Nika let out an involuntary gasp when the wheels hit the runway. Many of the other passengers applauded the landing. Taxiing to the gate, they sat for several minutes with the seat-belt light still lit. Around her, people ignored the voice on the intercom advising them to please remain seated. The door slid open and a uniformed Mexican official walked onto the plane, followed by a young soldier. Passengers cleared the aisles and let him pass. In his hand he held a form and was checking it against the seat numbers. He stopped when he got to Nika’s row, looking her over carefully. Nika knew it was too good to be true. Somehow they had found out her plans. Now she would be sent back to Russia. She had been crazy to imagine she could escape her fate. The official checked his form once more and then spoke to her. She didn’t understand a word he spoke, but when he motioned for her to follow him, she understood. She walked with her head down, eyes averted from the other passengers, ashamed that so many had witnessed her failure.
With the official in front and the soldier behind, they led her past the customs lines and through a door into a small office. The official sat behind a desk and motioned for Nika to take a seat across from him. He spoke in racing Spanish, and only when he saw her lost eyes did he switch to English. “Do you speak English?”
“Yes.” Nika was relieved they had a common language.
“Passport please.” Nika handed it over and watched as he stamped it and stapled a form to it. “This is your student visa, it will allow you to stay in Mexico until you travel norte.” Placing her passport into an envelope, he handed it to the soldier, who stood at attention behind Nika. “Welcome to Mexico, and good luck on your travels.”
“Thank you.” Nika couldn’t believe what was happening, she could barely keep herself from shrieking with joy. The soldier led her through a series of halls that traversed the airport out of the public eye. They came out onto a freight dock where a white van was waiting. A middle-aged man with a face ruined by acne scars took the envelope from the soldier and opened the back of the van, it was windowless, like a dark cave. The man pointed for Nika to get in. Something about the man and the van scared her, but she pulled up her courage, reminding herself that nothing good ever came easily. Crawling into the van, she found no seats, only stained rough woven blankets and a few dirty pillows. The slamming door almost caught her feet as she scrambled to get in.
As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she discovered she was not alone. Pressed up against the far wall, two eyes gleamed.
LOS ANGELES — AUGUST 16TH 7:16 AM
A huge sloppy dog kiss woke me. Angel could sleep through the end of the world, but miss breakfast by ten minutes and she broke out in a rash. I had a sick gut and a head full of regret. I felt slow and clogged from my return to drinking. My mouth was dry, swollen and tasted like gym socks. That was it I told myself, no more drinking, I was done, time to climb back up on the wagon.
I poured two cups of kibble into a bowl for Angel and lumbered into the shower. While the hot water worked on my kinked muscles, I tried to reconstruct the previous night. Anya flitting across my inner-vision, beautiful and scared. The Russians picked up Marina at my club, then later Anya and the redhead in Santa Monica. The smaller of the two thugs, the one called Victor, had as much as admitted they were running whores when he denied that they did it in Hollywood. Was the blow job in my parking lot a one-time deal as Marina told me, or was she hooking out of the club and giving the cash to Victor? Was that the new scam, place girls in strip clubs so they could troll for Johns? Why not place an ad on Craigslist?
All these questions but no solid answers. It was time to reach out to Anya and find out what the fuck was going on. Drying off, I discovered a goose egg on the back of my skull, and a dark bruise had flowered on my jaw. Gifts from Victor and the giant.
“Privet! Smart boy, you found me, but sadly I am busy. You know what to do, so do it.” At the beep, I hung up without leaving a number. I didn’t know if Anya’s calls were being monitored. I made the call from a pay phone, if they checked her missed calls it wouldn’t give me up. The less they knew about me the better.
“Walk away, boss. You don’t want to fuck with these psycho Russians,” Gregor said as we sat the next morning, drinking thick Turkish coffee in his Frogtown apartment. “The ink — barbed wire across his head — that’s gulag shit. He was down for life without parole. The skulls, they get one for every man they murder.”
“Maybe they were fronting. Half the punks with spider webs never been locked down or even heard of the Aryan Brotherhood,” I said.
“No. Russian cons will kill anyone with ink he didn’t earn. First they cut the offending skin off. Sweet, yeah?” Gregor was a young Armenian thug, a big boy, six foot and pushing 250 hard. A blanket of baby fat surrounded his face, but the rest was pure muscle. When I met him, I’d broken his nose, then I’d hired him to cover my ass in a rescue mission that went sideways. He took a blast from an AK47 that ripped him up and left scars from his chest to his left knee. He never complained. After he recuperated, I set him up with an apartment outside of the grip of the Glendale Armenian Power boys. I had Manny hire him as a day bouncer. Plenty will say they got your back, Gregor had proven it. In our world, that was better than gold.
“Anya, the dancer, she had a tattoo on her hip, like a telephone pole.”
“Same as Marina?”
“Exactly.”
“Not a telephone pole, it’s a Russian cross. You’d know that if you weren’t a heathen.”
“Fine, church boy, so what’s it mean?”
“Old country bullshit. The Vors would mark the girls in their stable. A warning to other pimps to keep them from poaching.”
“Fuck me.”
“Yup, and they will. These guys are ruthless in ways you can’t even imagine. Best plan, forget the girlie.”
“Not an option.”
“Always an option. Put one foot in front of the other ‘til this is a bad memory. Or is she that fine?”
“She is, if she’s real. If she’s playing me, I’m fucked.”
“Either way you’re fucked, boss. You want me to ride along?”
“Unless you got something better to do.”
“Nothing that can’t wait.”
At nine PM, I loaded my Smith amp; Wesson snub nosed.38 and dropped it into the pocket of my black leather sports coat. I slipped a Buck knife into my Levi’s then laced up my steel-toed Docs. If the shit went sideways, I was going to be ready this time. I picked up Gregor; no bulge showed under his wool greatcoat, but I knew he had his CZ 9mm strapped up under his arm.
Hitting the freeway, I cranked up Amanda Palmer, piano, accordion, hell, even ukulele, all in a punk sound — it was as if the decadent Germany of the twenties had been brought back and replayed through a busted speaker. It was one of the few CDs Gregor and I could agree on. Left alone, I would have played The Clash’s Give ‘Em Enough Rope. Bar none, the single best record ever made. Perfect for the necessary mind-set I was looking for, fuck ‘em all and let god sort it out. Someday, I would convince Gregor of the importance of The Clash, but it didn’t seem like this was the time. Settling into a groove on the freeway, I concentrated on the music. Trick was to let the sound take my head off the present situation. When you have no facts, it’s best not to let your mind make shit up. Conjecture killed more good men than bad intel.