He stood, walked to the suite’s lounge, retrieved his mobile phone from the floor. A crack or two in the casing from the impact against the wall. He opened the contacts list. Her number was stored under Laima. He would never call her that to her face, of course, but it felt foolish to have “Mother” in one’s collection of phone numbers.
Before he hit the dial button, he mopped up white powder from the glass desktop with his fingertip. He worked it across his gums, relishing the cool numbing sensation that followed.
Now, dial.
Strazdas listened to the tones as the mobile connected to the apartment in Brussels. His mind’s eye pictured the large, open living area, and the telephone on the elegant side table next to the plush couch he had bought for her. He saw her switch on lights in the darkened apartment, walk to the phone, reach for the handset, her eyes blurred by sleep and tears.
“Hello?” she said.
“It’s me.”
Silence for a moment, then, “Tell me.”
“Tomas is dead,” he said.
A distorted clatter as the phone fell to the apartment floor. A strangled cry, like an animal caught in a trap. He listened for a minute or more, choked sobs and keening wails, until it stopped like a needle lifted from the groove of an old vinyl record. She lifted the phone again.
“How?”
Strazdas told her all of it. About the whore, how Tomas wanted to break her in, how she cut his throat with a shard of glass, how Darius and that idiot he ran with tried to dump the body in the water, and how the whore got away from them.
When he was done, he listened to her steady breathing. Eventually, she said, “Kill her.”
“I will,” Strazdas said.
“Make sure the bitch suffers for what she did to my boy,” she said.
He was a child again, shamed because he’d wet his bed, red imprints of her hard hand against the skin of his legs. “I will,” he said.
“And anyone else who was responsible, anyone who gets in your way. Do you understand me?”
Or a young teenager, caught with his fingers in his trousers, her mouth slashed wide in disgust. “Yes,” he said.
“Kill them all.”
His bladder ached. “Yes.”
A hard click, and she was gone.
He ran to the bathroom.
15
A WHITE TOYOTA VAN approached, its headlights flooding the shadows beneath the bridge. Galya flattened her shivering body against the pillar, concrete icy cold on her cheek.
The van slowed, the driver’s window lowered, showing the occupant’s moon face.
Galya stepped away from the pillar, letting the light find her. The driver smiled. He reached for the passenger door, opened it, turned back to her.
“Come on,” he said.
HE HAD COME to her in the afternoon. She had given him a glance as he entered the room, ushered in by Rasa, and turned her gaze downward.
Rasa spoke to him in English, saying, “Enjoy her. She is new. Never been touched.”
She closed the door, leaving him alone with Galya.
He lingered at the other end of the bedroom, his eyes like points of black oil on his round face, his coarse dark hair swept back from his forehead, a thick beard surrounding the red slit of his mouth. A pink scar carved a line from the center of his forehead to the outer edge of his right eyebrow. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, maybe forty. Galya examined him in the corner of her vision.
“Hello,” he said.
Galya tried to reply, but only managed a thick murmur in her throat.
“Can I sit down?” he asked.
Galya moved closer to the bed’s headboard. She felt his weight on the mattress. It rocked her like a boat on a sickly wave. She did not look at him, but she sensed his attention on her bare skin. Without thinking, she placed one forearm across her breasts, the other down between her thighs so her hand cupped her knee.
“My name’s Billy,” he said.
Galya did not respond.
“Am I really the first client?” he asked.
Galya swallowed, her lips tight together.
“So no one’s touched you yet?”
Galya studied the patterns on the faded wallpaper.
“Good,” he said. “Then it’s not too late.”
He kneeled on the floor, facing her, like a suitor asking for her hand in marriage.
“I can help you,” he said. His accent was soft and soupy, not hard and angular like the men who owned this flat. English, maybe, she couldn’t be sure.
Galya lifted her eyes to meet his. His gaze locked solid on hers, his expression firm and truthful.
“If you can get away from here,” he said, “I can help you.”
Galya went to speak, but closed her mouth when she realized she had no words for him.
“Please believe me,” he said. “I can help you. If you can get out of here, don’t tell anyone where you’re going, I can help you get back home. What’s your name?”
Galya shook her head.
“My name’s Billy Crawford,” he said. “I’m a pastor. A Baptist pastor, but I haven’t been placed with a church. Instead, I help girls like you, help you get away from this. Do you understand?”
He reached for Galya. She pulled away.
“It’s all right, I won’t hurt you,” he said, as if he were calming a trembling puppy. “Look.”
He held a fine silver chain before her eyes, a cross dangling from it.
“For you,” he said. “So Jesus will protect you.”
He went to place it over her head. She flinched.
“I’m sorry,” he said, lowering his hands. The cross settled in his lap. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I know you’re scared. I know you don’t want to be here. You don’t, do you?”
Galya wanted to shake her head, tell him no, she didn’t want to be here. Instead she turned her eyes away.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m here to help you. I can help you get back home, away from these people.”
Away.
Such a big word. So big there were many ways to say it in Russian. Away, like she wanted to get away from Mama’s farm. Like she wanted to leave her village. To be free of the things that bound her there. To go to another place and have a life of her own.
Those notions seemed foolish now, but the word still weighed as heavy. She wanted to be away from here more than she had ever wanted anything before.
So when he reached again, she dipped her head, allowed him to place the chain around her neck. The cross lay cold on her skin. She touched it with her fingertip, felt the hard angles.
“Jesus will protect you,” he said. “He will protect you, and He will help you get away from these people. Do you understand me?”
Galya nodded once.
“Good.” A smile split his moon face. He took her hand and put a piece of paper in her palm, a string of numbers written on it in pencil, each digit impossibly neat. “When you get away from here, call me. Understand? Call me. I can save you.”
