Luca
I miss the East River.
I never thought I’d ever say that, because that waterway is a special kind of cesspool, but as I’m dropping off this severed Russian foot at the eighth drop-off point I’ve hit since leaving the gym, I think I might have misjudged the fucking thing.
The East River is New York’s garbage disposal. You can toss a body in there and trust it’ll be taken care of.
And the best part? Everyone knows what you’re doing and they know not to get in your fucking way, so if you’re down at one of the docks at three in the fucking morning tossing a body-sized bit of cargo into the water, no one’s going to question you. Hell, they’re probably out there doing the same thing.
But here?
Yeah, there’s no great dumping ground. The Russians run the docks, which rules that place out, and practically every other beach spot in Arroyo Falls is filled with surfers or people with dogs that are way too interested in sniffing what’s in the bag that I’m carrying.
Which is why I’m twenty miles out of town, on some rocky outcrop in the middle of fucking nowhere, tossing a severed foot into the water. A fucking foot wrapped in a chopped up hefty garbage back.
It arcs through the air like some black, plastic-wrapped meteor and lands in the water with a great kerplunk.
I watch it go splash into the water and it kinda floats around in a little eddy pool for a bit before sinking into the depths. I use that time to think about my life and what I’m doing tossing feet into the ocean.
I mean, really, what the fuck?
By the time I actually get to Volgograd to scout the place out, I’m in the mood for a drink.
And I swear to Christ, if they try to serve me some watered-down shit, I will starting shooting right then and there.
I get there and instantly start wishing I was back on the rocks by the seaside, tossing tattooed body parts into the water like they’re some perverse messages in a bottle.
This place is a dump.
It makes Reyes Boxing look like a fucking palace.
On the outside, it’s the definition of ramshackle. Rusted, dirty, and looking like it’s about ready to fall down.
Inside, it’s like someone vomited a bunch of red all over the walls and plastered everything with pictures of angry Russian guys with beards and big mustaches and general’s hats. Every space that wasn’t filled up with pictures of Russian men is covered with flat-screen TV showing hockey games wrestling matches or photos hastily torn from titty magazines.
Except they’re not normal titty pictures. They’re weird Russian shit. All the women look sad and mopey and some are doing things you’re definitely not meant to do with your rations of beets and carrots and about half the models have better mustaches than most men can grow.
Even if I wasn’t already planning on killing these assholes, I would be after seeing their disgrace of a bar.
The bartender is some pale, soulless-eyed shit who looks like his father was the abominable snowman. He’s freakishly hairy. And he’s a prick, too — he serves every other person in the bar twice before he gets to me.
“What do you want?” he mumbles, once he finally gets to me. His accent’s so thick and murky I think he might have been born in a Siberian bog.
He smells drunk, too. Like he’s trying to pickle himself from the inside out with cheap alcohol.
“Whiskey. I don’t give a shit what kind.”
The bartender pulls some label-less bottle from beneath the bar and dumps it into a dirty glass.
It bubbles at me menacingly. Whiskey shouldn’t bubble.
I think I might’ve made a mistake.
“Ten dollars. Pay now.”
I sniff the stuff. It smells like drain cleaner. Tastes like what I imagine drain cleaner to taste like, too. But at least it isn’t watered down — it’d be a waste of water to dilute this stuff.
“Ten bucks? For this shit?”
He shrugs like he absolutely does not give a flying fuck.
“That is the price for a non-member. Non-members also must pay up front.”
I hand over the cash. I’m not ready at this point to start any shit because I’m not done scouting the place. Hell, I just got to this lovely establishment.
I find a quiet corner and drink my draino in silence. There’s more Russians here than I thought, but then, they’ve always been like cockroaches — they multiply like crazy once they get a foothold.
I go through three more whiskeys while I scout the place. Even get a nice buzz going, which is the first time since seventh grade that I’ve been drunk on such shit alcohol.
That isn’t the only thing nostalgic about sitting here. It’s been a while since I’ve staked out a place for a hit.
As I’m looking over the bar, memorizing the exits, the placement of the tables, counting the number of track-suited deadbeat patrons, it takes me back to when this was my life; when my greatest rush was those bloody few minutes between the start and the end of a job, when hours or days of planning came to fruition in one violent, gory mess.
On the back of my eyelids — like a movie — I can see how a raid on this place would go down. Every gunshot, every drop of blood, every body. It’s going to be fucking beautiful.
There’s just two problems.
For all the time I’ve been here, I haven’t seen Vladimir. Not that I know what he looks like, exactly. But I know what his type looks like. I know the attitude they project, the way other men act around them, and the way the room seems to slope towards them, like they’re pulling everything around them into their orbit.
My other problem? I’ve got no backup. My partner is rotting in the ground with a nine millimeter-sized hole in his skull.
For a while, I’m staring into my whiskey glass, trying to figure out just how I’m going to pull this job off and realizing it’s going to take a lot of time and planning. And then he finally enters.
Storming through the front door, the room changes the second he arrives. The normally-inattentive bartender has a glass of top-shelf vodka on the bartop before the guy who must be Vladimir is even close to the bar.
Chatter stops and the only sound is the muted babble of the sportscasters on the TV’s.
I keep my head down. I’ve got my target.
“Any word about Yuri, boss?” the bartender asks.
Vladimir pounds his vodka and hurls the empty glass in the bartender’s face. “What the fuck do you think?” he shouts.
So, that was the dirtbag’s name. He looked more like an Ivan to me.
“Sorry, boss,” the bartender says, keeping his head down and filling Vladimir another glass.
“How should we take care of this?” another thug asks. The fact that Vladimir doesn’t assault this one tells me he’s a bit higher on the chain.
“Keep looking. Do whatever you have to do. I want to know what happened to him. If he doesn’t turn up in the next couple days, it’s on that bitch’s head. We’ll get our shit and then every one of you will get a piece after I’ve fucked her bloody. When we’re done with her, we’ll sell her off to one of the fucking whorehouses in Bangkok.”
The look on every single one of these guy’s faces tells me exactly what’s going on in their heads. The slanted smiles, the narrowed eyes, the slight nod.
Every single one of these rat bastards is thinking about fucking my woman. Every single one of these rat bastards is going to die.
It takes everything I have not to start shooting right then and there.
I’ve got another problem, now: time.
I watch and wait while the Russians celebrate the hell they’re going to raise in my love’s life. It takes a while before there’s an opening where I can get up and slink out without raising too much attention. Not that they seem to give a shit, they’re so caught up in drinking and bragging about what they’re going to do.
Outside, the sun’s setting. A deep, crimson orb disappearing into the Pacific.
I get into my car and pull out of the lot. Once I’m cruising down the road, heading to home, I pull out my phone. I dial a number I never thought I’d dial again.
There’s a click.
“Well, well, look who it is. It’s been a long fucking time, Luca. Pops started to think you might actually be dead, that you offed yourself like your fucking brother. You’ve got a lot of guts and zero fucking brains calling me.”
“Enough with the bullshit, Angelo,” I say. “I don’t have the time. I’m calling in every favor you’ve ever owed me. Every body, every job where I saved your family’s ass. How soon can you get to California?”