by Paul A. Barra
Percy Fletcher let the lines go just before noon and watched the falling tide ease Double Tap into the stream. He inched the throttles forward, beginning his voyage down the coast to a place in New York called Sheepshead Bay.
The big Hatteras was an easy handling boat built for blue water sailing, with more power than anyone could ever need. She was Fletcher’s home, facilitating his peripatetic life as an assassin for hire. Registered in Beaufort, where he was born, the sport fisherman berthed in ports large and small, up and down the eastern seaboard, sometimes for a day, other times overwintering, and was now maneuvering through an anchorage in Gloucester, Massachusetts, before settling in for a run through light seas at twenty knots.
Sitting next to him, Ethyl was nearly as tall in the seat as her master. Trained as a guard dog, the giant schnauzer seemed to be enjoying the sea time, scenting the air and tracking birds.
Fletcher sailed due east across deep shoals and then south to skirt the Cape and Nantucket Island. At this comfortable speed, he figured she sucked in sixty-five gallons of diesel an hour. He had a contract with a man named Smirnov that would make the trip worthwhile. Smirnov wanted an operative from out of town, and was willing to pay for the advantage. Percy Fletcher was from out of town, no matter where the town was located.
The Double Tap roared south, ducking in to come up under Montauk. He slowed her after dark and cruised the ocean shore of Long Island westward into Brooklyn.
By midmorning they made the city piers in Sheepshead Bay where he had a reservation. He parked her and went ashore to take Ethyl for a walk. A misty rain had started by the time they got back to the marina. A man in a yellow slicker was standing by his boat.
Cognizant of the size of his dog, Fletcher stopped without getting close. The visitor was a big-chested guy, not too tall, not too young. He needed a shave and his face glistened in the weather.
He pointed a stubby finger at Ethyl. “What’s that?”
“A dog.”
“Funny man. You own this boat?”
“Yes, sir, I do. You want to buy her?”
“Not me, but maybe my friend. Can I see it?”
“I just now got in and haven’t cleaned up yet, but you’re welcome aboard.”
“Don’t worry. We ain’t buying clean.”
Fletcher sat Ethyl in the stern sheets and took the man for a tour. He asked a few questions about the boat, looked in cupboards, ran the sink water, flushed the toilets. He did not ask for a test run. After maybe fifteen minutes, they sat in the cabin and drank bottled water. Offering the Double Tap for sale was the gambit Fletcher and Smirnov had agreed on to establish their mutual bona fides. He just had to find out if this man was the contact he was looking for or some guy wanting to actually buy a luxury open-water boat.
“This is a nice boat, Mr...?”
“Fletcher. Percy Fletcher.”
“Percy, huh? Never knew a guy by that name before. Your mother musta had a sense of humor. Or maybe she knew you’d grow into a big fella.”
Fletcher said nothing.
The man cleared his throat. “I’m Peter Rossman. My boss is interested in buying a boat, for fishing and, er, whatever. We saw your ad in the Eagle yesterday.”
“Why doesn’t your boss come by and see it for himself? This here’s a big investment.”
“He’s a very busy man. I’m like his first line of defense, y’know? I see it and like it, he comes to take a look too. If it was junk, he doesn’t have to bother himself.”
When Rossman left, Fletcher went out to Ethyl, who was still sitting in the mist, water droplets on her dense coat blinking in the hazy light like sea sparkle in the night off Bimini. He rubbed her down with a towel and brought her inside. She stayed in the cabin while he went to dinner in the early twilight.
Some of the restaurants along Neptune Avenue had Cyrillic letters on their signs, but he chose one called The Silk Road Inn because it offered lamb. Unlike most Southerners, he liked the meat.
It was fragrant inside. Icons edged in gold paint decorated the walls and a sort of tinkling Asian-Fusion music, lutes and flutes with violin background, drifted through the place, along with the smells of cumin and other spices he couldn’t identify. He stood on the mosaic tiles of the foyer until a girl came out of a back room and saw him. Her pleasant face burst into a smile.
“Hi, there. Sorry I didn’t notice you.”
“Is it too early to eat, ma’am?”
“Around here, mister, it’s never too early to eat.”
The place filled slowly, so the noise level had risen above the music by the time he was finishing his lagman, a noodle dish with carrots and onions floating in broth, and a crispy lamb roll. His waitress had a distinctively flat Turkic cast to her features, as did many of the customers.
“You like your food, big man?”
“I did. It’s delicious, and cooked to perfection.”
“So how come you don’t finish?”
“I got to save some for my dog.”
She laughed. “Okay. Maybe you will have a midnight snack, yes? I’ll put the rest in a box for you.”
He was counting out money for his bill when the restaurant quieted suddenly. He looked up and saw what had caused the chatter to diminish. Two men walked in, pushing chairs aside and scowling at the people. A slim waiter moved to greet them, but the man in front put up a meaty palm. The waiter stopped and stepped back. They came to Fletcher’s table and stood there, looking down on him. The waiter watched them.
The man who led the invasion—if that was what it was—looked decidedly unfriendly. His bowling ball head was welded to a neck as thick as the bollard to which the Hatteras was tied. Muscled arms jutted from his chest, ending in hands like welding gloves. Huge slabs of more muscle ran down his front. The man’s black eyes looked hard at Fletcher, not blinking. He began flexing his fingers.
But it was the man with him who spoke. His voice was quietly modulated. “Mr. Smirnov wants to see you, pal.”
This one had black hair, slicked back and curling around the collar of a cashmere suit jacket. Fletcher thought he looked like Billy Martin, the Yankee second baseman who had been Mickey Mantle’s best friend. He nodded at Billy and followed him out. Bowling Ball went behind them. Fletcher saw him glance at the bills he’d left on the table, but he didn’t reach for them.
The Brooklyn evening had gotten cool, but neither of his escorts seemed to notice. “We walking?”
Billy said, “Yeah. It’s not far.”
They started off, but spun around like tap dancers when the restaurant door banged open. The waitress rushed out, holding something in her hand.
“You forgot your—”
Bowling Ball slapped Fletcher’s doggie bag from her and shoved her back toward the door. The waitress squealed in surprise. He snarled, “Get back in your cave, you weegee cunt.”
Fletcher didn’t like his action or the slur, and said so. He didn’t know what a weegee was, except that it was some sort of insult the way the goliath spit it out. Before he could engage with the bald mountain, Billy Martin jumped between them.
“No, no, Yuri, let it go. This is Mr. Smirnov’s guest.”
Yuri swept the smaller man aside as if he were a bothersome horsefly. Martin stumbled, looked as if he was about to go down; Fletcher caught his arm and held him up.
As he was saving Billy Martin from a fall, Yuri swung at his face. It was as if he’d been waiting for the opportunity to wreak some damage; or maybe he just didn’t like Fletcher calling him chowderhead after he’d assaulted the waitress. Either way, he was going to pound this tall dink-lover with the fancy boat.
Yuri moved with surprising quickness, punching as if he were in a shot-putting event. The punch bounced off Fletcher’s shoulder as he was turned toward Billy Martin. Even the poorly aimed blow rocked Fletcher and brought him up to his toes. He came down, set his feet.
The Russian bore in, but his aggression didn’t get any further. Fletcher confronted him quickly, snapping a straight left to the end of the wide man’s nose. Fast hands are more important than bulk in a street fight, and Percy’s hands could fly. Yuri roared as his fleshy nose turned sideways to his face with the sound of cartilage rupturing. He was momentarily blinded by pain. Fletcher twisted his weight into a right cross through the blindness that dropped the hefty Russian.
It felt like hitting a fastball on the sweet spot, but the sound of the punch was the wet thwack of a cannonball thudding into a fibrous palmetto log. As Bowling Ball fell, Fletcher whirled to Billy Martin. The smaller man had made no move to interfere. His hands were open in front of him, a peace sign. Yuri was down, mouth open and eyes rolled up in his head.
Fletcher stepped toward the storefront and picked up the cardboard container. He brushed it off and spoke to the waitress, now flat against the door.
“Thanks for bringing this out to me. My pooch will appreciate it.”
He smiled at her. She stood flat against the door of The Silk Road Inn with her eyes wide and her mouth open. She nodded and darted back inside. Bowling Ball was still on the sidewalk; one foot was twitching and blood ran from his nose. Fletcher and Billy left him there and walked on. An older couple coming from the other direction went out on the street to avoid the human lump on the sidewalk. The husband raised his smartphone and took a picture of BB’s downfall.
Fletcher asked Billy, “What was that all about? She’s a weegee?”
“Yuri Vasilek doesn’t like anyone who is not a white Russian. The girl is a Uighur, from central Asia. He hates them even more if he cannot pronounce their name.”
They walked a few minutes longer, Billy Martin looking back twice at the heap that was his earlier companion. The street turned to Emmons Avenue, and the bay appeared on their right. Billy’s heels clicked on the concrete.
They came to a restaurant across the road from the water. It was called the Ekaterina, and was so garish Fletcher wondered if it had been designed in Bollywood, all reds and golds and flashing colored lights, picture windows with brightly painted figures of Cossacks on white horses and women in silk robes to either side of a double door made to look like a gilded gate. In front stood a junior Bowling Ball in pantaloons and a bright blue vest. His arms were folded in front of him, but he opened the gate smoothly when he saw Billy.
Inside was an oasis. The decor was as ugly as the frontage, but the interior was otherwise calm, with textured walls and thick red carpeting. Classical music played.
They walked past full tables to a circular booth in the back. Billy slid into the booth and spoke in Russian to a thin man in a suit who sat with Peter Rossman. The thin man’s eyebrows went up as he listened.
The thin man gestured to Fletcher and said, “Please have a seat.”
Fletcher pulled a chair from a nearby table and sat, putting his go-box in front of him. The thin man looked at the container as if Fletcher had spit on the tablecloth, but said nothing. He pulled the last clam from a silver salver of shells and sucked it down. A waiter in black with gold braids on his sleeves nipped in and removed the tray.
“I am Andrey Smirnov. I am interested in your boat, but I did not expect to have my associate assaulted when he came to invite you to dinner.”
“I’ve eaten already, thanks.”
“You are not going to assault me?”
Smirnov looked unconcerned when he spoke. Fletcher thought he probably had a few more Bowling Balls watching his table.
“I reckon a man with enough class to play ol’ Rimsky-Korsakov in his restaurant can’t have violence on his mind.”
Smirnov smiled and moved his chin toward the speakers. “Nikolai and I share the same patronymic, Andreyevich. I’m happy you appreciate Russian music. Maybe you and I can be friends, after all. Eh, what do you think?”
“That would be fine with me, but we don’t have to be friends to do business. That’s why God made lawyers.”
Smirnov laughed. He patted his lips with a cloth napkin. Dropping the napkin, he waved a hand, and the four men were suddenly alone in the table’s alcove.
Nevertheless, the host spoke in a lowered voice. “I hope the incident tonight does not compromise your, er, mission. Yuri won’t bother you again, believe me.”
“I hope he does.”
Smirnov and his two associates looked at each other. When they turned back to Fletcher, their smiles looked tentative. Was this stranger more than they had bargained for?
Fletcher spoke to Smirnov. “We have a contract and I intend to fulfill it.”
Smirnov nodded. Peter Rossman and Billy Martin left them. Alone with the assassin, the Russian man told him about his target, a man Fletcher would recognize. They agreed to a financial arrangement: $100,000 for the hit, a Zelle transfer as soon as Smirnov had verification he was dead. Their contract was verbal only, first communicated with temporary phones that had since been disposed of, and finalized now with no witnesses. The names Percy Fletcher and Andrey Smirnov may even have been aliases, for all the other man knew.
Fletcher left him and returned to his boat. Ethyl liked the lamb leftovers Fletcher brought for her. He didn’t tell her how much trouble they had initiated.
The next morning, he put the leash on Ethyl and walked down the pier and along the bay. Small groups of men wearing yarmulkes and speaking a guttural language walked uptown and crossed under the elevated subway tracks. Fletcher followed one group into a diner called Linda’s.
The dog sat close to his chair in her sphinx pose. A waitress came over to the side away from Ethyl and placed a plastic menu on the table.
“You want I should read it to you?”
“I’m sorry now?”
“You must be a blind man, seeing’s you brought a dog into an eating establishment. I figure you can’t see the menu, I could read it to you.”
She was a heavyset woman with a shiny forehead and her hair pulled into a kind of black bandana. She wore a short apron over jeans. The way she pronounced dog made it sound like a French vulgarity, but her attitude was friendly so Fletcher smiled at her.
“Thank you, ma’am, but I don’t need a menu. I’d like four eggs, scrambled, with sausage, a double order of corned beef hash and cheese grits.”
That brought a big grin to her round face.
“This may be South Brooklyn, buddy, but it ain’t hardly the South. Not a grit in the joint. I can give you toast. White, wheat or rye. A bagel with seeds or no. Or maybe a bialy with a schmear? You’d probably like that. Coffee?”
“Please.”
The bialy turned out to be a sort of bagel with chopped onions where the hole should have been. The schmear was cream cheese. He liked it; so did Ethyl. The woman came back to clear his table. The men he had followed in were speaking loudly enough to be overheard. Fletcher thought New Yorkers talked as if everyone wanted to hear their conversations.
“What’re those fellas speaking?”
She looked at the corner table over her shoulder. “Russian with some Yiddish thrown in, I think. They’re Russian Jews. Come in here every Saturday morning before temple.”
“You think they know a guy named Yuri Vasilek?”
She glanced at him quickly and looked away. “Maybe you should ask them.”
She went over to the men and spoke to them, pointing at Fletcher. One of them waved him over.
“Funny thing,” he said, “we were just talking about Yuri. You know him?”
“I met him last night.”
Another man sat up straight. He had an idea. “Where you staying?”
“I’m living aboard my boat.”
“Hey! That flashy white one?”
He nodded.
“We seen it there. What a beauty. Peter Rossman told me some guy come down in that big-ass boat, gonna sell it to the boss. That true?”
That was the cover story he and Smirnov had concocted, so Fletcher admitted to it. The speaker snapped his mouth shut and widened his eyes as the link between the out-of-town boat arriving and Yuri being beaten by a stranger occurred to him. The table grew quiet. Fletcher looked at the men and could see fear on their faces. One of them spoke in a low voice.
“You decked Yuri last night?”
Fletcher nodded as the waitress came by to heat up their coffee, unaware of the tension at the table. She patted Fletcher on the back, happy he had made some friends. They waited until she left to mention Yuri again.
The first man, Georgy Petrov, looked at his two friends and apparently received some sort of silent permission. He spoke quietly.
“We have a major problem with Yuri Vasilek.”
“I imagine you do,” Fletcher replied. “I got the impression he’s a bully.”
“He’s more than that. He’s a fucking terrorist.” Petrov growled when he said that, his face red and spittle flecking his lips. He took a breath and went on.
“He’ll come in here to eat, staring at us, like. Daring us to even look back at him. Then he walks by and drops his check in front of us.”
“You pay it?”
“Got to. We don’t, and next thing you know something bad happens to one of us. A car gets broken into. A fire on a front stoop. One time, Sammy Mirzayanov’s son finds his bedroom window open and a rat sitting on his bed eating a raw chicken neck. Sammy goes to talk to Yuri and gets two teeth knocked out.
“And that ain’t all. He walks down the avenue and we got to step out of his way. We don’t, he claims assault and pushes us around. Russian men don’t like that kind of shit, y’know?”
“I can’t think anyone would like it.”
The men looked at their table, brooding. Petrov spoke again.
“We’re happy you beat Yuri up, but I’m afraid we’re going to pay for it. He’s going to be ramming around here like a maniac after being embarrassed.”
“I’m sorry for your troubles. If you do see the mutt, tell him I’m looking for him.”
Fletcher left and walked down Emmons again.
Billy Martin was waiting by the gilded gate of the Ekaterina. “You got time for a quick ride, bolshoy chelovek? Something I want to talk to you about.”
He blinked a new Buick to life. It was an aerodynamic station wagon the Russian drove like an Italian rally racer. Seven minutes after dropping the dog off at the boat, they stopped by the aquarium in Coney Island and the two men got out. They walked past a long concrete wall that Fletcher realized was actually a sculpture depicting the evolution of the sea or something. They sat on a bench in the sun and watched some folks making the most of an early ocean-side visit, sitting in the sun, walking in the shallows. One potbellied man was working a metal detector along the high tide line.
“It seems so peaceful out here, doesn’t it?” Fletcher detected pessimism in the man’s voice.
“You saying things are not as they seem?”
“Yeah. I’m afraid that’s just what I’m saying.”
The man resembled Billy Martin even more in the mood that had taken him. Martin, for all his brilliance as a manager of major league teams, was often beset with nihilism, doubt. Fletcher hoped this Russian wasn’t going to react as violently as the real Martin often had when he was in the grip of his anxieties. He sat and waited.
“It’s Yuri.”
“Yuri? The ape-man with the bowling ball for a head?”
Martin allowed himself a smile, but his heart wasn’t in it. “I’m afraid he’s gone rogue, Percy. You must take care.”
“What has he done?”
“Well, first off, someone reports him lying on the sidewalk last night, thinking maybe he’s dead. By the time the cops arrive he’s awake, screaming, throwing punches and everything. He’s covered in blood, so the cops arrest him. I hear that wasn’t easy. He spends the night in the drunk tank up on Ocean Avenue, but he never had even one drink. He was so frustrated by you ruining his reputation, in his mind, that he lost it. His mind.”
“That’s bad, Billy.”
The man didn’t react to the name.
“It gets worse. This morning, they set his nose, which you broke. So he’s running around with a big metal brace or something, black eyes, swollen face. Not a happy Rooski.”
Fletcher had learned that some people turn inward after getting hurt for acting uncivilized; others plot revenge. According to Billy Martin, Bowling Ball wanted only to get back at Fletcher.
“This fella works with you?”
“Not really. Andrey—Mr. Smirnov—hires him once in a while, for guard duty, like. I’m sure he now wishes he never had.”
Yuri’s conversations with the normal associates of Smirnov were brutally brief, he said, and rarely refined. Yuri had seen Fletcher arrive in the Hatteras and go into the Uighur restaurant, and had led the way to summon him to dinner at the Ekaterina in order to point out the place.
“He claimed he didn’t know the name of the restaurant where you were eating, so he was my guide. I now think he went looking for trouble.”
“With the Uighurs, or with me?”
“Could be either one. Like I told you, he doesn’t care much for Asians—or African Americans or the Spanish, for that matter. But he also doesn’t like big guys walking around his neighborhood, thinks he needs to be the toughest guy on the block. That sort of thing.”
“Sounds like a plague on y’all.”
“You got that right. Yuri has been banned from The Russian Weight Room, where some men go to beast it up, because he was seen injecting himself in the locker room. Steroids, likely. The cops know him, but they don’t get many complaints. Russian men are macho guys, y’know what I mean? But I think they’re all afraid of Yuri. He goes around like he owns the town, taking things from stores, breaking into lines... Stuff like that. It’s easier just to let these things go by. Then you got less trouble. Andrey probably fired him after the incident with you and the waitress at the Silk Road, but someone saw him a little while ago, outside the Uighur restaurant.”
“He looking for me, you think?”
“I think so. He gets his confidence back, he could come to the Ekaterina thinking he can push other people around. Then we’re going to have trouble once he finds out he’s been fired.”
“That’s the problem with having a mad dog in your house—sooner or later it’s going to attack its master.”
“True,” Billy Martin said. “Funny you should say that, because Yuri is supposedly deathly afraid of dogs. He probably won’t bother you when you have Ethyl with you.”
They walked up the boardwalk to Paul’s Daughter and ate hot dogs and sauerkraut while standing in the sun and the salted onshore breeze. The sausages popped when they bit into them, a burst of simple pleasure. It was too cool for the beach, but people walked and waded anyway, taking their simple pleasures where and when they could get them. He had heard that some of the Russians in Little Odessa, as Brighton Beach is sometimes called, actually swam this time of year. He shivered at the very idea.
“You cold, Percy?”
“No. I’m just amazed at you Russian guys. Tough like that—and putting up with a bully like Yuri.”
“Yeah. Life is complicated.”
Only he and Smirnov knew his target, so Fletcher figured he better get the job done and kill the guy before Yuri could blunder into his way and interfere with his assignment.
Later that night, Fletcher tracked his target to the vicinity of the city pier where the Double Tap was berthed. In another month, the docks would begin to get active, but for now everything was tranquil. The stays of an empty flagpole chimed faintly. The bay sloshed against pilings; gulls fluttered their feathers as they slept in the cold night air. He could smell the harbor vapors, rich and muddy, hovering above the surface of the black and sluggish water.
As Fletcher came down the dock he saw Ethyl on the fantail. She was looking at the marina office. A low growl made his neck hairs bristle. He quickly stepped into the shadow of a deck lamp and drew his CZ-75, a Czech 9mm semiautomatic that never failed to operate. The pistol felt natural in his hand, even with his thin leather gloves on.
A small intermittent light in the marina office looked like someone using a flashlight. There was nothing valuable in the office, but Fletcher’s reservation data were in a file cabinet. He had paid his berthing fee to a clerk somewhere in the bowels of the NYC Parks Department, but a copy of his application was kept on-site. Could someone be trying to find out about him? Could that someone be his target, hoping for a preemptive strike at him? The Hatteras was the only boat docked in Sheepshead Bay that early in the year except for the permanent charter boats.
Fletcher called quietly to Ethyl. She leaped to the pier and ran to his left side. She stood there, vibrating with restrained curiosity, staring at the office and the moving light. As one, man and dog crept to within five feet of the front door, both all in black. They stood in the shadow of the flagpole, still and invisible. Three minutes later, the doorknob turned slowly.
When a figure in a hoodie crouched out, Fletcher assumed a shooting stance and spoke loudly, “Stand fast. Don’t move!”
The figure jumped, fired his handgun high and in Fletcher’s general direction. The muzzle flash blinded Fletcher momentarily.
The intruder took off running. Fletcher sent Ethyl after him. She caught him in four long bounds, jumped on the figure’s back and knocked him to the deck concrete. The hood shifted in the collision, revealing a shining brace on his nose.
Yuri screamed and threw the dog off him with an enormous burst of strength. Ethyl rolled away from the Russian, yelping and scrabbling to regain her footing, unable to stop her momentum. She skidded to the edge of the pier and dropped off into the blackness.
Vasilek regained his feet before Fletcher reached him. Yuri was snarling and keening like a crazed man. He fired three times into the bay, flame spurting from his gun, stopping only when Fletcher shot him in his big round head.
Ethyl was splashing wildly, whining piteously, swimming in frothy circles.
Another figure appeared, darting from behind the office. Fletcher pivoted to him, but before he could take aim the man jumped into the bay as a bloom of color appeared around the dog. The frigid seawater brought a loud gasp from the man as he swam into the blood, grabbed Ethyl’s skin and dragged her to his body.
Grunting with effort, he held the dog tight to him and sidestroked to the pier. Twice the water lapped over their heads. The man spluttered each time. Fletcher could hear the man’s ragged breathing as he made it to a ladder, straining to carry the dog. Fletcher pulled them up; the man would not have made it otherwise. Ethyl weighed nearly ninety pounds.
The man sat down hard on the dock. It was Billy Martin.
The schnauzer came to Fletcher, still whining softly but walking without a limp. He could see a furrow torn out of her right shoulder; a bloody wound, but treatable.
Billy Martin slumped on the deck, panting harder than Ethyl, his chest heaving and his legs splayed out in front of him. The combination of the icy water and the exertion required to rescue the big, panicked animal had exhausted him. He looked at Yuri’s body, watched listlessly as Fletcher walked over and picked up the bully’s gun. He pointed it at Billy Martin—his target.
“Thanks for saving my dog.”
He pulled the trigger. Billy Martin flopped backward with a hole between his eyes. Fletcher fitted his own gun into the corpse’s hand and threw Yuri’s back to him. He yanked Billy’s Glock from the holster at the small of the dead man’s back and put it in his own. The marina was deathly silent.
Percy Fletcher and his dog walked over to the Double Tap and boarded. He cranked the diesels, cast off from her berth. They motored slowly through Sheepshead Bay and out to sea.
He sent a single-word text to Andrey Smirnov: Done.