He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket with trembling hands and pressed the number for her cell phone. It didn’t matter that he had already called that number twice and had been passed immediately to voice mail.
“This is Irina. Please leave message. ”
He waited impatiently for the beep. “Irina? Irina, answer the goddamn phone. Answer me! Answer me!”
He screamed into the phone, still pacing. Sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes. His hair was wet with it. His heart was pounding.
“Irina? Irina!”
He called her name over and over, until finally the only sound that came out of him was a wild animal cry of pain.
Alexi Kulak was well-known for his mastery over his emotions. Most people would have said he didn’t have any, but that was not true. In that moment he knew the kind of grief from which the only escape is death. In that moment he knew the kind of fury that could scorch the earth and everything on it. In that moment he knew the kind of hopelessness that crushed the spirit.
Irina was dead. He knew it now. He felt the absence of her life force. The emptiness was like an anvil pressing down on him.
His phone fell from his hand and bounced on the cracked pavement. He put his hands to his face, feeling the heat of his tears, and he dropped to his knees and slumped forward, heedless of the impeccably tailored suit he wore.
What did it matter, a suit? It meant nothing. Nothing meant anything. Irina was gone, dead, murdered, her life torn from her and crushed. Her body was cast aside like the carcass of an animal, thrown into a filthy canal.
What mattered now was that someone would have to pay for her death. He would find that person. He would find that person, and that person would suffer in every conceivable way until they begged and prayed for death.
This Alexi Kulak promised, and all knew that Alexi Kulak was a man of his word.
Chapter 11
The cell phone was encrusted with pink crystals. Very girlish, which surprised him. Irina had been in no other way a child. Old far beyond her years, he thought. Jaded in a way one didn’t expect. An old soul, some would say.
He didn’t believe in souls.
The ring tone the phone played when it was being called was classical, melancholy.
The thing had been ringing all evening. He waited for several moments after the song had played, then opened the phone. The screen told him there was voice mail. He touched the call button and listened.
There were three messages, all of them in Russian, all from the same man. The tone of the first message was casual. Tension crept into the second one. Tension and impatience. The third call was desperate, panicked.
He saved the messages, then scrolled through the menu to settings and to voice message.
“This is Irina. Please leave message. ”
He hit the button again.
“This is Irina. Please leave message… This is Irina. Please leave message… This is Irina. Please leave message… This is Irina. Please leave message…”
Chapter 12
I had the shower and the drink, but as exhausted as I was, I didn’t go to bed after Sean left. What would have been the point of it? I would have slept fitfully for a couple of hours, if I slept at all. I would have been up prowling the house at two in the morning, avoiding even making an effort to go back to sleep, because I knew that nightmares were lying in wait for me.
A little wax to spike up the hair a bit. A pair of slim dark jeans, a simple black top, sexy sandals. Mascara, lip gloss, and a pair of diamond earrings. At least I looked presentable, even if I didn’t feel fit for public interaction.
Landry’s car turned into the drive, and he parked and stood beside it for several moments, looking my way. I watched through the barely opened plantation shutters in my bedroom. Then he turned and went to Sean’s house.
I waited for a couple of minutes, then left, driving at a crawl, hoping no one would hear me leave.
Players was relatively tame on Monday nights. Everyone who had to have a job had to be at that job bright and early Tuesday morning. Hangovers were not a good idea for people who had to muck stalls and ride horses all day in the South Florida sun. Those who didn’t have to have jobs were free to do as they pleased, but with a shortage of twenty-something girls looking for a good time, the club didn’t hold the appeal it did on the weekend.
The entertainment for the evening was a Jimmy Buffett wannabe with a guitar, a harmonica, and a bad-looking aloha shirt (as if there is some other kind). He had a guy on keyboard who wore a captain’s hat and a double-breasted blue blazer with shiny brass buttons, and a drummer who was young enough, and looked bored and embarrassed enough, to be the son of one of them.
I walked into the bar and skirted the dance floor, where a dozen people were drunk enough to have lost their inhibitions. I’ve always thought there should be a public-service ad showing video of middle-aged drunk people dancing. The rate of alcoholism would surely plummet, simply from the humiliation factor.
The bartender, a hunky young fellow with dark eyes and five o’clock shadow, came over as I took a seat toward the end of the bar.
“What can I get for you, ma’am?”
“For starters, you can not call me ma’am, you darling boy,” I said with a wry smile tucking up the right corner of my mouth. “How do you ever expect to have a mad hot affair with an older woman if you treat them like your old aunt Biddie?”
He grinned. Excellent orthodontia. “What was I thinking?”
“I can’t imagine. Next, you can bring me Ketel One vodka with tonic and a big squeeze of lemon.”
“You got it.”
He turned away to see to it. Someone had abandoned a pack of cigarettes on the bar. I helped myself to one, feeling vaguely guilty, not that I had stolen it but that I was smoking at all. Filthy habit. When he came back with the drink, I asked him his name.
“Kayne Jackson.”
“Kayne Jackson. My God, you’re a soap star waiting to happen,” I said. “Kayne Jackson, I’m Elena Estes.” I took a sip of the drink, savored it, and sighed. “It’s a wonderful pleasure to meet you. Were you working here Saturday night?”
“Yeah, why?”
I had downloaded and printed the photos from Lisbeth Perkins’s cell phone. I showed him the one of Irina sitting between Jim Brody and Bennett Walker. “Did you see this girl here?”
“Yeah. That’s Irina. She’s a regular with that crowd. Hot babe, but she wouldn’t look at me twice.”
“Do you think she had a problem with her eyesight?”
“I think I don’t have a big enough wallet.”
“Ahhh… One of those. Looking to snag herself a rich husband?”
He shrugged.
“Did you happen to see when she left?”
“No. I couldn’t say. It was Jim Brody’s birthday. It was a zoo in here. Why?” He looked a little suspicious. “Are you a cop or something?”
I took another sip of the drink, another drag on the cigarette. “Or something… Did she seem to be having a problem with anyone?”
“No. She was having a good time,” he said, then checked himself. “She and Lisbeth Perkins got into it about something out in the hall. Lisbeth looked pissed and left. Must have been around one.
“With anyone?”
“Alone.”
The band had decided to give it a rest. More people came to the bar. Kayne Jackson excused himself and went to serve people who wouldn’t make him work so hard for his tip.
“Are you enjoying my cigarette?”
The voice was smooth and warm like a fine brandy, almost seductive, a little amused, accented. Spanish.
I looked at him from the corner of my eye as I exhaled a stream of smoke. “Why, yes, I am, thank you. Would you like one?” I said, offering the pack to him.