Burn Artist Read online

  When I was very young – maybe six or so – Grisha drove me to one of the projects in Red Hook that was owned by the Organizatsiya. He dragged me by my arm from the car, all the way down the stairs to the basement. In my dream, the walls throbbed red hot.

  It was one of father’s ‘lessons’: excursions where I was supposed to ‘toughen up’ and ‘learn how to be a man’. From the age of five onwards, he exposed me to everything he did. He beat people unconscious in front of me. He killed a guy outside of a bakery with a tire iron while I waited on a dustbin, watching every blow. For this particular lesson, he’d brought a cat in a potato sack. He was drunk, of course.

  “You have to learn one thing about this world, kiddo. You wanna know what that is? It’s that nothing matters. Not a fucking thing. Everything is like everything else, and it’s all shit. You think anything makes sense?”

  “No, sir.” It was hellishly hot down here, and stuffy. The furnace clanked.

  “All that matters is being strong, kid. You know why? Any day, the government can just up and throw your fag ass in prison. Your old man was famous. He was gonna go to the Olympics. Then suddenly, bam! My ass was in GULAG! You want to know what I did? Fucking nothing, that’s what. Someone that didn’t like me made shit up to the police, and that was it.”

  The question formed in the dream as I had spoken it. “Why would somebody do that?”

  “Why? Because humans are garbage. There is no ‘why’. I nearly died twenty times in that hellhole. It ruined my body, and now I’m never going to wrestle again. You think there’s things worse than dying, Alexi?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What if someone fucks you in the ass? You think you’d rather be somebody’s bitch instead of being dead?”

  “No, sir.” I didn’t understand him, but I knew I was supposed to disagree. The words coming from his mouth, huge and distended in the darkness, were meaningless. He looked like an alien, saying alien things.

  “Good, because I swear to God, if you turn out to be some kind of sissy faggot, I’ll choke you to death myself.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In the dream, as in life, I was paralyzed as he pulled the struggling cat from the bag. It was one of mother’s alley cats. We weren’t allowed to have cats in the house, but she fed close to twenty strays in the yard every night, and every couple of weeks, several of them would go missing. Now, I knew where they went.

  “You don’t even fucking know what I’m talking about, do you? Let me show you what happens to pussies in this world, Alexi.”

  I was rooted to the floor, cold with black terror. I was an adult in my dream, but I still couldn’t move as he flung open the pig-iron door and threw the cat inside. It screamed, and as it screamed, I screamed.

  The earth quaked. A dark shadow bore down on me from above, and I blindly threw a punch out as hard as I could. There was a startled shout, but the shrill yowl and awful stench of the burning cat was still there, blurring slowly into the piercing honk of my alarm clock going off at full blast.

  “Morning, sunshine.” Vassily scowled down at me. His wiry hands were wrapped around my wrists. He had an angry red flush across his jaw where I’d punched him.

  As I got my bearings, I realized that I was still in bed. The sheets were damp with sweat. “Hhh…What…?”

  “You nearly knocked me out. And then what? We’d be late to your… uhh… whatever you set this alarm for.”

  Oh, right. “Mariya.” My voice was thick, gluggy and rough. I coughed, winnowing out the present reality from past memory. They were receding already, sliding back down under still mirrored waters. Now that I was awake, I could remember without feeling. “Mariya’s. Brunch. And then we have to… surveillance. Want to come?”

  “Surveillance? Oh boy oh boy, do I ever.” Vassily rubbed his face. I couldn’t read his expression.

  “Get ready, then. We have to be at the location by three.”

  “No worries.”

  I got to my feet, wooden and dizzy, and stumbled to the bathroom. The first thing I did was throw up. It was loud and painful and unpleasant, but I felt better afterward. Once I had purged, I showered, brushed my teeth, and tried to plow through the fugue toward wakefulness. Food would help; coffee would help more. By three p.m., I would hopefully be reasonably alert and ready to go hunt our man.

  Mariya’s deli was an oasis in the chaos of Brighton Beach. Shadowed by the railway overhead and a blue and white awning, the glass-fronted corner store was always cool in the summer. There was no menu on the wall and little decoration inside, but it always smelled like fried butter, sugar, vanilla and tea. Mariya was Vassily’s elder sister. By extension, she was my adopted sister, and the only maternal figure I could ever remember having.

  We had keys, so we went in through the cramped back hallway. I closed the door on the hot bustle of the street outside, and we moved through the cool darkness of the corridor to the kitchen. Mariya was in there, busily boiling pelmeni and chopping onions. Vassily knocked on the door frame, and she looked over with arched eyebrows and then a gracious smile very much like her brother’s.

  “My boys!” She left her food to meet us halfway across the kitchen. She kissed Vassily briefly and platonically on the lips and face, and then bent down to kiss me on both cheeks. “Look at you both! Alexi Grigoriovich, you have dark rings around your eyes. You’re exhausted. Why aren’t you sleeping more?”

  “Life and work,” I replied, shrugging. I tried to be nonchalant, but my stomach was hot and dry after the morning’s nightmare and subsequent puking. Mariya’s warm, blue-fur voice was a balm over the memories of my father.

  “You know how it is. No rest for the wicked,” Vassily added.

  Mariya clucked her tongue in disapproval, reaching out to straighten my collar. I let her. She was one of two people in the world I let touch me beyond a handshake or a pat on the back. “I swear, the pair of you look thinner every time I see you. You’re working too hard. Do I need to go and kick Rodion in the tuches?”

  “You could try.” Vassily grinned at the thought of it. “He’s got a pretty hard ass, though. I bet you could swipe a credit card down the middle of that thing.”

  “Oy gevalt. I swear, these friends of yours are going to kill you both one of these days.” Mariya tutted, hustling back to the stove. It was still early afternoon, and she was managing the kitchen by herself. The rush didn’t start until after four. “So, you’ve come here to eat my food and dirty my chairs, have you?”

  “And drink your kompot,” Vassily said. “Pretty much. Me and Alexi figured you’d want to see us before Court on Monday.”

  “Nonono, Semych. Don’t remind me of that.” Mariya shook her head, scowling as she strained the dumplings out of the pot and heaped them on a plate. “I don’t even want to think about you in that place. Not to mention, prison. What a nightmare.”

  “I’m not going to prison, Mari.”

  She turned to look back at us. Like Vassily, she was black haired and blue eyed, tall, handsome, and hawkish. Brother and sister were almost the same height, an even six feet. Unlike Vassily, she had no tattoos and no scars gained from combat. She had lost both parents and three brothers to the criminal life, and the Organizatsiya was not for her. “That’s what Antoni thought, too.”

  “Toni was put away for murder. The Fed arrested me for tax and credit card stuff.” Vassily waved her off with a long hand. “It’s not a big deal, sis.”

  “It’s a big deal since RICO,” she retorted. “But ayy, let’s not talk about it. I don’t want to bring bad luck on us before we go to the courtroom. What do you boys want to eat?”

  “I would dig the hell out of a chicken sandwich and some blintz,” Vassily replied.

  Despite the heat, I was in the mood for something warm. “Veal pelmeni would be wonderful, Maritka. And coffee.”

  “Go out back and wait, then.” She resumed dishing up, shooing us away with a hand. “I’ve got Vanya and his goons out front all wanting their food
. After that, I’ll bring it out with some kompot.”

  “Everything all right out there?” Vassily’s eyes narrowed imperceptibly. “They aren’t treating you badly, are they?”

  “No no.” Mariya laughed, a warm, rich blue sound. “They’re all just hungry, Semych. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  Nearly every day after elementary school, we had gone to Mariya’s shop to eat dinner and do our homework in the same empty storeroom. Mariya kept bulk ingredients in there these days, but the same wooden table and chairs Vassily and I had used as children was still in here. It was a pleasant, relaxing start to what was bound to be an interesting day scoping out Jacob Maslak and seeing what we could do to make his life a living hell.

  Chapter 6

  The better part of any operation like this was surveillance. Surveillance is time-consuming and requires an earnest wetworker to be well prepared. Coffee is mandatory, as are binoculars, a notepad or tape recorder, and a hospital bedpan: the kind with the long neck and water-tight screw-on cap. All that coffee has to go somewhere, and I assure you that there is nothing worse than being six hours into a twelve-hour surveillance gig and knocking your improperly capped bedpan onto the floor of your car.

  This job wasn’t likely to take twelve hours, but we stocked up just in case. Early Monday afternoon, Vassily and I rented a car under fake names with a fake credit card, a Town car with tinted windows and a low profile. Then, we headed for Maslak’s office.

  CelTech was based out of an office two streets across from the Columbia University Medical Center. The building looked like a sapling struggling in the shade of a giant tree: or in this case, the monolithic parking garage just behind the building. We cruised down 163rd, looking out over the beige cube dug into its pit, but it was still a little early for the workers to be leaving.

  I sucked on a tooth as I slowed for traffic. The street was one-way, narrowed by solid lines of parked cars to either side. “You know what he looks like, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. White, five-foot eight. Trim build, dark hair, short beard. Ivy League cut, square face. He looks Hungarian to me, drives a black luxury sedan.” Vassily was in the back, watching the rear windows while I focused on the road.

  “Which only narrows it to around eighty percent of all cars up and down this street,” I replied. “I really hope he doesn’t park in that multistory jungle we passed on the way here.

  “Well NOW he has.” Vassily rolled his eyes. “Good one, Alexi. You jinxed us.”

  “I can avert the jinx with a sacrifice,” I replied. “But the ritual has very particular requirements. For one thing, the sacrifice must be a smart-mouthed hohol-”

  “Hey! Fuck you!”

  “- And he must be defenestrated at high speed on a New York City highway,” I continued, turning the corner. We had to go around again until we found a spot to set up.

  “God, I hate you so much.”

  “I know you do.” I eyed the huge parking garage on the way past it again. “You don’t have his home address? I know that neither Nicolai or Rodion do.”

  “Nah. He gave an address, but Nic says he went to check it out and Maslak doesn’t live there. Makes sense to me… would you give your address out to people like us?”

  “An excellent point.”

  It was just after five when the first wave of staff poured out through the gate. We were able to mount a search while waiting for people to load into their cars and pull out onto the street. I finally grabbed a spot not too far down, and we began the anxious game of trying to spot our man in among the spreading streams of people.

  Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long. I was keeping an eye forward and to my right, but it was Vassily who hissed with recognition. I turned around and followed his pointing finger as a knot of suits clambered up the stairs from building to gate, chatting and smoking. The man matching Maslak’s description was among them. He was a waspish, shrewd looking yuppie with a side-part and a suit which looked too expensive for his dowdy workplace. He also had the mannerisms of a nervous squirrel in the company of hawks: three larger, swarthy men who hung back at the fence line to finish their cigarettes.

  “Hey, wait. Holy shit.” Vassily peered through the grayish window film, brow furrowed. “I know that guy.”

  “Who? What?” I squinted, trying to see if I recognized any of his coworkers.

  “That big guy, the fat one with the comb over. Fuck, what’s his name… it’s Acardi, Accorso, something like that. He’s a Mafia headhunter. Works for John Manelli’s crew over in New Jersey.”

  There were five Italian Families that ruled the north-eastern United States. The Manellis were a subfamily of the Scappeti Mafia, a blue-collar industrial mob based in Newark. There’d been a hundred and sixty-one murders in 1981 in that city: The Manelli Crew had been responsible for quite a few of them. I frowned. “Last I heard, Don Scappeti and Rod had an agreement. They buy our gasoline.”

  “Yeah. A couple million dollars’ worth of gas.” Vassily’s tone was dark as we watched Maslak shake hands with the capo and his men and then stalk off down the street. Our mark was headed toward Fort Washington Avenue, and the Central Parking garage. “Go out there, man. Go follow him and make sure he’s going where we want him to go. I’ll drive around the block.”

  “Good plan.” I waited, tense and wary, until I saw the three goons head for their cars. Feigning calm, I opened the door and got out, brushing down my shirt. Vassily scrambled over the seat and plopped down behind the wheel. I set off after Maslak at a purposeful walk while Vassily pulled out of our bay and out onto the street, cutting off a car that had been trying to creep past us.

  Fortunately, I passed well in a crowd of suits. Neatly dressed and self-contained, I pretended to pay attention to a pager as I followed the man around the corner, all too aware that wherever there was Mafia, there was Mafia security. Manelli’s men were watching this street. If they were protecting Maslak, they knew that Rodion and the Yaroshenko Organization would be out for him. I could almost smell the garlic on the wind.

  Sure enough, Maslak went into the shade of the garage jungle. Built to serve the hospital and the many smaller laboratories clustered around it, it was reminiscent of the concrete sarcophagus that the Soviet government was currently building around the ruins of Chernobyl. I followed him in, keeping a bead on him while I waited for Vassily to catch up. Every second that passed, every moment we headed deeper in the building and closer to the stairwell, the more tension gathered in my shoulders. It was an eternity before the town car rolled past, Vassily concealed by the tinted windows. Maslak turned a corner, and I took the chance to throw open the door and jump in.

  “Where’d he go?” Vassily craned his head, rolling forward.

  “Left,” I grunted. “If he goes upstairs, I’ll get out again.”

  Vassily sped up and hauled the wheel left, pitching me against the door. A car screeched to a halt to avoid broadsiding us, honking loudly.

  “What are you doing?” I righted myself, resisting the urge to grab the wheel.

  “I’m trying to follow him!”

  “Do you want to play the Soviet national anthem out the window while we do it?” I leaned around him catching glimpses of Maslak weaving through the lines of cars. He crossed the next aisle, then the next… and then got his keys out, twirling them around his finger has he closed in on a black Renault.

  “There we go. Get the plate!” Vassily’s voice rose in excitement as we slowed to a creep, as if searching for a spot.

  It was my turn to roll my eyes. “You are the worst kind of desk jockey. I already have the plate, Vassily.”

  “Write it down!”

  “I don’t need to write it down.” I watched as the man pointed something with his hand, and the car flashed its lights and chirped. He had some kind of new electronic entry system, one that didn’t require a keypad on the door. It probably worked with radio waves. Interesting.

  We circled around, and then followed him at a distance o
ut into the nightmare that was Manhattan rush-hour. While we were stuck in gridlock with every other poor schmuck on the road, Vassily and I took the opportunity to change seats. It was well understood that I was the better driver, and tailing marks was an art form.

  It took us nearly an hour and a half to drive eleven miles. By mile nine, Vassily began to grimace and glance out the window. “We’re headed to that Battery Park development area. If this guy lives where I think he might live, I don’t think we’re going to be able to get him at home, Lexi.”

  “Why?” My focus was on the road. Even with air con, the sun through the windshield had turned my gloves into a sauna. As traffic thinned out and headed for the Brooklyn Bridge, we were able to pick up some speed.

  “This guy’s New Money, and he’s still pretty young.” Vassily rapped his fingers against the door, frowning. “He wants the best of everything, right? The Concrete Club owns some of the biggest apartment towers near Battery Park and Wall Street. And who runs that?”

  “The Mafia. But he might not be going home at all,” I said.

  “On a Thursday night?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Don’t yuppies all go to each other’s apartments and eat sushi on Thursdays?”

  Unfortunately, Vassily’s hunch was right. Maslak turned right at the World Trade Center, then left onto South End Avenue to pull up in front of a sectioned off apartment complex with its own boom gates, skywalk, and three skyscrapers’ worth of luxury housing. Ruefully, I watched the black Renault disappear into the dark maw of an underground parking garage. An attended parking garage. We cruised on by and found a place to park down the road, crestfallen.