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We take it steady until we’re through The Tunnel to avoid attracting attention, and Timur passes the time by regaling me with the night’s adventures.
“So I ran some screenshots of the security footage through my new toy,” he tells me. “I jacked a police scanner. It took less than an hour to jailbreak the thing, and I have to say, it’s useful. I’m never without it.”
“And it identified him straight away? Impressive. I’ll put one on my birthday list. Who was he?”
“A little weasel called Jake Northwood. He’s been pulled for assaults and petty robberies, but he fell off the police’s radar when he started working for Giovanni Moretti. Your cops are just as corrupt as ours in Chicago?”
“You bet. So, was he someone important?”
“To Don Moretti? Who cares? All I know is I disturbed his beauty sleep. When I told him why I was there, he started bleating about how Aldo Moretti made him do it. Wanted to make you suffer for insulting him.”
“By fucking with my car?” I laugh. “If that’s all the retribution I’m gonna have to deal with, I’ll consider myself suitably chastised.”
A woman in a tow truck cuts across two lanes, almost hitting us, and I almost sound the horn before I remember I’m playing at being a model citizen. No good getting stopped with a cool one in the trunk. I’d be able to pay my way out of it, but it’d get back to Vlad, and that’s a conversation I don’t wanna have.
I haven’t been to Harbortown for a while, but I know where I’m going—a logistics and shipping business we used to own. The current boss is an old guy called Jerry, and he takes acre of business; if we need a body gone, he will see to it. We don’t ask him how, and he doesn’t say, but I suspect more than a few of our enemies are rotting at the bottom of the adjacent river passage called, appropriately, The Kill.
Timur and I park in the lot. With very few words but a lot of money exchanged, Jerry relieves us of the corpse, loading it onto a flatbed trolley like it’s a roll of carpet.
“That’s that done,” I say as he trundles away, Jake’s head lolling off the back of the trolley. “For now. Don Moretti will be pissed when the finds out. And our dead friend never had a chance to tell me whether I gotta keep my guard up.”
Timur is piqued. “I dealt with it, didn’t I? I’ll keep the security footage, and if anything else kicks off, we’ll take it from there. I got your back.”
“What’s Sissi’s deal?” I ask. “He seems okay, but I’m not sure. Is business so bad in Chicago that he has to come sniffing around here?”
“He knew your Papa but always got on better with Vlad.” Timur lights a cigar, and I frown, opening a window. “Sissi wants a bigger slice of the action in New York, but don’t they all? Nothing wrong with ambition. He’s a friend to your family, so it’s not as though you lose out if he does gain a foothold.”
I ponder this on the drive back to Manhattan. Sissi Barone hasn’t given me a reason to doubt him, but something feels off, like a lullaby played in a minor key. Familiar, yet ominous. At least Timur can give me the backup I need without involving Vlad.
“I appreciate your help, bud,” I say, “but you gotta dial back your methods. When we met, you were a tech guy, an IT fraudster. When did you go wild?”
“I learned a ton under Sissi. You never heard what happened with his brother Michael?”
“No.”
Timur tosses the butt of his cigar out the window. “I caught him stealing from his own daughter’s trust fund that Sissi set up for her. Unencrypted the transaction history, and there was nothing more to be said. Sissi told me it was my opportunity to prove I could do what was necessary to take his brother’s place as his right-hand man, so I took Michael to a cemetery and buried the cunt alive.”
“You did what?” I ask, unable to keep the shock out of my voice. “I can’t imagine a worse way to go. That’s inhuman.”
“That’s what Sissi said,” Timur says. “Too late by then. I’m sure the bastard suffered plenty.”
I’m a lot less concerned about the Morettis now. Timur is not a man to trifle with any more than I am.
“I can see why Sissi wants you in his corner,” I say, “but I need you to understand that you aren’t a one-man rampage. Murder is routine but not indiscriminate, and I don’t want your neck on the line just because you wouldn’t play by the rules.” I shoot him a glance. “You’re not a mafia or bratva man. You’re expendable; if you don’t believe me, carry on the way you are. You’ll soon find out.”
“You’re not technically bratva either, but Vlad Kislev is allowing you to marry his little sister,” Timur says. “That’s trust that extends beyond a mere accident of birth. You can’t choose your blood, but you’ve found a genuine home and a family who have chosen to bring you into the fold. I envy you.”
I hope he’s right. My feelings for Lilyana are either a profound betrayal or the ultimate in devotion, depending on your perspective. Vlad and I are on opposite sides of the line, and only time will tell whether he comes around and realizes she’s the moon and stars to me.
Watching her fall apart under her own touch for the first time was something else. I upset her by leaving, but it meant I had the perfect excuse to retreat and allow the intensity of my feelings to subside. There’s never usually an upside to it when a man pulls up with a corpse in his car, so I should be grateful for small mercies.
The night is giving way to dawn, a pale haze rising behind the skyscrapers.
“Breakfast?” Timur asks.
“Nah. I have to sleep.”
“In that case, drop me at West 42nd so I can get a decent coffee.”
