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The second young man interjects, jutting his chin in the air.
“We still gonna get paid?”
“For what? You can’t do the job Jacek hired you for. You’re lucky I don’t make you pay me for lying and wasting my time.”
The one who asked about getting paid swings at Aleksei, who grabs his wrist and twists it behind his back as he slams him face down on the hood.
“Come at me again, and I’ll break every fucking bone in your body before I dump you in the East River. Drowning is an agonizing death, but with your body shattered into tiny pieces under your skin, you won’t be able to swim. Fuck around and find out.”
He gives the kid another shove before he steps back.
“I have another job for you. Let’s see if you can manage it.”
The guy with the dashcam steps between them.
“What is it?”
“There’re flammables in barrels just inside the fence.” He points. “Pour them everywhere, then get out.”
“That’s it?”
I can’t tell who said that. The guys sound a lot alike, and they’re standing too close to the car for the camera to catch their faces. But I can see Aleksei’s. Something about it makes my skin crawl.
“Yeah.”
“Do you want us to drop a match or something? The place’ll light up like the Fourth of July.”
“Will it?”
The two young guys laugh, but Aleksei barely cracks a smile. Oh, fuck. I whisper in Gabriele’s ear.
“That stuff they carried in were explosives, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And Aleksei knows, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
I turn back to the TV and watch in horror as the two guys break into the lumberyard again. I can’t see or hear anything, but Aleksei casually walks toward the open fence. He doesn’t get closer to the gate, but he stands in front of it.
Before I can guess what’s going to happen, he draws his gun and fires three times. Two go in the same direction. Through the gate and into the guys doing his dirty work. The third bullet hits something metal and causes a spark. I hear the plunk of metal hitting metal, then there’s a whoosh as the spark catches whatever they poured all over the lumber and supplies.
“What was that?”
“Micronized copper azole. It’s used to treat lumber. But in the state it was in, it was basically tiny copper pieces suspended in water. Along with other chemicals that get mixed in, it’s highly flammable. Not what you’d expect for something that goes on wood. It took very little to ignite that place.”
I keep watching the video as Aleksei watches the flames spread. He walks away as calm as can be and gets into his Range Rover. He drives away, and you can see his taillights in the distance just before the explosion. A fire ball leaps into the air before it appears to spread to the four corners of the Earth. Really, it spreads across the entire lumberyard and over to the construction site. Both areas go up in a blaze within minutes. Debris lands on the car and shakes the camera, but it keeps recording.
Sirens approach, and we watch firefighters work. Salvatore fast forwards through most of it until there’s just some smoldering piles of ash. I recognize Philip Morris when he arrives. He talks to the fire chief and some other people before another firefighter leads him into the crime scene. He looks around then comes back over to his car, which he parked near the one the victim drove. I hear him talking to someone just outside the dashcam’s focal range. He asks the first question.
“You know who owns this place?”
“Yeah. Some guy in Connecticut. He owns a bunch of condo communities and was starting a new one here.”
“Who worked for him?”
“Mostly Russian and some other Eastern Europeans.”
