James Baldwin - Stained Glass

Much as I still didn’t want to rely on guns, lest a DOG emerge from them and kick my ass, this was a job that called for firearms. I had the Wardbreaker, my faithful old Commander, and my larger backup piece, a matte-black Glock 21. The Wardbreaker had never really been intended to be a frequent-fire workhorse: it carried nine .45 full-metal jackets and was meant to work in silence with its fixed magic. The Glock carried fifteen fragmentation rounds. It was noisy, short-range, and it left blow-out wounds that could fit a man’s fist. It was good for stopping people when they tried to run away.

I wrapped the eggs individually in washcloths borrowed from the vanity, and loaded into a backpack and under my suit jacket. It was near midnight by the time I’d fixed myself up with loaded magazines, rope, wire, knives, styptic and bandages.

I filled Binah’s food dish up like a little kibble mountain, and looked down at her with my hands on my hips. “Be good, girl. Don’t eat anything you shouldn’t. And don’t claw the curtains.”

“Mrra-oww.” Binah looked back up at me, tail flicking.

I turned and left her there. As I shut the door, she slipped out behind me, arching against my ankle.

“No. In you go.” I tried to push her in with my shoe. By way of reply, Binah latched onto my leg, clawed her way up my body, and clung to my shoulder with claws. Decision made, I left Talya on the phone and reused the car I’d taken to Moris’s place. The likelihood of being pulled up in this particular old piece of junk was low, and the drive wasn’t really that far.

There were a few places where I could reliably find Vanya, and I decided to go to the one where he spent the most time: the AEROMOR shipping yard. I’d never spent a huge amount of time with him before. Vanya ran his own Cell out of Red Hook and the bulk of my work was based in and around Brighton Beach and Queens. I knew he’d been brought into the Organizatsiya from Russia when I was a young boy. Back then, he’d been a stocky man with a beak nose and thinning brown hair. As an older man, he had morphed into a pasty, obese Jabba the Hutt clone who smacked his lips a lot, smoked imported East German cigarettes, had a thing for Orientalist decor and laughed whenever he spoke. He was a coward and a shrewd recruiter whose best skill was almost certainly his ability to manage people braver and more capable than himself. He’d hooked Vassily on coke and either masterminded or assisted in his physical and mental ruin. And he was a pedophile.

The main entry to the shipping yards was an archway off Van Brunt Street, the run-down road closest to the waterfront. It was also the most obvious, and the most heavily guarded. Van Brunt turned a sharp corner into Degraw Street, an old docklane lined with crumbling Italian, Chinese and Russian sweatshop warehouses. It smelled like old seafood, and it was backed up with cars and small trucks along one side. I parked my little car down near the end of the street, and put Binah down on the passenger side seat. In the dim glare of the streetlights, she looked up at me expectantly.

“We are so not doing this, Binah,” I said. “You’re a cat. I don’t care if you’re a familiar or not.”

The Siamese yawned, stretched, and hopped over my lap to paw at the door.

“No. I have limits.” I set her back on the seat. “ You are staying here.

Binah crouched down, growling with her ears pinned back to her skull, backing away from my hand.

“That’s better.” I went to open the door, and stopped as I saw what she had sensed. Lights, a car turning the corner. My gut twisted as a wave of cold washed over me, and the parasite in my gut stirred. Cutting through the stale air of the docks was the whiff of something unpleasantly familiar: a smell like rotting flesh and burnt sugar. A Violet smell. The smell of DOG.

Binah growled again. I let go of the door and drew my pistol, submerging in the shadows of the dash as headlights bloomed down along the street and glazed the dusty windows. Seconds later, a car rumbled by, pulling in several spaces behind.

Doors opened, then slammed above the buzz of male voices talking. There was a ‘choonk’ sound, the sound of a trunk being popped.

The gnawing in my chest built slowly, creeping up a little more with every sound outside. I rubbed my gloved finger against the grip of the Glock in my hand… and tensed as a metal door banged open, only a few cars up from my position.

“Come on, man. What’s the deal?” A brusque voice with a pronounced Long Island accent could be heard through the door. “You got it?”

“What does it fuckin’ look like?” Someone snapped back, his English heavily accented. “Stop jacking off and come and help me.”

A high, feral, garbling scream of rage burst out into the air. It was the kind of noise I’d always imagined an angry mongoose makes, and it cut suddenly and with a strange finality with the slam of a head against a hard surface.

“What’s the matter? You want some more dick, is that it?” Long Island raised his voice. I heard scuffles, thumps, and then silence. “Slanty-eyed faggot.”

I startled at the use of the slur. An Asian man? Was that Angkor?

“Get it him in trunk already. The Deacon’s waiting.” The Russian-accented man sounded anxious.

“The Deacon will get his,” the other man grouched. “Like I give fuck.”

“You’ll give fuck if we end up under knife, instead of this spooky little cocksucker.”

There is a saying in Ukrainian: Meni tse treba yak zuby v dupi . Roughly translated, it means: “I need this like I need teeth in my ass.”

I risked a periscope peek over the back of the driver’s side chair, forming a rough plan of assault. If I got out there in a duck and roll, I could probably shoot out the tires and then the men inside and pull their victim out. Even as I was thinking it, the front doors slammed and the engine of the getaway car thrummed to life.

“Shit.” Plan B it was, then – and not a bad plan, anyway, because they were about to lead me to deeper waters. Whoever ‘The Deacon’ was, I was pretty sure I needed to meet them.

The car pulled ahead of me, trundling without haste, and rounded the corner. I started up and followed after, just a little faster than I’d seen them leave. The headlights stayed off as I rumbled along behind, watching as they picked up speed down Van Brunt Street and turned down Hamilton Avenue.

“Where are you boys headed…?” I mused aloud as we drove parallel to the expressway, heading towards the entry ramp. “Back to Brighton Beach?”

But they didn’t get onto the highway. Instead, they turned right onto Columbia Street, a long road that led down to the Red Hook waterfront. I tailed them at the furthest distance I could stand, watching as they followed the street around, all the way past the Red Hook park, and then turned a sharp left into a dirt and gravel lot just before the wharf. I knew that road. It led to the Red Hook Grain Terminal.

“Well then.” I accelerated the short way to the gate and came to a sharp stop, wincing as the tires shrieked for a moment on the road. I backed it up and turned so that the car pointed in the direction of escape instead of towards Gowanus Bay, cut the engine, and checked my weapons before getting out, cat in tow.

The air near the waterfront reeked like shit and dead seagulls, an awful, headache-inducing cocktail of rot and chemicals that made it the ideal location for a NO-inspired cult sacrifice. The Grain Terminal loomed like a concrete sarcophagus in the distance, illuminated by the full moon that was now heading for the horizon. For a moment, I wondered if I had done another stupid thing by not waiting for the Big Cat Crew. The Grain Terminal was enormous, and by the time I got there, Angkor was going to be long gone. If they were executing him, they’d do whatever they were going to do and dump his body in the canal before I even reached the outhouse.