Mike Faricy - Russian Roulette

It’s a lot of ‘maybes,’ but I had an idea. I skirt around the roughly six-block campus area, down to Marshall Avenue. It’s busy, lots of cars, people walking, there’s shops, a couple of restaurants, a lot of people on the street. I drive almost two miles, looking.

“You’re taking your sweet time getting me to the damn hospital,” Hale groaned.

I could see he was talking through clenched teeth.

“Yeah, okay, let’s get you there,” I said, picking up speed.

“I can hop on the interstate at Snelling and make up for lost time. I can see the stoplights for Snelling about three blocks ahead. I’ll take a left there and, and, and…”

I focused on a figure up ahead walking on the sidewalk, not running, but making pretty good time.

“Hale, look, up ahead, you see her, the red head? That our girl? The baseball cap, with the ponytail.”

Hale took a deep breath, exhaled, attempted to override the pain.

“Jesus, I don’t know.”

“How may women do you know go out to walk a couple of miles in boots with a pointed toe and six-inch heels?”

“Christ, go over the curb pull up alongside her. I’ll jump out,” he said.

“Are you kidding? And what, hope you land on top of her and pin her to the ground? You can’t chase her with that leg. Christ, you can barely stand.”

I pulled over to the curb.

“Give me your cuffs,” I said holding out my hand. “She’s focused on just moving away from here. I can come up behind and get close to her. You just be ready to pull up as soon as I’m there.”

He slapped the cuffs in my hand, and I was off walking quickly to catch up to her. Any sound I made moving along the sidewalk was drowned out by the constant flow of traffic. In short order I was no more than thirty yards behind her, Hale was creeping along behind me in the Hummer, a city bus coming up behind him. As the noise from the bus increased I began to run. It was an interesting experience. I don’t like to run, and I certainly hadn’t done it since the bomb blast last week. As the bus roared past I closed to within fifteen feet. More than one person on the bus was watching with a look on their face wondering exactly what in the hell I was going to do. I came up behind her, called out, “Nikki, Nikki.”

She turned around, reflexively, just as I leapt. I landed on top of her and knocked her to the ground. She got a solid elbow into the bridge of my nose just as we hit the ground together. I heard something crack. Somehow I got one of the cuffs around her wrist, then felt the nails from her free hand scrape down the side of my face. The Hummer was over the curb, screeching to a stop on the sidewalk. A second car screeched from somewhere.

She tried to knee me and I turned my thigh to block her. It still hurt. I was wrestling for her free hand, she gave me another elbow, this time to my mouth. God, that hurt.

I caught another elbow with my lip, twisted her hand behind her back, clamped the handcuffs around her wrist. I sat up on top of her, took a deep breath, and felt an explosion on the side of my head.

“The fuck you doing, buddy?” someone yelled. It wasn’t Hale. Another boot, this time to the back of my head partially knocking me off Nikki. I saw stars and things went black for a second or two.

“Get the hell off her, man. Get off. Leave her alone ya pervert!”

I was aware of two massive tree trunk legs stepping over Nikki and coming after me. I rolled a couple of times hoping to avoid the boots. It didn’t work. I caught a glimpse of Nikki up and running, then she was down on the ground again.

“Police, police,” I screamed. Two or three well-aimed kicks arrived before he stopped.

“You all cops?” followed by a pause that allowed the pain to begin to register. “Shit, sorry there, officer. I didn’t know. Honest.”

He was overly large. Shaggy brown hair, full beard, dirty Budweiser T-shirt, jeans, what felt like steel-toed boots and a very worried look on his face.

Hale had the MAC 10 pointed at the guy, his left foot had Nikki pinned to the ground by her ponytail.

The big man bent down to help me up.

“Shit, you all working undercover? I didn’t know, honest. I thought you were rapists or something, you know? Thought I was protecting that little gal is all. Man, you guys oughta wear a badge or something. Ain’t that the damn law?”

Hale grimaced, lifted his shirt, and exposed the badge pinned to his belt.

“Okay, there’s the damn badge, now beat it, before I charge you with interfering with an officer.”

“Look, didn’t mean no harm by it, like I said…”

“You wanna get charged or you wanna drive away and enjoy the rest of your day?”

“Drive away, I reckon.”

“Okay, good, right answer. So go, take off, get outta here.”

Hale phoned the Mikes and Gary. The Mikes transported Nikki back to the bunk bed dungeon. Gary drove us to the hospital, five stitches for me, and a walking cast for Hale’s broken ankle. It was after five before we got back and were able to begin talking with Nikki.

She was a little scuffed up from our grab. She wore no makeup and was even more beautiful in person than the photo of her standing naked on the beach. She was also more than a little suspicious, but then who could really blame her?

We were sitting on the couches. Hale was asking the questions, his injured ankle encased in a gray walking cast with his leg extended and resting on a stack of pizza delivery boxes.

I sat at the far end of the other couch, directly across from Nikki. I held a cold can of Coke wrapped in a T-shirt. I alternated pressing the can gingerly against the stitches on the broken bridge of my nose and then the stitches in my swollen bottom lip. It didn’t seem to be helping much.

Nikki was sitting in the corner of the couch, knees together, feet flat on the floor, arms folded tightly across her chest. She was looking at Hale, almost glaring at him, mouth set firmly, lips clamped. I could see her chest rising and falling with each breath, and I could hear her exhale.

“You knew Sergie Alekseeva?” Hale asked.

She nodded ever so slightly.

“Can you tell me anything about him?”

“I can tell you he is dead,” she said almost spitting the words out. Her accent was much more pronounced than Kerri’s and when she made the statement she raised her chin ever so slightly, but defiantly.

“Yeah, well, that was in all the papers, but can you tell me anything about him?”

“What is there to tell? A pig, better off he is dead.” It was almost as though she was talking to herself. She didn’t look at either of us, just stared blankly at the wall behind me.

“No argument from me,” Hale said. “But what we’re after, Nikki, is arresting Sergei’s father, Braco Alekseeva, and putting him in prison for good. We want to close down his organization. Understand?”

She gave no indication she had even heard him.

“We believe he’s involved in human trafficking. Transporting girls over here, forcing them to be prostitutes. Raping them, getting them hooked on drugs, ruining their lives, maybe even killing them. But we need more proof before we can arrest him.”

“You can’t stop him,” she said quietly, almost offhandedly, like it was a given, akin to darkness falling every night.

“We can’t stop him without help, and that’s where you come in. Look around you, you’re not in jail. I haven’t asked you what you were doing before we found you walking along the street. Right now, I don’t really care. I just need your help in bringing down Braco Alekseeva. That’s all I care about. I don’t care what you’ve done. I don’t care if you don’t have a visa or you don’t have a passport. Stopping Braco is the only thing I care about. And, when I’m finished with Braco, we’re going to shut down Kumarin and his gang down in Chicago. Now, I think we can help each another here, but it’s up to you.”