Gregg Hurwitz - The Survivor

Abara lifted his hand, palm up, then let it clap down on his knee. “I don’t know how to help you, Nate.”

As he gazed across the locomotive controls, Nate caught the faintest glimmer of an idea.

He remembered Abara’s snicker when asked what the DA would need to make a conviction airtight. Flipping his daughter, maybe, in exchange for immunity on the drunk-driving murder.

And he’d told Nate earlier across that interrogation-room table, After the hit-and-run, she ran to Nebesa, a Ukrainian club-she’s there every fucking Tuesday.

He pulled his phone out and stared at the date stamped across the blue LED screen: October 30, Tuesday .

“Maybe,” Nate said, “I can figure out a way to help you. ”

Abara’s face swung around, and Nate could feel the weight of his stare. “I can’t be party to involving you in an investigation.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“Good.” They sat in the locomotive, staring through the windshield, going nowhere. After a time Abara bobbed his head thoughtfully. “But you know my cell-phone number already. If you wanted to send me a text, there’s not much I could do to dissuade you.”

“No, I suppose there’s not.”

Abara rose, slapping Nate on the shoulder as he headed out. “I would say, ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ but that’s all you seem to do.”

Gauche and trendy, Nebesa lived up to every stereotype of an Eastern European club. Movie-premiere searchlights swept the sky, Range Rovers and limos gleamed in parking spots, and the towering sign above the valets glowed violet. Many of the girls trickling in were indistinguishable from hookers, and the neckless doorman looked like an icebox in a knockoff suit.

With a neat stack of folded twenties in hand, Nate stepped past the red velvet rope and approached the overhang of the entrance, doing his best to firm his weak left ankle and keep his foot from dragging. The doorman gauged his approach, scowling, hands crossed at the crotch, one gripping the other at the wrist, a posture no doubt studied at bouncer school. He stared down at the bills, unimpressed, and then his eyes flicked up at Nate. His bearing and mien matched those of the other Ukrainian heavies, and sure enough the accent did, too: “Cannot come in.”

“Why?” Nate asked.

“You are not pretty enough.”

“Explains why you’re out here.”

The man had no eyebrows, but the glossy bulges of flesh above his eyes rose. He shifted slightly, his loafers inching out to shoulder width. Balancing his weight.

Another bouncer of equivalent size steamrolled out through the dark-tinted door. “Iss there problem?”

“No. Our friend is just leaving.”

The man nodded and withdrew back inside.

“I’m here on behalf of Pavlo Shevchenko,” Nate said. “I have a message for his daughter. He will be displeased if you interfere with his directive.”

The doorman sneered. “You do not look like friend of Mr. Shevchenko. You do not sound like friend of Mr. Shevchenko.”

Nate remained in place, keeping his stare even and, he hoped, menacing. Thumping bass vibrated through the walls of the club, and two women across the parking lot greeted each other with squeals of delight. The cut on Nate’s forehead tingled beneath the butterfly stitches.

The doorman breathed down on him for a moment or two. Then, affecting a bored expression, he calmly removed a slender but wicked-looking knife from inside his lapel. He touched the tip to just beneath Nate’s eye.

Nate didn’t flinch, didn’t take a step back.

The man let the point skim down across Nate’s lips, his throat, and come to a rest on the ball of his shoulder. He applied a bit of pressure.

Nate stepped forward into the blade.

It broke the surface tension of his skin cleanly, a spot of crimson spreading on his white shirt. The doorman pulled the knife back quickly, alarmed, but Nate gave him no space, leaning in until the hard edge rested across his own throat. He stared up at the bouncer’s wide face.

“Yeah,” Nate said, “but do I act like a friend of Mr. Shevchenko’s?”

“You act like crazy person.”

Nate pushed into the knife a bit more, feeling the pressure against his Adam’s apple. “Do you want to step aside, or do you want me to wake up Pavlo Shevchenko and ask him to handle this matter himself?”

The doorman withdrew the knife carefully and put it away. “She is in VIP booth on balcony.” His bare skull glistened. “I’m sorry, bro. We do not always know Mr. Shevchenko’s men-”

Nate moved past him, and the tinted door flew open as he neared, the backup bouncer nodding deferentially. The noise hit Nate like a truck, the strobe lights making him doubt his balance up the stairs. Despite the smoking ban, the air reeked of cigarettes. As he reached the landing, a girl with glassy eyes and a latex dress swiveled, lifting a maraschino cherry from an appletini and sucking it, twirling the stem languidly in his direction.

With its cabana-like drapery, cushioned benches, and rock-star view of the undulating dance floor, the VIP booth was clear enough. Boy-men clustered at the edge, bouncing, pumping fists in the air, and lifting their cell phones to record a scene blocked from Nate’s vantage. Making his way over, he saw the cause of the commotion-a blonde and a brunette, so skinny they seemed almost elongated, making out with each other as the onlookers whooped and filmed. The girls were really putting on a show, bumping and grinding, tongues flashing into view, long red nails running along endless stretches of stockinged thigh.

Nate pushed past the guys, through an effluvium of spicy cologne. “Anastasia Shevchenko?”

The blonde lifted her head dreamily. “It’s Nastya. What do you want?”

The guys with their cell phones bristled at the disruption, their complaints growing aggressive. Nate turned into them. “Get the fuck out of here. Go. Go. ”

They took note of his stitched forehead and the coaster-size bloodstain on his shirt and dissipated into the crowd. The brunette slid out of the booth, plucking at her miniskirt, and Nastya turned her glazed focus to Nate. Her sapphire eyes blazed, accenting perfect features. Her appearance was so striking it seemed almost fake.

She straightened her too-tight dress, cinched at her tiny waist with a throwback eighties studded belt. Her hands fumbled at a cobalt pack of Gauloises, and she lit up lazily. “Way to ruin the party.”

Nate slid into a seat opposite her. Took a breath to even himself out. “I know you were driving that car,” he said. “I know you killed that family.”

“Are you another relative?” she said, unfazed. “’Cuz I told you I can’t talk about all that. I know you need to blame someone, but it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.”

She jerked an inhale, the orange flare casting a glow across the left side of her face and illuminating for an instant the raised scar tissue laid like a twig across her porcelain cheek. The damage was all the more evident given her flawless skin. Nate reached across, took her chin, and turned her head, exposing the seam back by her ear. “Yeah? Then what’s that?”

She wrenched away, her first show of emotion. “I hit no one. I was at the club all night. My car was stolen from the valet here. I was struck in the face with a bottle during a fight on the dance floor.” Her voice had turned stiff, almost robotic.

“We both know that’s not true.”

“I hit no one ! I was at the club all night. My car was stolen from the valet here. I was struck in the face with a bottle during a fight on the dance floor.” She punched the words, aiming them like bullets across the table at Nate, but he had dealt with his own teenage daughter enough to see right through the shell of fury. He could sense the denial in her face, behind her eyes.