David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

“There ain’t no 14 thfloor there. If it’s the address I’m thinkin’ of, it’s a fuckin’ dry cleaner’s. Not even Russian. I think it’s maybe Korean. Japa-fuckin’-ese. Fuck do I know? Does a shitty job and there’s no more than four fuckin’ floors in the whole building. Maybe you got the address wrong.”

“It’s the right address.”

“I’m telling you: you’re wasting a favour.”

“A favour is mine to waste.”

“Up to you.”

“A favour . You owe me.”

“Fuck. All right, but you’re a fuckin’ idiot.”

“It’s important.”

“I get that sense, Amar. We’ll take care of it. I’ll send Montassini this afternoon.”

The telephone conversation he had just before he got on the trans-Atlantic flight to New York, not two days after the first, had a remarkably different tone to it:

“You weren’t fuckin’ kidding.” Bucci was giggling, like a kid who’d just found pirate treasure. “It’s there all right. It’s a fuckin’ ghost hotel. Never fuckin’ heard of it before you called me. Must have driven past it a million fuckin’ times — never saw it.”

“I’m coming out. Where shall we meet?”

“You’re comin’ out? Well fuck — I’m at the hotel right now. Trying to figure out what the fuck’s going on.”

“We have something in common then.”

“Fuckin’ right.”

Jack got into the small elevator with Shadak. Pressed 18 . “Mr. Bucci’s stayin’ in the bridal suite,” said Jack. Shadak took a step back — the old gangster was standing a bit too close, even for the tight elevator.

“You wear a lot of cologne,” said Shadak.

“You like it?” Jack gave Shadak a funny look.

“No,” said Shadak. He smiled, exuding all the good will and warmth that he could muster after seven hours in an airplane seat. “It makes me want to cut your fucking throat you piece of shit funnyboy.”

Jack took a step back and looked at his feet. Maybe, thought Shadak, he was thinking about the stories they told about him. The things he’d done to some of the others. That would be good.

The elevator lurched to a stop. Somewhere in its guts, a bell chimed. Then the door opened to the corridor of the 18 thfloor. A brass plaque announcing the bridal suite was fitted on the wall opposite them.

“I can find the rest of my way without you,” said Shadak. Jack didn’t argue. The door slid shut, and Amar Shadak set off to meet his nominal partner Gepetto Bucci on his own.

“You okay? You don’t look so fuckin’ good.”

“I swallowed the wrong way,” said Shadak. He set his bag down by a pressed-board wardrobe, and smiled at Bucci. The Italian looked older today, and smaller. His white hair, normally plastered back over his skull, was a bird’s nest. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes floated in the middle of raccoon-dark pits. The spot on the left side of his skull where the hair wouldn’t grow anymore was white as bone. He didn’t smile back.

“Sit down,” he said.

The old man was not alone in the bridal suite of the Emissary Hotel. There were three other guys there — two of them playing cards, another one back in the kitchenette, a cell phone at his ear. He was wearing a bright red Trekker’s Outfitting Co-op T-shirt. Shadak didn’t like it. He didn’t stop smiling, though.

“Can we talk alone?”

“Sit down ,” said Bucci. “No. Ordinarily fine. But not today. This place is too fucked up. It’s like a fuckin’ horror movie this hotel. You gotta observe the rules. Send a guy off into the crapper by himself, he’s likely to get his nuts ripped off with a fuckin’ weedwhacker, you know what I mean.”

Shadak didn’t, exactly. But he was used to that with Gepetto Bucci. He sat down. The two guys playing cards ignored him. The idiot in the TOC shirt turned away and whispered into his cell phone. Shadak decided he would keep his eye on that one.

“This is not a haunted hotel,” said Shadak. “But it’s good to be careful. How long have you been here?”

“A day and a night. When I heard back about how things went with your job — couldn’t believe it. So I sent some of my guys out here. Take a better look.”

“And they found this place deserted.”

“Deserted.” Bucci snorted. “Ali fuckin’ Baba’s cave, that’s what they found. Yeah — no one was here. But we got into the safe — took a look at what they got goin’ on in the basement. Fuck, Amar. Who is this Fyodor Kolyokov guy anyway? How long did you know about this place?”

Shadak didn’t answer. The guy at the phone was writing something down now. He was shaking his head.

“No fuckin’ guests — no fuckin’ staff. But cash — cash by the fuckin’ boatload.”

“Did you find the isolation tank?” said Shadak.

“You mean that UFO. Roswell thing on the 14th floor? Yeah. It was in the room with the two people we got for you.”

“And Fyodor Kolyokov was nowhere to be seen.”

Bucci made a face. “No. Not exactly. But what with everything in that basement — it’d be easy to make him go away.”

Shadak looked at him.

“Acid baths,” said Bucci. “There’s this room next to the laundry — with big bathtubs like in hospitals. Whole wall covered in brown fuckin’ jugs of hydrochloric acid. Place stank, too. Easiest fuckin’ thing, to take your pal Fyodor Kolyokov down there and make him disappear.”

“Yeah — like almost happened with fuckin’ Leo,” said one of the card players.

Shadak ignored him for now. “So you think Kolyokov is dead then,” he said.

“Don’t you?”

“I do think that. But I value your opinion.”

Bucci steepled his hands and frowned. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think he’s dead.”

“What about Kilodovich?”

“Kilodovich?”

“Alexei Kilodovich.” Shadak fished into his pocket and pulled out the old Polaroid — taken in better days, in the back of a Soviet jeep outside Kabul. They were both grinning like schoolboys, and they weren’t much older than that either. Bucci finally cracked a grin when he took the picture.

“Look at you,” he said. “Little fuckin’ Amar. That is you, right?”

“It was some time ago,” said Shadak. “Kilodovich is the one beside me.”

“Figured that out.” Bucci handed it back. “Never seen him. ’Course, judging from the time that picture must have been taken, he could have grown himself a new face by now. But I told you—” the smile slid off his own face, like a sheet of ice from a sharp awning “—nobody was here when we came.”

The TOC man put down the phone. “Hey,” he said, to Bucci. “We got another message.”

“Yeah? Excuse me for a second, Amar.” Bucci shifted around in his chair. “Montassini?”

“Montassini.”

“Where is he now? He get to fuckin’ Halifax yet?”

“Didn’t say where exactly. But I don’t think he’s in Halifax. Said he was on some kind of satellite phone.”

“Satellite phone? Fuckin’ Montassini! On a fuckin’ satellite phone! So anybody could be listening! Where the fuck is he?”

Shadak leaned forward with interest. “Halifax,” he said. “Satellite phone… Montassini… ” He snapped his fingers. “Ah! Wasn’t Montassini one of your Capos — one of the people we agreed you should send here for my favour? What has this to do with a satellite phone and the city of Halifax? Tell me what is going on here, Gepetto.”

Bucci turned to look at Shadak. He lips curled to say something — then he saw Shadak’s smile, the implicit menace of his Turkish associate’s chillingly accommodating demeanour.

“Take it easy,” said Bucci. “Don’t go fucked up on me, Amar. We’re talkin’, all right?”