Chapter Thirty Three

“So what do you figure is left of their machine?” Marcus said.

Deon shrugged as he worked a rifle cleaning rod up and down the barrel of his Galil. “They have a handful of soldiers, probably out at their farm. And Irina.”

Joe laughed, a harsh sound. “What is she going to do? She’s just a woman…”

Deon looked up at that. “Don’t underestimate her. She has been the power behind Sergey for a long time. She is by far the more dangerous of the two.”

Marcus and Joe stopped what they were doing and looked at him.

“How so?” Marcus said.

“She’s the brains, always was,” Deon said. “But who in this business will deal with a woman? No one. Hence Sergey, hence the gone but not lamented Mr. Darko. Where is she going to go? They have money, yes, but she has product that is worth more money, and some soldiers. We can’t count her out.”

“Easy enough,” Joe said. “Let’s go out there and get her.”

Deon laughed. “I was thinking maybe I’d just go and talk to her. She will be needing a new business partner…”

Marcus and Joe exchanged glances.

“That’s cold,” Marcus said. “Her husband is still smoking in the street, and you’re already moving in on the widow?”

Joe laughed.

Deon shrugged, continued to clean his gun. “She is not an ordinary woman.”

“I’ll say,” Marcus said. “So what now?”

“After the battle, tighten your helmet straps,” Deon said.

“Fucking Obi Wan Kenobi I got here,” Joe said. “Hand me some more patches, will you?”

Deon tossed over a bundle of rifle cleaning patches. They were working in the extension he’d put on the three car garage of the safe house he maintained in the quiet Oak Manor neighborhood of west Lake City. Cars in the front, but then through the heavy metal door at the back of the garage you came into an extended workshop and armory that was where Deon kept most of his on-hand product. The house was held in trust by a local bank, and the paper trail led back to a holding company, with no connections back to Deon. He spent time here, kept to himself, spoke little to neighbors who knew that he traveled a lot. On the other side of town was another smaller unit, that had the entire basement converted to a storage facility.

But this was what he called home.

Or the closest thing to a home he kept.

Deon washed his hands at a large metal sink at the back. “Beer?”

“Always,” Marcus said.

Deon opened up the ice box and pulled out three long neck Budweisers, handed them around. The three men sat together in companionable silence, sipped their beers.

“I think I’ll have to find a way to give Mrs. Komorov a call today,” Deon said. “Express my condolences.”

“Here’s to odd attractors,” Marcus said.

“Odd attractors?” Joe said.

“Chaos theory, my friend. Chaos theory.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Marcus laughed. “You need to read something besides action novels and comic books, my friend.”

“Who’s got time to read?”

Deon and Marcus exchanged glances.

“Philistine,” Marcus said.

“Don’t start with me,” Joe said.

“It’s like a thespian,” Marcus said.

“That’s like a lesbian?” Joe said.

Marcus laughed and laughed. “You’ll get it one, day, brother.”

***

“Holy fuck, Batman,” Nina said.

She stood next to her cruiser and surveyed the block long crime scene taped off with yellow banners and surrounded by cruisers, ambulances, forensics vans, television vans with their masts extended fully, and the obligatory heard of gawkers and on-lookers. LT Fabruzzi looked over at her and shook his head.

“Your boy Darko was in the middle of all this shit,” Fabruzzi said. “He’s the third crispy critter from the left over there by the meat wagon. Sergey Komorov and some assorted soldiers from his crew round out the barbeque menu today.”

“What was all this about?” Nina said.

“I’m thinking this is Act 2 of the epic that was played out in Viet Town the other day,” Fabruzzi said. “You got Steep Ride and his crew got, in the drive by of all drive bys, along with a very hard core bunch of the Hmong Ghost Riders, just about all their main shooters, including a guy named Ho who was seen in the company of your pal Darko, and who is affiliated with the whole Komorov machine. Or what’s left of it, I should say.”

“So who’s the missing player?” Nina said.

“That’s what you got that shield for, Detective. Go out and detect for me. Darko is done, well done by the looks of it, but this here ties in with that big time shooting of yours yesterday…”

“Darko’s dead. So Sex Crimes is done with this. You want me working with Homicide?”

Fabruzzi considered her. “Nina, not to blow smoke up your ass, but you’re probably the best detective in this department. Yes, I know that Homicide would poach you in a minute, as would every body else. And I know you’re the queen prima donna when it comes to how you want to work, exactly the way you like to work. So no, you don’t have to work with Homicide. Go over and talk to them…I just want you to do what you do best -- wander around and find shit out for me. And then Homicide can run or you can run, hell, I don’t care. Just go out while the trail is hot, and find me the missing party here. This is open warfare, and we don’t know all the players, but there’s somebody behind the scenes who is very, very good at this shit. I want to know who it is.”

Nina considered him back.

The lone gun woman? She kind of liked that idea.

“Sure, Oozy,” she said. “I’ll sniff around. I think I know just where to go…”

***

Jimmy stared at the ceiling, Lizzy pressed up against him, her breathing a gentle sound in his ears. This was the longest they had ever stayed together; most of their visits were short, punctuated by sex.

And though he didn’t want to admit it, he liked it.

He liked everything about it. Her in his bed, the coffee, the soothing calm of her presence. The smell of her.

Outside, the rest of his world called to him.

What made him resist this, the warmth of her, the ease he felt with her? He didn’t know, he only knew it was there. It was as though she shone a light on him, a light that exposed something dark within himself, something he didn’t want to face…or else maybe it was the fear of letting go of what he had been before, and changing into something new and different…of entering unknown territory.

He lifted himself on one elbow, propped his chin in his hand, looked down at the woman sleeping next to him.

Saw the possibility of change, of letting light into his life.

Considered that.

Did he want to go there? It was so seductive…

Or was it better to stay where he was?

He’d been a man in the shadows his whole life, and the prospect of being in the light with this woman, this woman who lived a life that was like his, so completely different, so completely compartmented…

He didn’t know if he was ready for that.

Or that she would be.

But it felt right, and that was what he’d learned, the hard way, was the best guidance for him. Thinking through worked on one level, but when it came to action and the world of his relationships, his gut feelings were everything.

And where would that take them? Living together? A dancer and a bouncer? Two people of the night time world…but when they were together, it was so different. That was what struck him. It was so different. Would her work bother him? He didn’t think so, it didn’t bother him now.

A dream he’d had, a long time ago, after what happened in Afghanistan…

…walking away from it all, and living somewhere quiet, a small town where no one knew him, maybe by the sea, or in the mountains, like Montana…

…living a quiet life with a woman…

…this woman?

He held his hand near her face, felt her breath stir the fine hairs on the back of his hand, the warmth of it stirring him.

Warm.

That’s what she was.

She thawed something cold in him.

And that felt as though it was where his resistance came from. That cold part wasn’t ready to go, or maybe it was and didn’t just know it yet…

Too much thinking, too much ahead.

Time to be in the moment.

He touched her face.

Just in the moment.

***

Irina Komorov sat transfixed in the big front room of the massively remodeled farm house she and Sergey lived in. Had lived in, she corrected herself. Sergey.

Sergey.

The front wall had been knocked out and replaced with glass, a long living room with multiple couches and armchairs set up. The view was beautiful, stretching out over a long expanse of manicured lawn that fell into a pasture, then the Embarrass River wound through it, a long stretch of rolling hills…the city was behind them, and Irina liked to keep her back to the city lights when she had worked out the remodel.

This was her favorite room.

Her back was straight and rigid, her feet square on the ground, her hands folded in her lap.

Sergey.

They had been together since leaving Moscow ten years before, both of them twenty-five, on the run from one of the vlhodnys who nursed a grudge against Sergey. Sergey was fresh out of the Spesnatz, eager to put his skills to work in the marketplace of the New Russia. And he had, and the money they’d saved, from his work and from hers in a whorehouse, had brought them here to Lake City, among the first of the Slavic and Russian émigrés to settle here.

Sergey.

She had seen it on the television, that’s all she knew, and now the telephone call from the police, the officers on their way to talk to her, Sergey’s charred ID and cell phone leading them this way…

So much to do.

What was left of their soldiers had come here. Set up the beds in the converted barn behind the farmhouse that served as both their warehouse and their men’s quarters. She had to think about what to do with them, with what remained of their business, their product. What to do about this.

She stared out the window, at the sunlight falling through a stand of oak trees that lined the lawn. Somewhere deep inside her, something stirred, rose to the surface.

Sergey.