Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick (7 page)

17

The element of surprise worked in my favor, at least long enough for me to jump out of the car and run into the middle of Fifth Avenue, where I was almost hit by a limousine. I kept going, heading for the park. I didn't turn and I didn't look back, just pounding hard and fast for some other place where Gobi couldn't get me.

The park,
I thought—the park was safe. There were trees, rocks, water, none of the city elements that she'd be able to use to her favor. I had the BlackBerry in my hand and was trying to dial while I ran, which was almost impossible—but if I could hide somewhere long enough, then maybe I could call home, and the police.

Bursting through the grass, I ran past the pond and headed straight on through the darkness. I passed a jogger and startled some ducks, sending them flapping and squawking skyward. There was a pile of rocks up ahead, and maybe enough ground coverage to make a call. I scrambled up, clutching Gobi's phone, trying not to make too much noise as I panted for breath.

At the top, I stopped and looked back.

From here, the park looked empty.

I sucked in a deep, rib-aching breath and listened to the faint noises of the city filtering through the trees: voices, car horns, the horses from hansom cabs clip-clopping up along Central Park South. I inhaled New York and breathed out Perry Stormaire. The world smelled like budding leaves, algae, and fresh-cut grass. Given a moment of calm and sufficient oxygen, my mind flooded with images and jumbled thoughts. The old man choking on his own blood as he sloped to the floor of the bar ... Gobi clutching me tightly and staring right into my eyes ... the way that Milos had jerked backwards and gone pale when she gave her name. What had he meant about things being "regrettable"? How had he known her?

Keeping absolutely silent, I looked back down the walkway and saw nothing but trees and grass and the shimmering darkness of the pond. The traffic on Fifth Avenue was a world away. The loudest noise was the thudding of my own pulse, pushing on my eardrums. Looking up, I realized that I could see my dad's office building rising way up on Third Avenue. There were lights on at the top, one of the partners working late in the corner office.

I touched a button on the phone. The screen lit up instantly, casting a glow on my face. I dialed my home number and waited while it rang and rang.

Finally, Annie's voice answered:

"Hello?"

"Munchkin," I whispered. I could hear the TV in the background, music playing. She'd been listening to a lot of hip-hop and R&B since she'd turned twelve. "It's me."

"
Perry?
Where are you? Mom and Dad went to the city looking for you and Dad's super pi—"

"Annie, listen to me. You have to get out of the house, right now."

"What? Why?"

"It's not safe in there. You have to get out. Go to the Espenshades' down the street—just get out of there."

"Perry, it's like, midnight. I promised Mom I wouldn't leave the house. I'm not even supposed to answer the phone unless it's an emergency, and I'm like, how am I supposed to know it's an emergency unless I answer it, you know?" I heard her crunching on something, popcorn or nachos, followed by a slurp of soda. It made me feel better, knowing that she'd raided the pantry and was hanging out, alive, eating nachos. "Anyway, what are you doin'? You sound out of breath. Are you still in New York?"

"Annie, listen. There's a bomb in the basement."

"A what?"

"A bomb in the basement of our house."

"Ha-ha, very funny."

"I'm not joking. Gobi put it there."

"
Gobi?
Our foreign exchange student?"

"She's not a foreign exchange student—she's some kind of international assassin, and you have to get out of there, do you understand me?"

It was quiet for a long time, and the TV and music went away. Annie had either turned them off or gone into another room and shut the door.

"Munchkin? Are you still there?"

She breathed.

"
Annie?
"

"Do you promise this isn't some trick, Perry?" she said. "Because if it is, it's
really
mean."

"It's not a trick," I said.

"You swear?"

"I swear," I said. "Just get out of there."

"Okay."

"And call the police as soon as you get to the Espenshades'."

"Perry?"

"What?"

"I heard Gobi talking one night in her room when she didn't think anybody was there. I think she might have been talking about guns. She kept switching from English to Lithuanian. I didn't say anything because I thought I must have been hearing her wrong." Annie's voice warbled toward tears. "I'm kind of scared, Perry."

"Are you outside the house yet?"

"Yeah..."

"On the cordless?"

"Uh-huh..."

"Just keep walking," I said. "Get as far away from the house as you can. I'm going to stay on the phone till you get to the Espenshades' front door, okay?" I waited. "Annie?"

No answer. Had we lost the signal? Then I heard the sound of a car's motor getting louder.

"Annie, can you hear—"

"It's Mom and Dad!" Annie's voice burst out suddenly, full of relief. "Oh, Perry, they're
home!
They're back! It's okay!"

"Annie, wait! Tell them not to go in the—"

She was already gone.

18

I held up the phone, looking for the redial button.

From down below, at the bottom of the rock pile, I heard a click.

"Come down, Perry," Gobi said.

Shit.

"So are you going to kill me?" I asked.

"I do not want to." She stepped into the cast of a streetlight, her shadow stretched out behind her along the sidewalk like something cut from black felt by a pair of very sharp scissors. She was still carrying her big bag with her, dangling from one shoulder. The gun in her other hand was pointed straight at my head. "But you know I will if I have to."

"Then I might as well make it worth your while," I said, and I lifted her BlackBerry up and flung it as hard as I could toward the pond.

19

Watch it fly.

A small thing, the weight of a pigeon, five ounces of circuitry and technology pinwheeling through the night air, screen glinting briefly as it arced downward toward the water and disappeared.
Plip.
Not even a splash. A duck quacked once and flapped away—Requiem for a BlackBerry.

I watched the ripples spread, reflecting the city lights.

Gone.

The next thing I heard was Gobi scaling the rocks toward me, scraping and clamoring up like a force of nature. I was halfway down the other side when she grabbed me by the throat and pulled me in, our mouths close enough that I felt her hair brush against my face.

"You have caused me a great deal of unnecessary difficulty tonight, Perry."

"Gee, you know, I'm really sorry. Maybe if you hadn't dragged me along on this whole thing, it wouldn't have been such an inconvenience for you."

Her other arm snapped across my elbow, hooking me close and marching me back through the park to the pond. As we passed the pond, Gobi glanced over and shook her head. "That BlackBerry was my ... How do you say? Lifeline."

"So ... done for the night then?"

"Not even close."

Stepping back out onto Fifth Avenue, we stopped and looked back at the Sherry-Netherland. My dad's Jag was exactly where I'd left it in front of the hotel. Except now there were two NYPD cruisers parked in front and behind it, rolling their lights. An ambulance had pulled up in front of the canopied entrance, and it didn't take a psychic to guess the identity of the body being carried out on the litter. A small crowd of midnight gawkers had gathered under the clock. New York City had rubberneckers even at this time of night, I guessed, and they didn't seem to care who knew it.

"First the BlackBerry and now the car," Gobi said. "You are on a roll, Perry."

I tried to shrug again but couldn't pull it off. My shoulders felt fastened into place with a set of rusty bolts. Gobi stepped to the curb and hailed a cab.

"Brooklyn," she told the driver as she tossed the bag into the back and climbed in next to it. "Red Hook."

The cabbie started the meter and we swung into traffic.

"I thought we were going uptown," I said.

"That was before you interfered with my plans," Gobi whispered, not looking at me, leaning just enough that I could hear her. "Tonight was the only night that all five of my targets are going to be in the city. You have created another mess that needs taking care of. And this time you can take care of it yourself."

We rode along in silence, each lost in our own thoughts. I thought about Annie and my parents and wondered how they would react to what she told them about the bomb in the basement. I imagined my mom wanting to call the police and my dad dismissing the whole thing as ridiculous. He would probably march right down to the boiler room himself with a flashlight just to prove a point. When he actually found something—

Wait.

Annie had seen headlights pulling into our driveway and started running toward them. But what if it had been someone else? I assumed the men in the Hummer had the license plate number on the Jaguar. How long would it take to get my home address?

"We have to get back to Connecticut," I said. "Right now."

"That is impossible."

"Don't you get it? What if those two assholes in the Humvee decide to go up to my house and grab my sister?"

"They won't."

"How do you know that?"

"Because tonight their only orders are to kill us." She stared out the window, and I saw her reflection in the glass, pale and expressionless. "Me."

"Gobi."

"What is it?"

"That guy back at the hotel—when you told him that was your name, he looked like he'd seen a ghost."

No reply.

"He said that you being there was impossible," I said. "What did that mean?" I thought of the scar I'd seen across her throat when we were dancing, thread thin, like a flesh-colored choker underlying the half-heart pendant necklace that she was still wearing. "Who are you?"

She didn't budge.

"Damn it, talk to me.
Who are you?
"

Now she looked back at me, her green eyes full and hard and very bright.

"I am Death."

I felt an inward shudder pass over me, a reflexive tremor of dread. The first time I tried to speak, my throat was too dry and I had to swallow twice just to get enough moisture to form words. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You are in no position to question me, Perry." Her voice was brittle. "You must think of your family."

"Believe me, I am."

"Then for now at least, you will do as I say."

I thought about my little sister, alone in the house and frightened, and the two men with cropped military haircuts, how they had come after us downtown, and my fear crackled up into a sharp orange flame of fury. "You should never have brought my family into this. You had no right to do that."

"I did what was necessary."

"Putting Annie's life in danger? How does that help the plan?"

"It was an insurance policy, nothing more. Everything else is just a cover."

"What about when we were dancing?" I said. "Was that just part of the cover too?"

She turned back to the window, the lights of the city playing across our faces as the cab cut through the night.

"Gobi."

But she didn't look over again.

20

It was after midnight down at the waterfront in Red Hook when she told the cabbie to drop us off in front of a flat-faced brick building that looked as if it could have been a shoe factory from sixty years ago. It had since either been turned into an expensive piece of yuppie housing or left alone to die a substandard housing project—from here it was impossible to tell. Deserted streets and empty basketball courts with torn nets surrounded us. I found myself staring back across the bay at the Statue of Liberty. It looked like it was made of Legos.

Gobi put down her bag and pointed.

"Through there," she said, and I followed her gesture to a wrought-iron staircase curling down the side of the building toward a basement door where all light died. "You will go down those stairs and through that door. Ask for a man named Pasha Morozov. Tell him that you need the information on the final two targets for Gojiba."

"Why me?"

"Because all this is your fault. If you had not gotten rid of the BlackBerry, we would already be on our way."

"And you'd be happily killing people again."

"You are never going to stop me from achieving my goal, Perry. You ought to know that by now. Do you wish to know the definition of a tragic hero?"

"Not particularly."

"A tragic hero is an individual who, with every attempt to restore things to normal, only pushes himself further away from normalcy." She nodded. "That is you, Perry."

"Great," I said, and sighed. "At least you were paying attention in English Lit."

"Yes."

"Who is this Morozov guy anyway?"

"Surveillance specialist. A source of information."

"He's the guy who wiretapped our house for you?"

"Through a third party, yes. I do not speak directly to anyone. He does not know me."

"And he's just supposed to give me this information?"

"You may need to persuade him."

"Maybe you better come along," I said. "You know, just in case there's some misunderstanding."

"Don't worry." The corners of her mouth dimpled slightly. "I believe that he will recognize you."

"Why? Why would he recognize me? Wait—why are you smiling?"

"Because you are an idiot," she said. "Is this how you wish to gamble with your family's lives, standing out here arguing a point that you cannot win?"

"You realize if I die in there, then neither of us gets what we want."

Gobi nodded sagely. "Then do not die."

Taking in a breath, I started walking toward the building, approaching the staircase, and stopped. Down in the shadows just outside the door, something glimmered, a belt buckle or some metallic object flickering off the ambient light. It made me think of the fairy-tale troll that lived under the bridge, and I hesitated, feeling its eye upon me.

"I need to talk to Pasha."

The shadow-troll slithered into the light and revealed himself to be a hulking giant in a shiny red tracksuit with the sleeves shoved up to the elbow, exposing muscle-corded forearms that looked to be built out of dozens of clenched fists. His face was the biggest fist of all, with a knuckle for the nose and two cheap signet rings for eyes.

"Pasha Morozov," I said. "Is he in there?"

"No."

I glanced back at the street, but Gobi was gone.

"I need to speak to him. It's important. Please."

The guard had already started to slink back into the shadow.

"Tell him it's about Gobija Zaksauskas."

The guard froze and then reemerged, a scowl imprinted over the lower half of his face like a poorly healed incision. A moment later a door scraped open, throwing a wedge of dim light across the corrugated metal stairs. A murmur of faint cries and something else came from inside—a thick-throated snarling sound from the depths of the building, as if the darkness itself were fighting for its life. It started like a howl and ended with a high whinnying shriek, then fell silent.

The door clanked shut.

I looked at the stairs.

The door opened again and the guard stepped out.

"This way."

"Ah..." I said, "you know, actually, is there any way maybe he could come out here and talk to me?"

"No."

Inside, the howling snarl rose up a second time. "What's going on in there?" I asked. "Are you breeding wolves or something?"

The guard's expression didn't change. "Come, if you are coming. Otherwise—"

"Okay, all right." I stepped down the stairs, trying not to lose my footing, then went inside. A dirty, feral odor was wafting out. It reminded me of the Humane Society Animal Shelter in New Haven, where we'd once gone to adopt a cat for Annie's birthday, choosing from a hundred yowling, miserable animals. The smell of sawdust and ammonia stung my sinuses and made my eyes water. From inside I heard men's voices now, coming from somewhere in front of me.

The hallway was dark, the damp concrete floor cracked and uneven, the ceiling low enough that I had to stoop forward to keep from hitting my head. Twenty yards ahead, a room blazed with light. The men's voices rang out louder, cheering and shouting in another language—Russian, probably—and the slobbering, snarling, wild night noise burst up again, shaking the air around me. I felt my kidneys go loose, and my legs trembled once before seeming to disappear at the knees. I tried to think of anything I could do to avoid going any farther and instead heard the cold voice of dispassionate logic in the back of my mind.

Think of Annie and your family. If you don't do this, they're dead.

Gobi wouldn't really—

She might.

I took another step.

The room was packed with heavy, hard-looking men in shirtsleeves and suspenders, twenty or thirty of them, gathered around a pit that had been dug directly into the floor. They were all shouting and waving their arms, pumping cash-stuffed fists in the air. An empty cage stood off to one side, its door open. Edging closer, I saw something huge and black tied to a stake in the middle of the pit, jerking and snarling in its harness. It looked too big and round to be a dog.

After a second I realized it was a bear.

Two dogs—pit bulls, or some kind of half-breed variant of them—were in the pit with it, lunging and snapping at the bear while it swiped at them with its claws. The men surrounding the pit cheered louder. The primitive expressions on their faces made what was going on in the pit look positively sophisticated by comparison. Their cheering overwhelmed the roar of the bear. None of the men noticed that I was even there.

Then I saw Morozov.

I figured it must have been him because he was the only one who seemed completely disinterested in the bear-fight.

He slouched in the corner with his back to me, a sallow scarecrow lost in the folds of an oversize suit. Plasma TV screens, monitors, and electronics equipment surrounded him like a glowing blue nest, bathing his skin in a pale light that made him look like he might have suffered from some blood-borne disease in childhood from which he'd never fully recovered. A massive pair of headphones rested over his head.

I tapped him on the shoulder. "Pasha?" I asked, figuring we might as well start right off on a first-name basis.

He turned around slowly, showing me sunken eyes that never seemed to stop moving, and slipped off the headphones. Behind us, the bear gave a great, bellowing roar and I heard one of the dogs give a shrill yip of pain. The cheering rose up again.

"What is it?" he asked.

"My name is Perry Sto—"

His fist came down on the table hard enough to make the equipment shake. His expression did not change.

"That is not what I asked."

"I'm looking for information," I said. "I'm here with Gobija Zaksauskas."

"Impossible."

"Why?"

"Because." He glanced disinterestedly back at the room, and then at me. "Gobija Zaksauskas is dead."