A Welcome Grave (35 page)

“I have told you before that I do not wish to be a part of this. The police found me over a mistake. I do not want to see more mistakes.”

“You’re more a part of it than you realize. Did you know there’s a warrant out for my arrest? They think I killed Jefferson. Actually, they think I
arranged
the murder. You’re the one they’re looking at for the killing, Thor.”

“This Doran, he is the one who killed him?”

“He says he didn’t.”

“Then who?”

“I don’t know, and right now I don’t care.” I lowered the bloody towel from my head, the wound finally beginning to clot, and twisted so I could face him. He hadn’t changed position, hadn’t so much as shifted since settling into the seat, but I saw that his gloved hands were clenched against his knees.

“I’ve got to get Amy back. That’s her name. Amy Ambrose. She’s an innocent in this, Thor. Other than making the mistake of knowing me, she’s got nothing to do with any of it. And they’ve got her right now.”

I was trying to keep my voice even, calm, but it wasn’t working. I knew Thor could hear the change, and when I looked back again his ice blue eyes searched mine.

“Help us find him, Thor.”

It was quiet. I knew better than to say anything else. He was considering, and all we could do was wait. It was as I had told Joe earlier—we were operating in a darker world now, and Thor was the guide we needed.

“This will not be an interview, the sort of thing you do in your investigations,” he said at last. “We will get the information that you want. But not in the way that you are used to getting it. And if we do get the name, if we do
learn who is involved in this, he will not be the sort of adversary you have dealt with before. He will be a professional at his job, and his job will be killing. This is the situation.”

“I understand that.”

He held my eyes for a long time, so long that I had to look away. Then he told us where to go.

T
he attorney’s name was J. D. Reed. He was not, Thor explained, the sort of attorney you approached to draw up a will or defend you in a small claims lawsuit. He was a mob lawyer, a con who’d passed the bar. Reed’s specialty wasn’t criminal defense, as I’d imagined, but tax law, or actually tax fraud. He got his start cooking books for a small-time hustler who owned a few bars around Cleveland. One of the bars was the River Wild. That was where Reed fell in with Dainius Belov, who eventually bought the place. The attorney wasn’t a member of the Russian mob by any stretch of the imagination, but he helped them, saved them dollars and eased them out of legal trouble at times. His contacts grew, and before long he was as connected to the organized crime scene as anyone in the city, a dirty lawyer who floated between the Russian mob and the Italians and any number of hustlers and cheats. The positive side about being so openly corrupt was that his network expanded easily. If you were dirty, and needed an attorney who was willing to help you along those lines, J. D. Reed was often the first name suggested. The criminal business world is not that different from the legitimate—word of mouth is key.

“He hides money,” Thor said, “and he does that well. Do it well enough, and people will come to know you. A certain kind of people.”

“He introduced Jefferson to you?”

“He arranged the meeting.”

Thor directed us into the underground parking garage of an old brick warehouse that had been converted into offices, still downtown, maybe twelve blocks from where we’d been. As Joe shut off the engine, Thor leaned forward so he could see us both.

“Whatever happens today,” he said, “will not be spoken of, to anyone. You understand the value of silence. You have proved that before. Do not forget its value today.”

“I won’t.”

He turned to Joe. “You will wait for us.”

“What?” Joe’s face clouded.

Thor didn’t respond, just gazed back at Joe, as if his silence were all the explanation he needed to provide. And it was. I understood, even if Joe did not. I’d been tested before, and passed. Joe had not seen the things that I had seen from Thor. He knew of them, but he had not seen them. As far as Thor was concerned, Joe had not proven himself yet. Not as I had.

Thor got out of the car and I followed, and we walked to the elevator. I touched the side of my head with my fingertips as we walked, and they came back flaked with dried blood. My head ached along the cut, but it was a dull pain.

When we got to the elevator, Thor pressed the button for the twelfth floor, the building’s highest.

“Are you sure he’ll be here?” I asked.

“He keeps his office and his apartment in the same building. They are connected. He is always here.”

Thor was still wearing the jacket and the gloves, and his face was empty, expressionless. He’d told me about Reed in his usual voice, that careful English without contractions or inflection. He never displayed emotion, not in his speech or in his face. It was the way he went through the world, leaving barely a ripple behind. Looking at him, I had the sense that he could pass right through the wall if he wanted to, leave me standing alone in the elevator wondering if I’d imagined his presence the whole time. I knew the cops on the organized crime task force had the same opinion of him.

The elevator door slid open with a chime, and we stepped out into an empty hallway, facing one closed door. There was no number or name on the door.

“Penthouse,” Thor said. He tried the handle and found it locked. There was a small intercom box beside the door. He pressed the button and waited. A few seconds later a disinterested voice came on.

“Yeah?”

“Thor.”

Static on the box, and then the voice came back, sounding decidedly less relaxed than in the initial greeting.

“Oh, okay, man. Sure. Sure. Um, come on in.”

There was a buzz, and then the lock ratcheted back and Thor pulled the handle and the door swung open. He stepped inside and I followed.

We were now standing in an open room that was half living quarters and half office. To my left was a U-shaped desk with two bookshelves and some filing cabinets behind it, plush leather chairs resting in front of the desk. A flat-screen television hung on the wall beside the bookshelves. On the other side of the desk was a small bar with a few bottles of wine and a crystal decanter filled with Scotch on top of it.

The office area then opened up into a sunken living room filled with more leather chairs, a sectional sofa, and a mammoth television. The far wall was composed of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the lift bridge over the Cuyahoga and the city beyond.

A short man with wet, curly black hair walked into the room. He had both hands clasped together and moved with the hurried steps of someone used to walking beside people with a much longer stride. He wore suit pants and a dress shirt with suspenders, the jacket missing. When he saw Thor, he picked up his pace even more, almost jogging across the living room with his hand extended. He saw me but didn’t give me more than a quick, curious glance. Thor commanded all of his attention.

“Hey, man, don’t get many surprise visits from you,” he said as he reached us, still with his hand outstretched.

Thor took Reed’s right hand in his own and yanked, hard. Reed stumbled, and then Thor put his left arm across the smaller man’s back and swept him forward, straight into a set of glass shelves. The shelves clattered together and one fell off its supports and hit the floor, but the tempered glass did not break. A small onyx sculpture and an ornate ashtray tumbled free and rolled to a stop near my feet. Reed floundered in the mess, regaining his balance just in time for Thor to spin him around and knee him in the groin. He hit him so hard that Reed was lifted up onto his toes before he fell to the ground and curled into a gasping ball of pain.

I’d been about as surprised as Reed by the sudden attack. Thor had given no sense of aggression until the moment he threw him into the shelves. Now he stood over him, blank-faced, watching as Reed writhed on the thick carpet, eyes streaming and mouth agape in agony.

“You gave my name to Alex Jefferson,” Thor said after a few minutes, when it looked like Reed’s breathing was almost back to normal. “I met with him to hear his proposition, and I told him he was confused. That should have been the end of it. It was not the end. Do you know who I have had to talk with since then? Who I have had to deal with because of your stupidity?”

Reed pulled himself into a sitting position, staring up at Thor with the eyes of a misbehaving child steeling himself for punishment. He shook his head but did not speak.

“Police detectives,” Thor said. “They have come to discuss Jefferson with me. They are very interested in my meeting with him. You can imagine that I do not appreciate the interest of these detectives. You can imagine that I do not appreciate you sending them to me.”

“I didn’t send them,” Reed said. His voice was choked with spit, his eyes still leaking tears.

“Yes, you did. You brought me into it.” Thor looked at me. “Tell him what is happening now.”

I knelt beside Reed, and he pushed himself away with the heels of his hands.

“Whoever Jefferson hired instead of Thor has kidnapped a woman. He kidnapped her to stop me from interfering. He’s trying to extort millions of dollars from Alex Jefferson’s wife. You sent Jefferson to him for help, but he turned on Jefferson.”

“Do you hear this?” Thor said. “Kidnapping. Do you know who becomes involved with kidnappings?”

Reed was silent until he saw Thor wanted a response, and then he spoke in a whisper. “The police.”

“The FBI,” Thor said. “Federal agents may be involved in this soon. They will talk to the police, who will tell them that they should talk to me. All of this, because of you.”

Reed was shaking his head again. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. All I did was facilitate a meeting between you and Alex. I didn’t know what he wanted. I just—”

Thor reached down and wrapped his fingers in Reed’s shiny curls. He tightened his grip and lifted, and Reed hissed with pain and stumbled to his feet, trying to lessen the pressure. Thor’s right hand slipped into his pocket and then came back out with the silver Buck hunting knife that he favored. His thumb flicked against it, and then the blade was open and at Reed’s throat.

“I do not want to hear your excuses, your whining like a child. You have brought this to me, and now you will tell exactly what we want to hear, and nothing more. Do you agree with this?”

“Yes,” Reed whispered. The knife blade had been pressed tight against his Adam’s apple, but now Thor lifted it and rotated it so the point was pressed into the bottom of Reed’s fleshy chin, the blade facing out.

“Nod your head if you agree,” Thor said.

“I agree.”

“I said nod your head.”

Reed swallowed, looking at Thor’s face. The knife blade was placed at the bottom of his chin, keeping him from moving his head, but he decided it was best to try to nod anyhow. He bobbed his head, Thor guiding the motion with the hand he still had wrapped in Reed’s hair. When Reed nodded, the knife point slid up his chin and back down. For a second there was just a thin white imprint from the folds at the bottom of his chin to his lower lip. Then it opened up and blood seeped through it.

“Good,” Thor said. “First question.” He looked at me. For a moment I just stared back at him. Then I realized he was waiting.

“Did Jefferson come back to you after Thor turned him down?” I asked.

Reed’s small brown eyes tightened as he stared back at me. He didn’t know me, but he blamed me for his current position, standing there with blood oozing down his chin and a Russian killer’s hand tearing his hair out at the roots. He answered the question, though.

“Yes.”

“Did you send him to someone else? Another person to help him with his problem?”

Reed hesitated this time, and Thor tightened his finger and pressed the tip of the knife into his chin, puncturing a deeper hole through his flesh.

“No,” Reed said, and he dropped his eyes as far as he could, trying to look down at the knife.

“You’re lying,” I said. “Who did you send him to?”

“I didn’t send him anywhere.”

“Give us the name.”

“I just told you that I didn’t send him to anyone else.”

Thor was watching me while he held Reed. Now he dropped his hand, snapped the knife shut, and put it back into his pocket. He stepped away from Reed.

“You think he is lying?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“I’m not lying, you asshole. I don’t even know what the hell you guys are doing here.” Reed wiped at his chin with his palm and smeared the blood, a hint of the bravado coming back as soon as the knife was gone from his face.

Thor walked away from us as if he’d lost interest in the discussion, went down the hallway, and disappeared into a room on the left. A second later a faucet squeaked and water began to run. Reed decided to take advantage of the momentary freedom and, casting a wary glance down the hall, hurried toward an end table with a telephone.

“I can call someone to remove you psychotics,” he said, reaching for the phone, “or you can leave on your own.”