CURLED UP IN his arms and he wrapped himself around me. I could have nuzzled with him there forever.
I spoke into the warmth of his chest. “We can’t really be together can we?”
His arms tightened around me. “Don’t even think about us not being together, Special Agent Vesper Cross.” With a gentle lift of my chin with his fingers, my cheek was in the palm of his hand. He turned my face to look in my eyes. “Don’t imagine living without me from here on.”
My heart swelled. As impossible as it was, it was the only way it could be.
A frown tugged my eyebrows. “But,” I said, “It isn’t like we drive for rival taxi companies or run hotdog stands across the street from one another.” He started that grin again. “Are you going to become a law-abiding citizen? Or do you see me making a career shift into racketeering?”
That’s when his phone rang. We looked in each other’s eyes.
“Can’t be that many people.” I liked that he waited until I nodded to agree before he took the phone out. That was different.
As he swiped the screen, I thought, How can it not? How could I let it not?
“It’s a text message,” he looked back into my eyes. “Vassily. Wants us to come to his club. Says he’ll treat us to dinner.”
“I already took a drink from him. I’m not going to be more compromised.”
“You didn’t drink it.” I liked that he remembered. “That isn’t the point.” I was already thinking that I might have to rethink my career in law enforcement. A gift of dinner from a Russian mobster wasn’t going to be the decider, though. “In any case, if we’re going to meet him, it’s better that we do it somewhere that’s not his home turf.”
Horse nodded. He said the name of the bar where we went the day we first met. The night when we met for a drink. Where we had grappled on the sidewalk. How could I ever be with this man? But how could ever I not?
He grinned and tapped a text message to send back with the address. “Shall I say ‘Right now?’”
I smiled and nodded, “Let’s take the initiative from him.”
Driving to the bar, we both had our theories about what Vassily wanted. Horse thought he would try to find out what I said to Paul Butler. Maybe what he said to me, too. My guess was that he try to get me to be a source for his boilerhouse project.
“He’s lost two of his contacts in the Bureau. He may not have any more.”
“He’s an idiot if he thinks he’s got any chance of getting you to do that.”
“You think I’m incorruptible?”
He looked at me for a moment, thinking about it. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think he can do it, though.”
“Oh, what, you think you can?”
It seemed risky just putting the idea out there. Offering Horse a challenge was always going to be dangerous.
Donny the barkeep recognized Horse right away. I was more surprised at the warm look of welcome-back recognition that he gave us. “Top shelf bourbons for you both?”
He polished a couple of shot glasses. “On the house. It’s been too long.”
Horse and I thought we’d take our drinks to the quiet booth in the back corner as the most discreet spot in the bar. We shouldn’t have been surprised that Vassily was already there. Installed in the darkest corner in the room.
Immaculate suit, smooth Cheshire cat smile. No goons. We hadn’t seen any outside either.
He had a tumbler with a clear drink. I guessed it would have to be vodka.
When we sat around the table, Horse ambushed Vassily right away. “Why Noah?”
I was impressed at his aggressive interview technique. Vassily wanted to see us, asked for the meeting, so Horse had shoved him off balance. Good start.
Vassily nodded and took a nip off his drink. “Okay, I won’t pretend with you. Having the city’s top cop to work with was very beneficial to all of us. But, well, I think you probably have a pretty good idea what the man was like, Agent Cross. He was expensive in too many ways. And difficult, my god. He made many demands.
“As I told your comrade, Horse — interesting name, Tovarich — as I said, the girls who work in my club are my prizes, my princesses, every one of them. They are totally precious to me. He came here, picked out a couple of girls. I didn’t like his attitude. Then, the way that Butler treated my beautiful Russian flowers, my god, I tell you. Well, he was never coming back to a club of mine.”
I asked him, “Do you want me to believe that was really why you wanted to get rid of him?”
“Vesper Cross, I respect you. I like you too. But you can believe what the fuck you like. I’m telling you, there were other reasons, other ways that Butler was becoming costly, but the value he had for us, for the project? I could have let them slide. But when he put a mark on one of my girls? The show was over for him.”
Horse said, “And all of the other people in your boilerhouse project, all the mobsters and politicians and whoever the hell they all are, they were all in agreement?”
Vassily nodded. “When I explained the situation, almost everybody recognized that he was too noisy. Attracting too much attention. Too troublesome and too out of control. Sooner or later, something would have to be done.”
Horse sat back. “And that something won’t have hurt your position in the project too badly, huh?”
Vassily smiled quietly. His eyes sparkled and he waited a moment before he looked to me and then to Horse. “Do you play chess at all, Mr. Horse?”
“You thought that Noah would help me to get what you wanted. To get rid of Butler.” Horse rolled the bourbon around his glass. “One way or another, you thought we would draw him out for you.”
“You and Agent Cross were in what you Americans might call a bit of a fix, no? I thought that your skills and Mr. Braxton’s together would assist you. I thought you would be a good fit.”
“And you might benefit from the outcome.”
“I don’t pretend to be a saint.”
I asked him, “So, have you got a private army, Vassily?”
“Me? No, of course not.”
“But your ‘boilerhouse project’ does that have an army?”
“I wouldn’t call it an army exactly.”
“And did you, or did it, your not-exactly private army, did it mount the attack on Carmine Monreale?”
“God, no. No, that was some bad guys.”
“Vassily, you are a bad guy.”
“No, I mean really bad guys. Way worse than boilerhouse.”
“Right.” I managed not to laugh. At least not audibly. “Because you’re the good bad guys.”
Horse asked him, “So, why did you want to see us, Vassily?”
“Tovarich,” Vassily raised his eyebrows. He looked genuinely hurt. “I wanted to see that you were okay.” He took a drink. “And, really, I just wanted to see you.”
I started, “Vassily…”
“Okay, okay.” He raised a hand from the table. “It is true what I said. I like you. Both of you. But, also,” he paused to look at us both, “If either of you wanted work, if both of you especially wanted work, I have admired your skills. I would like to offer you both employment.”
“Vassily, as crooks and racketeers go, I kind of like you, too.” I looked directly at him, “But you don’t have any work for me. And I’m not going to do any work for you.”
He didn’t miss a beat before he turned to Horse.
Right away, Horse said, “I’m not freelance now, Vassily. Vesper is my new boss. What she says is what I’m going to be doing.”
Horse’s apartment wasn’t going to feature in Architect’s Journal or Wallpaper, except maybe as a ‘before.’ Of course, it wasn’t really the decor and soft furnishings I was there for.
When he offered to take me to his cabin for a few days, I looked around his bare floors, the bare walls and out of the clean but bare windows at the view of a gray wall. I asked him if the cabin had furniture. He told me it did.
“Well, it will be a step up, then.” I told him, “Let’s go.”
Horse’s car was a Toyota Land Cruiser in battlefield colors. It could have been fun to feign surprise but I didn’t think of it. It looked like it had come directly from a war zone. Climbing in I asked him, “Did you buy this from a Somali warlord?” He grinned slowly in reply.
Manhattan is such a small island but it always surprises me at how long it takes to drive out of New York. The drive to his cabin in the Adirondacks wound on for long enough for the light to change from afternoon to late evening.
On the way, we talked, chatted easily about all kinds of things. Like two childhood friends, like we knew each other from way back. Like we hadn’t seen each other in ages and were just picking up where we left off.
We talked about movies and TV shows. About music. Our tastes weren’t the same but they fit together, like pieces of a puzzle. Like his tastes and the things he knew about would fill the spaces, complete the pictures of mine.
I asked him, “Will you ever change your wicked ways?
“All of them?”
“Okay, no. I don’t want you to change all of them.”
“Only the more wicked ones?”
“Mm, those probably not so much. No, most likely the less wicked ones.”
“When we get to the cabin, maybe I’ll run through the wicked ways for you, one by one. See if we can run through all of my evil ways. You can say which ones you want me to keep and which ones you don’t.”