The Survivor

Chapter 44

Bloody, crusted, and stitched up like an American baseball, Yuri’s face resembled a Halloween mask. The cool basement gym smelled of the blue rubber mats on which Yuri, on better days, practiced Olympic lifts. The doctor checked his circulation in various places, poking his capped pen at the swollen flesh, then stepped away from the bench press he’d been using as an examination table. Pavlo handed him an envelope, which disappeared into the white coat.

The doctor said in Ukrainian, “I will return in the morning.”

He exited.

Pavlo flexed his hands and stared down at his inked knuckles-crosses and diamonds, asterisks and bars. How many times had a needle stabbed his flesh while he’d gazed up at a prison ceiling? He’d gathered the pain prick by prick, swallowed it whole, stored it for future use.

Across the space, Dima and Valerik sat on the mats, smoking and playing their cards. Misha did push-ups, one after another, his lithe body plank-straight. He was shirtless, a Fila terry headband holding his swept-to-the-side blond hair at bay.

Dima glanced at Yuri’s face. “Does it hurt?”

Yuri stood with a grumble. “No.”

Contemplating Nate Overbay’s escape, Pavlo ground his teeth. “He has the list still. Now we must chase. You are to call in more favors. I don’t care how much you spend. Every flight, border, bus station. Understand?”

Yuri nodded. “We are.”

“More,” Pavlo said.

“He failed you,” Misha offered. Not the least bit winded, he continued with his push-ups. “He was beaten by a dog.”

“You did not see this dog,” Yuri said. He walked over to Misha and glowered down. “Perhaps you think you could do better than me.”

Misha did a few more push-ups, bouncing up to clap his hands between reps, then rose to confront Yuri. “That is why I am here. To do better than you.” His shell of swoop-around hair remained perfect, unruffled from the exercise.

“No,” Pavlo said. “Not yet. Let Yuri search through our channels. There are ways to locate someone here, many ways. Not just force.”

“And if you don’t find him?” Misha asked.

“We will find him,” Yuri said.

“And if not in time for Anastasia’s trial?”

“If I must, I will send an army of men with semiautomatics into DA’s office a week before that trial,” Pavlo said.

“This,” Misha said, “sounds like a better plan.”

He walked out to the balcony, knocking Yuri’s shoulder. Though Yuri outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds, the bigger man did nothing. Misha stretched his muscles in the darkness, steam rising from his shoulders.

Pavlo heard the front door open upstairs, and a jangle of keys struck the wooden table. “Papa? Papa!”

He hurried up to the main floor and immediately knew something was wrong. Nastya stood in the open doorway, makeup smeared down her cheeks. Behind her the Town Car glided silently away.

“Come in from the cold,” he said.

Her chest was heaving, her ribs faint outlines beneath her dress. “Is it true?”

“Is what?”

“That you’re killing them. The people who saw me in the Jag.” She held out her phone with a news story up on the little screen.

He caught a flash of the name-Patrice McKenna-and his blood ceased moving for an instant, his insides turning to concrete. “Who told you this?”

“Is it true?”

He tugged her arm gently, forcing her a half step into the foyer, then closed the front door. “Do not raise your voice to me.”

“I don’t care. I don’t care! Answer me. Are you doing this? Are you killing them?”

He took her slender hand and led her into the sitting room, where he sat beside her on the recamier with its ridiculous scrolled cherry-veneer arms. The admission froze in his throat. He backed up, came in from a different angle. “You will not survive in prison,” he said.

She seemed to break, as if someone had snipped the cords that held her upright. She sagged, boneless, her mouth spreading to emit a gut-deep moan.

“Many years, many times, I was in prison,” he said. “I am of prison. Not my daughter. I would kill the world before I let my daughter go into a box.”

She clutched at him. “That’s not your choice.”

He flung her back. “It is all my choice. Everything!” Spittle flew from his lips. “For you I betrayed who I was. I betrayed my code. In prison I remained unbroken, but for you-for you-I went against my own skin.” He slapped a hand to his wrist, shoving up his sleeve, revealing the blue ink of the Zone. “Not for you to live a life behind bars like me. Like your dedushka in Babi Yar, starving and weak, made to carry a sack of wet salt across the yard and back. Across and back. A mockery of existence. A celebration of horror. You cannot understand. You will not live as we have lived. Every relative reaching back. All of us, filthy and marked. But not you.”

“I am filthy,” she sobbed. “I am marked.”

“No. You are pure.” Vehemence seethed in his words. “If I have to destroy the world, you will not go. I will bring war.”

“I have no say,” she wept, a hoarse whisper. “I have no choice. Stop, Papa.” She’d switched to Ukrainian, something about his native tongue bringing the words home right to the pit of him, lifting the hairs on his arms. “For me.”

“It is all for you.”

“Please, Papa. Please.” Pleading quietly, she pawed at him in desperation, pressing her palms to his chest. “Stop, Papa. Please.”

“Stop this!” he roared. “Do not question me. I gave you life. I took you from the street. You breathe because of me.”

She froze against the cushion, a startled animal. Not a sound. Not even the soft rasp of her crying. He was trembling, his powerful hands clenched. He loosened a fist, reached for her. At his touch she softened. Drew a shuddering breath. And then another.

He stroked her hair. She shifted so she was lying across his lap, the tension slackening in her neck.

“You will listen to me,” he said gently.

She settled into him, her muscles surrendering. “Okay.”

“It will be all right.”

“Okay.”

“I will take care of you.”

“Okay.”

“You will see.”

She rustled a bit and then rose. Her face had gone flat, expressionless. “I’m tired. I need to go to bed. I need to forget all about this.”

“Good. Forget all about this.”

She paused before him. Holding his face, she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “I know you love me, Papa.”

“Yes,” he said.

She stepped out of her high heels, leaving them empty on the pile carpet before her father, and floated into her room on stockinged feet. She put her back to the closed door and stared out her picture window at the magnificent view. Hollywood, the pulse of the universe. All those dreams and hopes bartered or bought for cents on the dollar, ground up and fed into the machine, fuel to keep the lights burning. People the world over drawn like moths to this strip of incandescence, yearning for a place, a home, an identity.

Her razor blade was out of her Coach wallet, in her hand, pressed to the top of her thigh, just shy of breaking the skin. She’d made no conscious choice, hadn’t even known what her hand was up to while she’d taken in the view. She applied a bit more pressure, nylon and flesh yielding, freeing a quick endorphin rush. What a relief to feel something. To cut through the edge of herself, to reclaim her body as her own. Eyes watering, she bit her lip, an expression of ecstasy. Then she let the blade fall from her hand. She breathed, felt the thin tributary snake down the inside of her knee.

With effort she peeled herself off the door. She cleaned herself up, tissue and styptic pencil, a midsize Band-Aid. The care and healing were as much a part of the ritual as the cutting itself. She had promised her father she’d keep her body unmarred, and she would do so, even now, to the best of her ability.

Using her brightest pink lipstick, she wrote across the window, NO MORE. Then she drew her heavy shades across the brightness, blotting it out. Beneath her mattress she retrieved a hidden trove of papers, artifacts of her failed search for her mother. Genealogy trees with broken branches, chat-room threads that knit into nothing, leads that went nowhere-she let all the dead ends spill across her puffy duvet.

Her sturdy desk chair fought the carpet as she shoved it to the middle of the room. Swaying, she tilted her head, letting her long hair brush her arm. With a distant smile, she ran her knuckles up her swanlike neck, taking comfort in the smoothness of her skin. Her fingertips rose to the scar tissue, traced its faint ridges. She unbuckled her thin studded belt and snapped it once.

Then she stepped up onto the chair and tested the sturdiness of her ceiling fan.