LEO FOLLOWED ELANA, AND I crossed the city to connect with Leo. She stayed off the freeway. They wound down through Ravenna and across the Cut, through my neighborhood—or what had been, my house now being what it wasn’t—and farther south into the Central district, where I joined the loose parade.
We drove past the large campus of Garfield High School, where Elana had once planted a kiss on me. It seemed impossibly long ago.
Leo came back on the line. “She turned left on—shit—Fir, I think it is. Where the hell are the street signs in this town?”
“We do that to mess with the tourists. Give her some room. She might be watching for a tail.”
All three of us drifted farther down into the Central district, which was like a patchwork quilt of Seattle’s gentrification. Abandoned houses sagged next to shiny townhomes that looked as though the construction crews had just finished smoothing the cement. Rows of residences gave way to industry.
Elana led us on a long path south on Rainier and finally turned onto Cloverdale. My stomach muscles started to tighten. Was she going where I thought she might be? The feeling intensified over the next few blocks.
“She stopped,” said Leo. “Corner of Volpe Street.”
I knew exactly where it was.
“Don’t park,” I said. “Keep going past and circle around. I’ll meet you one block north.”
Leo was standing outside the Saab when I pulled in behind him. We walked back to the block where Elana had finally stopped. There was a liquor store at the corner, with a dumpster against its wall. The dumpster made good cover as Leo and I peered around the edge of the building.
“She went in there,” Leo said.
The place had no sign. It looked barrel-bottom. Years of exhaust soot had etched the mortar and bricks. The windows were smoked so that no one could see in. A black Lincoln Town Car was parked in front. In contrast to the building, the Lincoln was pristine.
Leo grunted. “Great neighborhood. You know this place?”
I nodded. “The North Asian Association for Trade.”
“North Asian?” said Leo. “Like North Korea?”
“Like Siberia.”
A metallic-blue BMW came fast up the street and stopped with a hiss of antilock brakes half a foot behind the Lincoln. Two men got out.
The driver was a hard case. He didn’t look like anything else. His hands and forearms were veiny and corded with muscle, outside the pushed-up sleeves of his shiny black tracksuit. His face was long and Asiatic around the eyes, and his cheekbones and brow ridge stuck out like knuckles in a clenched fist. The blue edge of Bratva tattoos showed at his collarbone. A hitter, no question.
His passenger I knew very well, from his high forehead right down to the tips of his pointed thousand-dollar shoes.
“And that there,” I said softly, “is Reuben Kuznetsov.”