“No? Then I won’t need to be polite again. Take off.”
He had the heavy Russian accent that Thor spoke so carefully to avoid. His nose was crooked, and there were scars above his lips and beside his eye, a face that had taken plenty of beatings and probably enjoyed every one, seeking the violence out like an alcoholic who’ll drive thirty miles to find an open bar for one more drink.
“We’re not cops,” I repeated, “and Thor knows us. So does Belov.”
“If you’re such good friends, you’d know how to find him.”
“Call him,” I said. “You get in touch with him, I’ll tell you my name, and you can let him make the decision. But I need to speak with him.”
“People who need to speak to Thor know how to find him, asshole. And if they don’t, and Thor needs to speak to them? He finds them. You get the idea? Now get out. We aren’t open yet, and this is a private room.”
I shook my head. “Maybe I’m not making myself clear. This matter I need to discuss, it’s the sort of thing that can get police involved. Thor finds out he could have avoided that, but then you screwed it up? I don’t think that’ll make him happy.”
“Go get your police and tell them to blow me. You don’t walk in here and make threats like you know somebody. You don’t know anybody.”
“Want to ask Thor about that?”
“Don’t need to.” He walked over, moving slowly as he shoved between us, letting his shoulder hit Joe’s. Joe stifled a wince at the contact, trying not to show the pain. I caught it, though, and so did the Russian. He stood in front of Joe, his face level with Joe’s chin, and smiled.
“Sore?” He reached out and delivered a short, chopping punch with the heel of his hand, catching Joe right on the damaged tendons of his shoulder. Joe grunted with pain and took a step back, and the Russian laughed.
“Do not come in here with a weak old man and give me orders,” he said, and then he stopped talking when I punched him in the side of his jaw.
I heard chairs scraping on the floor as the men at the table got to their feet, but I didn’t look at them. The one who’d hit Joe had taken my punch well and spun back to me. I met him with my right elbow, pivoting to generate the power, like a left-handed baseball swing. The elbow caught him on the side of his mouth, and I felt the sharp edges of his teeth against the bone. He staggered and then fell, and when he did I stepped clear and drew the Glock in time to stop the rush of the man who’d been seated with his back to us. He was almost on me, and when I turned my gun was a foot away from his face.
The two others were on their feet, the one with the cleft chin holding a chair in both hands, ready to swing it. Joe had his gun out, too. They looked at my gun and his, and then the chair hit the floor and they all took a few steps back. If any of them had a weapon, he hadn’t cleared it in time, and now it was our show.
“Maybe you didn’t understand me when I told you this was important,” I said. “It’ll be important to Thor, too. When we’re gone, feel free to call your boss. You tell Belov that one of your dumb-ass buddies assaulted a man named Joe Pritchard today, and then you see how pleased he is.”
None of them spoke. There was fury in their eyes, the look of violent men who’d just lost a confrontation and would not soon forget it.
“Now,” I said. “I will ask again—how can I find Thor?”
There was a pause. The one on the floor had struggled back to his feet, blood streaming out of his mouth. He was feeling his teeth with his thumb. I hadn’t looked at my arm, but there was a warm wetness of blood on my elbow, trickling down the forearm, a souvenir from those teeth he was checking on.
“You know Cujo’s?”
This came from the one with the cleft chin. Cujo’s was another bar, less than a mile away. I’d never been inside, but I could picture the sign, the face of a snarling dog.
“I know it.”
“Go there.”
“That’s where Thor is?”
“Most likely.”
“I’d like a phone number.”
“For Cujo’s?”
“For Thor.”
“He does not use phones. Go to Cujo’s.”
I wasn’t convinced that Thor didn’t have a phone, but it wasn’t impossible, either. He liked to keep a low profile.
“All right. We’ll go to Cujo’s. And if we don’t find him there, we’ll come back. With Belov.”
It was an empty threat, since Joe and I had no idea how to locate Belov, but it was the best I had. I took a few steps back, moving toward the door without lowering my gun. There would be a weapon somewhere in this place, and I didn’t want to give them the chance to move for it.
The Russian I’d hit suddenly sucked the blood off his lips, tilted his head back, and stepped forward to spit on me. Before he had the chance, Joe whipped his good arm around and drilled him in the center of the forehead. He still had the gun in his hand, and the sound of metal on bone made everyone in the room stiffen. Instead of bringing his head forward to spit, the Russian kept going backward and hit the floor for the second time. I had my back to the double doors by then and pushed through them, Joe stepping out with me. We moved quickly through the main room of the bar, guns out, but no one followed.
“You pop him because he hit your shoulder?” I said.
“No. That was for the weak old man comment.”
It took us ten minutes to get to Cujo’s. I’d remembered it being on Carter Road, but it was actually on West Fourth, tucked along the bend in the river. From the parking lot you could look up and see the Eagle Avenue lift bridge, and just beyond that the brick chimneys of the old waterfront firehouse, built decades earlier to deal with lumber fires. On another day, I would’ve stood there and taken it in, the little patch of cracked asphalt offering a perfect vantage point of the river that had allowed the city to thrive. Today, the only reason I scanned the area surrounding the parking lot was to look for cops.
Below the SNARLING DOG sign, on a board decorated with red-tinged drops of saliva from the beast’s jowls, were the bar’s hours:
“Places around here seem to have private hours for Soviet nationals,” Joe said.
“I’ve noticed that.”
There were a couple of cars and an old truck in the parking lot, but no one was outside. I took my gun out of my holster as we approached the door and held it down against my leg.
“Going in a little strong, aren’t you?” Joe said.
“I don’t trust that guy at the River Wild. Maybe Thor’s here, maybe he was setting us up.”
“Same thing I was thinking. We go in here and get into the same situation we did in the last place, then what? Keep crashing into bars all day, waving guns and asking for Thor?”
“It’s the way to get her back, Joe. The police are not going to know how to find Doran’s partner, even if they believe my story. Thor will.”
“Then we better hurry up and find him.”
The door was unlocked, and I pushed it open and stepped inside. No overhead lights were on, but there were neon signs scattered around the walls, casting the room in a crazy variety of colored lights.
“No friendly faces,” Joe said.
“No faces at all.” I took three more steps into the bar and heard the door slam shut behind Joe just before someone looped a length of chain over my head and pulled it tight.
The immediate, jarring power of the man behind me lifted me onto my toes and yanked me backward. I got the fingers of my left hand between the chain and my throat, but it did no good; the metal links tightened into my flesh and I felt my air supply give out, the breath already in my lungs the last I would taste until the chain loosened.
The Glock was still in my hand, but when I lifted it and tried to turn it my attacker knocked it free in one easy blow. Then I clutched at the chain with both hands, gagging, as someone in a sleeveless T-shirt moved forward from behind the bar. I saw him wind up, pulling his fist back as he ran at me, and I had enough time to tighten my stomach muscles before he hit me. Even with that, the blow seemed to shatter my insides. His fist came up into my
