“What do you get per baby?” Angie’s voice was weary with contempt.
“One thousand off my debt.”
“So you’ve got to get them five hundred and twenty-six babies before you’re off the hook?”
He gave that a resigned nod.
“How close are you?”
“Not close enough.”
My phone vibrated again. I looked at it. Same number. I put it back in my pocket.
My wife said, “You know even if you got them five hundred and twenty-six babies to sell on the black market . . .”
He finished the sentence. “They’ll never be done with me.”
“No.”
My cell vibrated a third time. I had a text message. I flipped the phone open.
Hey guy. Anser your
fucking phone. Sincerely
Yefim.
Dre took another hit from his flask. “You’re like a fifteen-year-old girl with that thing.”
“Yeah, well, you’d know all about that.”
My phone rang again. I got off the couch and walked out to the front porch. Amanda was right—from here, you could hear the brook gurgle.
“Hello.”
“Hello, my good guy. What you do with the Hummer?”
“I drove it over to the stadium and left it there.”
“Ha. That’s a good one. Maybe I see Belichick driving it one day in his hoodie.”
In spite of myself, I smiled.
“What’s up, Yefim?”
“Where you at, my friend?”
“Around. Why?”
“I thought maybe we could talk. Maybe we could help each other out here.”
“How’d you get my phone number?”
He laughed, a deep, long belly chuckle. “You know what day it is?”
“It’s Thursday.”
“It is Thursday, yes, my friend. And Friday is a big day.”
“Because you wanted Kenny and Helene to find you something by Friday.”
I could hear the snort through the phone. “Kenny and Helene couldn’t find a chicken in the chicken soup, my man. But you? I look in your eyes after I shoot that faggot car and I see you’re afraid—you’d be one icy fucker if you weren’t—but I also see you’re curious. You sitting there thinking, If this crazy Mordovian don’t pull this trigger, I’ve got to know why he points it at me in the first place. I see that in your eyes, man. I see it. You a type.”
“Yeah, what type?”
“The type keep coming. What’s that saying about size of the dog?”
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s—”
“The size of the fight in the little dog. Yeah.”
“Close enough.”
“So, I’ve got to figure you already know where this crazy Amanda is.”
“What makes you think she’s crazy?”
“She stole from us. That makes her fucking cuckoo clock, man. And if you don’t know where she is, I bet a bag of mice you’re close.”
“A bag of mice?”
“Old Mordovian expression.”
“Ah.”
“So where’s she at, my friend?”
“Let me ask you something first.”
“Shoot straight away.”
“What does she have that you want so bad?”
“You playing with me, guy?”
“No.”
“Making fun of Yefim?”
“Definitely not.”
“Then why you ask such a asshole-stupid question like that? You know what we want.”
“I honestly do not. I know you want Amanda and I know—”
“We don’t want Amanda, man. We want what she took. Kirill looks bad, man. He looks like he can’t find one little girl stole his property? The Chechens up the block? They’re starting to laugh, guy. We probably have to kill a few just to close their mouths, not have to look at their rotting fucking teeth.”
“So, what—?”
“The fucking baby! And the fucking cross! I need both. If that stupid card-junkie piece-of-shit doctor goes back to work and can find me another baby, I’ll give that one to Kirill, he won’t know the difference. But if I don’t have that cross and some baby by this weekend? It’s going to be a fucking bloodbath, guy.”
“And you’ll give me Sophie in exchange?”
“No, I won’t fucking give you Sophie. We’re not let’s-make-it-a-deal here. Yefim say he wants the baby and the cross, you bring me the baby and the cross. Otherwise, they sell this soup in the little towns along the Black Sea? Only get it in these little towns. It comes in a red can. Parts of you will be in those cans. Parts of your family too, guy.”
Neither of us said anything for a minute. The heel of my hand had turned dark red from clenching the phone and my pinkie had gone numb.
“You still there, my main man?”
“Go fuck yourself, Yefim.”
He gave that a low, soft laugh. “No. I fuck you, man. I fuck you and your wife and your little girl in Savannah.”
I looked out on the road. The tar was very black. It matched the tree trunks by the church. The clouds had dropped down the mountain and hovered just above the telephone wires that stretched the length of the road. The air was damp.
“You don’t think we watch you?” Yefim said. “You don’t think we have friends in Savannah? We have friends everywhere, guy. And, yeah, you got that big crazy Polack protecting your little girl so we lose a couple of guys taking them out. But that’s okay—we get more guys.”
I stood on the porch looking out on the road. When I spoke, the words came out clipped and harder than I intended. “Tell me about this cross.”
“The cross,” Yefim said, “is the Belarus Cross. It go back a thousand years, man. Some people call it the Varangian Cross, other people, they call it the Yaroslav Cross, but I always like Belarus Cross. No price on this thing, man. Prince Yaroslav, he pay the Varangians with this cross to kill his brother Boris in the unification war back in, like, 1010 or 1011. But then he miss the cross so much, after he become ruler of all Kievan Rus, he send some other Varangians against the first Varangians, and they kill them, bring the cross back to him. It was in the czar’s pocket back in ’17 when they put him against that basement wall and, boom, blow his brains out. Trotsky had it in Mexico with him when they ice-axed his head. That cross get around, man. Now Kirill get it, and he’s showing it off at party on Saturday. All the big fish be there, man. Real gangsta. And he need that cross.”