Blackbird (21 page)

It was pretty late when they led me into my cell and I met my cellmate. I didn’t know what to expect. He was on the bottom bunk, reading a book propped open in the biggest, hairiest hands I’ve ever seen. Every part of him was hairy except for his shiny bald egg head. I thought he was fat at first but he was all mass, moving with a strange grace when I walked into the cell carrying an armful of cheap, stiff linens. My mattress looked more like a blanket. It didn’t matter. It could be a king-size memory foam whatever and it would be the worst bed in the world without Eve. It was starting to sink in that it was all over, that I would never be waking up next to her again. I must have just stood there for a while.

“Vitali,” my cellmate announced, thrusting out his hand.

I dropped my things on the top bunk and took his hand. He gave me a firm, almost brutal shake.

“Victor.”

“I know who you are. I have pulled strings to make sure you are bunked here. You are Victor Amsel. They call me Vitali the Hammer.”

Oh shit.
That
Vitali.

“What are you doing here?”

I probably shouldn’t have shown fear, but at that moment I was scared shitless. This was the Vitali that Brittany was always talking about, the one I was supposed to be setting up to take a fall along with Martin.

“You are afraid I am going to kill you.”

I blinked a few times. “Yeah.”

“I would not kill you. I would have someone else kill you. I am not wanting to go to supermax.” His Russian accent started poking out, rounding out his vowels, making him sound a little harsh. “No. I bring you here because I am wanting to be your friend.”

“I’ve been told not to make friends here,” I said.

Actually, no one told me that. I saw it in a movie. Also, it made a hell of a lot of sense. Vitali was not the kind of guy I wanted on my speed dial.

“Five years will be a long time,” he said, folding his hands between his legs. “I have been here for two already, and I am looking at six more. I am behaving but they will be strict with me.”

“I see,” I said. “Well, good luck with that.”

I climbed up on that top bunk.

“If you will not let me help you, I will have to use you.”

I froze, sitting there. There wasn’t much room. My head brushed the ceiling and I flopped down.

“Use me how?”

“You will help me destroy Martin. You can do this and gain from it, or you can be forced.”

“I’m not doing anything that’s going to keep me in here longer, and I don’t want to have any trouble with you, but I’m not going to put myself in your debt either.”

He sighed. “You should hear me out. You wouldn’t want this Eve to have an accident, would you?”

I sat up. “What?”

I also hit my head on the ceiling, and went crashing back down. Fuck. I was out of the bunk and on my feet in seconds, seeing red. I didn’t care if I spent the rest of my life in this shithole, nobody was going to use Eve against me. Nobody was going to threaten her.

Vitali sat up.

“You are hotheaded. I was like this in my youth.”

“Listen, fuckhead. You put one hand on Eve and I’ll fucking kill you. You have to sleep sometime.”

“I won’t put a hand on her. Friends of mine will do that, and more. After what Martin did to me, I should feed him her liver, but I don’t think he would care. Martin is not like other men. He does not
feel
. I would be more frightened of him in this room than all your youthful bluster. In any case, if you threaten me again, Eve will suffer the consequences. Now sit down and we will talk.”

There was no where to sit, besides his bunk, but the toilet. I sat on the toilet and propped my cheek on my chin.

“Good. Now you are listening, I am speaking. I have plan to deal with Martin and return to you what is yours, minus some, shall we say, recompense for my situation. Two years ago, Martin betrayed me to police. Arranged that I would be caught red handed.”

“He’s been sending you money, though,” I said. “To a bunch of fake Russian companies…”

“All his, created with me. When he decided he no longer had use of my services, he disposed of me. I think I should consider myself lucky. If our situations were reversed, I would have had him killed.” Vitali shrugged.

The causal way he said it made me shudder.

“This is agreement. You work for me, help me undo Martin. I leave girl alone, cut you in.”

“Define ‘cut me in’. I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”

“No, no, bad for business. I only torture and kill men who screw me over. Fulfill your end of the agreement and it is done when it is done, no more between us. Yes?”

I looked around. With my luck, this was another setup.

“You refuse, Eve has trouble.”

“Fine, fine, god damn it,” I snapped. “What do I have to do?”

“Wait,” said Vitali. “For five long years, wait, learn, and prepare. Then Martin will wish he had never been born.”

Wait I did. I waited, and waited, and waited.

After the end of the first month, I thought I was going crazy. That was when Mom came to visit me. The only time she came to visit me. I sat in the visiting room, my leg jagging up and down as I scrubbed my hands through my hair. It wasn’t like the movies, with the glass partition and the phone. It was just a table in a room, though I was shackled to the floor by the ankles. I sat there wringing my hands for an hour, forgot the shackles, and tried to stand up when she came in.

She looked
bad
. She must have lost twenty pounds, she was pale, her skin was waxy. She walked over to the table and sat down and stared at me flatly.

“How could you?”

“
Mom?”
I choked out. “You can’t believe this. I didn’t do anything.”

She shook her head. “Victor, it was all going to be yours. Why did you do this?” She snorted. “I should have known. I’d hoped you were just going through a phase, with all those girls. When you started seeing Eve I really thought you loved her. You were sleeping with that slut almost the whole time, weren’t you?”

“No.
No,
Mom, I swear.”

“They showed us pictures. Pictures of you eating with her. Holding hands.”

“For Christ’s sake, Mom,” I pleaded, “she touched my hand. I pulled away…”

It hit me then like a ton of bricks. It was
 
all
 
a setup, the whole fucking routine. She touched my hand for the benefit of the photographer they had following me.

Martin saw the end was near. He had to know I’d have him out of there the instant I had legal control of the company. How many favors did he call in? I never had a chance. My lawyers could have called Jesus Christ to the witness stand to testify in my defense and the jury would still have convicted me. I just spared Eve some suffering by keeping her off the stand. The result would have been the same. How long had he been planning this? Since that day he tried to drive her away? Before she started college?

Since I met her? Was this the plan the whole time, drive a wedge into my family?

Holy God, if I couldn’t inherit, which I now could not, the entire estate reverted to my mother.

Who had, no doubt, made Eve her sole beneficiary. She was like a daughter to her.

“Mom?” I said, softly. “What’s wrong?’

“I had to see you again. I’m dying, Victor. I have lung cancer.”

I blurted out, “but you don’t
smoke
.”

She started laughing, and stopped herself when it turned into a wet, thick cough. “I know. It’s hilarious. First I lose my husband, and now this. Eve is devastated, Victor. She cries day and night. She missed her final exams. She thought you loved her.”

“I do, I do I swear. I signed a plea deal so she wouldn’t have to testify. I’d do anything. Please tell her, Mom. I love her. Look at me.
Look at me.
”

She looked at me. From her eyes, you’d think she was dead already.

There was a sliver of doubt there, though. Just a touch.

No matter what, she was still my Mom.

“I might tell her, when she calms down and can think rationally. She really does love you, Victor. I don’t know what it’s going to do to her, going through this.”

She stood up. Time was up.

Before she left she said, “Wait. I do know. It’s going to make her like
him.”

She coughed again.

“Mom,” I said. “I love you.”

She walked out. They closed the door.

Five years is a long time.

Chapter Eighteen

Evelyn

Neither of us speaks for a long time.

Finally, I clear my throat, and fill the air. “You claim it was all a setup,” I say, softly.

Victor looks at me. His face is hard but his eyes, his eyes are pleading.

“It was. I swear to God, they made it all up. It was a trick. I never thought they would try to make it look like I was sleeping with Brittany.”

“You weren’t sleeping with her,” I say.

“No. I swear it on my mother’s grave. I was not sleeping with Brittany Andrews. Or anybody else after I met you. Not since the
day
I met you. I even had some girl pawing at me at our parents’ wedding.”

“I remember that, you blew her off.”

“I would again, and again, every time for a thousand years for you, Eve. I love you.”

The words hit me like hammers. I. Love. You.

I want to say it back, but if it was true I wouldn’t have believed the lies, would I?

“You took the conviction to spare me?”

He looks up at me and nods, slowly. “Yeah. I knew it would be brutal for you if they put you on the stand, and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it. My lawyers couldn’t even stop it. The whole thing was crooked. Your father had control of the money, and money buys power.”

I shake my head. He stands up and walks over to the bed. I hug my knees to my chest and curl up, waiting.
 
He sits down. I look over through the fringe of my hair as he sits on the bed and, gingerly, reaches out and touches my back.

My voice comes out tiny, childlike. I can’t help it.

“A-after that your Mom got really bad,” I blurt out. “She got sick very fast. It was weeks. She spent the last two months in the hospital. I visited her every day even when I was supposed to be studying. Father pulled strings and got my degree conferred on me on time. He moved all of your stuff out of your room.”

He tugs on the hood of my sweatshirt.

“You kept this.”

I nod, and sniff back tears. “I used to sleep in it. I hid it from him so he wouldn’t know. I kept the ring, too. I still have it.”

He reaches over and touches my chin with his fingers. A little tug and I turn to face him, still curled up. He looks right into my eyes.

“Evelyn Ross, I swear, I did not sleep with anyone but you. I didn’t do anything they accused me of. I saw proof that your father is a criminal.”

My mouth works silently, but I can’t say anything.

Finally, I manage to choke it out. “I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t you see me?”

“I couldn’t,” I whisper, “at first. After that… Father was always there. When your mother died, I was alone with him. I started to
forget
. It went back to the way it was. I was alone with him in the house all the time. It was like he knew what I was thinking. Then I just…”

I take a long breath.

“It hurt so much, I just didn’t want to feel
anything
. When I lost your mother, I was crushed. There was nothing left. I was like a robot. I woke up, went to work, slept, woke up, went to work. The only time I felt something was when people were afraid of me. It made me feel strong. Like I meant something.”

Victor puts his arms around me. I stay still at first. Part of me is still fighting it, but it hurts too much and I don’t have the strength anymore. I give in. I collapse against him, but I don’t cry. My eyes are dry. I just press them shut. Then they start to sting a little and I feel an itch on my cheeks and lie to myself, and almost believe it’s not tears. Then the sobbing starts and I slip my arms around Vic’s broad chest and squeeze him, hard. He breathes against me, sitting still at first, and slowly puts his arms around me.

“We used to be really good,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble, over and over. “I’m so sorry. I should have carried her message.”

“What did she say?”

“She was in the hospital. Near the end. She told me that she forgave you that I needed to forgive you, that if I went and saw you and gave you a chance I’d understand, but then she was gone and I was alone with
him.
He
hit me
, Victor. After the meeting he was there when I got home and he
hit me
.”

I break down in sobs. Victor is still as stone, but his embrace is warm and firm. Slowly, he lays down, pulling me with him so I’m curled up to his side and tucked up under his arm. He reaches over and grabs a fistful of the dry, scratchy hotel room tissues and dabs the tears from my face.

“You’re melting,” he says.

I snort. “I hate that fucking article. Ice Queen? Really?”

“I think it’s cute. You do look like some sort of ice fairy princess.”

I laugh softly. Can it be this easy?

“What kind of a deal did you make? Are you in trouble?”

“Yeah,” he says, softly, “I’m in trouble. I’ll probably never be safe. I did it for you.”

“Don’t throw that at me,” I say, bitterly. “I can’t take that, too. God, Victor, what was wrong with me? I shouldn’t have believed…”

He cuts me off and squeezes my arm. “Eve, I think if I was in the gallery
I
would have believed it. They played me hard, like a sucker. I should have known when she propositioned me. Twice. Fucking bitch.”

He sits up and leaves me lying on the bed. I run my hands up his back.

“What do we do?”

“I don’t know. I can’t stop what I’m doing now.
 
I work for Vitali. You know why the call him the hammer? He told me when you smash a guy’s toes with a hammer, they look like grapes. Jesus.”

“What exactly is it you’re supposed to do?”

“Run a bust out on Amsel. Destroy my own company. I get a cut of the proceeds. He keeps the rest. If the company was public I could move on it when the stock price goes down, but it’s still privately held. I was going to try and force Martin to take the company public, spread out the debts before
 
it came down on him. On you.”