I looked into Katherine’s eyes. Would I watch over her? Absolutely. I stroked her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips. Then my lips traced the same pattern. Eyelids, cheeks, mouth.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked when we stopped for a breath.
“Absolutely.”
“How did your pants get wet?” She lowered one hand and cupped it between my legs.
“Beer. An unfortunate accident.”
“You can’t be walking around all wet,” she said, unbuckling my belt. Then she unzipped my fly and helped me out of my pants.
The beer had soaked through to my boxers. “Wet also,” she said. “And hard, too.”
“Can’t imagine why,” I said.
Within seconds I was naked and then Katherine joined me. I lay on my back and Katherine straddled my hips. I thrust up into her, not hard but firm. She arched her back, dug her knees into my thighs, and pressed down against me. She slowly took in a breath, then just as slowly let it out. She did it again. And again.
The sound of Katherine about to reach a climax is the best part of making love for me, and as her breathing got more frenetic, I matched her until—
Our orgasms came in rolling waves, one after another, slowly subsiding until she let her body fall on top of mine. Then Katherine wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pressed her lips to my ear.
“I’m crazy in love with you,” she whispered.
“I love you, too,” I said. “Never thought I could love anybody like this. But here we are.”
We fell asleep like that.
Not a care in the world.
So incredibly naive.
Chapter 12
VADIM CHUKOV WAS a survivor. When a rival mob captured him, he managed to strangle his captors from the backseat of the car with their own handcuffs. When four prison guards beat him and locked him in solitary confinement, he escaped and lived to kill them and their families. Chukov had been stabbed four times, shot twice, and thrown off a speeding train. He’d be damned if he was going to die from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
He sat naked on the ceramic tiles of the steam room, a towel across his lap. His cell phone and a bronchodilator inhaler lay on the towel. Lifelines both.
Chukov had discovered cigarettes when he was eleven years old. Yava, the full-flavored Russian cancer sticks that gave a young street enforcer for the Solntsevskaya Bratva swagger, status, and eventually COPD.
Thirty-five years later, he was a slave to the steam, breathing in the moist heat almost every day to help open his inflamed lungs.
Most of the steam rooms in the city were magnets for fags and yuppies, but the Russian and Turkish Baths on East 10th Street were old school. Real tile, not that fiberglass and acrylic shit they were putting in those new hybrid steam rooms. And no pretty boys. At least not at this hour of the morning. He had the steam room to himself.
Chukov’s body was short, thick, and covered with curly black hair and sixteen tattoos. The rose, the tiger, the skulls — every blue line on his body told his history in the Russian Mafia to anyone who knew how to read it.
The cell phone rang. He was waiting for some good news that he could give to Prince. This had better be it. It wasn’t.
“Where’s my money?” the voice on the other end said.
It was the Ghost.
“Where are my diamonds, you prick?” Chukov came back angrily.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Ghost said. “All I know is we had a deal. I kept my end of it, you didn’t. Walter Zelvas is dead. My money hasn’t been transferred to the Caymans.”
“Why do you think I hired you to terminate Zelvas?” Chukov said. “He was skimming diamonds from the Syndicate. The diamonds weren’t in his apartment, so he must have taken them with him. You were the last to see him alive.”
“And if I don’t get my money, I’ll be the last one to see you alive.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chukov said.
“It means look to your left.”
Chukov turned his head. There was a red dot on the wall. It moved up to the ceiling, made a few S turns, danced back to the wall, and then landed on his chest.
He had to clench his sphincter for fear of shitting right there.
“You’re here?” Chukov said. “How did you find me here? How did you get in?”
“It’s what I get paid to do, remember? So pay me.”
“Be reasonable,” Chukov said. “Give me time to recover the missing diamonds.”
“Not…my…problem,” the Ghost said.
The red dot moved slowly down Chukov’s body to the roll of a lifetime of overindulgence around his belly and finally came to rest on the inhaler that sat on his lap.
Chukov was sweating profusely, not all of it from the steam. “Please,” he said.
“Lift up your skirt,” the Ghost said.
“What?”
“The towel. Lift it up.”
Chukov had faced death before. He beat it every time, but not by cringing in fear.
He ripped the towel off and stood up. Naked. Proud. Defiant.
“Fuck you,” he bellowed. “Vadim Chukov bows to no man.”
The words echoed off the tile walls.
Chapter 13
“WHERE’D YOU DO the seven?” the Ghost said.
“What?”
“I’m not interested in looking at your dick. I can read the tats. According to that star on your knee, you did seven years in prison. I asked you where.”
“Butyrka.” Chukov spat out the word. “Hellhole. I’d rather have gone to Siberia.”
“Put the towel back on and sit your fat ass down.”
Chukov wrapped the towel around his waist and sat. “If you can read tattoos, you know that the seven-pointed star on my knee means more than prison time.”
“I know. You’re a made man in the Russian Mafia.”
“I bow to no man.”
“I heard you the first time,” the Ghost said. “Were you a pakhan in the old country?”
Chukov inhaled deeply and filled his lungs with hot steam. “Nathaniel Prince was a pakhan. I’m a humble brigadier.”
“Brigadier, maybe,” the Ghost said. “But not so humble. Not if you choose to violate the Vorovskoy Zakon.”
Chukov exploded. “Bullshit. I have never violated the Thieves’ Code. I’ve been bound by it my entire life. Even in prison.”
“And I say you’ve desecrated rule number eighteen: Make good on promises given to other thieves.”
“That means nothing if you steal from me,” Chukov said.
“I killed a man for you, but I didn’t steal,” the Ghost said.
“How do I know you’re not lying?”
“You have two choices, Brigadier Chukov,” the Ghost said. “You either take my word for it and live by the code, or you don’t believe me and die in five seconds.”
The red dot made little circles on Chukov’s chest.
“Pyat,” the Ghost said, counting backward in Russian, “chetirye…tri…dva…odeen.”
“I’ll pay, I’ll pay,” Chukov said.
“Kogda?”
“You speak Russian?” Chukov said.
“Just the basic stuff you need in my line of work,” the Ghost said. “Like please, thank you, and when can I expect my money?”