She pursed her lips. “What do you want I should do, pull him out of thin air?”
“Look, I know he’s here or you know where he is,” I said. “I’ll speak to him now, or I’ll get very, very unpleasant until he shows his face. Your choice.”
After a long second of snarling at each other like wolves on a nature program, she sighed. “I buzz him.” Her hand dipped below the level of the desk.
My gun came out fast, the safety off, aimed less than an inch from her eyes. “Don’t move.”
She didn’t gasp or cry, like someone who % wasn’t reaching for a gun would. She just glared at me, like a small child who’s been denied a reach into the cookie jar.
“Slowly,” I said. “Show me the piece.”
Sniffing in fury, she brought out the long-barrel revolver and slammed it onto the desk. It was a .38, plenty large enough to ventilate me at close range.
“Now I call Nikolai?” she asked hopefully.
“You wish,” I said, taking the gun and tossing it into the trash can on my side of the desk. I unhooked my cuffs from my belt and gestured to her. “Up.”
“Nikolai will kill you,” she snarled. “He will make you into pieces so small you will not fill paper cup for a funeral.”
“Scary threats, scary gangster, blah blah blah,” I told her, handcuffing her to the office door and relocking the deadbolt.
She cursed at me some more, in Russian, but I turned my back on her and walked around the desk and through the door behind it, finding myself in a chill metal-lined hallway, freezer lockers on either side filled with nothing but permafrost and empty hooks for meat. I gave a small sigh of relief. Another dead body would really ruin an already crappy day.
I walked on, pushing through another plastic curtain into the main freezer, from which a chorus of male voices emanated.
I didn’t hesitate before I banged the door wide open. “What, no strippers? No pool table? No humidor? Nikolai, this is one sucky secret clubhouse.”
The group I’d surprised slowly stopped what they were doing, which was counting stacks of worn bills and banding them. Four pairs of eyes turned and bored into me. Rostov stood up slowly, deliberately setting down his fistful of bills.
“I’m sorry, miss, but this is a private business establisment. Can we help you find your way back to wherever it was you got lost?”
“Is this where you took Lily Dubois?” I said, gesturing at the featureless warehouse and plastic pallets, the cold air drifting down from the vents in fingers and cloaks of white vapor. “Not exactly a romantic hot spot, I have to say.”
One of Rostov’s companions reached for his gun, or whatever the bulge inside his windbreaker was supposed to be. Could have been a hero sandwich, but I doubted it.
“No,” Nikolai said. “I’m sure the young lady is here in an official capacity.”
“Smart boy,” I said. Rostov gestured to a an empty plastic chair at the table covered in money.
“Please. Sit.”
“You’re pretty polite, for a gangster,” I said. Rostov chuckled. It was a deep, fatherly sound, like a jolly Eurotrash Santa Claus.
“My dear, whatever rumors to the contrary—I’m a legitimate businessman who happens to run a concern built largely on cash transactions. What you see here is merely an … accounting meeting.”
“Lucky for you, I’m not interested in your money laundering,” I said. “I’m interested in the girls that you’re selling overseas.”
Rostov shrugged broadly. “Girls? I’m lucky if I find myself a date on [http://www.match.com] match.com, Officer.”
“Okay,” I said, sitting in the offered chair and propping my feet on the table, sending cash to the floor in a minor snowdrift. The heavies traded glances but Rostov waved them off. I said, “I have a proposition for you.”
Rostov seated his bulk in another chair. He wasn’t fat, just solid—twenty years ago he might have been a heavyweight boxer or just one hell of a big guy, but he had run to softness around the eyes and jaw, and he looked like a mopey cartoon character. “I am listening, Officer.”
“It’s Lieutenant,” I said. “Lieutenant Wilder.”
“Whatever flips your skirt up,” Rostov said, and suddenly he was no longer a friendly Santa but one of those innately creepy ones you see on Dateline exposés.
“Here it is,” I pressed on. “You admit to killing Lily Dubois…” I took out the picture and shoved it across the table at him, “and I’ll let you tie up the case the feds are making against you with local prosecutors for a couple of years. You plead guilty and you’ll serve your time at Los Altos instead of some federal hellhole.”
“I do not know this girl,” Rostov said dismissively. “She is not my type.” He shoved the photograph back at me.
“Too skinny. Too pale. I require something to grab on to when I fuck them.”
I had planned to stay cool and calm and to whittle Rostov down with common sense instead of threats. All of that flew out the window when I got a look at the gleam in his eyes.
“Although in a pinch, I would have taken her on trial basis,” Rostov continued in a clinical manner. “Some men’s proclivities are not the same as mine. Her youth could have served her’” He let out a yelp when I came across the table and grabbed him by the neck, squeezing down on either side of his windpipe, burying my fingers in the space between the thick cords of his tendons.
“Word of advice,” I snarled, feeling the sting as my eyes changed color from gray to gold. “I’m real, real low on patience these days.” Hex me, this was not how things were supposed to go. I didn’t lose it and jump the gun anymore. I was in control of the were, not the other way around. The crippling rage stayed locked in a box in the dark
