James Patterson - Kill Me If You Can

“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.

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.

“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? ”

“I’ll transfer it immediately.”

The red dot disappeared from Chukov’s chest.

“Spasibo,” the Ghost said. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”

“We’re not done,” Chukov said. “I have another job for you.”

“I’m listening.”

“I accept that you didn’t take the diamonds,” Chukov said. “I want you to find out who did.”

“Then kill the mudak and return the diamonds to you,” the Ghost said. “Da?”

“Da,” Chukov said, followed by a wet, croupy laugh.

“I want double what you paid me for Zelvas.”

Chukov choked on his own laugh. “Double? Are you crazy?”

“It costs more when I have to figure out who the target is,” the Ghost said. “Plus, I figure getting back all those diamonds ought to be worth something to you.”

“Maybe ten percent more,” Chukov said.

“Double,” the Ghost said. “Take it or…”

The red dot reappeared on Chukov’s chest.

“…leave it.”

Chukov took it. “All right. I’ll pay double, but only if I get the diamonds back.”

“Then we’re in business again,” the Ghost said.

Chukov looked down at his chest, waiting for the red dot to disappear. It didn’t. “You can take the gun off me now,” he said.

There was no answer.

Chukov sat there sweating, but the dot didn’t move. It took him a full minute until he realized — the dot was never going to move. The laser beam was on autopilot.

Cursing, Chukov stood up and followed the red line through the steam to its source. It wasn’t even a gun. It was a cheap key-chain laser pointer resting on a block of wet tile.

The Ghost, of course, was long gone.

CHUKOV SHOWERED, DRESSED, took a cab home, and begrudgingly transferred the money to pay for eliminating Zelvas.