At one forty-five, the drunks and dandies left the club in one long stream. The younger men who had come with buddies joked and whooped at each other. The older men moved with heads down, hoping to hide their secret shame. Within minutes, the lot was almost empty.
At two ten, Anya and a short red-haired dancer walked out of the club. Anya was dressed in jeans and a hooded sweat-shirt. Street clothes only made her look better, more real. I was about to get out and call to her when a black Mercedes pulled to the curb. The redhead opened the door and they climbed into the back.
On the Westside, Mercedes are more common than skin cancer. But this was the second time I had seen Russian dancers get into a black S class. I couldn’t swear it was the same one that had picked up Marina, but what were the odds?
Maybe I saw a mobster where there was a car service, but I didn’t think so.
For a moment, I tried to convince myself that it was none of my business who they were or how Anya was involved. But when the Mercedes pulled off, I followed. Slipping into traffic a few cars back, I gave them just enough room to roam without noticing me.
The difference between stalking and looking after someone is a fine line, one I decided not to look too closely at as I followed them up Wilshire. At Santa Monica Boulevard they hung a left heading past Beverly Hills, towards Little Kiev, West Hollywood’s Russian neighborhood. Cruising up to an intersection, they slowed down, timing it right so they could blast across the street at the moment the light turned red.
The cars in front of me stopped, blocking me in. I angled into the right-hand turning lane and mashed down the gas pedal. The V8 roared its deep throated war cry as I blasted through the red. I swerved to avoid an oncoming 4x4. They fisted their horn, but I was gone in a cloud of burning rubber.
Two blocks up, I saw the Mercedes squealing left down a small side street. My heart thumped to an adrenaline-driven beat. I wished I hadn’t left my piece at home. With two felony convictions on my back, I never carried unless I was expecting trouble. The three strikes bullshit meant that a firearms bust would buy me the bitch.
I lost sight of the Mercedes when they ripped a quick left down a narrow alley that ran behind a two-story office building. Pulling down the alley, I discovered it was blocked off at the other end by a cement block wall. The Mercedes had vanished. Rolling to a stop halfway to the wall, I searched for their escape route.
Headlights shot into the sky. The Mercedes sped up out of a parking ramp behind me and skidded to a stop sideways, blocking my exit. I was trapped, and whatever came next, I knew it wasn’t going to be good. If I was right and they were Russian mob, it was going to get ugly.
The front passenger door opened and the biggest man I’ve ever seen lumbered out. I’m a big man. This guy was a fucking giant. A freak. He had a huge square head, with a tattooed line of barbed wire running across his forehead. His black beard and thick hair were buzzed to military length. He was wearing a loose black suit with a black tee shirt stretched tight across his massive chest muscles. He walked slowly toward my car. I could clearly make out the bulge of a shoulder holster under his designer jacket.
I jumped out of the Crown Vic, and headed for the brute at a run. Calm in his sizable advantage, he noticed too late that I brought a tire iron behind my back. Only losers bitch about a fair fight. I arced the iron up toward his head. It would have been a great move if he hadn’t raised his arm and taken the blow on his forearm. The tire iron landed with a meaty thud. If it hurt, he didn’t show it on his face.
Fuck. This man was a fucking monster. Swinging back to strike again, I never got the chance. He drove a boulder sized fist into my chest, exploding the air out of my lungs and sending me stumbling back. In battle, the whole world slows to a syrupy crawl. I was fighting for breath when I saw his other fist sailing at me. I had time to notice four skulls tattooed on his knuckles before it connected under my jaw. My head snapped back and my feet left the ground, for a floating moment I thought everything was going to be fine. It wasn’t. I crashed down hard. Lightning sparks darted across my vision and my stomach lurched.
In the back of the Mercedes, Anya had her face pressed to the glass. She looked worried, and in a sick way I was glad. As if it were a sign she liked me. A boot to my ribs made me forget her.
The brute towered over me like King Kong on steroids. I was blurry-eyed and gasping, he hadn’t even broken a sweat. I fought to get up, but he placed one of his size 15s on my chest and vised me to the ground.
“Kak dela mudack?” a voice said from behind the giant. My chest was compressed to the point where it took all my strength to keep breathing; speaking was way beyond my power.
“You want Pasha to squash you?” The driver moved out of the giant’s shadow. He was a thin angular Russian, his head was clean-shaven and he had a bushy black Stalin mustache. A prison tattoo of a cat crawled up out of his open shirt collar, scratching its way onto his cheek. On his knuckles I saw two tattooed skulls.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Only a gasp passed my lips. My head was throbbing and I could feel the flush of blood pulsing in my face.
“Vzdrochennyi,” the giant said with a low chuckle.
“Da.” The driver pointed a bony finger at my face. “Pasha says, you look like cock that’s been jerked too hard.” The brick-like foot on my chest twisted, grinding out what was left of my breath. “You fucked up his jacket, is it your destiny to die under his boot?” I struggled out a head shake. “Ok, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. We’ll see. Pasha?” He motioned up and the giant stepped off me. Air flooded in, burning my starved lungs. “Now, who the fuck are you, dolboy’eb? Why follow me?”
“I wasn’t,” I mumbled out as best as I could. A flick from the driver’s eyes and the giant’s huge hands ripped through my pockets. Rolling me over, he pulled my wallet out of my jeans. It had cash only no ID, I never carried any. It’s easier to be whoever you want when you carry no evidence to the contrary.
“Victor!” The redhead called from the back seat of the car. The thin man walked over and spoke Russian into the window. She said something that made Anya shake her head in denial. Her eyes flicked briefly onto me, then back to the man.
“The girl tells me you were dancing with Anya. Says you were talking a long time. No badge, no gun, not a cop. Who are you?”
“I work… for Mr. Gallico.” Trying to regain some level of calm, I rolled up into a sitting position. I fought the urge to massage my bruised jaw. Dropping LA’s mob boss’ name wasn’t a total bluff, I’d known the old Sicilian since I was a kid. I didn’t work for him, but he owed me a few favors.
“Fuck the guinea bastard,” the driver said. “What is he to me?”
“He’s the man who’s going to have your eggs scrambled if you don’t watch out.” I was making it up as fast as my thumping head could think. These bastards could kill me and never look back. My only hope was to convince them that killing me might piss off their boss.
“Why would the Italians have you follow me?” He wasn’t convinced yet, but doubt was starting to show.
“Word is, you’re running whores in Hollywood. That’s his territory, and you ignorant pricks know it.” I knew I was pushing it, but if the bluff was going to work, I needed to act like I had the upper hand.
“The wop bastard, he controls shit,” he said without conviction.
“Then kill me and let it fall where it does.” I gave him the hardest stare I could muster.
“Maybe you bullshit.”
“Yeah, and maybe I’m not. Want to risk a war with the Italians to find out?”
“Pososi moyu konfetku.” He backhanded me across the face, but after the giant’s blow it felt like a love tap. “I see you in my rearview mirror again, you will be dead.”
“Don’t worry, if I come up behind you again, you won’t notice me until the blood’s running down your cheap suit.”
“Cheap? Versace!” He looked like he was going to smack me again. My cold eyes caught him off balance. If he was going to kill me, so be it. I was tired of playing the bitch to his macho gangster act.
With a twitch of his head he led the giant back to the Mercedes. It would have been comical watching the massive man fold himself into the car if my head wasn’t hurting so bad. In the red glow of their brake lights, I saw Anya through the rear window. She looked both frightened and sadly resigned.
While they faded into dark streets, I stayed sitting. Feeling for broken bones, I was relieved to find only bruises and scrapes. The first thing you learn in the military is keep your head down and never volunteer for anything. Only a cherry would go rushing off to try and save a woman he’d just met from a fate she may or may not have chosen. If I could have erased her scared eyes from my mind, I would have. And if my mother had three
