Authors: Chris Culver
By Any Means (26 page)
“Leave me alone.”
Bubbles of spittle formed at the edges of his mouth. Ash wheeled the stand and table containing Frank's IV bag closer to the bed and reached into his pocket. Frank's eyes opened wide when he saw Ash put one of the packets of sugar on the table. The collapsed veins in Frank's arms stood out bright and red against his skin as he strained to grab the bags.
“What is that, man?”
“I think you know what it is,” said Ash. “And it's yours if you talk to me.”
Frank coughed violently. “You're lying.”
“No lie,” said Ash. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a second packet as well as the spoon. “It's yours if you talk to me.”
“Where'd you get it?”
Ash scowled. “I'm a cop, moron. Where do you think I got it?”
Frank shook his head and struggled to sit up straighter. “It's not real. You're trying to trick me.”
“It's real, and it's right there,” said Ash. “We picked up four bricks of this from some kid driving from Los Angeles to Baltimore. Our lab said it was pretty good.”
“Give it to me. I need it.”
Ash pulled the third bag out of his pocket and started to give it to Frank, but then pulled his hand back and looked at the bag.
“I think you ought to give me something first. Don't you?”
“What do you want?”
“Tell me where you got the girl.”
“My boss gave her to me.”
“Who's your boss?” Frank started shaking his head. Ash stood, walked to a white cabinet on the far side of the room, and started rummaging through its drawers. He found what he wanted in the third and pulled out a disposable syringe. Frank's breathing increased in tempo. “Is Lukas your boss?”
Frank nodded. “Yeah.”
Ash walked to the IV stand and lay the syringe beside the bags of sugar. “What's his last name?”
“Fleischer. It means âbutcher' in German. That's how he introduces himself. Lukas the Butcher. He thinks it makes him sound scary.”
“I don't know. Bill the Butcher sounds scary. I'd even say Bart the Butcher sounds scary. Lukas the Butcher doesn't have the same ring to it.”
Frank's eyes never left the bags of brown sugar. “You going to give me that stuff now?”
“Nah,” said Ash, shaking his head. “We're just starting. I'll tell you what, though. I'm going to go get a lighter for you so you can get started soon.”
“Fine, whatever. Just hurry.”
Ash said he'd do his best before grabbing the bags of sugar and slipping into the hallway. He called Captain Bowers and told him that they needed to look for someone named Lukas Fleischer. He didn't have a spelling on the name, so they'd have to look at multiple variations. If they were lucky, the Bureau would have something on him. When he went back inside, Frank had resumed shaking. Ash waited beside his bed without saying anything until that passed.
“Thank you for waiting for me. Assuming you're ready, let's get back to my questions.”
“Where's the lighter, man?”
Ash furrowed his brow as if he didn't know what Frank meant. Then he tapped his forehead and rolled his eyes.
“I feel like an idiot,” said Ash. “I went to the bathroom and totally forgot. Don't worry, though. I'll get it. You said Lukas was your boss. What'd you do for him?”
“I drove a van.” Ash waited for him to elaborate on that, but he didn't say anything else.
“I see. You wasted gasoline for him. Did you do that for any special reason?”
“I picked up girls for him and then moved them wherever they needed to go.”
Ash nodded and jotted a couple of notes.
“So you actually interacted with him?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You saw Lukas. He gave you orders.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I used to meet him at a bar.”
“A bar in Indianapolis?”
“No, Chicago. It was in Bridgeport, my old neighborhood.”
Frank seemed to finally understand that Ash wanted more than just one-word answers.
“Good,” said Ash. “What's he look like?”
“What do you care?”
“Just in case I happen to go to a bar in Bridgeport and see him,” said Ash. “I'm a nice guy. I like saying hello to people.”
“He's got white hair and gray teeth. What else do you want to know?”
“Is he old?”
“I said he's got white hair, didn't I?”
“Fair enough,” said Ash. “Where'd you pick up the girls, and where'd you take them?”
Frank kicked his legs against the bed and shook. “Come on, man. I need some stuff.”
“All good things come to those who wait,” said Ash. “Where did you get the girls, and where did you take them?”
“All over,” he said. “I picked them up at O'Hare and either took them to an old house in Englewood, or I'd drive them to that house in Indianapolis.”
“You mean the house we found you in?” asked Ash. Frank nodded, his eyes closed tightly. “How many girls would you say you've picked up at the airport?”
“I don't know. I didn't keep track.”
“Just guess.”
“Fifty or a hundred. They sort of blend together. Haven't I said enough?”
“You've said plenty,” said Ash. “Are those the only two places you took girls?”
Frank didn't respond. He coughed hard enough that Ash considered calling a physician to check him out. According to the monitor beside his bed, his heart rate remained steady, though, so Ash simply let him catch his breath.
“Do you want me to call a nurse? She might give you some water.”
“Water isn't what I need.”
“I know, and we're almost there. Did you take girls anywhere but those two places?”
He closed his eyes tight. “Some big house out in the sticks east of Indianapolis and a farm near Louisville.”
Ash wrote that down. They hadn't found the farm yet. The girls might have been there.
“Where is this farm?”
“It's off Sixty-Four. Just some rinky-dink town.”
“Describe it.”
Ash managed to coax enough detail out of him that he had a fair idea of the farm's location. He ought to be able to find it.
“When did you last go to this farm?”
“Yesterday morning.”
Ash almost stopped breathing. “And you took girls with you?”
Frank nodded. “Seven, but Lukas let me keep one. Somebody else brought in a few others. He gave me some stuff, too, as a thank-you. I gave some to Maya, but I didn't get to take any.”
If Ash had to guess, that “stuff” had been designed to kill them both and eliminate witnesses who could identify Lukas in court.
“Maya was the girl you were with, right?” asked Ash. Frank nodded and gritted his teeth. “How many men work for Lukas?”
“A lot. I don't know.”
“Does the name Palmer mean anything to you?” asked Ash. Frank shook his head. “How about Alistair Hines?”
“He and Lukas know each other. He came in to clean up this mess,” said Frank. “I never met him. Come on, man. Just give me the stuff now.”
“Sure,” said Ash, reaching into his pocket. He put the packets on the heart rate monitor. “They're brown sugar. Maybe the nurse can put them in your coffee.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I'm not going to give an addict drugs. Are you kidding me? Who do you think I am?”
Frank thrashed against his restraints. The monitor beside his bed started emitting a high-pitched tone, signaling a dangerous rise in his heart rate. Ash took a step back from the bed and grabbed the sugar packets. Two male nurses ran into the room in short order.
“What happened?”
“We were just talking, and he started freaking out. I don't know.”
“I'll kill you, fucker,” said Frank. “I'll fucking gut you.”
One of the nurses injected something into Frank's IV line. Almost instantly, his face and voice slackened, and he stopped fighting. His eyes stayed open, though.
“I hope that was non-narcotic,” said Ash.
The nurse with the syringe nodded. “It's just a mild sedative. He'll be fine.”
For a mild sedative, it worked remarkably well.
“He's in some pretty intense pain,” said Ash. “Is there anything you can give him?”
“We tried giving him a time-release pain capsule, but he chewed it to get high.”
Ash normally felt sympathy for drug addicts. They made mistakes, but he knew how powerless addiction could make someone feel. He had a hard time feeling anything at all for a man who admitted trafficking in young girls and accepting one as chattel for a job, though. The world would be a better place without him. If the girl he tookâMaya he called herâdied, maybe the court system would make that happen. On his way out of the room, Ash made a short prayer that it wouldn't come to that.
K
iev, Ukraine, 1971. It looked like a party or family reunion. Well-dressed men and women congregated around tables on a concrete slab beside a quartet of apartment buildings. Most of the women wore simple, long dresses and scarves over their heads to keep their hair from becoming disarrayed in the wind, while the men wore long-sleeved wool shirts and black or brown slacks. Almost all of them looked at each other fondly and laughed at each other's jokes and remarks.
The image stood in stark contrast to the propaganda Kostya had seen on television. The west proclaimed the Soviet Union a dystopian wasteland where lines to buy bread or other basic necessities stretched for blocks, where men and women dressed in dull uniformity, where secret police officers trolled the streets, looking for dissidents. Soviet propaganda, on the other hand, depicted the empire as a utopia where people had ample leisure time, children could play, and everyone had enough to eat. The reality lay somewhere in between, as it oftentimes does.
Kostya hadn't been to the Ukraine since being shipped to a gulag and later joining the Red Army. His military service hadn't been by choice, but it had worked out for him. His superiors recognized his abilities, allowing him to become a junior officer. When he left the army a year ago, he left as a captain, a very high rank for someone not formally a member of the Communist Party. He had a wife, a young family. He could have lived out the rest of his life in relative ease. He had little interest in being another cog in the center of a giant bureaucracy, though, and he had even less interest in joining the Party and hoping for something greater. He had promises to keep.
“Are you ready?” asked Kostya, glancing to his left. At nineteen years old, the man beside him, his new brother-in-law, still had several years of military service left. He may not become an officer, but he'd do well for himself and his much older wife, Kostya's sister. He had the temperament of a soldier. Even though Kostya had only known him for two years, he trusted him, something he couldn't say about many people.
“He deserves to be in prison,” said Lev.
“He will be,” said Kostya. “At least for a few days.”
Kostya walked forward. The apartment buildings around them, like the streets and sidewalks, had been constructed of dull, reinforced concrete, causing the otherwise bright day to feel almost gloomy. Children laughed and played somewhere distant, and he could hear the clattering of an old car engine on the street. Kostya straightened the lapels of his suit. He doubted Vladimir would recognize his face, but he'd know what the suit signified. Very few men other than Party leaders could afford a suit like that. Kostya refused to join the Party, but he had found ways to earn a comfortable living despite that. Lev's simple, olive-green uniform would complete the image.
The family gathered around the table stopped speaking as they approached. Kostya looked over his shoulder and found his brother-in-law staring at Vladimir, unblinking. Had those eyes been directed at him, Kostya would have been driven into silence, too.
“I'm truly sorry to interrupt what appears to be a happy family,” said Kostya, smiling. Several of the family members closest to him relaxed. Kostya looked at Vladimir. His shoulders no longer had the square, muscular shape Kostya remembered, nor did his eyes hold the same strength. Vladimir looked away, like an animal wishing to avoid a confrontation. “My friend and I would like to briefly abscond Vladimir. He's an old friend.”
“How do you know my husband?”
The woman who spoke had broad shoulders and a flat face. She could have lost thirty pounds and still been slightly overweight. Kostya smiled but felt uneasy around her. Growing up on a collectivized farm that sent most of its production hundreds of miles away to Moscow, he had waited in line for hours to buy potatoes, and hours more in a separate line for bread or milk. It was a part of life. Few average Soviet citizens had the chance to become overweight because few had the time to wait in that many lines. He doubted Vladimir's wife had to wait in too many lines. Despite his transgressions and changes in the government, her husband was still an important man. Kostya counted on that.
“Your husband was one of the MGB officers who most influenced my own career choices,” said Kostya, reaching into his pocket for an ID card that identified him as a former army captain. He held it up and smiled. “I've told so many stories about Vladimir that my brother-in-law demanded I introduce him.”
Vladimir's wife looked at Kostya's ID before sitting straighter and putting her hand on Vladimir's shoulder, urging him to stand. Kostya wondered if she knew about her husband's activities while he had worked for the MGB. Probably not.
“I'm sure my husband will be most pleased to meet your brother-in-law, Comrade Captain.”
Vladimir slowly stood up and looked at his wife. “We'll be back. Stay here.”
Kostya held out his arm, gesturing for Vladimir to precede him from the courtyard. The day felt warmer and brighter out of the shade cast by the buildings. Trees along the streets swayed in the breeze, but Kostya paid them little mind, instead focusing on the man in front of him, the man who had assaulted his aunt and allowed others to do the same to his sister. For
many years he had plotted to shoot him in the back when no one could see, but he realized now that wouldn't do. Eight years in the GRU, the main intelligence directorate of the general staff, had taught him the virtue of patience when punishing others.
“I remember you,” said Vladimir. “You're Myra's nephew.”
“I'm glad to have made an impression,” said Kostya, looking around. Residents of the nearby apartments had planted flowers in wooden boxes hung on balconies and windows, granting a bit of bright color to an otherwise dull building.
“How is your aunt Myra?”
“Dead,” said Kostya. “Breast cancer.”
“I'm very sorry.”
“No, you're not,” said Kostya. “You used her like she was a toilet and then discarded her when you were done.”
“I did no such thing. Our relationship was complicated. You were a boy. You didn't understand.”
“I wasn't as young as you think.”
“Perhaps not,” said Vladimir, staring straight ahead. “I presume you came to my home for a reason.”
“This isn't your home. This is your sister's apartment. It's her birthday. You have a much larger apartment several miles away.”
Vladimir stopped walking and looked at Kostya and then Lev as if for the first time.
“What do you two want?”
“An apology.”
Vladimir squared his shoulders to Kostya and straightened. “I'm not a man to trifle with, boy.”
“Neither am I,” said Kostya. “You sent me to the same gulag you sent my uncle Piotr. That was a mistake.”
“I did my job. That's all.”
“You worked for a tyrant and had my uncle executed so you could fuck my aunt without worry.”
Vladimir turned and headed back toward his sister's apartment.
“Never come back here again,” he said. “I still have some sway with my former colleagues. They will arrest you.”
“If you do, you'll find that your former colleagues don't have the power they once did. My colleagues, on the other hand, are at your house right now.”
Vladimir stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Don't lie to me.”
“I'm not. Go home and find out on your own.”
He looked at Kostya from his feet to his forehead.
“Are you trying to scare me? It's not working. Let the past stay in the past and leave me be.”
Kostya shook his head. “You could order me around when I was a child, but not anymore. Right now, you have KGB officers in your house, men I know. They will find stolen letters to Party leaders, diplomatic cables, maps showing troop deployments, documents discussing troop levels, tactics, and morale. They'll even find an English-language typewriter. I used every favor I accrued in my years of service to acquire them.”
“You'll have to do better than make up stories to intimidate me. Leave.”
Vladimir turned toward the apartment again and started walking. Kostya grabbed his arm by his shirtsleeve and pulled hard. Vladimir cocked his arm back to hit him, but Lev caught the old man's arm and pinned it behind his back before he could.
“You will go to prison for this,” Vladimir snarled at them. “Army careers or not. I'm a member of the Party. You can't touch me.”
Kostya shook his head. “As soon as you go home, you'll be arrested. After that, you will be taken to Lubyanka Square in Moscow where you will be questioned and tortured. When you pass out from the pain, they will inject you with adrenaline so they can start over again. That's all that will happen.”
Vladimir squirmed in Lev's grip and sneered. “If you're confident of these things, why tell me?”
“Because I can. When they strip you naked and tear out your fingernails, know that I ordered the evidence against you to be placed in your apartment. When they burn you with cigarettes, know that I'm watching. And when they force your face into a pile of your own filth at the end of your miserable life, know that it will be my sister's husband who pulls the trigger. You did this to yourself, and you made me who I am, Comrade Orlesky. I will never forgive you for that.”
*Â Â *Â Â *
Chicago felt ten degrees cooler than Indianapolis, but that didn't make it comfortable. The wind whipped through the row houses and buildings around him, carrying the scent of cinnamon and clove from a nearby bakery. When Kostya first came to the United States, the Ukrainian Village had been a neighborhood for Eastern Europeans wanting to maintain a common identity and culture, but as time progressed, many of those immigrants assimilated into the greater American culture and left the area. Now the neighborhood had more yuppies in restored Victorian row houses than Ukrainians and more sushi restaurants than Orthodox churches. Some people called that progress; Kostya had his doubts.
“Vitali still lives here?” asked Lev, looking toward the window in front of a Southwestern restaurant. Kostya and Lev had parked on the street in the center of a dense commercial district. Unlike the Loop or other major business centers in the city, few of the buildings in the Ukrainian Village reached over four stories. Kostya looked around him. From his vantage point, he could see Vitali's bakery, several restaurants, and an art gallery on street level. Cars jammed the roads and pedestrians crowded the sidewalk. The noon sun stood high overhead. Lunch break.
“I haven't talked to him in several years, but hopefully.”
“I hope he's as smart as you remember.”
“Me too.”
Kostya had met Vitali Kozlov almost forty years ago in Tel Aviv, Israel. They had both been young men then, both eager and hungry to put their mark on the world outside Soviet borders. In Vitali's case, his sojourn abroad hadn't been entirely by choice. He grew up in a Soviet orphanage and was sent to a gulag for hooliganism at eighteen. At twenty, his Soviet jailers, in a cost-saving measure, handed him a passport that labeled him Jewish and sent him to Israel. Eventually, he immigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago. When Vitali became an information broker, Kostya didn't know or care as long as he could use him.
Kostya walked to Vitali's bakery and pulled open a heavy glass door. The scent of cinnamon became stronger, as did smells of yeast and sourdough. Baked sweet goods filled display windows and racks behind the counter displayed loaves of bread. Several people waited in line for service, but Kostya ignored them and flagged down a young female cashier with dyed blond hair and brown roots, drawing annoyed glances from some of the other patrons.
“I'm looking for Vitali Kozlov. Is he in?”
The cashier looked at Kostya for a moment, but then quickly looked away. “Let me get my manager.”
The cashier wiped her hands on her apron and then left the register, drawing still more annoyed glances. Kostya took a breath and leaned against the counter, ignoring those around him. When the cashier came back, a man who could have been her older brother stood beside her. He had brown hair with just a hint of red, a pinched face, and a few freckles on his cheeks. The cashier went back to ringing up customers, but the manager leaned forward and lowered his voice.
“Do you have an appointment with Mr. Kozlov?”
Kostya shook his head. “He's an old friend,” he said, turning to Lev. The big man produced a bottle from behind his back and handed it to Kostya. “Tell him I've brought his favorite scotch.”
Kostya handed the bottle to the manager and eyed him as he walked off.
“That's an odd way to treat your friends,” said Lev. “You might as well have pissed in a bottle.”
The flicker of a smile sprang to Kostya's lips, but it disappeared before anyone but Lev could see it.
“Vitali will know what it means.”
“I hope so.”
They waited for about five minutes before the manager returned. Behind him stood a man with thin lips, glasses, and shoulders stooped with age. He smiled broadly when he saw Kostya and held up the bottle.
“The last time I drank this, I was sitting in a bar in Brighton Beach and my girlfriend had just left me for a football player.”
“You met your wife that night.”
“I did,” he said, chuckling and looking at the label. “She bought me a drink and warned me that not even homeless people would drink this excrement. Where'd you find it?”
“I had to call around.”