Yuri’s eyes bulged. “You’re Professor Brandon?
But I saw your picture online. It doesn’t look anything like you.”
“I got a makeover.”
“You looked better as a blonde.”
“So did your mother.” Then she turned to
Constantine. “Hurry up and kill this guy. I need a drink, if you
know what I mean.”
Yuri shook his head. “You can’t kill me,
sweetheart. Not if you want those letters.”
Oh, I want them,
Belial said.
And I already
know how to find them. Go ahead, little one.
Natalie stepped closer to Voloshin. She placed her
palms on either side of his face and stared into his eyes, watching for the
signs Belial had taught her. Voloshin clamped his lips shut and breathed
heavily through his nose, flaring his nostrils. His pupils dilated and
contracted in rapid succession. “You’re scared,” she said. “And you
should be.”
“Of you?” Voloshin hissed. “You’re a suit.”
“Is that what you think?” She shook her head.
“Belial taught me how to read people like you. I don’t need you to find
those letters because you’ve already told me where they are. They’re
here, someplace you can still get to them easily.” She snorted.
“You probably put them in a sock drawer or a shitty wall safe hidden behind a
painting.”
Yuri’s eyes widened. His pores began to release the
smell of fear, sharp like unwashed flesh. Belial nodded his
approval.
Very good, little one. We can kill him now.
No,
she thought. Then Belial tapped her with
his wing, setting off a firestorm behind her eyes. She gasped and dug her
fingers into the side of Yuri’s face to fight the pain.
“Enough,” Constantine said, pulling her back. “Are you
all right?”
“It’s Belial,” she said. “He wants to kill him.”
“Let me deal with Voloshin. Go check the house and see
what he’s hiding. If you find money or weapons, take them.”
She nodded, hurrying past Yuri into the kitchen and pulling
open the freezer door.
Please
, she prayed,
please let there be
vodka.
She reached for the plastic jug and gulped until the burn
became a tingle that numbed her to Belial’s words and wings. As the pain
subsided, she glanced at the yellow appliances and faded floral
wallpaper. A Russian-language calendar hung on the wall, but it wasn’t
displaying the current month—there weren’t enough days. On the counter, a
pumice stone and cracked bar of Lava soap lay together in a plastic dish.
She tilted her head, remembering Yuri’s pristine
fingernails—better cared for than most women’s. He wasn’t the one getting
down and dirty, cleaning up with pumice and Lava. And why hadn’t he
flipped the calendar to the right month?
Something’s not right
, she thought. If the
Romanov letters had been with this family for ninety years, why were they
surfacing now? What had changed? Someone else obviously lived here,
or had at one time. Someone who got his hands very dirty and still used a
Russian calendar. Why didn’t that person have a say in what happened to
them? Why wasn’t he here, participating in the negotiations? She
didn’t think he was dead. Yuri didn’t seem like the sentimental type who
would keep a dead man’s soap handy.
She pulled the calendar from its nail and flipped through it
until she figured out which month it had been left on: June. This
other person had been in the house until just last month. How long did it
take Yuri to hire a thug who could break into the embassy for him? She
put down the vodka bottle and headed for the staircase, where years of
footsteps had worn a gray path up the center of the mustard shag carpet.
She found three bedrooms upstairs. The first was a
makeshift home gym with free weights covered in dust and an over-the-door
resistance system she recognized from late-night infomercials. The second
room belonged to Yuri, filled with Patrick Nagel posters and dirty laundry.
But the third bedroom lay virtually empty. A single row of black garbage
bags sat lined up along the sliding closet door. She could still see
indentations in the carpet where pieces of furniture had rested for quite some
time.
She tore open the first plastic bag and lifted out a flannel
shirt with large tortoiseshell buttons. When she held it up to her
shoulders, the cuff hung limply three inches past her fingertips. It
smelled warm, like almonds and musk.
The rest of the bag held more worn clothing, including a
pair of pants with a photo in the back pocket. Its thin white border had
been trimmed with pinking shears and although the points were dull and bent,
the subject of the photo looked brand new: a 1964 Ford Falcon, parked in
front of the house. Yuri, she calculated, hadn’t even been out of diapers
in 1964.
As she inspected the bags, she realized there were several
things missing: pajamas, socks, underwear, t-shirts, and sweats. The bags
contained only work clothes, a few jackets, and blue jeans. As soon as
her mind created the list, she knew. The missing items were the types of
things her mother had sent her to her first sanitarium with.
A feeling of helplessness washed over her as she thought
about what Yuri had done. He’d packed off his father or grandfather so he
could steal his family’s legacy without anyone interfering.
Maybe
Belial was right
, she thought.
Maybe we should kill him.
She ran back to Yuri’s room and yanked open all the drawers
of his dresser, searching for anything to confirm her hunch. It wasn’t
hard to find, tucked against the right hand side of the top drawer. The
letter, written on Seashore Oaks stationery, was filled with the kind of
handwriting that wasn’t taught anymore, with slashes across the vertical length
of the number seven and long curlicues on the first stroke of the number
one. It was written in a mixture of Russian and English; the parts she
could read made her want to cry.
Please come
, the old man wrote.
It is lonely
and I have been ill. The nurses do not allow me to visit with the others
while I am sick. I remembered that I did not clean out the garage.
If you speak to the doctors once I am well, you could arrange for them to let
me come home, just for a weekend. Please, Yuri…I must see you.
“The hell with this,” she muttered, shoving the letter and
photo into her jacket pocket. She hurried back downstairs, eyes locked on
Yuri like a heat-seeking missile. He stood where she’d left him, with
Constantine’s gun trained on his chest. She went straight up to him, fist
clenched, and socked him in the jaw. “You fucking asshole! You
didn’t tell him, did you?”
Yuri threw up his hands to defend himself against a second
punch and looked to Constantine. “What the hell is she talking about?”
“Professor,” Constantine warned. “What’s going
on?”
Natalie ignored him. All she could think about was a
lonely and helpless old man who would die alone because he’d been sold out by
his own family. “You’re going to keep all the money for yourself and leave
him to die in that shithole!”
“You’re fucking crazy, lady.”
“Yes, I am, but I’m not disloyal! Belial was
right. You deserve to be killed. He wants me to slice you open with
a knife, and believe me, I do know how. See?” She held up her
forearm, pushed back her sleeves, and ran her finger the length of her
scar. “You can tell me what you want your obituary to say. I’ll
write in blood on your wall.”
Yuri pulled his arm back, as if to hit her.
“Go ahead,” Natalie said, thinking of what Belial would do
to Yuri if she let him. “You’ll only make it worse.”
“Shut up!” Yuri cried, loosing his arm. In an
instant, Constantine tossed his gun away and picked Yuri up around the
waist. Yuri’s blow glanced off Constantine’s shoulder, nowhere near its
intended target. Constantine slammed Yuri to the floor and knelt over
him, glowering. “If you touch her, I will kill you. Do you
understand?”
She saw Yuri’s eyes fill with angry tears. “I trusted
your government. I was trying to do you a favor.”
“Blackmail is not a favor. Give me the letters now.”
Yuri’s gaze flickered from wall to wall, as if searching for
an escape. “This isn’t right! You can’t just steal them from me.”
“The way you stole them from your family?” Natalie
asked. She picked up Constantine’s gun from the sofa and handed it to
him.
Yuri flinched as Constantine clicked off the safety.
“I didn’t know about the money until he was already in a home, I swear!
Don’t kill me.”
“I don’t believe you,” Natalie said.
“This is your last chance,” Constantine said, pressing the
Walther to Yuri’s temple. “Where are the letters?”
Yuri exhaled sharply, flinging spit onto his chin. His
cheeks were red and puffy and Natalie could see sweat stains beneath his
arms. “In the safe,” he mumbled. “Behind the painting.”
“I knew it,” she said.
“Bitch,” Yuri hissed.
“That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?” Constantine rocked
back on his heels, allowing Yuri to rise. “Now go get them.”
The smaller man rolled to his feet and made the sign against
the evil eye as he passed her. She flipped him off and watched him
scuttle toward the eastern wall of the living room. He lifted an ugly
seascape from its nail and leaned it against a console table.
Natalie saw the safe and her heart began to pound. She
was in the same room as letters written by two of the Romanovs.
Beth
is never going to believe this
, she thought.
I don’t even believe
it.
She stepped up to Yuri’s backside and peered over his
shoulder. A black combination safe had been built into the wall.
With three quick twirls of the dial, Yuri opened the latch. He pulled the
door forward slowly and Natalie held her breath as he reached into the square
black hole. But he didn’t pull out a piece of paper—he pulled out a
revolver, which he pressed to Natalie’s head. “I want my reward,” he
growled, clicking off the safety. “I want what Kadyrov promised
me.”
Constantine had already aimed the Walther at Yuri’s
head. “You won’t get it by killing her.”
“Are you sure about that?” He jabbed Natalie’s forehead
with the muzzle. “Reach into the safe and grab the box.”
Natalie swallowed thickly and looked to Constantine.
He nodded. She followed Yuri’s directions and reached into the safe,
pulling out a document-sized metal box. “Is there more?”
“No,” Yuri said. “Now go to the front door.”
Natalie clutched the box to her chest. “Where are we
going?”
“Shut up and walk!”
Again, her eyes sought Constantine’s. His face was
stretched taut like a trampoline. “Do it,” he said.
She obeyed, shuffling forward as slowly as she could.
Belial,
what do I do?
she asked. The angel lay strangely quiet, wings
outstretched over her brain.
I can duck, I can run, I can trip and
fall…please, help me…
Constantine’s face gave her no clues. His blue eyes
trained a laser-sharp focus on Yuri’s trigger finger.
The barrel of the gun was cold where it touched her
skin. The rest of her was sweating. She could feel drops of liquid
plunging from her shoulders to the band of her bra. The door was only
inches in front of her now. She reached out for the brass knob and gasped
when it began to move.
The door flew open, knocking her backward into Yuri.
“Candy gram,” a deep voice boomed.
July 2012
San Francisco, California
The pounding on the door sounded like a medieval battering
ram. Beth woke with the pirate book on her lap and one hand curled around
Seth’s baseball bat. Flashbulb memories of the night before popped into
her head: the prank calls, the 911 operator, the calm but patronizing deputy
dispatched to assure her she wasn’t in any danger.
A second set of violent knocks echoed in the downstairs
hallway. “I’m coming,” she grumbled, flinging back the covers and
reaching for a fleece bathrobe.
Seth cracked his door as she passed by, one hand grasping
Roosevelt’s collar. The dog barked and Seth hushed him with a nip to the
shoulder. “Mom, what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” she said, tying the robe’s belt tightly around
her waist. “Stay inside with Roo, okay?” She knelt down to pet
Roosevelt, thinking the ordinary gesture might comfort her son. But the
dog was impatient; he jumped up to meet her and scratched her across the
cheek. “Ow,” she said as Seth pushed Roosevelt back behind the
door. “I’m serious, kiddo. I’ll be back in a sec. Why don’t
you guys practice ‘sit’?”
She waited until Seth closed his door and stumbled
downstairs, groping for the doorknob. When she opened it, the morning
sunlight blinded her and she raised a hand to shield her eyes. A uniformed
man stood on her porch, clutching his belt uncomfortably. “Good morning,
ma’am. Inspector Lopez, SFPD,” he said, holding up his badge. “I
need to ask you a couple of questions about an incident that happened at an
apartment leased in your name. We think it might be connected to your 911
call last night.”
“What are you talking about?” she said, rubbing her
eyes. “What incident?”
“Do you currently rent unit #6 at 1490 Valencia?”
“My sister lives there. Is she all right?”
“Ms. Brandon, when was the last time you saw or heard from
your sister?”
A heat wave rocked her from head to toe. She’d had
hundreds of nightmares that began this way, with a police officer asking her to
come and identify Natalie’s body. Beth swallowed hard and forced her
voice to remain steady. “Three days ago. I called her last night
around midnight, but she didn’t answer. Tell me she’s okay.”