Eventually, the traffic slowed. As the excitement at Dock #3 trailed off, the Ying Shao workers got back to loading their ship while I waited, cold, hungry, and patient. After a long humid silence, my skin prickled with sudden sound: boots scuffling on the pavement, marching closer and closer to the warehouse door. One pair of boots, punctured by melodic whistling. My prey was swinging a chain with keys. I could hear the links click, the keys rattle. Like a spider, I stirred only to refocus my attention, waiting for the fly’s legs to pluck the right strands at the right time.
He was a fast walker, striding by so fast I nearly missed my chance. I lunged out, and struck him in the back of the knees with a fist and the blade of my hand. He went down with a short cry of surprise, quickly silenced with a smack to the back of the head. I seized him by the ankles and dragged him away into the shadows to strip his clothes. I left his underwear, but took everything else. Taking another man’s underwear was against the Code.
His coveralls were tight over my chest, bagged at the waist, and strained over my thighs. His boots pinched, but I was no longer unclothed. Even better, I had gloves: They were fingerless, but they were leather. I pulled them on with a shudder of relief. My eyes and tongue stopped throbbing, and the hallucinations, while still vivid, reduced in intensity.
I pulled my new wool cap down as far as I could, left the unconscious man behind some pallets for his workmates to find, and slouched away with my hands in his pockets. There was a pack of cigarettes in there. A lighter. A ten-dollar bill in a clip, no wallet. A piece of thin red rope braided with jade beads and a bronze Chinese coin, some kind of talisman… and car keys, with an electronic tag. Never had I felt anything as beautiful as these keys, and the means by which to find his car. I could go and get my cat, my passport, a gun… all of which were at my apartment. The apartment that was almost certainly being watched.
My momentary elation vanished. Nicolai would be in charge of recovering me: Sergei would not trust such an important job to anyone else. Nic would be organizing his men quickly and efficiently. I knew Nic, had trained under him. He’d taught Vassily and I how to fire guns, boost cars, make tools. The skills I had used to escape, he had taught us. One of the things he’d taught me? If you ever try to kill someone and the guy manages to run, check his house. Nearly every fugitive makes a last stop at home to grab those vital, necessary things before they flee for good. Nine times out of ten, you catch your mark coming back out of his front door.
I would not be able to get on my flight. The Laguetta Family owned the airport, and the security union was headed up by one of the Don’s captains. Nic could and would reach out to him for a favor. The Avtoritet of Brighton Beach would be calling everyone he could think of, including the people who generally regarded me favorably. No one I knew was trustworthy enough to stand up to Nic for me. My passport, my papers, Binah, everything… Nic would make them tempting and unreachable. GOD damn him, but he was good at his job.
Move. The inner voice was not Kutkha, but it was compelling all the same. Find the car.
They had my fucking cat. My tools. The Wardbreaker. Everything. A tremble started in my fingers. Angrily, I clenched around the bundle of keys until the points bit into my fingers, hissing through my teeth as a jolt of hot pain lanced through my hand. It freed me up to move on, one foot in front of the other.
Ten bucks, one tank of gas, a pack of cigs, and one go-bag hidden in Gravesend. If they weren’t going to let me run, I was going to have to fight.
And once I could see straight? I’d fight them to the death. Sergei didn’t know who the fuck he was dealing with.
Chapter 5
Somehow, I found the go-bag. It was well hidden in the grounds of an old tenement landmark near Sheepshead Bay station, wet from the runoff rain. As I pulled it from the cold fireplace, all I could think about was food. Deliriously, I rifled through the bag, searching for something to eat. I found a couple of protein bars and a small bag of snacks, food intended to see me through a short drive or a day on the run. Whatever flavor they were, I didn’t taste them as they went down.
Still chewing on something, I heaved the bag over my shoulder, staggered back to the car, and drove away to the north, fleeing to the furthest place I could think of within New York’s City limits: The Bronx.
Between the green sprawl of Yonkers and the sterile, gothic beauty of Manhattan lay an ulcerated crescent of poverty. While yuppies turned over millions on Wall Street, the homes of the people they foreclosed, ripped off, conned, and milked were left to rot in The Bronx, Hunt’s Point, and Harlem. Fifty years ago, this had been a nice enough area. Systematic racism – in the form of the government neglecting infrastructure and private interests ruining families – had rotted it from the center out. Gutted apartment buildings studded the scorched land like burned trees. Uncollected trash bags spilled their guts over the sidewalks. Potato chip bags, old clothes, and newspapers gathered like tumbleweeds against chain link fences, which themselves leaned crookedly against piles of concrete rubble. The roads were pockmarked and worn. The violet, chemical stench of industry hung over the Harlem River, while the sour orangeness of human filth blew in from underneath the bridge. The Bronx looked and felt like a warzone, but it was a great place to disappear.
My car was one corpse among many in the dusty lot where it finally perished, coughing to a halt next to a stirring vortex of trash. The air outside was cold and clammy, the wind thick with the smell of burning tires, dust, and hot grease. Dawn was only just beginning to come in from the east. There were lights glittering to the south, but there was nothing to illuminate the old ruined projects save for the crescent moon overhead. When I opened the door and got out into the darkness, the distant white glow shifted and traced. It was impossible to say if it was upir blood or fatigue, but my vision was screwed and getting worse. It was a miracle I’d made it without running myself off the road.
I hefted the go-bag, took it to the nearest patch of loose dirt and dropped it there, where I kicked it around a little, rolling it in the dust and gravel until it was ratty enough that no one would want to steal it. I took it back to the car and opened it up. My head was clearer now, and as I rummaged through, a new sick feeling began to rise in my throat. A number of the things I’d packed in here were missing. The pistol, ammunition, I.D, cash and cards – none of them under my own name, fortunately – were gone. Someone had found it and been through it. They’d left all of the clothing and the things they couldn’t fence: a pearl handled razor, a fixed-blade knife, soap, a calico bag with underwear and other miscellany, and my notebooks.
So that was it, then. No money, no bank cards, no credit cards. Nothing. I took a deep breath and sat back, trying to keep my heart rate under control. Neither fear or anger were my friend, not right now. There was nothing to do except hit the streets, cool off, and hoped that I wasn’t important enough for Nic to hold out longer than a week or two. When I was fit enough to start mugging, I could get my hands on some cash. Until then… I wasn’t sure.
Dutifully, I took stock of what I did have. The ten bucks I’d taken from the dockworker could last seven days, if I was careful. The car could be sold if I found the right guy in this part of town. For the time being, though, I tried to stay in the moment and set out clean clothes, the knife, razor and soap. There was an old Coke bottle on the passenger’s side half full of water. I drank most of it, used the rest to wash my hands and face and dampen my hair, then hacked at it until I was left with a spiny, tattered mess. I lathered it up, and started shaving.