Authors: Owen Laukkanen
THE DRAGON
had brought her a cocktail dress.
It was a pretty little number, short and flirty. Catalina studied herself in the mirror and wondered how the Dragon had guessed her size. It fit perfectly, clung to her waist and her hips before falling loosely to mid-thigh. Only in the bust was there room for improvement, and there wasn’t much she could do about that.
She fixed her makeup in the bathroom mirror, feeling increasingly absurd. He’d brought her heels, too; she resembled an actress, or maybe just an expensive prostitute. She’d never worn makeup before, struggled to apply her mascara. The Dragon knocked on the door. “Hurry up, little one,” he said. “You’ve taken long enough in there.”
She applied some lipstick. Good enough. She wasn’t going to slave away to make herself look pretty just so he could—
Just so he could what?
She forced the thought from her mind. She knew what the Dragon wanted from her. She knew he would probably get it. She could only hope that he would decide not to bother Irina any longer, or her parents, if she gave it to him willingly.
A storm was descending on the city when she tottered out of the bathroom, unsteady on her brand-new high heels. She struggled to maintain her balance as she walked out to the living area. The Dragon had dimmed the lights in the dining room, lit candles and set them on his ugly table. There was a meal waiting for her. A bottle of wine. The Dragon stood at the head of the table. He wore a dinner jacket. He looked as absurd as she felt, with his big beard and unkempt hair, his toothy, wicked smile. Behind him, sheets of rain pelted the window.
The Dragon licked his lips when he saw her. “You’re the perfect prize,” he told her, eyeing her up and down. “Come sit down.”
Catalina froze. Every instinct she had told her to run, run as fast as she could, kick off those heels and bolt for the door. She didn’t, though. She knew the Dragon would catch her. She swallowed her fear and walked to her chair.
The Dragon waited until she’d sat at the table. He filled her glass with wine, loaded her plate. “I ordered in,” he told her. “Duck. Have you tried duck before, girl?”
Catalina shook her head no. The man was jumpy, she noticed. Erratic. His eyes were alight, his wicked smile wide. Catalina watched him, unnerved by his agitation. Wondered how long he would keep up this stupid game.
“Drink up,” he told her, motioning to her wineglass. “We have a long night ahead of us.”
She picked up the glass, hesitant. Sipped the wine. The Dragon smiled at her again. Sat back and admired her as the storm began in earnest outside.
L
E
PLAVY BROUGHT THE RAIN
with him. It started slow enough, a few scattered drops here and there, but when the storm arrived, it came for real, sending lashing sheets of water down on the crashed Durango and the body of the Acura driver, on Stevens and Windermere, and the rest of the FBI agents, medical personnel, and local police who stood guarding the scene.
They’d found another body in the Durango. The driver, a young guy with a bullet in his head. He’d been shot in the stomach, too.
“The guy drove until he couldn’t drive anymore,” Windermere said, ducking into the Charger with Stevens to wait out the storm. “As soon as he crashed, our passenger killed him. Then he ducked out and killed our man here for his car.”
“Didn’t want to leave a witness,” Stevens said. “Even if they played on the same team.”
Windermere looked across the service road at the Durango, where Agent LePlavy was pacing, talking on his cell phone. “So who was he?” she said. “Is this the guy we’re looking for, Stevens? Is this guy the Dragon?”
Stevens thought about it. “With the thug at the lot and this guy in the truck, that makes three men at the scene,” he said. “Irina only saw two. This guy’s probably management, whoever he is.”
“And we lost him.” Windermere ran her hands through her hair. “I cannot believe we let that asshole get away.”
“We have him scared now,” Stevens said. “Scared people make mistakes. Sooner or later, we’ll smoke him out of hiding.”
“You believe that?”
“I do,” he said.
Windermere said nothing. Pursed her lips. Stevens cocked his head. “What?”
“I was just thinking,” she said, “if you’re right and we are scaring these guys. You remember what they did when they couldn’t get to Irina?”
“They went after her sister,” Stevens said. “They doubled down on Catalina.”
“So maybe call your family,” Windermere said. “Tell them to hole up somewhere, just in case. Better safe than sorry, if these bastards get desperate.”
Stevens didn’t say anything. Was still saying nothing when LePlavy came over, slid into the backseat, soaking wet from the rain.
“We ID’d the bodies,” he told them as lightning flashed above. “Marek Costel, back at the container yard. This guy in the truck is named Sladjan Dodrescu.”
“Sladjan Dodrescu,” Windermere repeated. “I won’t ask you to spell it. Either of these guys into anything major?”
“Couple bids for assault, B and E, stuff like that. Probably they’re just thugs, pawns in the game.”
“We need the king, LePlavy,” Windermere said. “How do we get him?”
“Container yard’s registered to a numbered company out of Malta. I forwarded the details to Interpol, waiting to hear back, probably not going to get much out of them.”
He looked at them. “There was a little house on that property, too,” he said. “A jail cell inside, iron bars and everything. Nobody there, though. They’re all gone.”
“Jesus,” Windermere said. “We need something here, Zach. Anything. What do you have?”
LePlavy paged through his notebook. “I have an address on Sladjan Dodrescu,” he said. “You want to take a look?”
“Probably not going to get much,” Windermere said. “But we’ll check it out anyway. Meanwhile, you find us something better.”
“I’ll try,” LePlavy said.
“Do, or do not,” Windermere said. “There is no try.”
TWELVE HUNDRED MILES
from New Jersey, Derek Mathers sat at his desk in the FBI’s Brooklyn Center fortress, listening in on the Minneapolis PD scanner and wondering how the hell he’d get Windermere back if he let Irina Milosovici slip through his fingers.
He’d been sitting at his desk for hours, watching the time tick away on his computer clock, cold-calling every police agency in the region and hoping somebody would come up with a lead on the missing woman. The scanners had been silent, and the phone calls yielded nothing. Irina Milosovici was a full-on ghost.
Mathers’s stomach rumbled, and he tried to remember the last time he’d eaten anything. Couldn’t. He pushed back from his computer, figured maybe he’d raid the vending machines down the hall. Then the scanner lit up through his headphones and he wasn’t thinking about food anymore.
Some kind of stabbing, the 4th Precinct. A girl outside a convenience store, one man injured. “Girl tried to steal some food from the store and bolted,” the dispatcher said. “The clerk followed her outside, and she attacked a bystander with a piece of broken glass.”
Mathers pulled back up to his computer. Fiddled with the volume and listened some more. Got nearly nothing. A patrol car nearby had taken the call, and that was pretty much that.
So he picked up his phone. Called Minneapolis PD, introduced himself, and asked for more information. Got—predictably—not much, but they patched him through to the dispatcher.
“White girl, dark hair, wearing jeans and a T-shirt,” the dispatcher said. “Maybe twenty or so. Store owner didn’t have much of a description. Guess he wasn’t really speaking good English.”
“Yeah,” Mathers said. “Thanks anyway.”
White girl, dark hair. Jeans and a T-shirt. Could be anybody. Still, Mathers was curious. And he was hungry, and he knew a decent burger joint in the 4th, not too far away from the scene of the stabbing.
He poked his head into Drew Harris’s office. “Headed out, boss,” he said. “Might have something on big sister.”
Harris looked up from a tuna sandwich. “Yeah?” he said, chewing.
“Some white girl just stabbed a dude with a piece of broken glass in the 4th. Kind of matches Irina’s description. I figure it’s worth a look, anyway.”
“No doubt.” Harris regarded his sandwich with distaste. “You pass by the Burger Barn, pick me up a bacon double.”
> > >
MATHERS DROVE SOUTH
from Brooklyn Center in a motor pool Impala. Followed the highway into the 4th Precinct: heavy industry, rail yards, low-income housing facing the tracks. Found the convenience store without much of a problem.
His stomach still growling, he parked the Impala beside a Minneapolis PD cruiser and climbed out of the car. Found the uniform administering first aid to a young black kid in a baggy Tupac T-shirt. The kid was bleeding from his arm, but it wasn’t bad. He seemed more embarrassed than injured.
Mathers flipped his badge open, showed it to the kid. “You’re the guy she stabbed, I guess.”
The kid spat. “Fucking bitch.”
“How’d it happen?”
“I was just standing here, man.” The kid scowled. “Yo, I already said this. Why I gotta do it again?”
“Just talk,” Mathers told him. “Sooner you talk, sooner you’re out of here.”
The kid glared at him. “Look, man, I was just minding my own business. The bitch come running out, trips and falls. I walk over like, you know, need some help or whatever, she spins around and sliced me open.”
“She say anything to you?”
The kid squinted. “What?”
“The girl. Did she say anything to you? Anything at all.”
“Nah, man.” The kid shook his head. “I was speaking to her, but it wasn’t like she knew what I was saying. She looked
scared
, though.”
Probably terrified out of her mind, Mathers thought. “What’d she look like?”
The kid sighed and scuffed his shoes. Then he told Mathers what he already figured. The girl who’d robbed the store was Irina Milosovici. Pale skin. Dark hair. Pretty face. Same clothes she’d been wearing when she bolted from the safe house.
“Call this in to your dispatch,” Mathers told the uniform. “I need all available units looking for this girl at the FBI’s request, got it?” He paused. “And see if you can get me a translator.”
LLOYD WAS WAITING
when Volovoi arrived at the Dragon’s warehouse.
It was a little brick building in downtown Manhattan, Alphabet City, plain and nondescript. Graffiti-covered walls, few windows. Volovoi parked his soldier’s BMW in the little loading area behind the warehouse, pulled in close behind Lloyd’s car, a fancy gray Bentley. He climbed from the BMW and hurried through the rain to the building’s back door, unlocked it, and stepped inside, dripping wet. There was a soldier waiting inside, Tomas. Another idiot.
“Get the girls,” Volovoi told him. “Line them up for the buyer. And make sure the blondes are in front.”
He watched Lloyd hurry across the parking lot, struggling with his umbrella as forked lightning licked at the skyline beyond.
This was it, Volovoi knew. This was the do-or-die moment. The FBI was no doubt investigating Marek Costel and Sladjan Dodrescu. Even if both men were dead, their families would talk. Their friends. Sooner or later, the FBI would trace the goons back to Andrei Volovoi. Soon enough, Volovoi figured, he’d see his own face on the news.
He would have to sell the girls quickly, as many as possible. Unload them before Lloyd and his friends found out about the FBI investigation. They would cancel their connection the moment they felt the heat. Their interest in the Dragon’s women would evaporate. And then what?
The Dragon wouldn’t get his money. He would punish Volovoi for it. And if he couldn’t get to Volovoi, he would punish Veronika and Adriana, his little nieces, instead. He would not rest until he’d exacted his due.
Volovoi chased the thought away. Never mind that. He would sell the girls to Lloyd and his friends. He would deal with the Dragon when he needed to.
Footsteps from the hallway. The girls, tottering up from the basement in short dresses and heels, made up like movie stars, prom queens. Volovoi followed them into the main room, looked them over. They shied away, wide-eyed and nervous.
“Behave yourselves,” he told them. “This is your chance to make an impression. Believe me, what this man and his friends have in mind for you is nothing compared to what will happen if you disappoint me.”
The girls said nothing. They were young, very young, but they had cleaned up nicely. Lloyd would be pleased.
Speaking of Lloyd—
Volovoi turned back to the door, just as Lloyd arrived. “Mr. Lloyd,” he said, ushering the man in. “Welcome. I hope you are ready to buy.”
THERE WAS A GIRL
in Sladjan Dodrescu’s house. Her name was Lola Rosario.
“Yeah, I been seeing Sladjan,” she told Stevens and Windermere, once she’d let them into the filthy living room and out of the rain. After they’d explained the situation, the dead man in the Durango. “I guess you could say he was my boyfriend.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Windermere said. “Any idea what your boyfriend was doing at the harbor today?”
Rosario shifted on the couch. Brushed aside a stale corn chip. Dabbed at her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said. “He wasn’t here, was he? Dude worked all the time. How should I know?”
“What kind of work was he into?” Stevens asked her.
“What’s this about, anyway?” Rosario said. “You said he was shot, right? So why the hell are you coming at me for?”
“It’s FBI shit,” Windermere said. “Let’s cut to it.”
“I really don’t know what he was doing,” Rosario said, shrugging. “Probably driving around in his Durango or whatever. It’s not like I was dating him for so long, you know?”
“Still, you’ve got to know something,” Windermere said. “I know he had to come home some nights, complain about his job, right?”
“Everyone complains about their job,” Stevens said.
“Sure he did, he was always bitching,” Rosario said. Then she brightened. “Oh, shit, I remember. He was real proud of himself, too.” She looked around. “I guess, like, a couple of his coworkers got fired or something, so he was thinking he was going to get promoted. Like, most of the time he just sits around and doesn’t do much, I guess, but these other guys, they did a lot of travel for work and stuff, a lot of really interesting shit. So he was excited.”
Stevens and Windermere swapped glances. “The drivers,” Windermere said. “You know where he did all this sitting around, Lola?”
“I mean, I don’t know, like, what he did for a living, but I kind of know
where
,” Rosario said. “This dude’s loft in Newark. I think it was his boss’s place.”
“Sure,” Stevens said. “You think you could find this loft for us?”
Rosario nodded. “I’ve been there a couple times, for parties and stuff,” she said. She paused. “You’re going to get the guy who did Sladjan, right?”
Windermere looked at Stevens again. “Yeah,” she said. “We’re going to get him.”