Scorpion put down his coffee and went back outside, walking as fast as he could to the Metro.
He was running out of time.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Shulyavska
Kyiv, Ukraine
She was beautiful, blond, and sexy in a tight red dress cut low to reveal perfect cleavage. She was singing Madonna’s “Take a Bow” in a throaty contralto, stage lights gliding across her body, and she almost had you going, except that she was a man.
“Razve chto Ruslan?” Scorpion asked the waiter in Russian. Is that Ruslan?
“ On nazyvaet sebya Svetlana, ” the waiter said. He calls himself Svetlana.
“Can you bring her over?” Scorpion asked, holding out two one-hundred hryven bills.
“Konechno.” Sure. “You got good taste,” the waiter said, taking the money.
Scorpion was sitting in the shadows, in an alcove with a plush sofa and a view of the stage. The club was chrome and black, cigarette smoke spiraling in colored lights, and filled with gay men and a few lesbian couples. A few minutes after her set, the waiter, smirking, brought Svetlana over to his table.
She looked at Scorpion, smiled, and sat next to him, motioning for the waiter to stay.
“Kupitmne champanskogo, dorogoi,” she said, squeezing Scorpion’s thigh. Buy me champagne, darling.
“Skolka?” Scorpion asked. How much?
“Twelve hundred,” the waiter said. About $150.
Scorpion nodded. Svetlana looked triumphantly at the waiter, who grinned and left.
“Do you speak English?” Scorpion asked.
“Little only, dorogoi,” Svetlana said, groping up Scorpion’s thigh toward his groin till he stopped her.
“Let’s talk first,” he said.
“ Konechno, dorogoi. After champanskogo, we go VIP room,” Svetlana said, indicating a room with вип in red neon over the door. “You will like me, I promise,” she whispered in his ear.
“You will like me better,” Scorpion said, showing her a stack of large hryven notes.
Svetlana took his hand and started to pull him up.
“Forget champanskogo and fuck me now,” she said.
Scorpion pulled her back down.
“What about your droog?” Your boyfriend.
“What boyfriend?” looking at him suspiciously.
“Your Chinese droog, Li Qiang.”
“What is this?” she said, exhaling smoke.
“I need to talk to Li Qiang. No trouble, just business.”
“So go his office. Don’t come sex me. Make trouble,” she said, staring glumly at the stage, where a drag queen pulled up her plaid schoolgirl-style skirt and wiggled her behind at the audience to laughs and scattered applause.
“I need to see him alone. Without his bodyguard,” Scorpion said.
“Why?”
“You don’t understand. He doesn’t have to be afraid of me. I am afraid of his bodyguard, Yang.”
“Ne svisti.” Don’t lie. “You not type guy who is afraid,” she said, putting the cigarettes back in her purse and starting to get up. “I not like.”
Scorpion grabbed her wrist and pulled her back. He put a stack of money on the sofa and held her hand on top so she could feel it.
“You really like him that much?” he asked.
“He okay,” she shrugged. “To tell truth,” looking at Scorpion, “he kind of lokh, understand?” Russian slang for a mark, a sucker. She wrinkled her nose as if smelling something bad. “I get bored. China men not so big where is important, understand?”
“Help me tonight, I’ll give you ten thousand. Half now,” Scorpion said, removing her hand and counting it out. “No trouble, I promise.”
She took the money and smiled.
“You look big enough,” she said, exhaling a thin stream of smoke at him.
“Not for you,” he said, putting the rest of the money away. “Like I said, this is business, rodimy.”
He waited while Ruslan went back and changed. When Ruslan came out looking like a man, they took a taxi to the massage parlor on Berezhanskaya. Without the makeup and the wig, Ruslan was a young man, handsome enough to be a model, and it was easy to see how he made such a good-looking woman.
They drove down the hill toward the Shulyavska neighborhood, the streets wet with slush, overhead power lines sagging with snow. On the way, Ruslan called Li Qiang on his cell phone. Following Scorpion’s instructions, Ruslan insisted they have one night that was just the two of them, without having Yang Hao waiting outside the door.
“Ya hochu tebya, moi dorogoi,” Ruslan told him. I want you, my darling. “For once, the whole night, just the two of us.”
After hanging up, he said, “He’s coming.”
“What about the bodyguard?”
“Yang is staying in car. He promise not come inside.” Ruslan held out his hand. “You give rest of money, kharasho?”
“Inside,” Scorpion said.
The taxi pulled up to the massage parlor with its blue neon sign that read CONGO MASSAGE SPA in the curtained window. Scorpion paid the driver and he and Ruslan went in separately, acting as if they didn’t know each other. Ruslan got the deluxe room, number 4. He slipped the man behind the counter fifty hryvnia to let Li Qiang know where he was.
Scorpion got the key to Room 16 and went through the main lounge, where a dozen or so naked men lounging on benches and in the steaming Jacuzzi pool checked him out. He found his way to Room 4, knocked and went in. Ruslan was lounging on a waterbed. He jumped up when Scorpion came in.
“You want I wait?” he asked.
Scorpion shook his head and gave him the rest of the money. Ruslan started for the door, then stopped.
“No trouble, da?”
“No trouble,” Scorpion said.
“You want, I wait in other room. After, we make sex. No money. Best zhopa in world,” Ruslan said, slapping his ass and wiggling it suggestively.
“I like women,” Scorpion said.
“I am better. The woman always she make trouble.”
“Well, we’re no bargain either,” Scorpion said. “Go out the back way and don’t let anyone see you,”
“Buvay, rodimy,” Ruslan said-So long, sweetheart-and left.
Scorpion waited behind the door. It was after midnight when he heard a knock. A moment later the Chinese man from the photo walked in.
Stepping out, Scorpion motioned with the SR-1 Gyurza for Li Qiang to sit on the waterbed.
“De Ruslan?” Li Qiang asked in Ukrainian.
“He’s not here. Speak English,” Scorpion said.
“Na zhal, ya ne hovoryu po angliyski.” Sorry, I don’t speak English.
“You went to USC, you son of a bitch. Don’t bullshit me,” Scorpion said, sitting on the only chair in the room, just out of range if Li Qiang made a move.
“What’s your problem? You go to UCLA?” Li Qiang said in perfect English, studying the man in front of him.
He’s good, Scorpion thought. Li Qiang was sizing him up so he could provide a description in case he survived.
