Claudine (18 page)

He wrestled with her suit, trying to yank it down while he fumbled with his penis. She scissored her legs to stop him when he attempted to stuff it inside her.

The door burst open. In three strides Andrei crossed the room, spun the man around and punched him hard in the face. Blood spurted from his nose. Andrei rammed him up against
the wall and delivered body blows in quick succession. Thorpe slumped to the floor.

Claudine staggered out of the way. She was about to chew Andrei out for not finding her sooner—until he turned and she saw his face.

CHAPTER
20

Andrei’s jaw was red and swollen and his shirtsleeve ripped and bloody. He limped. Behind him, two men with iron-hard muscles and tattoos approached her attacker, who’d managed to sit up and was cowering in a corner.

“You all right?” Andrei asked, his voice gentle.

“A few scrapes, that’s all.” She turned her back to zip up her bodysuit. “What about you?”

But Andrei had already returned to Thorpe. He pressed the heel of his open hand against Thorpe’s neck. The man swore and struggled limply. Andrei increased the pressure until Thorpe toppled over in a dead faint. He gave his friends orders in Russian and jerked his head toward the taller of the two. They heaved the man up and, supporting him between them, shuffled out the door and down the stairs.

“What are you going to do with him?”

“Take him to a secure place. Let him sweat it out until tomorrow.”

“What happened to you?” Maria touched the side of his face. He winced.

“I left the other two in the van to monitor the street while I followed you. I watched you go inside, and then I got hit from behind. While I was out, someone must have gone to town on my face. A good thing I had the others with me or I’d be dead right now. The guys who attacked me ran away when they saw my men coming. They took off on motorbikes so we lost them. I was too worried about you to chase the hooker. She’ll be easy enough to find later anyway.”

“I’m sorry. I never should have insisted we go through with this.” A wave of guilt washed over her. Her stubbornness had nearly cost Andrei his life.

Andrei gave her a wry grin. “What are you talking about? We caught him.”

Maria’s knees suddenly buckled; shooting stars dimmed her vision.

“You’re hurt,” he said propping her up.

She touched the sore spot on her scalp. “He cracked my head against the wall, that’s all. I’ll be okay.”

“Let’s get you out of here.” Andrei kept his arm around her down the stairs. His two friends had dumped their quarry into the back of the van and waited, parked behind a nondescript beige rental car. Andrei gave them the thumbs-up and they pulled away from the curb. He helped Maria into the passenger side of the rental car, got behind the wheel and buckled up.

“Where are we going?” she asked, slurring her words.

“To the hospital. You’ve got to get checked out.”

She tried to raise her voice but only managed a weak reprove. “No hospitals. We can’t report this. I’ll be fine.”

He gave her a worried look but said nothing. Instead he pulled out his phone and punched in some numbers, keeping one hand on the wheel. He spoke a few words in Russian before he clicked off.

“I’m taking you to Brighton Beach, then—my place. A doctor will come see you there. Until we’ve got everything we need out of that guy, it’s not safe at your apartment.”

L
ittle Odessa stretched for several miles south of the elevated subway line bisecting Brooklyn. Brighton Beach Avenue ran underneath it. Through the tinted sedan windows, she could see the bright lights of grocers, bakeries, pharmacies, clubs and restaurants. Most had signs in Russian. Even at this hour, the street hummed.

Andrei turned left off the avenue and stopped in front of a high-rise with a redbrick façade and balconies formed by ornamental white cement squares. A young man waited at the building entrance to park the car. Andrei threw him the keys and helped Maria into the building. As they walked toward the lobby elevator, she stumbled and grabbed his arm for support. “I’m all right, just a bit woozy,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

“No, you’re not.” He let her rest against him as the elevator rose to the fifth floor. The adrenalin flooding through her system during the fight with Thorpe had subsided, leaving her cold and weak. Leaning close to Andrei, she began to warm up and feel safe again.

They got out of the elevator and Andrei reached into his pocket for his keys. When he opened his door she let out a little exclamation of surprise.

A vestibule opened into a spacious room with a shining floor of black oak. A large Persian carpet on it looked antique. One entire wall was lined with bookcases. At a guess, Andrei owned more books than she did. Most of the paintings, original and contemporary abstracts, were of the best gallery quality. An old upright piano of painted white wood stood against the far wall. The room was lightly scented, sandalwood or myrrh, something exotic like that.

“What do you think?” He said this a little shyly, as if he worried she might regard it as far too modest a place.

“It’s lovely, Andrei. You have great taste.”

That seemed to satisfy him and he eased her down on the plush sofa and arranged cushions behind her back to keep her comfortable. “Let me take off those boots,” he said, his baritone a little gruff. “I don’t know how you can walk in them anyway.”

“Lots of practice.” She giggled. Immediately the dull ache in her head ramped into searing pain. “Oh God,” she pressed her hand to her temple.

“Lie still. Don’t try to talk; I’ll be right back.” Andrei went into the adjoining kitchen and opened the fridge. He returned with an ice pack wrapped in a dish towel. “Hold this to your head.”

She did as he asked. She sank back against the pillows, clamping the cold pack to her temple. “Can you hand me my bag? I have some Tylenol in there.”

“You can’t take anything like that. Not until the doctor’s seen you.” He perched at the end of the couch, unzipped her
boots and slid them off. He gently massaged her feet for a few minutes. Maria watched his lean tanned hands, the tight muscles of his arms as he bent over her, and felt a tingle of desire. A dramatically different response than she had to Lillian’s energetic kneading and pummeling.

She felt a cold nose on her leg, looked down and saw a large dog with rough brown fur and floppy ears. It licked her knee.

Maria reached out to pet him. “What’s he called?”

“Tramp.”

“You named him after the Disney cartoon?”

“No.”

“Oh!” Maria laughed.

“No, it’s not what you think. I found him when he was a pup, a couple of streets away, rooting around a Dumpster. He was so thin his ribs stuck out from his chest like wooden barrel staves. And he does like the ladies.”

“Takes after his master, then?”

Andrei’s smile must have hurt him. He touched his jaw gingerly before answering. “Certainly does. Got to get something else. Be right back.” Tramp’s tongue lolled with pleasure as Maria petted him. She took another look at the paintings. One resembled a Chagall. Must be a print, she thought. Coming here gave her a rare look at Andrei’s private side. She liked what she saw.

He returned with a first-aid kit and a hand-embroidered quilt in bright colors. “One of the few things I have left from home. My mother made the quilt.” He ordered Tramp to the kitchen.

“We just got here and now you’re banishing him?” she joked.

“I set out his dinner. He won’t mind at all. Stretch your leg out a bit.”

He dabbed some liquid from a bottle in the first-aid kit onto gauze and wiped it over the scratch, cleaning off the crusted blood. “Sorry. It will sting for a minute or so.” It did hurt, but the tingle she felt before now reappeared as a delicious sensation in her groin when his fingers brushed her thigh. After he finished, he tucked the quilt around her legs.

“Thank you. You take such good care of me.” She could feel her eyes drooping. “I’m so fatigued. I’d like to sleep for a while.”

He shook his head. “You can’t yet. We don’t know how bad your head is hurt. I’ve got to keep you awake until the doctor comes.” As he walked over to the glass doors leading to the balcony, he was limping again, and she reminded herself that he’d been hurt too. He slid the doors open. “This is the best time to be here, when the beach has quieted down at night. Maybe the breeze will help to stave off your drowsiness.”

A soft wind blew in, carrying with it the murky scent of salt water. From the light of the apartment building’s windows, Maria could see a plain of golden sand stretching to the water’s edge, a rim of white where the waves hit the shore and a flare of orange. “What’s that light?”

“Some kids started a bonfire.”

Now that he mentioned it, Maria could smell a faint hint of smoke in the air. She began to feel as though she could stay in this comfortable cocoon forever. Andrei leaned with his back against the cement squares of the balcony, ambient light from the room playing over his fit form. He’d combed his hair,
changed into jeans and a sharp-looking black tee when he went to get the quilt.

“The hurricane dumped huge amounts of sand right up to our building,” he said, as if from far away. “A giant piece of the boardwalk got torn out and thrown against the outside wall by the waves. There was a ton of debris. Afterward, kids used some of it to slide down the mounds like they were tobogganing. It was really treacherous here. We’re one of the areas that got the worst of it. You could smell gas everywhere. At one point it felt like a tsunami, as if the storm was going to sweep the whole place away.”

“I remember trying to get ahold of you through all that. You didn’t answer your cell for three days. I was so worried.”

“Yeah. I stayed awake the entire time. We had no power, and a lot of the older folks in this building were huddling in their apartments, terrified. Some of us got together and moved them to a community center.”

They heard a quiet tap at the door. Andrei checked through the peephole and let in an older man with a full head of woolly white hair and a plump florid face. They spoke in Russian. “Dr. Levkin,” Andrei said to her by way of introduction.

Andrei got a kitchen chair for the doctor to sit beside her. The doctor spent about twenty minutes checking her vision, mobility, temperature and blood pressure. Asking her questions.

“She probably has concussion but she must have X-ray, best is MRI. I can’t tell much about how injured she is without that.”

Andrei raised his eyebrows at her.

“I’ll go tomorrow morning,” she said.

The doctor clearly disapproved. “You should go right now. If
you stay, you have to be waked through the night. Once every hour.” He spoke to Andrei again and then bid her good-bye.

“What about you?” she said. “Shouldn’t you be getting checked out too?”

“I’ll do that tomorrow when we get you to the hospital. Think I’ll survive tonight.” He laughed.

Andrei gave her a clean white T-shirt, long enough to reach midthigh. While she changed out of her leather bodysuit, he brewed some tea in the kitchen and brought it out in a glass, piping hot. He wrapped a napkin around it and handed it to her. “An old herbal recipe; it will help the pain.”

She took it gratefully. “Where’s Tramp?”

“Asleep in his bed. It’s long past midnight, you know.”

She sniffed the aromatic tea and took a sip. It tasted bitter but had a pleasant herbal aftertaste. She sank back into the pillows and watched summer lightning flash in the sky.

“How about some music?” Andrei said.

She eyed the piano. “Sure, but only if you play for me.”

He took a seat on the piano bench and lifted the cover. The yellowed ivory showed how aged the instrument was, but its tone was as pure as crystal. He ran his fingers lightly over the keys. He played effortlessly, beautifully; the music seemed to harmonize with the distant wash of the waves on the shore. The summer ocean air and his playing cast a spell over the peaceful room, imbuing the night with a sense of magic. Maria recognized songs from Prokofiev and Chopin. The sounds lulled her senses. She fought the urge to sleep because she wanted to hear every note. Again she was struck by how little she knew of the man she’d seen almost daily for the last three years.

“This next one’s especially for you,” he said.

It was from Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto Number 2. She recognized it the minute she heard the first few bars. “How did you know that was my favorite?”

“You mentioned it once. I have a good memory.”

It was a song her own father loved and had played often, and the melody went straight to her heart. She remembered how her mother would plunk herself on the old fat armchair with her eyes closed to concentrate on the music and Maria would curl up in her lap, listening avidly to her father play.

“What’s the matter?” Andrei swung around on the bench.

She was hardly aware of the song ending; her eyes were clouded with tears. “It brings back memories of my parents, my real parents. I lost them long ago. I told you that once—didn’t I?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. When I play it helps me to remember as well.”

“What about your parents? Are they still alive?”

“Yes. They live in a nursing home a few blocks from here. They’re pretty comfortable. And still madly in love, which is a good thing because they went through so much to be together.”

“How so?”

“My mother came from a Jewish family in Moscow, and my father’s parents were anti-Semitic, a fact my father’s been ashamed of all his life. There was blood on the floor when my parents announced their wish to marry. They ended up eloping and escaped to America. Lucky for me I was born here and not over there. That picture,” he gestured toward the Chagall print, “reminds me of my parents.”

“A reproduction—right?”

“No. It’s an original. My grandmother gave it to my mother for her sixteenth birthday. The only family memento she took with her when she ran away.”

“Oh, that’s so romantic. And what about you? You were married, I think you once told me. But you never gave me any details.”

“Lucia and I met at college. At the time, we were full of high hopes. I wanted to teach economics, she took science courses and planned to go into medicine. Then she became pregnant.” His face darkened with the memories. “Our grand plans crashed on the rocks. I had to drop out of college to make money. That’s when I went to work for my uncle. She lost the baby while I was in Mexico checking on some oil suppliers. Over that year, we grew awkward together. The harder we tried to glue our relationship together, the more it fell apart. So we divorced. Eventually, she did become a doctor.”