“So he escaped from a hospital visit?” I asked, the sneer smeared all over my words.
“No. That would be cheating. The doctor had to visit Pete in stir. There was a special clinic. Well, one day there was a substitute for the doctor who smuggled in a small arsenal and various other tools. They subdued six guards and made it to the escape car without killing anyone. That was one of Pete’s prerequisites — no one could get murdered in the operation. He’s a little like you, Joe.”
“Where is he now?” Olo asked.
“On an island in an ocean with his young wife and two kids.”
“He took her back?” That was me.
“Here he comes,” Oliya said.
Looking in the direction of the Polish restaurant, I saw Yuri talking to the semiofficial attendant who parked his car. The guy ran off, leaving the Russian doddering by the front door.
“I’ll go get the car,” Oliya said.
She left hurriedly.
“That’s an extraordinary woman,” Mel commented as she went out the front door.
“I think she thinks the same of you.”
“Really?”
“Do I have to worry about it?”
“What you mean?”
“Come on, man. You know what I mean. Are you stalking Olo by secretly hiring her?”
“Never even seen her in person before today. I only hired her because I was told she was the best Int-Op had.”
He seemed to mean what he was saying.
“There’s Yuri’s car,” I said.
Yuri was already two blocks down when Oliya pulled up to the curb, but that didn’t matter.
“What’s the plan?” she asked as we trailed behind.
“If he takes the same way back, he’ll go past that cemetery near his house.”
“You want to ram him?”
“No.”
“It was something about the way he shot the guy,” Mel mused from the back.
We were approaching the border of Queens from the Brooklyn side.
“What guy?” That was me.
“Peter-not-Peter’s wife’s boyfriend.”
“He shot him in some special way?” Oliya asked.
“Not really, but old Pete had never shown such passion. That’s why the wife needed outside stimulus. Pete was as dependable as the old Ford your grandfather drove. When he shot the boyfriend her heart opened wide.”
“Wow,” I said. “Damn.”
“Drop back a little,” Mel said to Oliya. “We don’t wanna spook the guy.”
“We don’t wanna lose him either.”
“I put a transmitter under his bumper and a little surprise under the dash.”
“What kind of surprise?”
“The kind that makes everybody’s life easier.”
It was fully dark by the time Yuri led us back to the peninsula.
We were cruising past the Memorial Homes Cemetery as we came to a red light. Yuri’s red Tesla was in the lead, with a light blue Hyundai behind him and Loopy’s Mark VII taking up the rear.
“This is as good as anywhere,” I said.
There came a faint click from the back seat.
The light turned green but the Tesla didn’t move. The light blue Hyundai honked and then veered around the red car angrily riding the horn.
“Killed a man one time for honking at me like that,” Madman Mel observed.
I cracked the door and told Oliya, “Pull up on the cemetery road.”
I got out and she pulled off.
The driver was unconscious behind the wheel. That was because of the gas bomb Mel had laid. I let down the backrest and rolled the little Russian into the back seat.
Behind the graveyard chapel we moved Yuri to the trunk of the Lincoln and then drove for four hours to a good-size stone farmhouse just outside Brattleboro, Vermont.
25
I woke up with the morning sun on my face. The huge bedroom had a chilly stone floor and its own fireplace. The faint scents of burnt wood, plaster mold, and bacon sat me up in the big bed. I’d kicked off the down comforter in the night.
There were the faraway sounds of the labors of morning coming from downstairs. Probably Mel making breakfast.
My clothes were hung on a high-backed dark walnut throne. I thought about getting dressed but didn’t have the heart for it yet. Instead I went to the twelve-foot windows. They gave a panoramic view of the pine forests and grassy fields that surrounded the hill where Melquarth Frost’s northern New England home sat.
No barn, farmhouse, or even paved road could be seen. It was idyllic. Beautiful. Primordial. And there I stood, naked as Adam — or a youthful Cain.
In spite of appearances, the majesty of nature is just a fancy blanket draped over the malevolence of the creatures of earth.
The forest floor was populated by beasts that spent entire lifetimes fighting and killing for food, for survival, for fun. And there I stood, a member of the most depraved species.
Every once in a while, naked and alone in the morning, I make up my mind to be better than my race, my human race. It’s a vow that can’t be kept for long. The call of nature will, sooner or later, drag you back down into the struggle that nothing and no one can long escape.
But now and then, if I concentrate, I have the chance of doing something right.
“Mornin’, Mel, Olo,” I said half an hour after my soul-searching.
“Good morning, Joe,” Oliya said.
“Hotcakes or cheese omelet?” Mel offered.
“Both.”
Over breakfast Mel talked about one day retiring to his woodland retreat.
“I could raise sheep, make maple syrup, and grow a garden that could feed a family,” he told us.
“Are you married?” Oliya asked.
“Never.”
“Then what family would you be feeding?”
The man named after the devil’s grandfather hunched his shoulders and smiled.
“Yuri in the basement?” I asked him.
“Yep. You want me to milk him this morning?”
“I was thinking that I’d like to take a run at it first.”
“That don’t sound like you, Joe. What’s up?”
“I don’t know. I was just looking out on the countryside and thought that I’d like to try my hand at forced honesty.”
Both of the specialists were looking at me, wondering. A sane man would have gone running from that room.
“Where’s the door to the cellar?” I asked.
“You don’t know?” Oliya put in before Mel could answer.
“He’s never been here before,” Mel replied. “I never had an uncoerced guest out here. Usually when we do this kind of work it’s out on Staten Island.”
I wondered if I should warn my bodyguard against learning too much but then realized that Mel was only flirting.
“At the other end of the sitting room you’ll find a yellow door,” he said to me. “It opens on a staircase that ends at blue and red doors. Red goes into the main room. Blue takes you to the prep chamber.”
Through the blue door was a closet that contained long black robes and porcelain-like masks of either red or white; these were used to interrogate the penitent without revealing your identity.
I eschewed disguise.
Yuri was chained to a stainless steel chair that was bolted to the granite floor. He wore headphones and a thick pair of blinders. Mel usually played opera for his prisoners. He said that you had to have dramatic music for serious situations.
I removed the headphones and then lifted his blindfold.
The international mobster was short and wiry, his hairless face lean and olive-colored.
“What do you want?” he said with conviction.
“I want you to give me a name.”
“Fuck you.”
His accent was so mild that I thought he must have learned English at an early age, at some kind of American school. Forty or so, maybe one of his parents was some kind of diplomat who lived in D.C. during Yuri’s formative years.