Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (58 page)

15

A new car, some food, and clear path to his goal.  Life was good.

Spencer winced.  The pain in his arm was dwindling, but still there.  The Demerol was doing its job fairly well.  He reached for his O.J., took a swig.

The rubles he had were plenty enough to buy the juice from the “petrol” station.  Though it had lots of pulp, and God fuck Almighty how he hated pulp.  He’d parallel parked on a long street flanked by two rising hills that made up pet parks.  It was called Vergev Naberezhnaya, and cars lined both sides of the street.  Abandoning the squad car and tossing his scrubs inside, Spencer moved quickly down the road, scanning the vehicles on either side of him, looking for just the right one.

The wind was howling.  Or maybe that was
the dogs again?  The wolves?  The mutts?  He looked around, but saw none of them.  Somehow, he didn’t think he’d lost them for good.

Spencer
strolled down the street until he came near the end, where a dull-grey 2011 Acura MDX sat parked; a mid-sized crossover SUV with snow chains attached.  Pretty good clearance, and, according to what Spencer had read on them, an ideal vehicle for winter driving.  There were also decals on the side, which read:
Обслуживание дерево удаления
.  Translation:
Tree Removal Service
.  Looked like someone’s work vehicle.

Pausing beside the window,
Spencer waited a few seconds, watching the street and gauging the onlookers, then used his left elbow to smash in the window.  It was his weak arm, so it took several hits before the window finally shattered, but with each hit the pain in his right arm flared.  No alarm went off this time, so that was a small blessing. 
It’s the little things in life that matter
.  Spencer wiped the seat clean of glass this time.  He tossed his plastic bag full of goodies into the passenger seat.  Hotwiring was no problem, and he was off and listening to Russian pop music in less than a minute.

Over the music, Spencer was singing
his own song, “Tainted Love.”  “Once I ran to you…aaahhhh…now I’ll run from you.  This tainted love you’ve given…I give you all a boy could give you.”

Something shifted in the back seat.  Spencer turned to look.  The back seat had been folded down, and there were two boxes filled with a few odds and ends, a pair of filthy work clothes that had spilled out, a hacksaw, a hatchet, and a chainsaw.
  There was also a box full of fliers with the tree removal service’s owner’s name and the phone number where he could be reached, as well as the rates he charged.

A siren approached from directly ahead.  Spencer spotted the flashing lights rounding a street.  He reached into his jacket for the Uzi.  The squad car raced right past him without slowing, and disappeared behind him.

“Take my tears and that’s not nearly aaaaallllll!  Tainted love,” he sang, lifting his (Zakhar’s) cell phone and checking to make sure he was still on course.  The Heights were on Abakumov Pereulok, a lane in a moderate-to-wealthy neighborhood, according to Wikipedia, the All-Knowing and All-Wise.  It was about eight minutes away.  Spencer checked the time—ten minutes till midnight—then tossed the phone into the passenger seat.

Spencer rooted in his plastic bag for another bottle of the god-awful pulpy orange juice, downed it in four gulps, and then forced cookies down his throat, reveling.
  His stomach was thankful to get anything, and his body rejoiced at his wise decision to replenish energy.  It might’ve had the effect of good cocaine; he wouldn’t know, he didn’t do that shit, over time it dulled the senses (a cig was often good enough), but he certainly felt hopped up on
something
.

It was the job.  It was the driving force that moved him forward.  That’s what had hold of him.  That, and
the need to repay Dmitry, to repay the stocky fucker that shot him, and to meet Comrade Zverev and see just who the fuck he thought
he
was, and get the information on At-ta Biral, and see if either Zverev or the “Eight Cats” knew where to find Dmitry’s family.

The snow remained stubbornly fierce.  Spencer listened to the bitch in the box, who said, “Stay…on…
this
…road…for…
one
…kilometer.”  But he couldn’t do that.  Up ahead, the road was closed, and a detour was suggested by brightly lit arrows.  Once he took a right, the bitch in the box reevaluated his route, and said, “Go…
one half
…kilometer…then…
turn left
…at…the
stoplight
.”

“
Vnimaniye
,” said the police radio.  Spencer tossed the radio into the plastic bag holding his food.  “
Prestupnik, ne nayden
. 
Bol’nitsy yasno
. 
Ustanovit po perimetru
…”  Translation:
Attention all cars.  Perpetrator not found
. 
Hospital is clear
. 
We will establish a perimeter at
…

Spencer didn’t follow the rest because it didn’t pertain to him.  They were establishing a perimeter well away from him.  However, he did hear a tidbit about “
politseyskaya avtomobil
” and “
ukradennyy
” in the same sentence: something about a stolen squad car. 
So, they know I took the police car
.  He smiled.  “Not bad, boyos, not bad.  You’re only
two
steps behind me.  That’s an improvement.  No, no, don’t sell yourselves short,” he laughed.  “That’s good, boys.  Very, very good.  You’re improving.”

“Turn…left…
here
,” said the bitch.

The sign for Fermilov Prospekt was all but ensconced by snowfall. 
Spencer spotted the large bronze sign up ahead
:
Height
s
.  Written exactly as it would be in English; sometimes, the Russians did that.  He started slowly down the road, easing along, looking at the houses on either side.  It as an affluent neighborhood, no doubt, but none of the houses aspired to mansion.  The houses were actually more akin to apartments.  There was as playground as silent as the grave and almost completely buried in snow; it was located near a roundabout, a communal area for all homeowners, no doubt.  There was also a small building where small kindergarten or daycare did business, its signage warning people about children walking.

The apartments themselves were what Russians called
Khrushchevka
, after Nikita Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party.  This living model was made popular during his reign.  Spencer had done his homework back in Derbent.  These were conjoined apartments, with long hallways in between each one, yet with shared living spaces.  Like a house in America, only every room was rented out by someone different, unless of course a lone occupant or family had the money to move in on their own.

Besides a few lights in each
building, there was absolutely no activity going on as far as Spencer could see.  He had no apartment number to go by.  He supposed he could message the Nigerian on eBay again, but that could take some time, and might arouse more suspicion.

Then, Spencer spotted a small bit of activity.  A light was on in a garage, and there were men moving around a
couple cars: a black sedan and a black SUV.  One of them looked ready to back out.  Spencer drove slowly by this building, watched six men in jackets hustling back and forth, one of them with a laptop computer he was folding up and tossing into the back seat. 
Going somewhere?
he thought.

A couple of the men looked in his direction.  Because of the darkness and the garage lights behind them, he could only make out dark silhouettes, no features
on any of them.  He kept on driving and pulled into a newly asphalted driveway two buildings down, where someone had worked hard to shovel the snow to one side.  He parked, and switched off his headlights.  From here, he could still see the men moving about.

This went on for five minutes. 
While he was waiting, the clock on the dash turned to 12:00
AM
.  “Tainted love,” he sang, touching his shoulder, the pain now little more than a dull throb.  “Touch me baby, tainted love.”  He shivered.  Having shattered the driver side widnow, the cold from outside was eating him alive.

Finally, everyone piled into one of two cars.  Then a
seventh and eighth man came out of the apartment and down a flight of stairs.  This made the total eight.  Erik had said that Vitaly Zverev was a bald man, but from this distance they were just dark silhouettes, and it looked like all of them were wearing ushankas.

An idea came to him. 
But no
…
no, if I make the call from Zakhar’s cell phone, Zverev will know something’s up
.  But he had to confirm it was Zverev somehow.  Then, he recalled the spare cell phone he’d gotten from the nurse’s coat.  He’d tossed it into the plastic bag along with everything else.  He fished it out, then found the number for Vitaly Zverev on Zakhar’s cell phone and dialed it up on the nurse’s phone.  He put it to his ear, listened to it ring.

He smiled.

On the way to the black SUV, one of the two men that came down the steps reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell.  “Yes?” answered Vitaly Zverev.

Spencer hung up immediately.  Two buildings over, the man stood in his driveway, staring down at his phone.  He put it back to his ear, probably asking if anyone was there.  “Hello, Comrade Zverev,” Spencer
muttered. 

Zverev looked around for a moment, perhaps sensing his doom.  Spencer
waited for Zverev and his pals to get into their vehicles and drive away.  Then, he backed out of the driveway without turning on his headlights, and followed them.  “You don’t really want any more from me,” he sang.  “To make things right—
bump-bump!
—you need someone—
bump-bump!
—to hold ya tight.  And ya think love is to pray.  But I’m sorry I don’t pray that way.”

It had taken almost twenty minutes for the taxi to arrive, even though it had a station that was right around the corner.  Shcherbakov slid into the back seat and immediately waved off the driver’s excuses of road closings and icy pavement.  “Just get me to the hotel,” he said.

“
Which one?”

“The Vidgof, as I told your dispatcher over the phone.”

“Sorry.  Must have slipped her—”

Shcherbakov waved off
his excuses again.  “Never mind.  Just go.”

They moved slowly out of the parking lot.  The driver drove with trepidation, and
once got stuck in the middle of the road, tires just spinning on ice.  It all grated on his nerves.  Never had he been so outmatched, and he couldn’t help but wonder what the others would think once Zverev told them the Grey Wolf had missed his mark. 
Will they say I’m finally getting too old for the work?

That was an unpleasant prospect.  What was life without
work?

While turning these troubles over in his mind, his phone rang.  Shcherbakov snatched it from his pocket.  “Yes?”

“…you just…call?”  It was Zverev, but the reception was poor.

Shcherbakov grimaced. 
“What?  You’re breaking up.  Say that again, I didn’t catch it.”

“
Hello?  Can…hear me?  Did you just call me?”

“No.  Why?”

“Someone just called…then…hung up, I thought…might be you.”

Shcherbakov almost wanted to smile. 
Clever bastard
. 
How did you find Zverev?
 
Not even Semyon and the others knew where he was, so you couldn’t have tortured it out of them
. 
So how did you find him?
  He spoke in earnest.  “Listen to me, cousin, he’s close to you.  He’s identified you now and he probably knows what you look like.  Where are you right now?”

“I’m…car now, headed for…Green.”

Location Green
. 
The Tsarskiy Penthouses
.  “How many are with you?”

“Eight.  Four in…
car, four in the one ahead of us.”

Shcherbakov put the phone down and spoke to the driver.
“Do you know the Tsarskiy Penthouses?”

The driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror.  “Sure.  I don’t get many passengers going to the upscale part of town, but I know it.”

“Take me there.  I’ll pay you triple the fare as a tip if you get me there in fifteen minutes.”

The driver looked at him again, and snorted.  “I think I can make that happen.”  He put on his blinker, and merged left suddenly, receiving numerous honks from motorists all around.

Shcherbakov put the phone back to his ear.  “Okay, cousin.  Listen to me very carefully, and follow my instructions exactly.”