Kill Me If You Can (4 page)

At the age
of five I was given my first toy chest. It was a Marine Corps footlocker. While other kids got colorful wooden boxes with their favorite superhero or sports team logo painted on the front, my father decided I should have an olive-drab, steel-reinforced, double-padlock trunk emblazoned with
SEMPER FI
and steeped in his own personal military history.

I still have it. It’s bolted to my bedroom floor. I unlocked it and buried the medical bag with the diamonds under layers of old uniforms and a few souvenirs I brought home from Afghanistan. I shut the lid and made sure it was locked up tight.

Then I went back to the living room, tucked the gun back in the art cabinet where it belonged, and opened the front door.

And there she was, wearing a dove-gray V-neck sweater that matched her eyes and a just-to-the-knees denim skirt that showed off her legs nicely. Katherine.

“What are you doing here at this hour?” I said. “Besides looking terrific, that is.”

She threw her arms around me. “Haven’t you heard? There was some kind of terrorist attack at Grand Central,” she said, kissing my cheeks, my neck, finally my lips. “I didn’t want to be alone tonight.”

“Good thinking,” I said, pressing her body against mine. “After the railroads, and maybe planes, the next logical terrorist target would be art professors.”

She stepped back. “Are you making fun of me, Matthew?”

“Never.”

“Will you watch out for me? Keep me company tonight?”

“Uh-huh.”

And I meant it. My mother raised me to be an artist, but my father trained me to protect the people I love. When I was growing up, he was more like a drill sergeant than a dad. Once when I was ten, we were hiking in Pike National Forest. One minute we were together and then suddenly he was gone, and I was all alone in the middle of the Colorado wilderness. I had nothing but a hunting knife. No food, no water, no compass. I knew we hadn’t separated by accident, either. This was a test. It took me thirty hours to pass it, but I finally found my way home.

I looked into Katherine’s eyes. Would I watch over her? Absolutely. I stroked her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips. Then my lips traced the same pattern. Eyelids, cheeks, mouth.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked when we stopped for a breath.

“Absolutely.”

“How did your pants get wet?” She lowered one hand and cupped it between my legs.

“Beer. An unfortunate accident.”

“You can’t be walking around all wet,” she said, unbuckling my belt. Then she unzipped my fly and helped me out of my pants.

The beer had soaked through to my boxers. “Wet also,” she said. “And hard, too.”

“Can’t imagine why,” I said.

Within seconds I was naked and then Katherine joined me. I lay on my back and Katherine straddled my hips. I thrust up into her, not hard but firm. She arched her back, dug her knees into my thighs, and pressed down against me. She slowly took in a breath, then just as slowly let it out. She did it again. And again.

The sound of Katherine about to reach a climax is the best part of making love for me, and as her breathing got more frenetic, I matched her until—

Our orgasms came in rolling waves, one after another, slowly subsiding until she let her body fall on top of mine. Then Katherine wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pressed her lips to my ear.

“I’m crazy in love with you,” she whispered.

“I love you, too,” I said. “Never thought I could love anybody like this. But here we are.”

We fell asleep like that.

Not a care in the world.

So incredibly naive.

Vadim Chukov was
a survivor. When a rival mob captured him, he managed to strangle his captors from the backseat of the car with their own handcuffs. When four prison guards beat him and locked him in solitary confinement, he escaped and lived to kill them and their families. Chukov had been stabbed four times, shot twice, and thrown off a speeding train. He’d be damned if he was going to die from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

He sat naked on the ceramic tiles of the steam room, a towel across his lap. His cell phone and a bronchodilator inhaler lay on the towel. Lifelines both.

Chukov had discovered cigarettes when he was eleven years old. Yava, the full-flavored Russian cancer sticks that gave a young street enforcer for the
Solntsevskaya Bratva
swagger, status, and eventually COPD.

Thirty-five years later, he was a slave to the steam, breathing in the moist heat almost every day to help open his inflamed lungs.

Most of the steam rooms in the city were magnets for fags and yuppies, but the Russian and Turkish Baths on East 10th Street were old school. Real tile, not that fiberglass and acrylic shit they were putting in those new hybrid steam rooms. And no pretty boys. At least not at this hour of the morning. He had the steam room to himself.

Chukov’s body was short, thick, and covered with curly black hair and sixteen tattoos. The rose, the tiger, the skulls—every blue line on his body told his history in the Russian Mafia to anyone who knew how to read it.

The cell phone rang. He was waiting for some good news that he could give to Prince. This had better be it. It wasn’t.

“Where’s my money?” the voice on the other end said.

It was the Ghost.

“Where are my diamonds, you prick?” Chukov came back angrily.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Ghost said. “All I know is we had a deal. I kept my end of it, you didn’t. Walter Zelvas is dead. My money hasn’t been transferred to the Caymans.”

“Why do you think I hired you to terminate Zelvas?” Chukov said. “He was skimming diamonds from the Syndicate. The diamonds weren’t in his apartment, so he must have taken them with him. You were the last to see him alive.”

“And if I don’t get my money, I’ll be the last one to see you alive.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chukov said.

“It means look to your left.”

Chukov turned his head. There was a red dot on the wall. It moved up to the ceiling, made a few
S
turns, danced back to the wall, and then landed on his chest.

He had to clench his sphincter for fear of shitting right there.

“You’re here?” Chukov said. “How did you find me here? How did you get in?”

“It’s what I get paid to do, remember? So pay me.”

“Be reasonable,” Chukov said. “Give me time to recover the missing diamonds.”

“Not…my…problem,” the Ghost said.

The red dot moved slowly down Chukov’s body to the roll of a lifetime of overindulgence around his belly and finally came to rest on the inhaler that sat on his lap.

Chukov was sweating profusely, not all of it from the steam. “Please,” he said.

“Lift up your skirt,” the Ghost said.

“What?”

“The towel. Lift it up.”

Chukov had faced death before. He beat it every time, but not by cringing in fear.

He ripped the towel off and stood up. Naked. Proud. Defiant.

“Fuck you,” he bellowed. “Vadim Chukov bows to no man.”

The words echoed off the tile walls.

“Where’d you do
the seven?” the Ghost said.

“What?”

“I’m not interested in looking at your dick. I can read the tats. According to that star on your knee, you did seven years in prison. I asked you where.”

“Butyrka.” Chukov spat out the word. “Hellhole. I’d rather have gone to Siberia.”

“Put the towel back on and sit your fat ass down.”

Chukov wrapped the towel around his waist and sat. “If you can read tattoos, you know that the seven-pointed star on my knee means more than prison time.”

“I know. You’re a made man in the Russian Mafia.”

“I bow to no man.”

“I heard you the first time,” the Ghost said. “Were you a
pakhan
in the old country?”

Chukov inhaled deeply and filled his lungs with hot steam. “Nathaniel Prince was a
pakhan
. I’m a humble brigadier.”

“Brigadier, maybe,” the Ghost said. “But not so humble. Not if you choose to violate the
Vorovskoy Zakon.
”

Chukov exploded. “Bullshit. I have never violated the Thieves’ Code. I’ve been bound by it my entire life. Even in prison.”

“And I say you’ve desecrated rule number eighteen:
Make good on promises given to other thieves.
”

“That means nothing if you steal from me,” Chukov said.

“I killed a man for you, but I didn’t steal,” the Ghost said.

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

“You have two choices, Brigadier Chukov,” the Ghost said. “You either take my word for it and live by the code, or you don’t believe me and die in five seconds.”

The red dot made little circles on Chukov’s chest.

“Pyat,”
the Ghost said, counting backward in Russian,
“chetirye
…
tri
…
dva
…
odeen.”

“I’ll pay, I’ll pay,” Chukov said.

“Kogda?”

“You speak Russian?” Chukov said.

“Just the basic stuff you need in my line of work,” the Ghost said. “Like
please, thank you,
and
when can I expect my money?
”

“I’ll transfer it immediately.”

The red dot disappeared from Chukov’s chest.

“Spasibo,”
the Ghost said. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”

“We’re not done,” Chukov said. “I have another job for you.”

“I’m listening.”

“I accept that you didn’t take the diamonds,” Chukov said. “I want you to find out who did.”

“Then kill the
mudak
and return the diamonds to you,” the Ghost said.
“Da?”

“Da,”
Chukov said, followed by a wet, croupy laugh.

“I want double what you paid me for Zelvas.”

Chukov choked on his own laugh. “Double? Are you crazy?”

“It costs more when I have to figure out who the target is,” the Ghost said. “Plus, I figure getting back all those diamonds ought to be worth something to you.”

“Maybe ten percent more,” Chukov said.

“Double,” the Ghost said. “Take it or…”

The red dot reappeared on Chukov’s chest.

“…leave it.”

Chukov took it. “All right. I’ll pay double, but only if I get the diamonds back.”

“Then we’re in business again,” the Ghost said.

Chukov looked down at his chest, waiting for the red dot to disappear. It didn’t. “You can take the gun off me now,” he said.

There was no answer.

Chukov sat there sweating, but the dot didn’t move. It took him a full minute until he realized—the dot was never going to move. The laser beam was on autopilot.

Cursing, Chukov stood up and followed the red line through the steam to its source. It wasn’t even a gun. It was a cheap key-chain laser pointer resting on a block of wet tile.

The Ghost, of course, was long gone.

Chukov showered, dressed
, took a cab home, and begrudgingly transferred the money to pay for eliminating Zelvas.

He poured himself a shot of vodka and downed it, then picked up the phone. He started to dial Nathaniel’s number but quickly hung up.

He couldn’t face the wrath of Nathaniel Prince without a second shot of vodka.

Times had changed. Forty years ago, Chukov had given the orders and Nathaniel had followed them without question. The two were cousins who grew up in the Sokol Settlement, a working-class neighborhood in Moscow.

Nathaniel was a model student and an adored only child. His father was a cheese maker, and after school, the boy worked in the family stall at the Leningradsky Market, using his charm and good looks to sell the soft sweet
Tvorog
and
Bryndza
to the tourists and well-to-do shoppers.

Vadim Chukov’s father was in prison, and by the age of twelve, Vadim was stealing cars on Arbat Street, where the wealthy parked. Luxury cars often yielded bonuses, such as cameras, watches, or the occasional gun in the glove box, and soon Vadim had a stash of hot merchandise. He showed it to Nathaniel, who had an idea. He would wrap each item in plastic and hide it in a tub of cheese in the family stall. Clued-in customers would ask for a particular batch of cheese, and before long, the smooth-talking Nathaniel was making more money in a few hours than his father made in a week.

Once he got a taste, he wanted more, and he climbed the ranks of the
Bratva
rapidly. He was only twenty-nine when he approached the Diamond Syndicate with the idea that propelled him to the top of the ladder.

The Syndicate trafficked in the illegal diamonds that had become the currency in war-torn African nations. Rebel armies funded their civil wars and armed conflicts by kidnapping the natives and forcing them to dig out the diamonds buried along the muddy riverbanks. Anyone who refused to cooperate would be mutilated or murdered, so the rivers ran red and the stones came to be called blood diamonds.

Prince came up with a foolproof plan to smuggle blood diamonds into America. Cheese.

He bought a small factory in Marseille where an exquisite Gruyère Fontu was made. When a shipment of blood diamonds arrived from Angola or Sierra Leone, they were cut, dressed, and molded into carefully marked wheels of the heavenly
fromage.

The cheese was exported to New York, where Zelvas and his crew extracted the stones and sold them to diamond merchants on West 47th Street who cared more about the black-market low prices than the fact that they came from the hands of murderous African warlords.

The plan worked well until Zelvas got greedy. By the time Chukov realized that Zelvas was taking a few stones from every shipment, the man had amassed a fortune.

Now Zelvas was dead, and the diamonds he stole were missing.

Chukov’s job was to find them. He downed a third shot of vodka and dialed Nathaniel’s number.

“This better be good news, Vadim,” Nathaniel said.

“It is,” Chukov lied. “Rice and Benzetti are closing in on the diamonds. You should have them back in a few days.”

“Rice and Benzetti?” Nathaniel screamed. “You’re counting on a couple of crooked cops to bring home a fortune in diamonds?”

“No, no, I’ve got a dozen other men looking,” Chukov said, wheezing. He paused to suck on his bronchodilator. “And I’ve hired the Ghost to track down whoever stole the diamonds and get rid of him. The Ghost is a legend, Nathaniel. He’s the best.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Vadim. Because if you don’t come up with the diamonds fast, I’ll be hiring the Ghost to get rid of you.”

He slammed the phone down.

Chukov picked up the vodka bottle and took a few quick swigs. Then he inhaled another lungful of albuterol from the little canister.

Bastard,
he thought.
I’ve created a monster.