A table had smashed through the right-hand window, followed by two young guys trading blows with broken bottles.
The long-haired guy had staggered to his feet only to be knocked down again by the Uzbek. The two of them were rolling around on the ground-a blur of gouging, biting, and punching.
The tall woman had removed her heels, dragged herself upright, and begun to rain down stiletto blows on the pimp’s bald head, which already looked like a ball of vanilla ice cream covered in raspberry sauce. Then a miniskirted woman wearing a cheap fur coat emerged from the bar, took a snub-nose from her purse, and shot the young guy in the stomach at point-blank range.
Bon was ecstatic-reveling in the kind of sustained excitement he usually reserved for watching Chan-wook Park’s vengeance trilogy back-to-back. He was laughing hysterically and pounding away at the steering wheel.
Jonny was mesmerized, but not by the blood and the violence. He was already thinking about all the things he could do with this technology at his disposal. Then he noticed Bon’s pounding of the wheel-the big man was now really having a go at it.
“Hey,” Jonny called to him, tapping his helmet.
Bon turned, his face twisted in a ferocious look of aggression that startled Jonny, so much so that it pushed aside his empire-building fantasies. It also made him fail to notice the incessant vibrating and pulsing blue-white light of his Samsung smart phone as it sat on the cabin floor by his feet and rang away.
“HE’S NOT PICKING UP,” Ae-Cha told Koschey, fear raising her voice to a higher pitch.
“Try him again,” he rasped, his eyes resonating with deadly intent.
Ae-Cha nodded tensely, and hit the Call button a second time.
AN ONSLAUGHT OF QUESTIONS battered me as I surveyed the chaotic aftermath of the shoot-out at the Green Dragon.
A team of paramedics was already here and tending to Jaffee, who was going to be all right. Gaines, on the other hand, was probably dead before he hit the ground. The waiter, too. Some patrons had been injured in the mad scramble to get out of the place, but none seriously. And, of course, Ae-Cha was gone, which had caused her aunt and several of her relatives who worked there to freak out with worry.
I tried to block out the cacophony and focus on what had just happened and why it had happened. I hadn’t expected our shooter to show up. He had Sokolov. Why had he come here? Why this late, this urgently? What the hell else did he want?
He had to be here for Jonny. But Jonny wasn’t part of this. He’d only helped Sokolov. He wasn’t a threat to him, in the sense that he couldn’t ID him. I didn’t think Ivan was petty enough to come out here for revenge, either. And he took Ae-Cha. Only reason for that would be leverage over Jonny.
Had Sokolov given Jonny something to hang on to for safekeeping? Something Ivan was after?
Then it hit me.
The van.
Jonny had lied about where he’d dumped it. Then he’d gone out soon after we’d questioned him about it. And now this.
It had to be the van. Sokolov had hidden something in it.
I grabbed my phone and called Kanigher.
“That APB on the van. Send it out again, priority one, tristate. That’s what our shooter’s after. We have to find that goddamn van before he does.”
THE SOUND OF AUTOMATIC weapon fire punched through Jonny’s ear protectors, forcing his mind away from Bon’s sneering face and back to the side street off Brighton Beach Avenue.
There were now at least a couple dozen people out on the sidewalk, all involved in one, large, messy, lethal fight-either one-on-one or locked in a Grand Theft Auto version of a bar brawl. Inside the bar was no different.
Jonny was enjoying the spectacle, the sensation amplified by the cocaine lighting up his neurons, but Bon was getting too agitated. Jonny knew it was only a matter of time before the cops arrived and that the wise move was for them to leave before that happened, but he was finding it hard to tear himself away from the show.
He scanned the street ahead and checked the van’s mirrors, scrutinizing the night for any telltale sign of spinning lights, when the blue light inside the van caught the corner of his eye.
His phone was glowing.
The display said: AE-CHA.
Jonny stared at it, uncertain about whether or not to take it. This was really going to mess up his high and kill the moment. He felt a chill as he imagined what she was probably calling about, this late at night: Jachin. Maybe she knew. Maybe she’d heard. And if so, he could just imagine the state she might be in, given how she felt for his now-dead friend.
He hesitated, then decided not to take the call.
He stared at it with a heavy heart as it droned on in silence, its blue light coming on and off hauntingly inside the dark cabin of the van, its ringtone muted by the big ear protectors on his head-then Bon lashed out, twisting around and slamming his big fists into the partition wall behind his seat like a caged animal on a rampage.
Jonny flinched and shouted to Shin, “Kill it!”
Shin punched in the first preset, the one that hadn’t had a discernible effect, just as Jonny grabbed the phone. And at that same moment, a police cruiser came around the corner, lights spinning.
“Get us out of here,” Jonny barked at Bon.
The big man looked at him with a dazed expression.
“Pulgarasi, we need to move.”
Bon stared at him for a second, then sat back down, threw the van into gear and floored the pedal.
Jonny looked back, watched as the police car pulled in outside the restaurant, then breathed out and answered his call. “Ae-Cha.”
It wasn’t Ae-Cha.
It was a voice he’d heard before, out on the docks that night, with Sokolov.
“Where are you, Jonny?”
44
Officers Kaluta and Talaoc pulled in across the street from Lolita and scrambled out of their squad car. Kaluta froze in place as his mind registered the sheer horror of the scene outside the restaurant.
It was unlike anything he’d ever witnessed before.
People were trading blows or facing off with one another with knives and broken bottles in their hands, but they were outnumbered by those who either lay dead or dying on the sidewalk. Men and women who’d clearly dressed up for a night on the town were on the ground, writhing pathetically or limping away, their clothes ripped to shreds, their faces locked in expressions of confusion and silent terror. Blood was everywhere and on everyone, a tableau from a zombie movie come to life.
“What do we do?” Kaluta asked his partner as he drew his gun.
Talaoc didn’t answer immediately. Something else had caught his eye, just as they were rushing up to the restaurant. A van had just stormed away and was turning off onto another street. A white panel van, with a refrigeration unit on its roof. Same kind of van that was on the priority APB that had just flashed up on the squad car’s computer screen.
Talaoc hit the Call button on his radio just as two other squad cars swarmed in.
“YOU HURT ONE HAIR OF-”
“Shut the fuck up and listen,” the Russian hissed. “I don’t care about her. You’ll get her back in one piece. I just want the van.”
Jonny’s mouth dried up.
The Russian didn’t leave him time to even think about how to handle it. “I know you have it. Don’t lie if you want her to live. I can make things very long and painful for her. Then I’ll come for you.”
The Russian’s words, the coke, the emotions of the whole damn night-Jonny’s mind was frazzled. He could barely think straight. Yes, of course, his first instinct was a desperate urge to hang on to the van, at any cost. But this was Ae-Cha the bastard was talking about. Ae-Cha, his aunt’s only daughter. His Ae-Cha.