The Survivor

When he finally dared to lift his head, Janie had composed herself as best she could. For the moment she and Cielle were holding it together, but they looked utterly shell-shocked.

“My God.” Janie blinked, tears finally spilling. She stroked her daughter’s hair. “We’re all alone in this.”

Nate could hear the faintest click of the kitchen clock. “I’m still here.”

Their faces showed that to be scant consolation.

Chapter 20

Passing a strip mall on a busy street in Tarzana, Nate spotted the illuminated sign with glowing ornate letters: NEW ODESSA. Pavlo Shevchenko’s suggested meeting place. Granted, Nate was a few days early, but it was his best bet to find the man, and in light of Yuri’s attack they had business to discuss. Janie was okay with holing up behind locked doors, 911 ready on speed dial. Vowing to check in on them later, Nate had stopped off at his place to pick up his gun and his medication, the two essentials he’d require moving forward.

He flipped a U-turn, the Jeep rattling into the lot, and parked at the far end. He popped the glove box and reached for the Beretta, but as soon as his hand touched the cool metal, something made him look up and across at the restaurant. A done-up middle-aged couple, the man with a cheap suit and skinny tie, the woman in a slinky sequined dress, approached a large oak door. A vast bouncer emerged from the shadows of the awning and patted them both down thoroughly, the diners submitting readily to the search as if it were a commonplace prelude to a meal. Nate looked back across at his hand buried in the glove box. Then he moved it from the stock of the handgun to the pill bottle. He gulped down his nightly dose of riluzole and antibiotics, adding Advil in response to the complaints of the stitched wound in his shoulder.

His heartbeat reverberated in his palms, his neck, matching the taps of his steps across the parking lot. As he neared the awning, the bouncer loomed.

“I’m here to see Pavlo Shevchenko,” Nate said.

“Spread arms.”

Nate complied.

The man’s paws groped Nate’s sides, his belt line, squeezing each leg and sliding from groin to ankle. As he knelt, his pant cuff pulled high, exposing a gun barrel strapped to the ankle. Satisfied, he rose and checked Nate’s chest and stomach, presumably for a wire, untucking and lifting Nate’s shirt without a trace of hesitation. “Come.”

Nate followed him into a dim lounge, dense with smoke and sweet perfume and the tang of pickled fish. Couples and groups of men crowded the tables, animated voices speaking what Nate assumed was Ukrainian. A glimpse through velvet curtains revealed a brick-walled banquet hall to one side, a makeup-intensive singer swaying and crooning lyrics in a foreign tongue as partygoers slow-danced drunkenly, holding each other as if in grief. A momentary disorientation washed over Nate; he had stepped through a portal into a foreign country.

The bouncer put a broad hand on the small of Nate’s back, steering him forcefully through. A table in the rear corner was framed by several pillars, affording it relative privacy and clear place of distinction. Drawing into view at the table’s head, bent so his elbows framed his plate, was Pavlo Shevchenko. He wore a dark suit, slightly dated in style, with a thin, expensive-looking dress shirt. Hunched protectively over his food, chewing, he looked lean and hungry, his face angular in the faint light. His eyes lifted to freeze Nate in a cold stare.

Across from Pavlo in the other seat of honor sat a heavy older man, thick-lipped and wearing an expression of general displeasure. The rest of the chairs were occupied by men wearing velour warm-ups and chunky gold Rolexes, sipping vodka from weighty shot glasses. Right out of central casting. None of the henchmen from the warehouse were in evidence. Tyazhiki. Shadow people.

The bouncer had a brief exchange with one of the men, the words sharp. Pavlo interrupted, addressing Nate directly. “You have accomplished my task already?”

“No. I need to speak with you. About what happened tonight. At the house.”

Pavlo leaned back, crossed his arms. “Sit.” He gestured at the man beside him, who vacated his seat obediently. Nate slid down into the chair, the bouncer sidling behind him out of his line of sight. At the table’s center stood a slender bottle of vodka.

Pavlo gestured at the man at the other end of the table. “Best Ukrainian restaurant, it is owned by a Georgian. Can you believe?”

Nate took a closer look at the restaurant owner. His jaundiced fingers twiddled with a thick black lock pasted across his forehead, arranging and rearranging it with a vanity befitting neither the matted hair nor his slovenly demeanor. He’d missed a spot shaving, a few coarse black threads at one corner of his mouth. The skin under his eyes was dark and flecked with skin tags, textured pouches like oyster shells. It was a magnificent face. A Depression-era photographer would have turned cartwheels to find such a face on a breadline. He appraised Nate sullenly, silently. Perhaps he did not understand English.

“Eat,” Pavlo said. “Blini with red caviar. The Americans have with black caviar to spend more, but is better with red.” He gestured at a mound of small half-moon dumplings beneath a dollop of sour cream. “And varenyky. Small, not like big China potstickers. Eat. You work for me now. One of my associates.”

“I’m not hungry,” Nate said.

Pavlo remained perfectly still, hands frozen at the sides of his plate. “The Georgian will be insulted that you do not eat.”

“Then he’ll have to be insulted,” Nate said.

A chilled silence. The others set down their utensils.

“Your man came to my wife’s house,” Nate said. “He broke the hand of-”

Pavlo slid his plate to the side. “You did not make call to police. You did not break our arrangement. That is only reason your daughter still breathes.”

Nate’s gaze moved to a steak knife just beyond his elbow. Pavlo’s eyes followed his stare, then rose again to his face, unconcerned.

“This man who called police, next time we will kill him. We know where he called. We know who he spoke to. His protest, it has been misfiled by police. We own many police. You do not know which ones in which departments. Every time you make phone call, you play Russian roulette with your daughter. Is this clear?”

“I will do what you want me to do. I will get you what’s in that safe-deposit box. If you stay away from my family.”

A glint of sturdy Soviet dentistry. “It is not anymore your family.”

“Don’t fuck with them.”

Pavlo set his hands on the table’s edge. Pushed back, his chair chirping on the faux-marble floors. He stood.

The men at the table were on their feet swiftly, even the Georgian. Nate became aware of uniform movement in the space all around him, and when he turned, his skin prickled at the sight. Every diner in the restaurant had risen, even those in booths, bending with difficulty from the effort. Their gazes stayed carefully forward, not fully turned toward Pavlo. Napkins fell from laps. The strains of music drifting in from the banquet hall only underscored the abrupt silence in the restaurant proper.

Nate, the only person sitting.

He had never seen anything like this. A headache thrummed at his temples. Every sense heightened. A spoon clattered to the floor across the restaurant; to Nate it sounded like drumsticks beating a snare.

Pavlo made a slight gesture with his hand, and the diners somehow noted this and rumbled back into motion, sitting, pouring wine, resuming conversations. His focus swiveled to Nate.

“You come here for strelka. Meeting. As if you are my equal.” His voice, raised for the first time. Up until now he’d conveyed all his power and menace with little more than a whisper.

“I will teach you who I am.” He pulled at his thin dress shirt, buttons popping off one after another, skittering across the table. At first his skin seemed bizarrely dark, but as his shirt fell away, Nate realized: It was covered with blue, slightly blurred tattoos. Pavlo lifted a thumb to a rose needled into the base of his neck. “My initiation.” An eight-pointed star came next, just below his collarbone. “This says I am vor.