Milo

 

I was still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes when I clomped into the clubhouse the next morning. My body was a little sore from all the roughhousing with Francesca, but I’d never felt lighter on my feet. I felt downright giddy, like a fucking schoolgirl. But goddammit, I loved it.

 

My mood immediately took a down turn when I waltzed around the corner and into the hallway. Tooth and Daze looked up at me from where they sat on the floor with half-empty boxes arranged messily around me. They blinked dazedly a couple times, looking like goddamn zombies, then turned back to the papers without saying a word. I frowned.

 

Stepping into my office, I saw Pete and Riley hunched over the conference table. Judging by the frightening number of cigarettes smoked down to the butt and stubbed into the ashtray in the middle of the table, they’d already been there for hours.

 

As I walked in the door, Riley roared “Argh!” and stood up suddenly, flinging his seat behind him and plunging a knife into the wooden tabletop. He was seething. I could almost see the steam rolling out of his ears. His eyes were bugging out of his head, rimmed with red, while his nose flared out like a bull in the ring.

 

He heard me clear my throat and raised his gaze to me, but it was like he could barely see me through the haze of fury clouding his vision. “This is fucking impossible!” he snarled. He picked up a sheath of papers and shook it in the air over his head. “It’s all fucking ruined! I can’t read a goddamn thing. We’ve been here for hours, fucking hours, and we’re not anywhere closer to finding this shit!”

 

“Calm down, Riley,” said Pete. His voice was level and cool, as always, but I’d known him long enough to hear the exhaustion underpinning it. I guessed the night’s rest hadn’t helped restore their patience much. They both looked ready to eat a bullet rather than dig through one more pack of water-stained files.

 

Pete looked at me. “Not going well?” I asked.

 

He took a fresh cigarette from the almost-empty carton at his elbow and tucked it in between his lips, then retrieved the lighter out of his breast pocket. “Not exactly,” he growled while lighting it and taking a drag. “Just too much damage from the flood. Here, take a look. This is the best thing we’ve found.” He held out a browned piece of paper, turning up at the edges.

 

“That shit is useless, I’m telling you,” Riley muttered as I walked over and took the paper from Pete’s hand.

 

“It’s all we got,” Pete replied.

 

I studied the page. It looked to be a newspaper clipping. If I squinted, I could make out the date. It was from a few weeks after Egor and Leon’s wife were found dead. The headline read, With No End in Sight, Murder Investigation Called Off. The article was still damp, and most of the ink in the paragraphs below had run together. I didn’t think it mattered, though, because the first line said, “Lacking promising suspects and any substantial evidence, local police have temporarily suspended their investigation into the murders of…” before trailing off into blurry nonsense.

 

My eyes roved over the sheet, looking for anything else that might be useful. I felt Riley watching me and nodding his head. “See?” he said. “Useless.”

 

Something caught my eye. “What’s this?” I asked.

 

Pete frowned. “What?”

 

I held out the page and pointed out something on the bottom edge. “What’s that look like to you?”

 

He brought it close to his face, wrinkling up his nose as he tried to get a good view. “Ain’t shit,” Riley said from across the table. “I’ve looked at that thing a hundred times already.”

 

“Milo’s right,” Pete said. “It’s something.”

 

“Lemme see that again.” I laid the clipping flat on the table and hunched over. Riley and Pete came to stand on either side of me and together, we all stared down at the handwritten scribble I’d noticed just below where the text of the article ran out.

 

“Looks like turnip,” Pete said.

 

“No, it’s turning,” Riley countered. “That’s a g, not a p. See the little squiggle underneath?”

 

“That’s just a pen mark, not a g. C’mon, use your head. Didn’t they teach you kids how to read in school?”

 

“Black,” said a voice at the door behind us. “It’s a name. Black.”

 

All three of us whirled around immediately. “Sorry, boss,” Daze said, panting. “He insisted he had to see you. I was just gonna bash his face in, but he said you’d know what was going on.”

 

“That’s okay, Daze. Let him in.” Daze stepped aside and Maxwell Robinson came shuffling into the office. He looked like he was favoring a bad knee, and he was wearing a bathrobe and house slippers, but it was the folder clutched in his fist that really had my attention.

 

“Ansel Black,” the man said as he hobbled over to where we were standing, pushed through to the table, and laid the file down flat. He opened it up and started thumbing through the contents before plucking one out and raising it up to me like it was a medal he’d just won.

 

I took the paper from his hands and read it as quickly as I could. What I read made my heart start racing at a million miles per hour.

 

Seeing Riley and Pete’s confused faces, Maxwell started to explain. “The police department somehow never released this to the media. They had a whole file full of stuff like that, in fact. I couldn’t believe I still had it. I remembered I made some copies of it—not that I was supposed to do that kind of thing, of course, but I was friends with Marty, who ran the file room, and we used to bowl together, and so—”

 

“Get on with it, old man,” Riley snapped. Pete gripped his shoulder and Riley growled but fell silent.

 

Robinson cleared his throat and continued. “Sorry, sorry. Anyway, I was a cop at the time, yeah? Different unit, beat cop instead of murder, you know how it is, but anyhow, not important. Apparently, word came down from on high that the investigation needed to end right away. Inconclusively was the word that was used. Came straight from the commissioner’s mouth, according to my sources. Whoever had that woman and your, uh, your friend bumped off, he must have had some pretty powerful friends. It takes serious influence to get a double murder investigation cut off. But whoever it was, he had that kind of influence, and the whole thing went kaput. They stashed all of the files they had into the storage closet and told the press that they didn’t have any leads and they couldn’t keep devoting resources to the case. So they moved on. And that was that. No suspects, no witnesses—at least, that’s what the press was told.”

 

Pete’s eyes narrowed. “But what?”

 

“But there were witnesses!” Maxwell said, beaming with pride. He pointed at the paper I held in my hand. “Ansel Black. He was there! Lived in the apartment right across the hall from where it happened. He saw it all. The cops interviewed him, but he was in shock and his memory was so jumbled up, and they didn’t have time to sort it out before the commissioner’s order to put a bow on the whole thing. So his side of the story got buried. Until now.”

 

“Let me get this straight,” Riley interrupted. “There was another guy at the apartment complex that night who saw the man who did it. Cops interviewed him. Then, before they could follow up on what he told them, the police department ordered the investigation be squashed.”

 

“Yes, yes,” Maxwell said, nodding. “That’s right.”

 

“That’s bullshit!” he exclaimed. “Motherfucking pigs!”

 

“Anyway,” Pete drawled, “now that it’s been broken down so our simple-minded friend here can understand what’s happening, can you tell us what that paper says, Milo?”

 

“What’s it say, boss?” Riley asked eagerly. “Can Black ID the bastard?”

 

Everyone’s eyes shifted to me. I let the paper fall onto the table. “It doesn’t say shit,” I mumbled.  “His statement doesn’t make any sense.”

 

Riley snatched it up and scanned it furiously, but as he read, his face fell further and further. By the time he reached the bottom, he looked depressed enough to jump out the nearest window. “Whoever took down this statement didn’t give a damn about getting it right. It’s just a bunch of nonsense. ‘I saw a man in a mask, oh wait, it was a woman, no, it was a pygmy dwarf.’ I mean, what the fuck, man?” He fell into a slump in a nearby chair. “We’ve still got nothing.”

 

“We need to find the guy,” Pete said quietly. “If we talk to Ansel ourselves, maybe we can wring some sense out of him.”

 

“Yeah!” said Riley, jolting forward. His eyes were suddenly glistening again. “Let’s find the motherfucker! He’ll talk. He won’t have a choice.” He looked back and forth at us excitedly.

 

“What do you think, Milo?” Pete asked me.

 

“It’s a good idea. Any lead is helpful at this point. Put out the word for everyone to start looking around for this Ansel Black guy.” But then I noticed Maxwell was wringing his hands and frowning. “What is it?” I asked, turning to him.

 

He swallowed a lump in his throat before pointing to the file. When he spoke, his voice was barely more than a whisper. “Next page.”

 

I plucked up the next sheet of paper in his folder and started reading. When I finished, I buried my head in my hands on the table.

 

“Please tell me that’s good news,” Riley whispered.

 

“It’s an obituary,” I said. “Ansel Black is dead.”

 

# # #

 

I’d thanked Maxwell and sent him on his way with a renewed offer for him to call on the Devil’s Sons if he ever needed assistance with something. He’d been as helpful as he could have been, but I was still steaming fucking mad. It didn’t seem like there would ever be an end to this shit. We’d come so close to a breakthrough, but now we were knocked back on our asses, planted firmly in square one. It felt like someone was toying with me. And all I could think of was Alla, begging me to bring a close to her misery.

 

I picked up the obituary and read through it again. I’d read it a thousand times over in the hours since Maxwell had left, but it kept niggling at me. Something just didn’t sit right.

 

Riley and Pete were back to digging through the documents. At first, they’d had some real zing in their movements, but as the minutes wore by and the clock hand ticked loudly in the silent room, they grew more and more despondent, until they looked every bit as depressed as they had when I had first walked in the room that morning.

 

The obit was dated a few months after the investigation had closed. Ansel Black, 23, passed away suddenly yesterday evening… Designated no heirs… Is survived by his uncle, Victor, and cousin, Nikolai…

 

I froze. His cousin, Nikolai.

 

The memory practically slapped me across the face: Vladimir shouting at the pimply teenage boy, “Go on, Nikolai, get the hell out of this room. I don’t want to look at you.” Turning to me and giving me an apologetic shrug of the shoulders. “My apologies, Milo. My son is often useless.”

 

I leaped to my feet and grabbed my jacket with one hand and my keys with the other. Riley whirled around to look at me. “Where are you going, Milo?” he asked.

 

I growled over my shoulder as I swept out of the room, “I’m going to pay our friend Vladimir a visit.”

 

# # #

 

Six pairs of eyes locked onto me as I barged in through the door. I had a Russian henchman pinned in a headlock, my gun pressed against his bleeding forehead. The men surrounding the poker table with cigars clamped in their mouths looked stunned at the sudden intrusion.

 

“I need to talk to you, Vladimir,” I thundered. “Right now.”

 

Vladimir looked around at his companions and shrugged, then set his cards face down on the table and stood. As he walked over to me, he pointed at the man in my arms and said, “Come on, Milo, let poor Dmitri go. He did no wrong to you.”

 

I relinquished my grip and let the poor motherfucker go. “Put some ice on that or it’s going to swell up like a bitch,” I advised.

 

He grunted as he stumbled away down the hall.

 

“Come, come.” Vladimir gestured for me to follow. He led the way to his office, where he settled into his chair with a sigh and pointed for me to do the same.

 

I sat. “Sorry about your man,” I said. “I’m a little short on time. Had to do things the messy way.”

 

He waved me off. “It is no big deal. Good for a man to get knocked around every now and then, no? Teach him he is not so tough. But, you did not come to discuss philosophy with me. Tell me, then, what brings you here in such a violent temper?”

 

“I need to know if you know a man named Ansel Black.”

 

Vladimir leaned back, frowning and stroking his chin. “Hmm,” he pondered. “I must say, the name does not sound familiar.”

 

“He’s your son’s cousin, Vladimir.”

 

“Pardon me?”

 

“I’m going to lay this out simply, because I trust you and I know you cared about Egor as much as I did. Ansel Black disappeared less than six months after Egor was murdered. The newspapers said he died. I think that’s bullshit.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Ansel Black is a distant relative of yours. I’m willing to bet he came to you right around that time and said he was in trouble. Said he needed to go underground, get out of the limelight for a little while. With Leon Samuels breathing down his neck, I can understand why he might want that.”

 

“My friend, I swear to you I know nothing of this.”

 

“I believe you, Vladimir. But I think your son does know something.”

 

His frown deepened. Extending a finger, he pressed a button on his desk. “Hilda, find my son and tell him to come immediately.” He didn’t wait for a response, instead rubbing his temples as he sank deep into thought.

 

A moment later, the door squeaked open and Nikolai stood there. “Yes, Papa?” he asked timidly.

 

“Come,” his father ordered. Nikolai slinked over to stand at the side of the desk.

 

“Go, Milo, ask him your questions.”

 

I turned to face the boy. “You had a cousin named Ansel, didn’t you, Nikolai? A distant cousin, probably, maybe not even blood related. Ansel Black.”

 

He kept his face studiously calm. “I don’t know. Maybe. My family is very big.”

 

“You’d remember this one. He came to you, didn’t he? Told you he was in trouble. Said he saw something but refused to tell you what it was, just that it was bad and he needed to disappear for a while. You helped him, right? And you didn’t tell your father?” With every passing word, he went whiter and whiter, until it looked like there was no blood running through his veins at all. “Thought you’d get in trouble for getting your daddy’s business involved in something without his permission, right? Tell me, Nikolai, is that right?”

 

He paused for a long time. Then he nodded. He started to speak in a whisper. “He just said he needed some help getting people off his back. Guys were looking for him. They came to his house when he wasn’t home, kept trying to snatch him off the streets. He was terrified. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t let him get killed, could I? I just gave him a place to stay for a while, that’s all. Then he asked for my help to get the obituary published. I was too afraid to ask my dad for help. He would have yelled at me and told me we didn’t need to risk tangling with biker gangs, that there was nothing good in it for us.”

 

I nodded solemnly. “Where is Ansel now, kid?”

 

His voice was a pipsqueak. “He works in the kitchen.”

 

I rose. “Thanks, Nikolai. Thanks, Vladimir,” I said.

 

Vladimir’s face was purpling with rage. I turned and strode out the door as the sounds of his enraged bellows erupted behind me. “Stupid, stupid boy!” he screeched. I heard flesh smacking flesh before I was too far down the stairs for the sound to carry anymore.

 

I burst into the kitchen, eyes blazing. A few bored-looking teenagers were half-heartedly pushing meat through the slicer or lugging boxes around the walk-in refrigerator. I stopped in the middle of the room. “Which one of you is Ansel Black?”

 

Everyone looked up in surprise. I swept my gaze around the room. Two people looked at each other and shrugged. A girl in the corner gave me an irritated glance, then went back to chopping lettuce. Then—there, out of the corner of my eye. I pivoted and saw a frail, nervous-looking kid with prematurely graying hair. He took one look at me and bolted through the door.

 

I hopped a counter and took off after him. He ran from the kitchen into the main dining area, overturning a table as he went. The few patrons sitting down to eat exclaimed as he knocked past them, reached the door that led outside, and flew out onto the sidewalk.

 

I was close on his heels as he wove through the pedestrians, leaving a trail of angry businessmen and tourists in his wake. He lurched suddenly into oncoming traffic. Drivers slammed on their horn as he ignored them and zipped straight across the street.

 

My breath was coming in short bursts as I followed behind, narrowly avoiding getting struck by a passing sedan. “What the fuck are you doing, you maniac?” the driver hollered out his window. On another day, I might have taken the time to beat the man’s ass just to prove a point, but right now, all that mattered was collaring this runaway motherfucker and finding out what he had seen the night that Egor and Leon’s wife were killed. If he got away now, I doubted I’d ever find him again. Getting this close had been a fluke. I wouldn’t get a second chance.

 

Ansel mounted the sidewalk on the other side and kept sprinting. He hooked around the corner of an alleyway. I was only a few yards away now. I whipped around and saw him halfway up the ladder of the fire escape that led to the rooftop. With a savage yell, I hurled myself upwards and managed to wrap a hand around his ankle. As gravity tugged me back to the ground, I brought him with me.

 

We landed in a heap of arms and legs. I didn’t want to wait around to see if he had a knife or a gun on him. Instead, I rolled over and pinned his skull against the concrete with my knee. I was panting heavily. “Ansel, calm the fuck down. I’m not going to hurt you.”

 

He snorted angrily in response. “Yes, you are. You’re with him. With them. You’ve been trying to find me for years.”

 

“Shut the fuck up,” I snarled. I looked up and saw a few passersby at the mouth of the alley, looking at us and gawking. “Come here,” I said. I picked him up by the back of his shirt and dragged him towards the back, behind a dumpster. Tossing him to a seat against the wall, I crouched in front of him and withdrew my knife.

 

“I thought you said you weren’t going to hurt me,” he gasped, eyeing the blade I had angled at his chest.

 

“I won’t, as long as you answer my questions. Tell me what I want and you’ll walk away scot-free. Sound fair?”

 

“How can I trust you?”

 

“You really don’t have a good grasp on your options here, moron. Now, take a second to collect yourself.” I paused while he took a deep, rattling breath. Snot dribbled from his nose. “Okay, good. Now. I want you to think very carefully. When you answer, be sure to include every detail you can remember, got it? Start from the beginning. What did you see on the night of those murders?”

 

He started to talk in a slow, halting voice. “I was at home. I lived in the apartment building, the one where the shit happened. I heard a bunch of noise from across the hall. I was high, man, I was so high. I thought the cops were coming for me. I threw the deadbolt and the chain, but I was still freaking the fuck out. I looked out my peephole, you know? And he came running out of the lady’s room. He had blood all over him, so much blood, man. He looked like he was a fucking butcher!”

 

“Did you see his face?”

 

“Only for a second. He put the mask on pretty quickly as soon as he came out of the room. I just remember his hair. He had this crazy white hair, even though I thought it was a young dude. He put the mask on real quick. But that’s when he heard me. I, like, I fucking kicked a lamp over or some shit, I don’t even know. I was so high.”

 

“You mentioned that already,” I said dryly.

 

He licked his lips. “He musta heard it, because he came up to the door and looked right in the peephole. And his fucking eyes, man!”

 

“What about his eyes?”

 

I knew what he was going to say before he said it. “They were gray. Not just gray like the color, but like, gray. Like, haunting. Alien eyes. Out of this fucking world. I thought he was a demon or somethin’.”

 

Gray eyes. There were two people in the world with eyes like that.

 

There was Francesca Samuels.

 

And then there was her father.