A Welcome Grave

34

We rode in tense silence for a few miles, both of us watching the mirrors and waiting for the sound of sirens. Nothing happened. If he’d seen the door frame, she’d provided him with a convincing excuse. It had been a hell of a thing for her to do after I’d just lost my mind like that, kicking my way into her house. She knew me, though. After everything else, she still knew me. It was a small thing, maybe, but it had been enough in that moment.

“Donny Ward,” Joe said. “The poor son of a bitch. Do you think it was Doran? You told him about Donny.”

“Doran already knew about him. I don’t know who it was, and I can’t worry about that now. It’s about Amy, Joe. She’s the only thing. I meant what I said back there—get Amy back, and I’ll turn myself in and let it go the course. But I can’t go to the police now. Not to turn myself in, or for help. That option was just eliminated.”

“I know.”

“More of that damn money,” I said. “They’re throwing away a lot of it just to set me up. Makes it seem they’re pretty confident about the chance of success with Karen.”

“This was supposed to be the trump card. I don’t think Doran and his partner wanted to show it so early.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is enough for the warrant, enough to put you in jail. After they get their money, it’s perfect—you command all the police attention, and they disappear. But to find Ward’s body so early doesn’t help them. It makes it impossible for you to maneuver with Karen, and they needed that.”

“If they know that . . . If they find out how useless I just became . . .”

“They could panic.”

We didn’t need more discussion of what panic meant while Amy was with them.

“We’ve got to find them before that happens and before they go for the money,” I said. “That’s the time frame, Joe. It’s that fast now.”

“It’s too fast, Lincoln, Marshals and cops have been looking for Doran for weeks. How are we going to find him in a few hours?”

“We’ll get help.”

“I agreed with that this morning, but if there’s an arrest warrant for you, then going to the police—”

“Not that kind of help. Not the police.”

“Then who are you thinking of?”

“Thor.”

I had no idea where to find him. Guys like Thor don’t list phone numbers in the book, and even if they did, I wasn’t sure of his last name. I’d seen it written only one time, on an FBI report, and it wasn’t the sort of name that you glanced at and remembered. Some bizarre collection of K’s and V’s and a dozen vowels, maybe? Without a full name, we’d have to go through his acquaintances, find someone who would be able to tell us how to locate him. Thor’s acquaintances tended not to be the sort of people you sought out if you cared about your health.

“We’ll try Belov,” I told Joe. Dainius Belov had offered help to us once in the past. It was the sort of offer you never wanted to need, but right now it might be our best hope.

“That house on Lake?”

“Only place I know to find him.”

He shook his head, not liking the idea.

“He can help, Joe,” I said. “If he’ll tell us how to find Thor, we can get the name of the man who put Jefferson in touch with him. The same person probably hooked Jefferson up with Doran’s partner. We get that much, we’ll find Doran’s partner, and then we’ll get Amy back.”

“Assuming we can find Thor, and assuming he’ll actually talk.”

“It’s what we’ve got. Maybe the only thing.”

“You understand who you’re counting on for help. He’s a killer. An enforcer for one of the worst criminals in this city.”

“We’ve got to get into this guy’s world, Joe. It’s also Thor’s world.”

Joe looked over his shoulder, made sure the lane was clear, and then accelerated onto 480 westbound. He didn’t offer any argument, didn’t say anything else for a long time.

I thought of her while Joe drove, the way she’d looked on the couch, how she slept with her hair over half of her face, breathing slow and deep. Was she awake now? Had they hurt her, knocked her out, drugged her? Was she bound and gagged, or was Doran sitting above her with his Colt Commander? I thought of the possibilities, and my chest tightened and my temples ached and things deep inside of me went cold.

An arrest warrant had been issued, a piece of paper that would send me to jail for murder, and that was somehow an afterthought in my mind. It caused me no fear when compared with Amy. If I could get her back from these bastards, the hell with the rest of it. Targent seemed like a good friend compared to Doran’s partner, that voice on the phone.

Joe’s driving—right at the speed limit—seemed impossibly slow, but I understood his reasoning. The last thing we could afford right now was to be pulled over for speeding. His car would soon be a risk anyhow. Targent would put Joe’s plate out on the radio eventually.

He drove us into the city, then came back to the west down the Cleveland Memorial Shoreway until we hit Lake Avenue. We didn’t have the address, but neither of us would struggle to locate the house, either. The only time we’d been inside, it had been in the company of Thor and another of Belov’s enforcers. Visits like that tend to stand out in your memory.

The big Victorian house looked the same, the home and grounds immaculate. I wondered if the neighbors knew what Belov did, or if they guessed about it—real estate, commodities broker, maybe?—while they ate dinner and looked out at his quiet estate and the stern-faced foreign men who visited.

We parked in the driveway and went up the walk and rang the bell. There wasn’t a sound from inside. Joe rang the bell again, and we gave it a few more minutes, but nothing happened. No one was home.

“He’s not here, and that means we’re in trouble,” Joe said. “I could go along with you on the idea that Belov might put us in touch with Thor. But without him?”

“We’ll try the River Wild.” I turned and walked down the steps and back to the car.

Joe was still standing at the door, looking down at me. “Just walk through the door, clear your throat, and ask for Thor? In that place?”

The River Wild was a Russian-mob-controlled bar in the Flats, a strip club where Dainius Belov’s crew could often be found.

“You wearing a gun today?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

The River Wild was on the east bank of the Flats—the old warehouse district that had been converted into an area of restaurants, clubs, and nightlife. Many of those once successful businesses were gone now, the Flats having fallen on hard times yet again. The River Wild hung on, but it’s easier to do that when you’re backed by mob dollars.

The building’s windows were covered with faded gray boards so passersby wouldn’t get a free glimpse of the dancers inside, and the door had a chain looped through the handle but not locked. I slid the chain off and pulled the door open and stepped into the dim interior.

I’d never been inside the bar before, but I’d seen it once through a grainy surveillance camera. A camera that had recorded a murder. We entered into the wide main room, looking out over rows of tables at the base of a tall stage with four brass poles mounted in the center. There was a bar on the left and another across the room. A wall clock shaped like a pair of breasts ticked over our heads. No one was in sight, but there were voices in the building.

“There’s another room in back.”

“Yeah.” Joe didn’t say anything else, but I imagined he was thinking exactly what I was: The room in back was where the surveillance camera had caught the murder.

We crossed the empty room and went past the stage and the rear bar and found a set of twin doors beside it. The voices were louder now. I let my hand drift back to check the Glock, then shoved through the doors with Joe behind me.

Three men at a table and one standing, everybody turning with hostile looks when we entered. There were decks of cards on the table, but nobody was playing; one cigar leaked a thin trail of smoke into the air. I didn’t know any of the men by name, but the one on his feet—a shorter guy with the flat face and beefy shoulders of a small, muscular dog—was familiar. I’d seen his photograph during a briefing with the FBI a year earlier.

“You got business here?” one of the guys at the table said. He had a deep cleft in his chin and steel-colored hair that clung to his head as if he’d just climbed out of a pool. “Or you in the wrong place, want to excuse yourselves and get the hell out?”

Joe moved around beside me, and now a chair creaked as the only man with his back to us turned all the way around.

“Looking for Thor,” I said, as if that were a perfectly normal thing for strangers to be doing in here.

The man on his feet said, “No Thor here, officers.”

“We’re not cops.”

“No? Then I won’t need to be polite again. Take off.”

He had the heavy Russian accent that Thor spoke so carefully to avoid. His nose was crooked, and there were scars above his lips and beside his eye, a face that had taken plenty of beatings and probably enjoyed every one, seeking the violence out like an alcoholic who’ll drive thirty miles to find an open bar for one more drink.

“We’re not cops,” I repeated, “and Thor knows us. So does Belov.”

“If you’re such good friends, you’d know how to find him.”

“Call him,” I said. “You get in touch with him, I’ll tell you my name, and you can let him make the decision. But I need to speak with him.”

“People who need to speak to Thor know how to find him, asshole. And if they don’t, and Thor needs to speak to them? He finds them. You get the idea? Now get out. We aren’t open yet, and this is a private room.”

I shook my head. “Maybe I’m not making myself clear. This matter I need to discuss, it’s the sort of thing that can get police involved. Thor finds out he could have avoided that, but then you screwed it up? I don’t think that’ll make him happy.”

“Go get your police and tell them to blow me. You don’t walk in here and make threats like you know somebody. You don’t know anybody.”

“Want to ask Thor about that?”

“Don’t need to.” He walked over, moving slowly as he shoved between us, letting his shoulder hit Joe’s. Joe stifled a wince at the contact, trying not to show the pain. I caught it, though, and so did the Russian. He stood in front of Joe, his face level with Joe’s chin, and smiled.

“Sore?” He reached out and delivered a short, chopping punch with the heel of his hand, catching Joe right on the damaged tendons of his shoulder. Joe grunted with pain and took a step back, and the Russian laughed.

“Do not come in here with a weak old man and give me orders,” he said, and then he stopped talking when I punched him in the side of his jaw.

I heard chairs scraping on the floor as the men at the table got to their feet, but I didn’t look at them. The one who’d hit Joe had taken my punch well and spun back to me. I met him with my right elbow, pivoting to generate the power, like a left-handed baseball swing. The elbow caught him on the side of his mouth, and I felt the sharp edges of his teeth against the bone. He staggered and then fell, and when he did I stepped clear and drew the Glock in time to stop the rush of the man who’d been seated with his back to us. He was almost on me, and when I turned my gun was a foot away from his face.

The two others were on their feet, the one with the cleft chin holding a chair in both hands, ready to swing it. Joe had his gun out, too. They looked at my gun and his, and then the chair hit the floor and they all took a few steps back. If any of them had a weapon, he hadn’t cleared it in time, and now it was our show.

“Maybe you didn’t understand me when I told you this was important,” I said. “It’ll be important to Thor, too. When we’re gone, feel free to call your boss. You tell Belov that one of your dumb-ass buddies assaulted a man named Joe Pritchard today, and then you see how pleased he is.”

None of them spoke. There was fury in their eyes, the look of violent men who’d just lost a confrontation and would not soon forget it.

“Now,” I said. “I will ask again—how can I find Thor?”

There was a pause. The one on the floor had struggled back to his feet, blood streaming out of his mouth. He was feeling his teeth with his thumb. I hadn’t looked at my arm, but there was a warm wetness of blood on my elbow, trickling down the forearm, a souvenir from those teeth he was checking on.

“You know Cujo’s?”

This came from the one with the cleft chin. Cujo’s was another bar, less than a mile away. I’d never been inside, but I could picture the sign, the face of a snarling dog.

“I know it.”

“Go there.”

“That’s where Thor is?”

“Most likely.”

“I’d like a phone number.”

“For Cujo’s?”

“For Thor.”

“He does not use phones. Go to Cujo’s.”

I wasn’t convinced that Thor didn’t have a phone, but it wasn’t impossible, either. He liked to keep a low profile.

“All right. We’ll go to Cujo’s. And if we don’t find him there, we’ll come back. With Belov.”

It was an empty threat, since Joe and I had no idea how to locate Belov, but it was the best I had. I took a few steps back, moving toward the door without lowering my gun. There would be a weapon somewhere in this place, and I didn’t want to give them the chance to move for it.

The Russian I’d hit suddenly sucked the blood off his lips, tilted his head back, and stepped forward to spit on me. Before he had the chance, Joe whipped his good arm around and drilled him in the center of the forehead. He still had the gun in his hand, and the sound of metal on bone made everyone in the room stiffen. Instead of bringing his head forward to spit, the Russian kept going backward and hit the floor for the second time. I had my back to the double doors by then and pushed through them, Joe stepping out with me. We moved quickly through the main room of the bar, guns out, but no one followed.

“You pop him because he hit your shoulder?” I said.

“No. That was for the weak old man comment.”

It took us ten minutes to get to Cujo’s. I’d remembered it being on Carter Road, but it was actually on West Fourth, tucked along the bend in the river. From the parking lot you could look up and see the Eagle Avenue lift bridge, and just beyond that the brick chimneys of the old waterfront firehouse, built decades earlier to deal with lumber fires. On another day, I would’ve stood there and taken it in, the little patch of cracked asphalt offering a perfect vantage point of the river that had allowed the city to thrive. Today, the only reason I scanned the area surrounding the parking lot was to look for cops.

Below the SNARLING DOG sign, on a board decorated with red-tinged drops of saliva from the beast’s jowls, were the bar’s hours: OPEN 4:00 P.M. DAILY.

“Places around here seem to have private hours for Soviet nationals,” Joe said.

“I’ve noticed that.”

There were a couple of cars and an old truck in the parking lot, but no one was outside. I took my gun out of my holster as we approached the door and held it down against my leg.

“Going in a little strong, aren’t you?” Joe said.

“I don’t trust that guy at the River Wild. Maybe Thor’s here, maybe he was setting us up.”

“Same thing I was thinking. We go in here and get into the same situation we did in the last place, then what? Keep crashing into bars all day, waving guns and asking for Thor?”

“It’s the way to get her back, Joe. The police are not going to know how to find Doran’s partner, even if they believe my story. Thor will.”

“Then we better hurry up and find him.”

The door was unlocked, and I pushed it open and stepped inside. No overhead lights were on, but there were neon signs scattered around the walls, casting the room in a crazy variety of colored lights.

“No friendly faces,” Joe said.

“No faces at all.” I took three more steps into the bar and heard the door slam shut behind Joe just before someone looped a length of chain over my head and pulled it tight.

The immediate, jarring power of the man behind me lifted me onto my toes and yanked me backward. I got the fingers of my left hand between the chain and my throat, but it did no good; the metal links tightened into my flesh and I felt my air supply give out, the breath already in my lungs the last I would taste until the chain loosened.

The Glock was still in my hand, but when I lifted it and tried to turn it my attacker knocked it free in one easy blow. Then I clutched at the chain with both hands, gagging, as someone in a sleeveless T-shirt moved forward from behind the bar. I saw him wind up, pulling his fist back as he ran at me, and I had enough time to tighten my stomach muscles before he hit me. Even with that, the blow seemed to shatter my insides. His fist came up into my solar plexus, knocking breath I couldn’t waste from my lungs. The forced reaction was to try and draw in a harsh gasp of air, but the chain around my neck kept me from doing that. I lost my breath and tried to take more in at the same time, and that pain was unlike anything I’d felt before, an internal tearing sensation that rode from my abdomen to my throat.

The room disappeared into a set of dancing diamonds, and then the chain loosened around my neck and I was thrown to the floor. I didn’t even have a chance to gather myself before the chain connected with the side of my head, knocking me prone. My lips removed a smear of dust and grime from the floorboards as I slid across them.

I was only vaguely aware of a shaft of light passing in front of my face, feeling no pain in my skull yet because I was so focused on trying to bring some oxygen into my lungs. As soon as the shaft of light moved over the floor, though, the assault stopped. I heard voices I didn’t understand, people talking in Russian, and I lay there on the floor and brought in slow, painful breaths. Dust and dirt filled my mouth each time I inhaled, but air had still never tasted so sweet.

Once I was sure I could breathe again, I rolled onto my side and propped myself up on my elbow. Blood was running down the side of my face from the spot where the chain had hit my head. I wiped at it with one hand and then sat up and looked around the room. Joe was back by the door, held by a powerful-looking man who had his arm wrapped around Joe’s throat, a gun pressed to his head. The two men who’d attacked me were standing in the middle of the floor, chattering in frantic Russian with the man who’d just entered the bar, spilling the light into the room. I blinked a few times, trying to clear my vision, as the new man snapped something and a second later Joe was released. I still couldn’t see him properly in the dark, but I knew the soft, steady voice, even when it was speaking Russian.

We’d found Thor.