I returned a single shot through the gaping splintered hole, whirled around from my cover, and put a booted foot through the remains of the door. It took most of the next hit. I rolled across and had a brief vision of Semyon cowering by his bedside table, a gun wobbling in his damp, shaking hand.
“Stop! Stop! I’ll k-kill you, you crazy white-eyed fuck!” he called out. He sounded high.
“You know why I’m here, Semyon,” I called back and measured the familiar weight of the Wardbreaker in my hand. Five bullets gone, four left. “Your protection is gone. You can’t kill me.”
I dove around the corner of the open door. His reply was an auto burst that tore the bedsheets off his bed and sprayed me with shreds of fabric and foam, but Semyon couldn’t aim the barrel straight. The strength was draining out of him. He had never been a strongman. He wasn’t a Bull or a soldier. He was a gemcutter and appraiser, a fussy white-collar who relied on men like Moni and me to do his dirty work and protect him, and I only had to wait until the final bullet and the guilty click of an empty cartridge to roll out from around the bed and aim my gun at his beaky, milk-white face.
“A-Alexi. God, Molotchik, look look look… you know me, you know me,” he stuttered, still holding the useless gun. “There’s coke, lots of coke. And money. Money under t-the bed. Take it and I’ll g-go. Away. Moscow, Israel. I’ll go and you can t-tell Lev—”
“That I let a snitch escape to Tel Aviv?” And coke? I frowned. I knew him, but he apparently didn’t know me very well at all. “You betrayed the Organization to the Manelli Family, and they went straight to the FBI. Or did they? What do you know about this, Semyon Milosivich Vochin?”
“B-business. It was just b-business,” he whispered, shaking his head. “Look, you have to talk to Nic about this, he—”
“No, Semyon. No, this isn’t about business. Men like us have no business selling out.” I got to my feet, keeping him centered down the sight. “Lev paid for you to come to America and help our people. Not the Manellis, and certainly not the police.”
Semyon said nothing, staring at me with cringing, red-rimmed eyes.
“He shared his home with you. He found you a job. You prospered, and you owed him your life here. You turned on him for drugs. Not for justice. Not because you thought you were doing the right thing. You turned for drugs.”
Tears leaked down Semyon’s face. “Alexi, I swear they made me take the deal, I didn’t have a choice! Nic—”
“We always have a choice.” Five years ago, New York had no ‘Russian Mafia.’ No one knew about us, our Organizatsiya. We were a nebulous, seemingly unconnected collection of businessmen, racketeers, gambling bosses, spooks, bookies, bouncers, and attorneys. We kept an easy peace among ourselves and our community, and the police never connected the dots—until Semyon Vochin. The Manelli family had passed on his information because, like all the old crime families of New York, they had a strict code of honor they broke when it suited them and a policy of never working with the law unless it achieved their ends. “You chose to steal. You chose to stick product straight up your nose. The Manellis can’t order you to turn in your friends, Semyon.”
“You don’t understand! They—”
“I understand that five men are dead because of your choices.” A tic rippled across my face. I advanced a little more, carefully. Whatever magic he’d had, it must have been on the car, not on his person, but it paid to be cautious. “So now I am here, the logical conclusion of the bad decisions you have made. You only have one last choice to make. Die well, or die poorly.”
“Fuck you,” he hissed.
“Come now. It’s a yes or no question, Semyon.” My aim did not waver.
Semyon’s fingers twitched on the trigger, and before he could throw the pistol at me, I fired. Fully charged with blood, the gun was truly silenced.
Blip blip. One took him in the chest, the other in the thigh, and with a hoarse shout, he pitched to the carpet.
Blip. His wordless scream cut into nothingness.
I found the cases of money under the bed: fifty thousand in cash, mixed hundred-and fifty-dollar bills. It smelled like new Government money. I left the case arranged neatly on the end of the ruined mattress, the rows of bills facing Semyon’s open bedroom door. Let the Feds find it, and wonder.
As I nosed back through the house, I heard a sound from the den. The woman? Neck prickling, I slid along the wall and around the corner, gun leveled.
The cat who’d run from me nosed around the dead woman’s hand, sniffing her fingers with tail held high. She was a Siamese with pale gray points, lithe and bold. When she got no response from her mistress, the cat turned and trotted across to me with a friendly chirp. Before I could think to move away, she pressed herself against my pants leg, purring and meowing.
“Huh.” I looked down at her, chagrined, and holstered the Wardbreaker. I shouldn’t have let her touch me. The fibers of my trousers would be on her fur now.
I tried to step back, but she rushed under my feet, making for one of the doorways, where she turned and yowled. Against my better judgment, I stepped around the blood and followed. She led me into a large, clean kitchen and paced around an empty dish of kibble crumbs. I felt a pang of something that might have been guilt.
“I see.” I found the box and poured until the bowl was full. “I suppose you’ll be going to the pound when the Feds come by, won’t you?”
The cat looked up at me, and for a moment, I was transfixed. Her eyes were a gray so pale they were white. Just like mine.
“Mrrrr-raow. Mrrr,” she replied.
A lot of wetworkers like me, they start out by killing animals. I never even considered it. The way I saw it, animals were just animals. They don’t have free will. Our choices make us human, and it is a very human thing to make choices which shape when and how we should die. Moni’s choices had led him to die here; Semyon acted similarly, making decision after decision that led him to the moment of his death. His decisions shaped the fates of his wife—complicit, but not responsible—and this particular cat, a creature with the misfortune to have been under the guardianship of a snitch. She was as stuck with him as I was with the Organizatsiya. This wasn’t her fault.
I turned to leave but then paused, looking back. The cat had an expression of fatuous contentment, crunching on her kibble. It would take the police days to find the corpses. Would she have enough food and water? What if she ate one of the coke-addled bodies and got sick?
No, no, don’t start on this. Damn it, brain. Her welfare was not my responsibility—but I am the son of an alcoholic and a Jew besides that, and the impulse to take responsibility runs hard and deep and true.
I jerked my shoulders and forced myself to walk away. This time, I made it as far as the doorway before turning. The cat was no longer eating: she was looking up at me, her white eyes wise and wide, imbued with subtle intelligence. If she was afraid or regretful at the loss of her human companions, she showed no sign.
“Is that so?” I folded my arms, wavering in place.
“Maarow.”
She had the upper hand, and she knew it. On seeing my expression, the cat squinted victoriously, purring, and began to groom her long toes. Her slender neck could produce a surprisingly deep sound, and even from across the room, it felt nice: a pleasant rumbling mouthfeel, a sound my brain translated to a delicate sky blue.
Five minutes later, I was back outside. Nic grunted with satisfaction when I threw open the car door and climbed into the backseat, and then again in surprise when he noticed the struggling bundle in my arms.