The Survivor

Chapter 43

Gauche and trendy, Nebesa lived up to every stereotype of an Eastern European club. Movie-premiere searchlights swept the sky, Range Rovers and limos gleamed in parking spots, and the towering sign above the valets glowed violet. Many of the girls trickling in were indistinguishable from hookers, and the neckless doorman looked like an icebox in a knockoff suit.

With a neat stack of folded twenties in hand, Nate stepped past the red velvet rope and approached the overhang of the entrance, doing his best to firm his weak left ankle and keep his foot from dragging. The doorman gauged his approach, scowling, hands crossed at the crotch, one gripping the other at the wrist, a posture no doubt studied at bouncer school. He stared down at the bills, unimpressed, and then his eyes flicked up at Nate. His bearing and mien matched those of the other Ukrainian heavies, and sure enough the accent did, too: “Cannot come in.”

“Why?” Nate asked.

“You are not pretty enough.”

“Explains why you’re out here.”

The man had no eyebrows, but the glossy bulges of flesh above his eyes rose. He shifted slightly, his loafers inching out to shoulder width. Balancing his weight.

Another bouncer of equivalent size steamrolled out through the dark-tinted door. “Iss there problem?”

“No. Our friend is just leaving.”

The man nodded and withdrew back inside.

“I’m here on behalf of Pavlo Shevchenko,” Nate said. “I have a message for his daughter. He will be displeased if you interfere with his directive.”

The doorman sneered. “You do not look like friend of Mr. Shevchenko. You do not sound like friend of Mr. Shevchenko.”

Nate remained in place, keeping his stare even and, he hoped, menacing. Thumping bass vibrated through the walls of the club, and two women across the parking lot greeted each other with squeals of delight. The cut on Nate’s forehead tingled beneath the butterfly stitches.

The doorman breathed down on him for a moment or two. Then, affecting a bored expression, he calmly removed a slender but wicked-looking knife from inside his lapel. He touched the tip to just beneath Nate’s eye.

Nate didn’t flinch, didn’t take a step back.

The man let the point skim down across Nate’s lips, his throat, and come to a rest on the ball of his shoulder. He applied a bit of pressure.

Nate stepped forward into the blade.

It broke the surface tension of his skin cleanly, a spot of crimson spreading on his white shirt. The doorman pulled the knife back quickly, alarmed, but Nate gave him no space, leaning in until the hard edge rested across his own throat. He stared up at the bouncer’s wide face.

“Yeah,” Nate said, “but do I act like a friend of Mr. Shevchenko’s?”

“You act like crazy person.”

Nate pushed into the knife a bit more, feeling the pressure against his Adam’s apple. “Do you want to step aside, or do you want me to wake up Pavlo Shevchenko and ask him to handle this matter himself?”

The doorman withdrew the knife carefully and put it away. “She is in VIP booth on balcony.” His bare skull glistened. “I’m sorry, bro. We do not always know Mr. Shevchenko’s men-”

Nate moved past him, and the tinted door flew open as he neared, the backup bouncer nodding deferentially. The noise hit Nate like a truck, the strobe lights making him doubt his balance up the stairs. Despite the smoking ban, the air reeked of cigarettes. As he reached the landing, a girl with glassy eyes and a latex dress swiveled, lifting a maraschino cherry from an appletini and sucking it, twirling the stem languidly in his direction.

With its cabana-like drapery, cushioned benches, and rock-star view of the undulating dance floor, the VIP booth was clear enough. Boy-men clustered at the edge, bouncing, pumping fists in the air, and lifting their cell phones to record a scene blocked from Nate’s vantage. Making his way over, he saw the cause of the commotion-a blonde and a brunette, so skinny they seemed almost elongated, making out with each other as the onlookers whooped and filmed. The girls were really putting on a show, bumping and grinding, tongues flashing into view, long red nails running along endless stretches of stockinged thigh.

Nate pushed past the guys, through an effluvium of spicy cologne. “Anastasia Shevchenko?”

The blonde lifted her head dreamily. “It’s Nastya. What do you want?”

The guys with their cell phones bristled at the disruption, their complaints growing aggressive. Nate turned into them. “Get the fuck out of here. Go. Go.”

They took note of his stitched forehead and the coaster-size bloodstain on his shirt and dissipated into the crowd. The brunette slid out of the booth, plucking at her miniskirt, and Nastya turned her glazed focus to Nate. Her sapphire eyes blazed, accenting perfect features. Her appearance was so striking it seemed almost fake.

She straightened her too-tight dress, cinched at her tiny waist with a throwback eighties studded belt. Her hands fumbled at a cobalt pack of Gauloises, and she lit up lazily. “Way to ruin the party.”

Nate slid into a seat opposite her. Took a breath to even himself out. “I know you were driving that car,” he said. “I know you killed that family.”

“Are you another relative?” she said, unfazed. “’Cuz I told you I can’t talk about all that. I know you need to blame someone, but it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.”

She jerked an inhale, the orange flare casting a glow across the left side of her face and illuminating for an instant the raised scar tissue laid like a twig across her porcelain cheek. The damage was all the more evident given her flawless skin. Nate reached across, took her chin, and turned her head, exposing the seam back by her ear. “Yeah? Then what’s that?”

She wrenched away, her first show of emotion. “I hit no one. I was at the club all night. My car was stolen from the valet here. I was struck in the face with a bottle during a fight on the dance floor.” Her voice had turned stiff, almost robotic.

“We both know that’s not true.”

“I hit no one! I was at the club all night. My car was stolen from the valet here. I was struck in the face with a bottle during a fight on the dance floor.” She punched the words, aiming them like bullets across the table at Nate, but he had dealt with his own teenage daughter enough to see right through the shell of fury. He could sense the denial in her face, behind her eyes.

“No,” Nate said.

“I hit no one.” Her voice trembled. “I–I was at…” The long cigarette held an inch-long tube of ash that defied physics, refusing to fall.

“Look at you,” Nate said. “Can’t keep your face straight here. Think what they’ll do to you in court.”

She sucked an inhale, fingers trembling around the cigarette.

“You fucked up horribly,” he continued. “And it cost people their lives. I can promise you: You’ll live with that the rest of your life. But I can also promise you: You can move on from this. You can figure out how to live again.”

A tear clung to her mascara-dense lashes. “How do you know?”

“Because I know. But it’s not over. Your father, he’s ordered the killing of everyone who witnessed you in the Jaguar that night.”

To gauge her reaction, he watched her closely, but he needn’t have. Her eyes widened with surprise; she jerked in a half breath and then another, as if choking. “It’s not true.”

“It is. The first witness, Patrice McKenna, was already stabbed to death. He’s trying to find the names of the other witnesses.”

“There’s no way. It can’t be true.”

“He is willing to murder more people to protect you. I have a daughter your age.” Just saying the words made his chest burn, brought the whole flammable scenario roaring back to life. He fought away emotion, leveled out his voice. “And if your father isn’t stopped, he’s gonna kill her. In front of me.”

Her lips parted to suck in another clump of air.

“He holds me responsible,” Nate said. “He holds the witnesses responsible. He will do anything. To protect you. Which means you’re the only one who can stop it. Talk to him. Get him to tell you what he’s done.”

Her radiant skin suddenly looked sallow. “He wouldn’t do something like that. What you said. He just wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t he?”

She looked anywhere but at him.

“If the lives of those people, my daughter, matter to you, get your father to talk to you. And take what he tells you to the cops. They’ll make it stop. If you do this, they’ll probably be able to keep you out of prison-”

“Everyone is so concerned about prison, prison, prison. I don’t care about going to prison.”

“You’re looking at a life sentence,” Nate said.

The dance beat throbbed like something living, rumbling the booth, the floor, the cushion in the small of Nate’s back. The ash fell, scattering across Nastya’s knuckles. She took no note.

“Your daughter,” she said. “Does she have a boyfriend?”

“If you can call him that.”

“You don’t like him?”

“No.”

“Did you have someone threaten him? Bolt cutter around his knuckle. Like this?” She encircled one delicate forefinger with another.

Nate felt the shift in conversation as something physical, a rise in the temperature around the booth. “No,” he said.

“It works well,” Nastya said. She studied him a touch drunkenly, her head lolling. “And this daughter, she has friends? Real friends? Who like her for who she is, not just for”-she spread her arms, indicating the bright drinks, the canvas drapes, the VIP view-“this.”

Nate nodded.

Her gaze pinned him to the bench. “A mother?”

“Yes,” he said. “She has a mother.”

“And this mother takes her to lunch. They talk. She gives her advice.”

Nate said nothing. The music thumped deadeningly.

“He is the only thing I have ever had,” Nastya said. “You tell me I’m looking at a life sentence? I’m already serving one.”

She blinked hard, stabbed her cigarette into the ashtray, and slid from the booth. By the time Nate rose, she’d vanished into the crowd.