“How about the other knee? Should I hit that one again, too?”
“Behind the wardrobe,” the man stammered.
“What’s that?”
“The wardrobe,” he repeated, his voice quavering. “The safe is behind it.”
Ralston pushed the chest out of the way. All that was behind it was one of the ugly fabric panels. Gently, he pushed on it and it popped open upon a set of hidden hinges.
“What’s the combination?”
Yatsko gave it to him.
Inside, Ralston found multiple stacks of currency, passports, a portable computer drive, and some jewelry. Pulling a pillowcase off one of the pillows on the bed, he crossed back over to the safe and took everything but the jewelry.
Grabbing Yatsko by the collar again, he dragged him out of the bedroom.
“But I don’t have anything else worth stealing!” he implored.
“Shut up.”
Ralston dragged the Russian back across the house and into the hallway near the kitchen. He dropped him near the door to the garage.
“Do you want my car?” the mobster asked. “Take it. The keys are in it.”
He was trying to negotiate, to offer the intruder something, anything. He had to have sensed that the man had not come just for a robbery.
“Is there fuel in the car?” Ralston asked.
“Yes,” Yatsko replied, hopeful.
“Good,” replied Ralston as he pulled a roll of duct tape from his backpack, tore off a piece, and placed it over the Russian’s mouth. “Because we’re going to take a little ride.”
Ralston kicked open the garage door and dragged Yatsko over to the rear of the BMW. Popping the trunk, he noticed the mobster’s eyes widen. Then he figured out why. Inside was something wrapped in several garbage bags and taped up in the shape of a mummy.
Ralston looked at the Russian lying on the garage floor. “Yaroslav, you piece of shit. What did you do?”
Pulling a knife from his pocket, Ralston sliced through the tape and garbage bags. What he found was what appeared to be a homeless man around Yatsko’s height and age. Upon closer inspection, he saw that all of the man’s teeth had recently been pulled out and his fingertips had been cut off.
There were several gas cans in the trunk as well. Ralston lifted one and sloshed it around. Full.
“Yaroslav,” he said, “were you going to set your house or your car on fire with this poor guy’s body in it? With no teeth and no fingertips, no one could ever say it wasn’t you. In fact, it’d probably look like you got whacked by some competing faction, eh? You are one slippery motherfucker, aren’t you?”
Ralston bent over and wrapped the Russian’s ankles with duct tape. Pulling him to his feet, he pushed the mobster backward into the trunk, where Yatsko whacked his head against the lid and landed atop the corpse.
Ralston looked down at him and smiled. “At least you’ll have company for our ride out to the desert.”
After wiping the house clean of his fingerprints, Ralston returned to the garage, climbed into the BMW, and turned the key in the ignition. He’d have to work fast. He had only so many hours of darkness.
CHAPTER 48
The Pearblossom Highway was an old, undivided two-lane blacktop interspersed with remote homesteads and dirt roads that led out into the Mojave Desert toward Las Vegas. Ralston had worked on a small, independent film in the Mojave years ago and almost missed the turnoff.
The dusty road wasn’t marked by anything more than a twisted Joshua tree and a large rock formation that looked like the side of an Indian’s face.
The heavy BMW sedan bumped and jolted as it hit numerous potholes and washouts along the way.
Finally, Ralston pulled off the access road into a small clearing ringed by sagebrush and turned off the ignition. Stepping out of the vehicle, he stretched his arms overhead and then leaned from side to side in order to stretch out his sore back.
When he was done, he grabbed his backpack from the backseat, fished out a flashlight, and walked around to the trunk. It was a clear night and the stars in the desert sky were fairly bright, but there were several different species of things Ralston didn’t want to step on if he could avoid it.
Popping the lid of the trunk, he clicked on the flashlight and shined it in Yatsko’s face. He had a small laceration on his forehead, probably from getting bumped around in the trunk.
“We’re here,” said Ralston as he pulled the Russian out and let him drop onto the dusty ground.
Yatsko was somewhere in his late sixties or early seventies. He had a broad, flat face that looked as if it had been hit with a shovel. His greasy hair was dyed unnaturally black.
Ralston used the flashlight to get his bearings. Once he figured out where he was going, he propped the Russian against the car and then flipped him over his shoulder. He weighed a ton.
Despite the pain radiating up his spine from his hip, Ralston kept going. He didn’t have far to go. The wash was just through the brush beyond the clearing.
When he got there, he set Yatsko on the ground, propping him up in a sitting position. He could see, even through his trousers, that his knees had swollen up like basketballs. He’d thought about bringing the baseball bat along, but had decided against it. He wouldn’t need it. All he had to do was tap the guy in the knee with the toe of his shoe and the man would be sent into fits of agony.
The question was, considering the pain he was suffering, would he cooperate? He’d worked with Russians before and had watched them take amazing amounts of punishment. They could be like plow animals.
It was time to find out if Yatsko was going to play ball. Reaching down, Ralston ripped the piece of duct tape from his mouth.
He expected a string of invective to start immediately. It didn’t. The Russian was trapped. He knew it and was sizing up his captor.
“You already have the money from my house,” he eventually said. “I can get you more. Much more.”
“This isn’t about money,” replied Ralston.
Despite the pain, the former FSB man smiled. “It is always about money.”
“How many people during your career in Russia offered you money? Deep in the bowels of the Lubyanka I’ll bet there were many.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m nobody. Just someone who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.”
Yatsko looked at him, a slow trickle of blood running down the side of his face. “Do I know you?”
“No. You don’t know me.”
“Then I must know the man who sent you.”
Ralston shook his head slowly. “No one sent me.”
“Then who are you, damn it,” he spat. “Why did you bring me here?”
“First, tell me who the man is in your trunk.”
“Who cares? It’s none of your business.”
Ralston took his flashlight and swung it at the side of the Russian’s face. It connected with a sharp crack.
Yatsko saw stars and when the pain receded and his vision returned, he looked up at Ralston and spat two teeth out at him. “Fuck you.”
Ralston hit him again, harder. “I’ve got all night and no place to be.”
He waited for the mobster to recover and then repeated his question.
“He’s a vagabond,” the Russian yelled. “Nothing. No one. Trash.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Yes, I killed him.”
“Why?” asked Ralston.
