James Baldwin - Burn Artist

“My boys!” She left her food to meet us halfway across the kitchen. She kissed Vassily briefly and platonically on the lips and face, and then bent down to kiss me on both cheeks. “Look at you both! Alexi Grigoriovich, you have dark rings around your eyes. You’re exhausted. Why aren’t you sleeping more?”

“Life and work,” I replied, shrugging. I tried to be nonchalant, but my stomach was hot and dry after the morning’s nightmare and subsequent puking. Mariya’s warm, blue-fur voice was a balm over the memories of my father.

“You know how it is. No rest for the wicked,” Vassily added.

Mariya clucked her tongue in disapproval, reaching out to straighten my collar. I let her. She was one of two people in the world I let touch me beyond a handshake or a pat on the back. “I swear, the pair of you look thinner every time I see you. You’re working too hard. Do I need to go and kick Rodion in the tuches ?” [16] Butt. Another Yiddish word.

“You could try.” Vassily grinned at the thought of it. “He’s got a pretty hard ass, though. I bet you could swipe a credit card down the middle of that thing.”

“ Oy gevalt. I swear, these friends of yours are going to kill you both one of these days.” Mariya tutted, hustling back to the stove. It was still early afternoon, and she was managing the kitchen by herself. The rush didn’t start until after four. “So, you’ve come here to eat my food and dirty my chairs, have you?”

“And drink your kompot ,” [17] A sweet, usually non-alcoholic drink made from fresh fruit steeped in sugar water and boiled. Steep it too long, and it might turn into Rakija. Vassily said. “Pretty much. Me and Alexi figured you’d want to see us before Court on Monday.”

“Nonono, Semych. Don’t remind me of that.” Mariya shook her head, scowling as she strained the dumplings out of the pot and heaped them on a plate. “I don’t even want to think about you in that place. Not to mention, prison. What a nightmare.”

“I’m not going to prison, Mari.”

She turned to look back at us. Like Vassily, she was black haired and blue eyed, tall, handsome, and hawkish. Brother and sister were almost the same height, an even six feet. Unlike Vassily, she had no tattoos and no scars gained from combat. She had lost both parents and three brothers to the criminal life, and the Organizatsiya was not for her. “That’s what Antoni thought, too.”

“Toni was put away for murder. The Fed arrested me for tax and credit card stuff.” Vassily waved her off with a long hand. “It’s not a big deal, sis.”

“It’s a big deal since RICO,” she retorted. “But ayy, let’s not talk about it. I don’t want to bring bad luck on us before we go to the courtroom. What do you boys want to eat?”

“I would dig the hell out of a chicken sandwich and some blintz,” Vassily replied.

Despite the heat, I was in the mood for something warm. “Veal pelmeni would be wonderful, Maritka. And coffee.”

“Go out back and wait, then.” She resumed dishing up, shooing us away with a hand. “I’ve got Vanya and his goons out front all wanting their food. After that, I’ll bring it out with some kompot .”

“Everything all right out there?” Vassily’s eyes narrowed imperceptibly. “They aren’t treating you badly, are they?”

“No no.” Mariya laughed, a warm, rich blue sound. “They’re all just hungry, Semych. Don’t worry about a thing.”

Nearly every day after elementary school, we had gone to Mariya’s shop to eat dinner and do our homework in the same empty storeroom. Mariya kept bulk ingredients in there these days, but the same wooden table and chairs Vassily and I had used as children was still in here. It was a pleasant, relaxing start to what was bound to be an interesting day scoping out Jacob Maslak and seeing what we could do to make his life a living hell.

The better part of any operation like this was surveillance. Surveillance is time-consuming and requires an earnest wetworker to be well prepared. Coffee is mandatory, as are binoculars, a notepad or tape recorder, and a hospital bedpan: the kind with the long neck and water-tight screw-on cap. All that coffee has to go somewhere, and I assure you that there is nothing worse than being six hours into a twelve-hour surveillance gig and knocking your improperly capped bedpan onto the floor of your car.

This job wasn’t likely to take twelve hours, but we stocked up just in case. Early Monday afternoon, Vassily and I rented a car under fake names with a fake credit card, a Town car with tinted windows and a low profile. Then, we headed for Maslak’s office.

CelTech was based out of an office two streets across from the Columbia University Medical Center. The building looked like a sapling struggling in the shade of a giant tree: or in this case, the monolithic parking garage just behind the building. We cruised down 163rd, looking out over the beige cube dug into its pit, but it was still a little early for the workers to be leaving.

I sucked on a tooth as I slowed for traffic. The street was one-way, narrowed by solid lines of parked cars to either side. “You know what he looks like, don’t you?”

“Yeah. White, five-foot eight. Trim build, dark hair, short beard. Ivy League cut, square face. He looks Hungarian to me, drives a black luxury sedan.” Vassily was in the back, watching the rear windows while I focused on the road.

“Which only narrows it to around eighty percent of all cars up and down this street,” I replied. “I really hope he doesn’t park in that multistory jungle we passed on the way here.

“Well NOW he has.” Vassily rolled his eyes. “Good one, Alexi. You jinxed us.”

“I can avert the jinx with a sacrifice,” I replied. “But the ritual has very particular requirements. For one thing, the sacrifice must be a smart-mouthed hohol —” [18] A racist term Russians typically use for Ukrainians.

“Hey! Fuck you!”

“- And he must be defenestrated at high speed on a New York City highway,” I continued, turning the corner. We had to go around again until we found a spot to set up.

“God, I hate you so much.”

“I know you do.” I eyed the huge parking garage on the way past it again. “You don’t have his home address? I know that neither Nicolai or Rodion do.”

“Nah. He gave an address, but Nic says he went to check it out and Maslak doesn’t live there. Makes sense to me… would you give your address out to people like us?”

“An excellent point.”

It was just after five when the first wave of staff poured out through the gate. We were able to mount a search while waiting for people to load into their cars and pull out onto the street. I finally grabbed a spot not too far down, and we began the anxious game of trying to spot our man in among the spreading streams of people.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long. I was keeping an eye forward and to my right, but it was Vassily who hissed with recognition. I turned around and followed his pointing finger as a knot of suits clambered up the stairs from building to gate, chatting and smoking. The man matching Maslak’s description was among them. He was a waspish, shrewd looking yuppie with a side-part and a suit which looked too expensive for his dowdy workplace. He also had the mannerisms of a nervous squirrel in the company of hawks: three larger, swarthy men who hung back at the fence line to finish their cigarettes.

“Hey, wait. Holy shit.” Vassily peered through the grayish window film, brow furrowed. “I know that guy.”

“Who? What?” I squinted, trying to see if I recognized any of his coworkers.