Stolen Souls

74

ARTURAS STRAZDAS DIALED the number again.

Still no answer.

“Bastard,” he said after the tone. “Call me back, you fucking bastard.”

He dropped the phone on the bed. The room felt much smaller than it had yesterday. He had slept for perhaps an hour and dreamt of Tomas lying on a slab, his blank eyes staring upward forever, and no one to bury him but Herkus. Except Herkus couldn’t do anything for Tomas because he too was dead.

Strazdas had woken with a feeling of weight on his chest, and he had lain there unable to scream for long minutes. When he could move, he rushed to the desk in the living room and pressed his nose to the glass top, inhaling whatever traces of powder still lay there.

He’d been trying to phone his contact ever since, and the bastard would not answer. Two hours had passed, and the sun cast a milky white light through the clouds that covered the city. Strazdas opened the window and gritted his teeth against the icy air that flooded in and around his naked body. He stood still and upright, goose pimples spreading over his skin, until he convulsed with the cold.

The phone rang. He grabbed it.

“Where have you been? Why haven’t you answered, you fucking—”

“Arturas,” she said.

He sat on the edge of the bed, his legs weakened by her voice. “Mother.”

“Have you forgotten me?”

“No,” he said.

“Have you forgotten what you promised me?”

“No,” he said.

“Then talk to me.”

He tried to find the words, but could not.

“Talk to me,” she said again, a hardness in her voice that dislodged a memory he preferred to keep nailed down, not free to roam his mind, crashing into the things he thought he knew. He covered his genitals with his free hand and brought his knees together.

“My driver is dead,” he said. “A madman killed him.”

“Your driver does not concern me,” she said. “I am only concerned with the whore who killed my son.”

Strazdas felt pressure in his bladder. “The police have her,” he said.

He listened to silence for a few seconds before she said, “You will take her from them.”

“My contact will deal with it,” he said.

“I don’t care how you do it,” she said. “Just know this: you will not return to me until you have done what I have asked. Do you understand?”

A deep, itching heat gnawed at his groin, his bladder burning for release. “I understand.”

“Good,” she said, and hung up.

He dropped the phone and ran to the bathroom, the first drops escaping him before he could reach the toilet bowl. A shiver coursed through him as he closed his eyes and listened to the sound of water on water.

When his bladder was empty, he showered, the tap set as hot as he could stand it. He returned to the bedroom and retrieved his phone. Daylight had taken hold outside while he’d been gone. He dialed the contact’s number one more time and waited for the answering machine.

“One hundred thousand for the whore,” he said.

Less than a minute later, the contact called back.

“It’s difficult today,” he said.

“My offer lasts until noon tomorrow,” Strazdas said. “After that, it’s half. The day after, half again.”

“Leave it with me,” the contact said.