Vassili
I head over to the attendant manning the big screen. Children are seated before it, watching the scene were Princess Tiana turns into a frog. They have those theater bags of popcorn in their hands.
“Where’s uncle?” I ask Yuri as he catches up with me. My uncle, Malich is all about family, so this will be the highlight of his day. He’d gotten his t-shirt and went to change, but I haven’t seen him since.
“Igor was eating everything in sight,” Yuri says of his brother. “Dad took him home. Anna is staying here with their kids.”
I shake my head. Why does it take Malich to keep his grown ass son from trying to kill himself? The idiot, Igor, has diabetes. His wife, Anna, is good at keeping him on track. The different attractions around my home must have kept her entirely too busy with their children to watch her husband.
“Are you putting that video on now?” Yuri asks.
The email app on my cell phone pings with a new message. I start to click on the one titled “Baby video,” when I notice a new email, the title in all capital letters.
FRANK GASPAR.
I’ll never forget the name.
The sea matched the pitch black of the night. My heart rate was at a resting pace as I jogged through the sand. My gaze narrowed, a dark figure was standing at the stairs that lead up to my Venice beach house. He stood in the shadows of the wooden pillars, blending well with the stair. Pretending to be oblivious, my eyes shaded somewhat, and I caught sight of a badge. It was one of those “to protect and serve” motherfuckers.
With a hard frown, I played stupid, continuing at my current pace.
The outline of a baton went to his side. In the last second, the cop lifted it, saying, “A message from—”
The baton slammed against my palms so roughly, it broke the skin on my palms as I grabbed it from my skin.
“You're gonna fucking hit me?!” I whacked him across the head with the stick determined to break the damn thing. Then I gripped him by his neck, slamming him against a pillar. His feet dangled.
“Next time you’re given an assignment, back your shit up,” I squeezed until he was dead weight. Fuck, what have I done?
I reached down and check his pulse.
Weak.
“What is it?” My wife’s concerned voice breaks through the memory. Where did she come from? I glance around. Children are running around with cotton candy and parents are chomping on beignets. Balloons fly in the wind. I rationalize where I am.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, she can’t know about him. Zariah and I have our secrets. Big ones. The first died by the name of Sergio. I murdered him slowly just to get Zariah’s attention.
In a fraction of a second, I’ve deleted the message without opening it.
Yuri catches the slight look in my eye. “Um, the email, maybe it was sent to me instead of you?” He catches on. “Don’t worry, kazen, let me check.”
Zariah sighs, “Oh no, I hope you guys find it soon.”
Yuri pulls out his phone, toggles the apps for a second and then says, “Nope, don’t see it. Let’s go make a call, Vassili. This is my god baby’s birthday. The director had better come through.”
Director? My cousin sounds like a liar. I shake my head, and we head to the sliding glass door.
I cock my head and he follows me to the downstairs office. Inside is memorabilia from my previous MMA fights. My first shirt with the Killer Karo symbol is framed above the back of my desk. I head to my leather chair, claiming it with a heavy heart.
“We need water?” Yuri asks, hesitantly.
I nod. From the inside of his suit jacket, he pulls out a bottle of Resnov vodka, and opens it.
After he takes a swig, I grab the bottle and toss it to the head, downing much of it. Wiping my mouth, I ask, “Do you remember maybe two years ago or so, I called you over after a run near my old home in Venice?”
“No.”
“Some cop came out of nowhere. It was night, and he started to tell me who he was about to beat me up for, but I got him first.”
My cousin’s eyes flit around with a bewildered look.
“You came over, whining about not sucking on your old lady’s tits. And you capped him, and hauled him away.”
“Oh, you’d dumped the cop beneath the stairs by your home. I came and finished him because you were being a pussy?” Yuri tosses back.
“No Sherlock, I just don’t murder mudaks for no reason. I thought we’d figure out who he worked for.”
“My dad,” he says of Malich. “Your dad, or Zariah’s.”
“Ring-ring-ring/” I nod, sarcastically.
“So, who did the cop work for?”
My eyes bug out. “Are you serious right now, Yuri. You killed him before we could get that far.”
“You were my accomplice.”
“Kazen,” I gesture, “I’m not wearing a fucking wire, we need to figure this out!”
“Okay!”
I reach up and grab my cell phone from my back pocket, open the email account and view the “deleted” items. Then my thumb mashes onto the email entitled with the cop’s name. I open it up for the first time, and just as I suspected the dead man is there. Someone excavated his body, and in the photo, the stiff is near a muddy area. A close-up photo of his Los Angeles Police Department Badge shows that he’s none other than Frank Gaspar. Now I have two bodies to my name. I slide the phone over. Yuri glances at it in disinterest.
“So?”
“Some-fucking-body pulled him up from the LA River, and all you’ve got to say is ‘so’?” I nudged my tense jaw at the phone. “Who did this?”
“Well, my pop didn’t. I remember everything now, you were ready to start pointing the finger at all of us. Malich didn’t do it.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Yuri.” I say through tensed lips. Although, I still feel bad for thinking so negatively about my uncle, he’s more than a father to me.
“It leaves one of two people. Vassili, we can’t take out Anatoly, but we sure as fuck can go murder Maxwell Wash—”
I reach over and slam my hand over his mouth. “Don’t fucking say that, Yuri! Not in my house. My wife is that bastard’s daughter!”
Yuri pushes my hand away.
“And again, Vassili, I say ‘so’?” He holds out his hands. “She doesn’t like his ass anymore. One crooked cop off the streets is no sweat off my back.”
“Maxwell Washington is the Chief of police. Bet your ass that the entire division will search for him, unlike they did for Gaspar.”
“Can you stop saying his name?” Yuri inquires. “I’m not a fan of mentioning the names of people that I… you know.”
“But you have no problem adding to the list?”
“Better them than me, Vassili. You have always been lukewarm in this game. You’re not in the bratva, but you’ll ask me to get some motherfucker in a basement just to get the attention of a piece of pussy!”
I slam my forearm along his chest. “That was my wife. I never asked you to help me torture for anybody but—”
“Dah, and you got whatever the fuck that Italian guy’s name was in the basement for Zariah, as you requested. I don’t have a fucking problem with helping you. But I recall a certain someone telling me to stay the hell away from his woman before you married her, in not so nice words.”
I shake my head. “Really? You’re bringing up old shit? I have a wife for that!”
“You have always been my brah! Fuck, a kazen, you have always been moy brat—my brother! So, forgive me if I recall bullshit, that still hurt. Then you call me to get rid of this cop, I do it. You call, I do it. Oh, and before this, you sent me to Atlanta to follow Zariah around like a stalker, while she attended college. I still had my assignments for Malich. And I still managed your MMA fights, Vassili. Where the fuck is my thank you for once? Calling me inside to—to argue with me about some cop on the beat, this is my god baby’s birthday! Fuck him, fuck that Italian dude, fuck you! I’d say fuck your wife, but I actually like her, and she’s family now. You, I don’t like.”
I hold my tongue. Shit, I have another assignment for him. He’ll be in Atlanta for me by the end of the week. He just doesn’t know it yet.
“Yuri, you are more than a fucking brat to me, okay?”
He almost smiles at the thought of us really being brothers. “And…”
“And.” I gulp down the tension in my throat. Shit, I’ve only said sorry a few times in my life, in all cases it was to a female. Zariah, Sasha, and my mother. “We will figure out who dug up Gaspar’s body and emailed me.”
“We you say? We will work together?” His eyebrow bunches. “No, Yuri, ‘manage the situation,’ as you always say?”
This fool is pushing it. I rub a hand over my face. “We work together.”
“And if it’s Zariah’s father? Do we get to kill him—shit, if you want to do the honors, I’ll just dump. Igor has had it in for him for years. Back when he was a lieutenant, Washington dropped coke on Igor’s wife’s, brother’s, best friend’s cousin’s, little brother’s—”
“Yuri,” I warn in a testy voice.
“Just want to recreate the picture. Everyone was pissed. The guy’s still in jail.”
“Well, fuck that. We need to get back to my baby’s first birthday. When that’s done, we’ll figure out if it’s Washington or Anatoly that is behind this email, and then we’ll deal with it accordingly.”