“Shoot straight away.”
“What does she have that you want so bad?”
“You playing with me, guy?”
“No.”
“Making fun of Yefim?”
“Definitely not.”
“Then why you ask such a asshole-stupid question like that? You know what we want.”
“I honestly do not. I know you want Amanda and I know-”
“We don’t want Amanda, man. We want what she took. Kirill looks bad, man. He looks like he can’t find one little girl stole his property? The Chechens up the block? They’re starting to laugh, guy. We probably have to kill a few just to close their mouths, not have to look at their rotting fucking teeth.”
“So, what-?”
“The fucking baby! And the fucking cross! I need both. If that stupid card-junkie piece-of-shit doctor goes back to work and can find me another baby, I’ll give that one to Kirill, he won’t know the difference. But if I don’t have that cross and
“And you’ll give me Sophie in exchange?”
“No, I won’t fucking give you Sophie. We’re not let’s-make-it-a-deal here. Yefim say he wants the baby and the cross, you bring me the baby and the cross. Otherwise, they sell this soup in the little towns along the Black Sea? Only get it in these little towns. It comes in a red can. Parts of you will be in those cans. Parts of your family too, guy.”
Neither of us said anything for a minute. The heel of my hand had turned dark red from clenching the phone and my pinkie had gone numb.
“You still there, my main man?”
“Go fuck yourself, Yefim.”
He gave that a low, soft laugh. “No. I fuck you, man. I fuck you and your wife and your little girl in Savannah.”
I looked out on the road. The tar was very black. It matched the tree trunks by the church. The clouds had dropped down the mountain and hovered just above the telephone wires that stretched the length of the road. The air was damp.
“You don’t think we watch you?” Yefim said. “You don’t think we have friends in Savannah? We have friends everywhere, guy. And, yeah, you got that big crazy Polack protecting your little girl so we lose a couple of guys taking them out. But that’s okay-we get more guys.”
I stood on the porch looking out on the road. When I spoke, the words came out clipped and harder than I intended. “Tell me about this cross.”
“The cross,” Yefim said, “is the Belarus Cross. It go back a thousand years, man. Some people call it the Varangian Cross, other people, they call it the Yaroslav Cross, but I always like Belarus Cross. No price on this thing, man. Prince Yaroslav, he pay the Varangians with this cross to kill his brother Boris in the unification war back in, like, 1010 or 1011. But then he miss the cross so much, after he become ruler of all Kievan Rus, he send some other Varangians against the first Varangians, and they kill them, bring the cross back to him. It was in the czar’s pocket back in ’17 when they put him against that basement wall and,
I finally trusted myself to speak. “And you think-”
“No think. I know. That little girl has it. Or that fucking card-junkie doctor. Oh, you tell him to get back to work. You tell him we need him so much we won’t take a finger. We take a toe. He don’t need a toe as much and he need his finger. So, yeah, he’ll limp. People limp. Get me that cross, get me that baby, man. I’ll-”
“No deal.”
“I just told-”
“I know what you just told me, you fucking hump. You threaten my wife? You threaten my daughter? One thing happens to them, or my friend calls and says he saw one of you Stallone-in-
He was laughing so hard I had to hold the phone away from my ear.
“Ho-kay,” he said finally, still chugging out a trail of soft giggles. “Ho-okay, Meester Kenzie. You funny guy, my main friend. Funny, funny guy. You know where my cross is?”
“I might. You know where Sophie is?”
“Not anymore, but I can find her plenty fast.” He chuckled again. “Where you come up with ‘hump,’ man? I never hear that.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Old tape, I guess.”
“I like it. I can use it?”
“Help yourself.”
“Say to some guy, ‘You pay me money or else, you, you hump.’ Ha.”
“All yours.”
“I find Sophie. You find cross. I’ll call you later.”
He laughed once more and hung up.
I was still shaking when I got back into the house, the adrenaline swirling at the base of my skull so badly I got a headache.
“Tell me about the Belarus Cross.”
Dre looked like he’d hit the flask a few more times while I was out on the porch. Angie sat in the armchair closest to the hearth. She looked so small, for some reason, so lost. She gave me a look I couldn’t quite read but it was pained, even forlorn. Amanda sat at the far end of the couch, a video baby-monitor on the end table beside her. She’d been reading
“Who were you talking to?”
“The Belarus Cross,” I said.
“You were talking to a cross?”
“Amanda.”
She shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. The what?”
I didn’t have time for this. Which left me with two options-threat or promise.
“They’ll let you keep the baby.”
She sat up. “What?”
“You heard me. If this genius over here”-I nodded at Dre-“can come up with another baby pronto, they’ll let you keep Claire.”
She turned on the couch. “Can you?”
“It’s possible.”
“Fucking Dre,” she said, “can you or not?”
“I don’t know. There’s one girl who’s close. I mean, she
Amanda’s jaw clenched and unclenched. She used both hands to pull her hair behind her head. She slowly twirled it into a ponytail and took a band off the side table and tied it off.
“So you talked to Yefim.”
I nodded.
“And he was explicit.”
“Couldn’t have been clearer-give them the cross and
