“the Last Christmas” as you would “the Last Supper.” In some ways it was much the same—an ending, a betrayal, and lives that would never be as they once were. I might have been an unwitting Judas, but the result had been the same. Consequently, I hadn’t felt much like celebrating on the twenty-fifth in the past ten years. You could keep the twinkling lights and the tree, but screw the presents and the eggnog; I didn’t want any part of it.
All those things were in the five-by-seven photo . . . along with two boys. One was fourteen; one, seven. There was no guessing involved in that. I knew those ages to the day, if not the minute. The older kid was obviously a cocky son of a bitch with black hair, mocking pale brown eyes, and a grin that just wouldn’t quit. My grin . . . I hadn’t seen it in a long, long time—not that version. The one I flashed these days had all the warmth of a jagged shard of ice.
The younger boy in the picture occupied a different end of the spectrum, in appearance and personality. He had unusual eyes, unique in their innocence and color. One green, one blue, they looked out calmly from beneath the fringe of pale blond bangs. His smile was smaller than my grin, but pure and happy. I touched a finger to the glass over that smile. It was my brother, Lukas.
We sat under a ridiculously huge tree. The lights sparkled among a thousand silver icicles and a thick coating of artificial snow. We’d insisted on the cheap and tacky spray despite our father’s snort of derision. It would be the only snow we were likely to see that year. Southern Florida wasn’t much for the white stuff—not that kind anyway. I had my arm slung around Lukas’s smaller shoulders and both of us sported eggnog mustaches, yellow and foamy. Mom had started the habit of making us alcohol-free nog three years before, and even though she’d died only a year later, the tradition was kept up. It kept her alive and with us for the holiday. And it made Lukas happy.
Kid brothers were always a pain in the ass. Any older brother or sister would tell you that. They tagged after you, asked a thousand questions, and bugged you endlessly. They took your crap without asking and narc’ed you out every chance they got. Lukas did all that, sure. He also looked up to me, brought me things—a sea-polished stone from the beach or a comic book he bought with his allowance—and didn’t think any cootieridden girl was good enough for his brother. If making eggnog made him smile, what the hell? I’d do it. And for those two years I did. Dear old Dad was always too busy, and the housekeepers . . . well, they weren’t Mom. The creamy drink pretty much sucked, but Lukas and I drank it anyway before opening our presents.
Of course, that year was the one the presents were too big to open. That year was the year we had to go to the newly built stable to see them. They came with fancy names, I’m sure, but I never learned them. I called mine Harry, after Dirty Harry. That was the year I wanted to grow up to be a cop. I’d never seen my father laugh before; not like that. “A
Lukas named his Annie for our mother, Anya. Those were our presents. Horses, two of them . . . a mare and a gelding. It would’ve been natural to blame it all on them, the horses, but it would’ve been a lie. And while I could lie smoothly without conscience to anyone I came across, I’d never figured out the art of lying to myself. It damn sure would’ve made things much easier. But if I knew one thing in this godforsaken world, it was that I didn’t deserve easy and I didn’t deserve to forget.
Others though . . . For them it seemed much easier to forget. The framed picture had come through the mail, boxed neatly with a short note from my father.
The day before had been my birthday. The picture was my present. Maybe it was meant as a memorial, a reminder of better, sweeter times, or maybe Anatoly was just cleaning out his goddamn attic. Either way, I didn’t give a shit, because in reality it was none of those things. It was a gravestone, pure and simple. Unconsciously, my hand had already tightened on the smooth wood of the frame, a split second away from slamming it against the wall. It would’ve been a petty piece of violence wrapped around a large chunk of raw pain, but in the end I couldn’t do it. That smile, my brother’s smile . . . Smash it? I just couldn’t.
Sliding it carefully back into its sheltering box, I placed it in the bottom drawer of my computer desk. Out of sight, out of mind; not exactly, but for now it was the best compromise I could make. Leaning back in the leather swivel chair, I closed my eyes and tugged the tie from my hair and massaged soothing fingers into my scalp. I could feel the black waves brush my shoulders and felt my lips curl ruefully. I needed a haircut. One of the guys had called me
I could’ve gotten my face fixed. Well, not fixed, but improved, yet I didn’t see the point. I’d learned it certainly didn’t hurt me in my current profession. Before that . . . I’d wanted to keep the scar. I wanted to be reminded . . . every time I looked in the mirror and every time I saw my reflection in the face of others.
My head continued to throb and I gave up rubbing it to go into the bathroom. Opening the medicine cabinet, I popped three Tylenol and chased them with a handful of sulfurous water from the tap. Through the wavy glass of the privacy window I could see splinters of a pounding slate blue surf and dirty white sand. I lived in a condo on one of the less-desirable stretches of the Miami shore. Even a life of crime wouldn’t pay for a beach house, not when you were on as low a rung on the ladder as I was.
Anatoly had been grudgingly impressed that I wouldn’t take his money, that I wanted to make my own way working for one of his allies. That wasn’t it, though. If I was going to take blood money, I wasn’t going to pretend it was anything but what it was. I wasn’t going to remove myself from the process and live like the prince I’d been born; a prince of crime and death, but a prince all the same—at least to my father’s peers. In the eyes of the police and the government, I was a little less royal. In the eyes of the victims, I was nothing more than a thug.
They were right.
But, hey, that was just my day job, so to speak. In the end I hadn’t been able to escape destiny. Dirty Harry was forgotten and I fell into the family business without much of a struggle. It was all secondary anyway, random noise that didn’t have a chance of interfering with my true calling of finding him . . . finding Lukas.
Bringing my brother home.
Changing into sweats, I moved into the kitchen to whip up some supper—“whipping up” being a nice euphemism for nuking leftover Chinese. As the microwave hummed, I considered picking up the phone to let Anatoly know how I felt about my birthday present. I could let him know what I thought of his giving up on his younger son. I could also beat my head against the wall; the result would be the same. It wasn’t worth the effort. Tracking him down now that he was indicted could take hours if not days, and that was if he was even answering the phone. Anatoly had numerous safe houses and refuges, and no one but he knew where they all were. I was no exception to the rule. And even if I did manage to find my father, I already had that particular conversation thoroughly memorized. My mouth flattened and I turned back to the microwave to pull out the steaming carton gaily decorated with red, green, and blue dragons.
I’d learned over the years that the majority of families of missing children never give up. They always look and they always hope . . . if not for a happy ending, at least for an answer—a resolution, peace.
Anatoly had obviously made his peace long ago. I’d never understood it. He hadn’t been the most demonstrative of fathers, but as ruthless crime lords went, he wasn’t so bad, I thought dryly. He’d been proud of Lukas and me, generous with presents if not with his time. At the age of fourteen, I wasn’t quite aware of what he did or who he was, but I was aware he wasn’t your average working Joe. And I had known he had resources that far outstripped those of the police. Why he hadn’t used them more after Lukas had first been taken and why he didn’t use them even now, I didn’t know. Damn it, I just didn’t know. Every time I brought up the subject, it ended in the same way.
I jammed the fork into soy-soaked noodles and twirled it savagely. Lukas was gone, he’d say implacably. We had to accept it and move on. Living in the past was useless and it was weak. It had no place in men like us.
He’d given up so easily, so goddamn easily. In ten years not a day had gone by that I hadn’t thought of Lukas. I had no illusions that it was the same for Anatoly. Taking the noodles to my computer, I sat down and clicked onto
