There was no point hitting such a man in the face-he had probably lost all feeling there. Lev kicked him in the groin. Both his hands went to his crotch and he gasped for breath, bending forward. Lev kicked him in the stomach. The man opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish, unable to breathe. Lev stepped to one side and kicked the man’s legs from under him. He went down on his back. Lev aimed carefully and kicked his knee, so that when he got up he would not be able to move fast.
Panting with exertion, he said: “Tell Mister V he should be more polite.”
He walked away, breathing hard. Behind him he heard someone say: “Hey, Ilya, what the fuck happened?”
Two streets away his breathing eased and his heartbeat slowed. To hell with Josef Vyalov, he thought. The bastard cheated me and I won’t be bullied.
Vyalov would not know who had beaten up Ilya. No one in the Irish Rover knew Lev. Vyalov might get mad but there was nothing he could do about it.
Lev started to feel elated. I put Ilya on the ground, he thought, and there’s not a mark on me!
He still had a pocket full of money. He stopped to buy two steaks and a bottle of gin.
He lived on a street of dilapidated brick houses subdivided into small apartments. Outside the house next door Marga was sitting on the stoop filing her nails. She was a pretty black-haired Russian girl of about nineteen with a sexy grin. She worked as a waitress but hoped for a career as a singer. He had bought her drinks a couple of times and kissed her once. She had kissed him back enthusiastically. “Hi, kid!” he shouted.
“Who are you calling a kid?”
“What are you doing tonight?”
“I’ve got a date,” she said.
Lev did not necessarily believe her. She would never admit that she had nothing to do. “Throw him over,” he said. “He has bad breath.”
She grinned. “You don’t even know who it is!”
“Come and see me.” He hefted his paper bag. “I’m cooking steak.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Bring ice.” He went into his building.
His apartment was a low-rent place, by American standards, but it seemed spacious and luxurious to Lev. It had a bed-sitting-room and a kitchen, with running water and electric light-and he had it all to himself! In St. Petersburg such an apartment would have housed ten or more people.
He took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and washed his hands and face at the kitchen sink. He hoped Marga would come. She was his kind of girl, always ready to laugh or dance or have a party, never worrying too much about the future. He peeled and sliced some potatoes, then put a frying pan on the hot plate and dropped in a lump of lard. While the potatoes were frying, Marga came in with a tankard of chipped ice. She made drinks with gin and sugar.
Lev sipped his drink, then kissed her lightly on the lips. “Tastes good!” he said.
“You’re fresh,” she said, but it was not a serious protest. He began to wonder if he might get her into bed later.
He started to fry the steaks. “I’m impressed,” she said. “Not many guys can cook.”
“My father died when I was six, and my mother when I was eleven,” Lev said. “I was raised by my brother, Grigori. We learned to do everything for ourselves. Not that we ever had steak, in Russia.”
She asked him about Grigori, and he told her his life story over dinner. Most girls were touched by the tale of two motherless boys struggling to get by, working in a huge locomotive factory and renting space in a bed. He guiltily omitted the part of the story where he abandoned his pregnant girlfriend.
They had their second drink in the bed-sitting-room. By the time they started on the third it was getting dark outside and she was sitting on his lap. Between sips, Lev kissed her. When she opened her mouth to his tongue, he put his hand on her breast.
At that moment the door burst open.
Marga screamed.
Three men walked in. Marga jumped off Lev’s lap, still screaming. One of the men hit her backhanded across the mouth and said: “Shut the fuck up, bitch.” She ran for the door, both hands to her bleeding lips. They let her go.
Lev sprang to his feet and lashed out at the man who had hit Marga. He got in one good punch, striking the man over the eye. Then the other two grabbed his arms. They were strong men, and he could not break free. While they held him the first man, who seemed to be their leader, punched him in the mouth, then in the stomach, several times. He spat blood and vomited his steak.
When he was weakened and in agony they frog-marched him down the stairs and out of the building. A blue Hudson stood at the curb with its engine running. They threw him onto the floor in the back. Two of them sat with their feet on him and the other got in the front and drove.
He was in too much pain to think about where they were going. He assumed these men worked for Vyalov, but how had they found him? And what were they going to do with him? He tried not to give in to fear.
After a few minutes the car stopped and he was hauled out. They were outside a warehouse. The street was deserted and dark. He could smell the lake, so he knew they were near the waterfront. It was a good place to murder someone, he thought with grim fatalism. There would be no witnesses, and the body could go into Lake Erie, tied inside a sack, with a few bricks to make sure it sank to the bottom.
They dragged him into the building. He tried to pull himself together. This was the worst scrape he had ever been in. He was not sure he could talk his way out of it. Why do I do these things? he asked himself.
The warehouse was full of new tires piled fifteen or twenty high. They took him through the stacks to the back and stopped outside a door that was guarded by yet another heavyset man who held up an arm to stop them.
No words were spoken.
After a minute, Lev said: “Seems we have a few minutes to wait. Anybody got a pack of cards?”
No one even smiled.
Eventually the door opened and Nick Forman came out. His upper lip was swollen and one eye was closed. When he saw Lev he said: “I had to do it. They would have killed me.”
So, Lev thought, they found me through Nick.
A thin man in spectacles came to the door of the office. Surely this could not be Vyalov, Lev thought; he was too weedy. “Bring him in, Theo,” he said.
“Sure thing, Mr. Niall,” said the leader of the thugs.
The office reminded Lev of the peasant hut in which he had been born. It was too warm and the air was full of smoke. In a corner was a little table with icons of saints.
Behind a steel desk sat a middle-aged man with unusually broad shoulders. He wore an expensive-looking lounge suit with a collar and tie, and there were two rings on the hand that held his cigarette. He said: “What is that fucking smell?”
“I’m sorry, Mister V, it’s puke,” said Theo. “He acted up, and we had to calm him down a little, then he lunged up his lunch.”
“Let him go.”
They released Lev’s arms, but stayed near.
Mister V looked at him. “I got your message,” he said. “Telling me I should be more polite.”
Lev summoned his courage. He was not going to die sniveling. He said: “Are you Josef Vyalov?”
“By Christ, you’ve got some nerve,” the man said. “Asking me who I am.”
“I been looking for you.”
“You have been looking for me?”
“The Vyalov family sold me a ticket from St. Petersburg to New York, then dumped me in Cardiff,” Lev said.
“So?”
“I want my money back.”
Vyalov stared at him for a long moment, then he laughed. “I can’t help it,” he said. “I like you.”
Lev held his breath. Did this mean Vyalov was not going to kill him?
“Do you have a job?” Vyalov said.
“I work for you.”
