trousers and supple black leather gloves on his hands. His dark hair was slicked back from a high forehead and hard, deeply carved features that could have been chiseled from granite for all the emotion they revealed. He might have been a businessman from one of the Polish firms along Milwaukee Avenue, except there was no reason for a legitimate businessman to have been involved in a gang shooting.

“Detective Patrick Flaherty,” he said, flashing his CPD star. Even though he’d passed thirty, he still looked young enough to occasionally work undercover with the gang enforcement unit, making the identification a necessity, especially when he wasn’t dressed for desk work at Area 3 headquarters. “Did you see what happened?”

The man’s steely gray eyes had raked over Patrick from head to heels and back again. His stolid expression didn’t change, but Patrick felt the gaze like a physical touch, sending a spark of awareness flickering along his nerves. He smothered it because he was in the middle of a murder investigation with gang connections, but it didn’t stop the churning in his gut. He’d met Alexei’s eyes instead, daring the man to make something of his age or his casual appearance. He hadn’t been on duty or he’d have been wearing a shirt and tie at least, but the captain had called him in anyway given his experience with the local gangs. The face of the man staring at him now was a new one, and he committed it to memory, determined to find out everything he could about the mysterious stranger.

Shrugging his shoulders, the man spoke in a slow, heavily accented voice. “He was shot.”

It was such a typical Alexei reaction, in hindsight. At the time, it had burned Patrick’s last nerve. “You think?” he snapped. “You want to tell me who did it?”

“You are police, no?” Alexei asked in turn. “Is supposed to be you telling me.”

“I’d be glad to,” Patrick replied, “as soon as you help me figure it out. Were you with him when he was shot?”

“
Da
,” Alexei agreed with a nod of his head. His gaze swept over Patrick again, more slowly this time, and one corner of his lips twitched upward.

Only the body on the stretcher between them kept Patrick from raising his voice and putting his hands on the infuriating Russian. Most of his mother’s lessons had long since worn off, but respect for the dead was one he hadn’t yet shaken. “Tell me what you saw of the shooter.” He hoped a more open-ended question would elicit more of a response. He should have known better.

Again, the Russian shrugged. “Was car. Dark windows. Could not see inside.” His lips twitched again, and this time Patrick was sure he was laughing at him. “It all happened so fast.”

Patrick rolled his eyes. “Your name and contact information so I can let you know when I find his murderer, since you’re obviously so concerned about helping us locate his killer.”

“Alexei Boczar.” He stretched his arm over the gurney to offer his hand, still encased in the black leather glove. “Grisha would be pleased at your diligence.”

“And if I need to contact you, Mr. Boczar?” Patrick was relieved he hadn’t stumbled over the foreign name. He spoke Spanish as well as the average local Latino, but he’d never had a reason to learn Russian. With his dark coloring, he might pass for Hispanic; he’d never pass for Slavic.

Boczar reached into his jacket, extracting not the gun Patrick was sure was concealed somewhere beneath the dark topcoat, but a slim silver card case and pen. He jotted a number on the card and handed it to Patrick. “You can reach me there.” His eyes met Patrick’s again, the steel-blue irises flashing darkly. “Whenever you need me.”

Patrick had been sure the number was fake, but he’d kept the card anyway and gone on to interview the other witnesses who were all about as helpful as Boczar had been. They, at least, had been familiar faces and names, though, so he hadn’t honestly expected more than that. He probably wouldn’t catch the killer—it frustrated him how rarely they did when rival gangs were involved—but he would’ve liked to figure out which gang had done the shooting.

Over the next several weeks, he’d dug for information on Boczar, calling in favors from Central Booking, Immigration, Organized Crime, and everyone else. He’d found exactly nothing except for a brief record of the man’s immigration from Russia seven years ago. No arrests, and he’d never made it onto OCD’s radar. He’d been in a car with a known Russian mobster. Patrick couldn’t believe he hadn’t been investigated by someone before now.

Finally, in desperation, he’d called the number on the card Boczar had given him. To his surprise, the number hadn’t been fake, and Alexei had picked up the phone. It annoyed him that he’d recognized the voice after such a short interview, but there was something about that gravelly rasp that had stayed with him. He refused to admit it was because of the erotic things that voice had done to his insides.

“Mr. Boczar, it’s Detective Flaherty,” he’d said. “I was hoping you could give me more details of the shooter’s car. The make, model, color, any part of a license plate. Anything.”

“I think you do not need search for car any longer,” Alexei answered. “It has doubtless been dealt with by now.”

Patrick had no doubt that was true, but otherwise he had no excuse for calling. “And the shooter? Has he been dealt with as well?” The question escaped before he could stop it, along with the bitterness in his voice.

He couldn’t see Alexei’s expression over the phone connection, but Patrick was sure the Russian was laughing at him. “Would it not make your job easier if he had?”

Patrick snorted. “As if. No, it wouldn’t make my job easier, because then I’d have two bodies to deal with instead of one, and a retaliatory hit instead of just a random one. Look, if you find out anything, call me at this number rather than taking care of it yourself. I don’t want to have to pull you in for questioning as a suspect instead of a witness, okay?”

“I have your number,” Alexei said before breaking the connection.

The words had been true in their literal sense. Patrick had wondered more than once since then if Boczar knew the colloquial meaning of the phrase. Whether he did or not, it was unfortunately true in either sense, as their next encounter had proven.

Patrick hadn’t been able to let it go after that call, searching through the morgue records trying to find a victim who could have been the perp in the first hit, to no avail. He had managed to finally track Boczar back to the family he worked for. The Volkovs were well known to the Organized Crime Division tracking the growing Eastern European criminal presence in Chicago, having appeared on the scene about ten years ago and quickly risen to a position of prominence. Given his lack of an arrest record, Boczar’s affiliation with them seemed to be relatively recent, though he was frequently seen in company with the Volkov son, Konstantin, who had enough run-ins with the law for both of them.

Patrick had taken to trailing the man on his time off. He wasn’t working undercover in the gangs at the moment. He was hoping, honestly, not to have to go back undercover. He’d done some things to keep his cover that he wished there’d been a way around. An old buddy who’d gotten promoted to Organized Crime’s gang enforcement unit had been more than willing to talk, giving Patrick all the information he could absorb about the Russian Mafiya, the
vory v zakone
, as they called themselves. Everything he’d seen since then both confirmed his suspicion that Boczar was neck-deep in the
vory
and challenged that belief at the same time. The man made the rounds of local businesses, almost certainly extorting protection money, except that he always came out with a purchase as well. Nothing big, necessarily, but he bought pastries at the local bakery and tools at the local hardware store. And he never passed a church without going inside and lighting a candle at the shrine of St. Michael. More than anything else, it was that gesture Patrick could not understand: a mobster who didn’t use religion just for show but actually seemed genuine in his devotions.

If there was one thing Patrick hated with every ounce of his stubborn South Side Irish soul, it was a mystery he couldn’t solve, and Alexei Boczar had become just that.

Four weeks later, after a day spent trying to broker a meeting between the leaders of the Imperial Gangstas and the Latin Cobras to settle a turf dispute before it escalated into bloodshed, Patrick had known he should have headed home, or at least to one of the local bars for a beer to unwind. What he shouldn’t have been doing was following Alexei Boczar making his rounds of the shops along Division Street.

As the autumn chill deepened and the afternoon sun slid behind a bank of clouds blowing in from the west, Boczar turned down a residential side street. Patrick hung back, the chance of being spotted greater without the neighborhood traffic to blend into. He let Boczar get a block ahead before following, the brightly hued leaves from the maple trees lining the street crunching beneath his feet. He was no longer surprised when the Russian’s goal came into sight—an ornate white stone church, its central tower capped with an elaborately carved golden dome. Boczar slipped inside for several minutes while Patrick waited across the street, the collar of his denim jacket turned up against the cold.

When Boczar left the church, he didn’t head back toward Division, walking farther down the street before turning into a narrow alley. When Patrick followed a moment later, he saw no sign of his quarry. Wondering if he’d gone into one of the houses through a back yard, Patrick was about to give up for the evening when a forearm slammed against his throat, cutting off his breath. He was flung against the side of a garage, the rough wooden siding cutting into his cheek.

“You thought I would not notice you follow me?” a deep voice growled into his ear.

“It took you long enough,” Patrick said, not struggling. There would be time to struggle later if Boczar actually threatened him.

“Was no need to confront you.” The arm didn’t release him, but the grasp felt different somehow, less constrictive, more intimate. “But I wonder why you continue. You see I break no laws.”

“Maybe I like you,” Patrick retorted since he wasn’t about to admit he didn’t have anything to pin on Boczar. “Or maybe I’ve seen things you don’t realize I’ve seen. Tell me who shot your friend and I’ll forget about all this.”

“Forget what?” There it was again, that tone in Boczar’s voice that hinted at hidden laughter. “As dedicated police as you are, had I committed some crime, you would have taken me by now.”

“Maybe I think you’d be worth more to me as my eyes on the street than you would be behind bars,” Patrick replied, trying not to bristle at Boczar’s words. He had to play this cool or he’d lose the man for sure.

“I prefer my eyes on what they see now,” Boczar purred, lowering his arm and stepping back to allow Patrick to turn around, the cool wind replacing the warmth of the Russian’s body.

“What you see now isn’t on offer,” Patrick snapped, his hackles rising at the thought that he would barter his body for information. Except, of course, he had, more times since then than he cared to count. That day, though, he’d been full of righteous indignation at the thought.