N THE MOONLIGHT, the driveway looked like a war zone. Smoke hung over the churned up lawns. Horse handled the Jeep like a pro, bouncing around the wreckage of two Hummers and a pickup. It was a squeeze to get by the smoking hulk at the stone pillars of the gateway.
On the switchback bends of the high country road, the dark, wooded hill was on our left and the eerily moonlit valley to the right. Horse handed me the card Carmine had given him. “You know this guy?”
A Russian name, and the address of a club. “No, I can’t say I do. You?”
He shook his head. His wry little grin was in place, but I knew there were things he wanted to say. Things he wanted to know. There were things I wanted to tell him, too. Like what really happened to the barrel of his gun before the trial. But I wasn’t sure I could ever tell him that. I couldn’t take the risk of having him know. Him or anyone else.
Carmine had handed him the fob so I wasn’t going to make an issue about who was going to drive, and I let him take us back to Manhattan. His driving was good. Predictably aggressive, of course, but not excessive. It was all I could do to stop myself from second-guessing him all the way. The fact of it was I just didn’t like not being in control.
We were quiet most of the way. But it wasn’t an awkward silence, like one or both of us trying to think of things to say. And not a cold silence. More like a truce. A respectful pause. I wanted to know how his time in prison had been. I hoped there would be a time to ask him about that, but this definitely wasn’t it. Not with so much unfinished business.
For a moment I wondered how long we could go on like this, piling up more incomplete and unresolved issues. The one night we had spent together, the night before I arrested him, I couldn’t forget that part, that night had changed something for me.
It wasn’t only physical, although that part was huge. And I do mean huge. After remembering it every night for five years, I couldn’t deny it. It would be crazy to try. No man I had ever been with before was anything like him. And not just because of his almost unbearable size.
At first I was afraid that he had spoiled me for every other man, that no one else would come up to him. It didn’t take long for me to realize, there could never be another man. Not for me, not in the same way. From here on, it was him or nothing. Damnit.
Somehow I needed to understand what it all meant, but it seemed like I would only be able to do it with him. And that kind of a conversation didn’t look like it was anywhere in our immediate future. That left me wondering whether we would have any kind of a longer-term future. Then again, every time we met, the chances of one or both of us dying seemed to ramp up pretty steeply.
None of this was helping me to concentrate on the job at hand. Something that Carmine had said made me think that I was finally getting close to the center of the investigation. It was exciting, and it felt more dangerous than anything I had ever felt before. I glanced sideways at Horse and watched his eyes sparkle as he drove. Saw the tiny pull in his dimples as he sensed me watching him.
We crossed the river and headed into the lights and the sea of night-time Broadway traffic. I felt like we had left another world behind us. This whole business had possessed a surreal side from the very start, and none of it was getting any clearer to me.
The address of the club took us to the bottom of a tall, new, steel and glass building. The top floors glowed bright and colored lights flickered and flashed high in the misty night air. Behind a fat red velvet rope at the shiny black double doors, four burly men in black suits with gray shirts and dark silver ties stood with their hands folded in front of them.
The men all wore their hair cropped short, with buzz-cut beards. Wires snaked from under their collars into their ears. Under their arms their suit coats bulged.
Horse parked the Jeep on a side street about a block away. “I’m not really dressed for an evening in a club.”
He paused by the fender and a tingle dropped through my body as he looked me up and down. “You’re dressed for action pretty much anywhere,” As he held out a hand he said, “Whatever else, Vesper, even if you wore a tent you’d still look like lit dynamite.”
At the door he took out the card and showed it to one of the doormen.
The doorman looked at the card and reached to take it. Horse said, “You see this name on the card? Is that you?”
“No.” The man’s voice was a barely tamed growl. “I take card to him. He says if you come in.”
The man reached for the card again. Horse took him by the wrist and pulled his arm up and back. With a hand on the man’s shoulder, Horse pressed him until his face was almost level with the gold motif on the black carpet in the club doorway.
“No,” Horse hauled the goon’s arm high in the air until the man let out a grunt. “I tell you what. You take message to him. Then, I decide if I give him card.” Horse mimicked the accent perfectly.
The man’s face reddened with anger and Horse gave his arm a wrenching twist. “Understood?”
He nodded. Horse pushed harder. “Yes.” The man groaned. “Okay, okay.”
The other three bouncers’ eyes gleamed like knives. One of them indicated with his fingers for Horse to show him the card. He looked at it, tilted his head to one side and had a quick chat into his cuff. After a couple of moments he ushered us through the doors and into a plushly carpeted, glass-sided elevator that catapulted us up the side of the building.
At the top we were met by another man, blonde and dressed like a Maître-d’ who guided us into a buzzing clubroom. We passed through a noisy, high-ceilinged cocktail bar, stacked with illuminated bottles. Lithe women in thin strings of colorful sparkle danced on podiums and at tables. Girls draped their toned bodies on banquettes and in booths, around and over men in business suits with wolfish eyes and shark-like grins.
We were shown to a secluded booth with a discrete view of the club and the expanse of Manhattan through the floor to roof windows.
“Allow me to bring you some refreshments. Would you like cocktails, snacks? If you would like to dine with us, we have an excellent chef.”
Horse asked what I would like. I shook my head. He ordered two bourbons and I tried not to smile. The Maître d’ bowed from the waist, “Of course.” And backed out of the booth.
“Well,” Horse said, “This is a civilized step up from a gun battle on a windy roof.”
“If you call the hospitality of gangsters ‘civilized.’” It came out saltier than I had meant.
I was hot in the leather pants. My thigh was against his. I hadn’t meant for it to be. When the drinks came, he held his and looked in my eyes. “You fought well at Carmine’s. You stood and faced the fire.” He raised the tumbler and took a hit off the drink. “I was impressed.”
I wanted to take a slug of the smooth liquid myself, but the pressure of his thigh against mine was so distracting that it was hard to keep my thoughts organized. Whatever was coming, I knew that I would need a clear head.
All the time he was inside and he had rejected all of my attempts to see him, I wanted to understand why. What he said before told me that he still thought I was responsible for him going to jail. More than anything I wanted to make him understand that wasn’t how it had happened, not by a long shot. But I was riddled with unexplained guilt.
All the talk there had been in the Bureau office about how, ‘If this one wasn’t his, he’s got it coming for plenty of others,’ I hadn’t bought that, even at the time. I’m a law and order girl. I want people tried and held to account for what they’ve done. For what can be proved. None of that ‘roll of the dice’ talk ever sat well with me.
If someone committed a crime, we were supposed to prove it and let them face the consequences. That ethos was a big part of what had attracted me to the Bureau in the first place. It seemed like it ran on strict rules and it didn’t deviate. It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t that way in every Bureau office, or in every department.
Just like any other enforcement branch, there were people who talked about ‘shades of gray,’ and ‘redressing the balance,’ and all the other things that were used to excuse what I saw as straightforward corruption. There were even people like that in AC. Specialist anti-corruption Agents who would turn a blind eye or plant a piece of evidence.
“Horse,” I meant to just raise my hand, but when I put it down somehow it wound up on his thigh. I had already started, “There’s something I need to tell you.” In the dark booth with Manhattan sparkling behind him, his eyes glimmered.
Then another voice interrupted me. “My friends. Tovariches. I am Vassily.”
A tall man with short silver hair stood in the opening to the booth. His gray eyes shone over a pair of dark shades. “Welcome.” He extended a big hand. On the back of that hand was a tattoo. The design was a familiar motif but looked as though it had been executed by a first-rate calligrapher. It looked imperial. “Thank you for coming. May I know your names?”
His smile was warm and conspiratorial, but deadly at the same time. “At least the names you will allow me to know you by.”
“I’m special agent Vesper Cross.”
“I’m called Horse.”
“Of course. I know of you both, but independently.”