Chapter Eight
Dzhaba Beridze, unaffectionately nicknamed “Jabba the Hutt,” leaned against the Mercedes SUV stopped by the side of the road and watched as Nicky walked toward him, silhouetted in the headlights of the SUV behind him. He exhaled a plume of Cuban cigarillo smoke. Nicky looked nervous. But then many of Jabba’s men were nervous around him.
They had cause.
Nicky stopped a cautious three feet away.
Jabba flicked the stubble of ash from his cigarillo. “Well?”
“Ilya Kasyanov was supposed to fly from Las Vegas to Minneapolis, Minnesota. He would’ve made a connection there to Amsterdam.”
“But?”
“There was a storm, sir. His plane was diverted to Fargo.”
“Where the fuck is Fargo?”
Nicky’s Adam’s apple bobbled in his thick throat. “North Dakota. Sir.”
“And?”
Jabba brought the cigarillo to his lips and drew acidic smoke into his mouth. It had been a wearying few days for him, beginning with his arrest by the mudak FBI. Fortunately, his incarceration had been short-lived due to the fact that the sole witness, a man named Anzori the Rat, had been found dead the next morning. Well, in truth, it was Anzori’s head and torso that had been found. The remainder of Anzori was missing. But the part of Anzori that was there had been rather creatively displayed: he’d been mounted on the hood of the car belonging to the FBI agents who had arrested Jabba. And in case anyone was confused about the message sent, Anzori’s tongue had been cut out and nailed to his forehead.
It would have been a satisfactory ending to a disruptive incident were it not for the discovery that Jabba had made when he’d arrived back at his Las Vegas office. His accountant of over a decade, Ilya Kasyanov, had taken the opportunity of his arrest to open his safe and steal something very precious. This had been a surprise to Jabba. In all the years he had known Kasyanov, the accountant had been nothing but a coward. Apparently Kasyanov had been under the delusion that Jabba would be out of the way long enough for him to flee the country.
Instead, he was in a car somewhere in the upper Midwest.
Jabba opened his mouth and breathed smoke. Two other Mercedes SUVs were parked behind the one he leaned against. Dark shapes stood by the last SUV—Sasha, Rocky, and Ivan, waiting. None of the remaining seven men had bothered getting out of the trucks. Above, the Nebraska night sky was filled with stars.
Jabba’s gaze flicked to him. “You know where he is headed, yes?”
Nicky started shaking.
Jabba sighed wearily.
Many, many years ago he had lived in Moscow in a flat so small there had been only room for a single, narrow bed. He had shared it with his mother, a woman who perhaps had been once pretty, though he did not remember her so. At night she brought home men and he’d go sit in the hallway, waiting and listening as they fucked her. When she’d earned enough or when she was simply too tired to go on, he would return to crawl into the stinking bed and lie beside her. One night the man with her had stabbed her and that was the end of his mother. Mama had worn a plastic pink heart around her neck on a cheap chain.
Her murderer had taken it. Why, Jabba had never known. Certainly it was not worth pawning. Perhaps it had been merely a whim of her murderer. Why not? He’d already taken her sex and her life. Why not take her pink plastic heart as well?
But Jabba had resented the theft. He did not like things being taken from him. And many, many years later, after he’d grown to manhood, after he’d found his mother’s murderer and made him bleed, after he’d become rich, and all around him feared him, then he’d acquired his own pink hearts.
His were diamonds, not plastic. Perfectly matched pink diamonds, graduated for a necklace, the largest a full five carats. Diamonds that had been cut from the earth from the same mine in Russia. Men had died bringing them to the surface. Jabba liked to think of those deaths when he ran his diamonds through his fingers. The pink looked like blood dissolved in water.
Jabba stuck his cigarillo in his mouth and reached back to take the gun out of the waistband of his jeans.
Nicky started to kneel, but had only bent one leg when Jabba pistol-whipped him across the face.
Nicky fell backward into the frozen grass beside the road, his hands clutched to his face, blood streaming from between his fingers.
Jabba tucked the gun back into his waistband and toed out his cigarillo.
When he looked up, Ivan’s face was white and Sasha had his lips pursed. Sasha jerked his head at Ivan, who hurried over to help Nicky up.
“This rental car, it will have the GPS. You will use your contacts to learn all you can about the GPS and the rental car, and then you will find the accountant,” Jabba said as he opened the door to the SUV he traveled in. He glanced back at Nicky. “Find him, or next time I will not be so sweet.”