The Siren's Touch (21 page)

“Took you long enough,” Makar said. Just as Sonya had described, his accent was eastern, from the region bordering Russia.

A strange calm settled over Dmitri. Sure, it was the moment he’d been waiting for his whole life, but he could play it casual too. “Something came up.”

“Gregor send you?”

“No.” Dmitri took a drag.

“Man of many words, just like your father, huh?”

Dmitri stiffened. He had to give it to him. The guy had balls. “My whole life, I’ve been waiting for the moment I could put a bullet in you, but it turns out I need information first. Tell me about the Truss family.”

Makar blew out a languid stream of smoke. “You mean to tell me your charming family is keeping secrets from you? I can hardly believe it.”

Under the force of his sarcasm, the ground shifted under Dmitri’s feet, like one of Sonya’s little tremors. Only Sonya was in her teapot in the hotel room, and no one else seemed to feel the earth shake.

“Come on, boy, I’ll buy you a drink.” Makar ground the butt of his smoke into the sidewalk.

Dmitri’s resolve faltered. He stared at Makar—tall and a little hunched, a beak of a nose under gray eyes. Just a man, not a demon, not a cloud of pure black evil, only a man with his own damn story.

Face-to-face, Dmitri knew for sure. Killing him would solve nothing. Oh, he wanted to, wanted to squeeze the man’s saggy neck until his face turned blue. But it wouldn’t change a bit of his past. It wouldn’t make Ivan a better father or Gregor more happy.

“If you try to run, I’ll shoot you in the leg, and I’ll keep shooting until I get all the answers I want. I have plenty of bullets.”

“You really are Ivan’s son.”

Dmitri’s swung his fist, fueled by years of instinct honed in the ring, and so fast not a single thought could slow it down. At the impact, the old man crumpled against the window.

And damn. Not one ounce of anger lifted from Dmitri’s shoulders. He’d already accepted it wouldn’t solve anything, but he’d kind of hoped it might make him feel better. No luck.

Makar righted himself and let his chin dangle, wiggling his jaw. “You gonna tell me what that was for?”

The words came out of Dmitri’s mouth, another instinct unencumbered by thought. “Buy me the drink first.”

He trailed after the old man, who held up two fingers at the bartender and then slid into a booth. The ripped and tattered vinyl caught on Dmitri’s jeans, and the bench showed its foam-core cushion. He stared at Makar across the table, trying to find the features he’d long ago memorized. It was the same man, for sure, but he no longer wore a cocky smile. The line of his mouth was somehow softer, his skin papery, and his jowls sagged a little. Under drooping lids, his clear eyes were keen and inscrutable.

The bartender appeared at the table with a frosty bottle and poured two shots.

“Leave it,” Makar said.

Dmitri rotated the bottle. Nemiroff. Huh. He wasn’t expecting to see that Ukrainian label in a San Francisco dive.

Makar lifted his graying eyebrows. “It’s why I come here. Cheers.” The old man raised his glass and threw it back in one swallow. “One thing I’ll say for you…your father was the type to shoot first and ask questions later. You’ve already proved yourself wiser.”

Dmitri wanted to argue, but why defend dear old dad? It was the truth.

Only Gregor had always said prison had ruined Ivan, and Boris knew him before Lukyanivska—another chink in the story. Dmitri was more than ready for the shot. He tilted his head back and poured the icy vodka down his throat, honey and chili pepper mellowing the alcohol’s burn.

“How did you find me?” Makar asked, already pouring the next round.

“You sent an unencrypted message. Gregor’s people traced your computer to northwestern San Francisco. I wore out my boots marching up and down Geary Street until I saw you get on that bus.”

“Hmph.” Boris didn’t look up.

Son of a bitch. He had done it on purpose.

Inside Dmitri, the need to understand welled up like a tsunami, threatening to drown him. And not just for Sonya, but for himself. “Why did you do it? You and my dad were like brothers, and you betrayed him. Ran off with the loot and royally fucked him over. He was in Lukyanivska for ten goddamn years. No one could survive that sane.”

Makar’s grey eyes narrowed. “Who are you kidding? He wasn’t sane to begin with.” He poured himself another shot, not bothering to offer one to Dmitri.

When he glanced up, whatever he saw on Dmitri’s face inspired silent laughter that made his chest bounce. Then it intensified, becoming a full-blown guffaw, his face red and his eyes bulging.

Dmitri rubbed his scalp. Was Makar saying—

“Boy, your dad’s always been a first-class prick. But of course, Gregor would blame it on me rather than admit a Lisko was less than perfect.”

Dmitri’s vision went black around the edges. Could that possibly be true?

If he let it, the world might just collapse around him. So he pushed down the churning emotions, breathing through the adrenaline just like he used to in the ring. His mind cleared, thoughts becoming crystalline.

He leaned over the table. “You’re saying he deserved to be set up?”

The old man shrugged. “It’s complicated.” He shot out his hand to the bottle to pour another round with the automated movement of a hard drinker.

Dmitri intercepted the vodka.

It took Boris a long time to look away from the gold-foil label. “This is the kind of story you don’t want to hear, kid. The kind that changes things.”

Yeah. He’d already figured on that. “Tell me.”

Makar reached behind him, and Dmitri had his gun out and discreetly aimed before the old man laid his wallet, tattered and harmless, on the table and help up his palms. He nodded at the billfold, and Dmitri nodded back, conceding. He tucked his Glock securely in place while thin-skinned hands rifled through receipts, paper bills, and finally pulled out a photo—yellowed and frayed at the edges. Makar slid it across the table.

Dmitri squinted. Nah. It couldn’t be…

But it really was.

A younger and kind of pretty Elena smiled up at the blond Boris with pure adoration. His arm held her snugly, his chin jutting proudly at the camera.

“Guess they left that part out.” He erupted in more of that unwelcome laughter.

Dmitri gaped at the strangely familiar photo. Fuck. It was the other half of the photo his father had hung in the apartment, right next to a gaping hole in the plaster he’d punched on the night Boris had betrayed him—a shrine to the gods of vengeance where the boy Dmitri had cultivated his worshipful hatred of Makar.

Only, suddenly the man’s cocky posture took on a whole new meaning, staking a claim over Auntie Elena, who’d been cut out of the photo Dmitri had studied. Gregor and Ivan would have hated them together. All the family bullshit about Lisko nobility, they’d never have accepted a nobody from some tiny village.

With a trembling hand, Dmitri poured himself another shot. The rudder turned on the giant ship of his anger, changing course, rearranging his world, his synapses, all his internal organs. He was gonna to puke.

Instead, he pulled out his pack of cigarettes and tap-tap-tapped them on the table, ready for another one already. “I need a smoke.”

“Me too.” Boris pulled out a pack of Troikas. Where the hell did he get those things? Apparently, he had a line on all the old-school goods, living back in the USSR right here in San Francisco.

Outside, they leaned against the window and lit their cigarettes from their own lighters. To share the flame would have been…nah. He wasn’t ready for that yet.

He exhaled for as long as possible. “What happened?”

“I knocked her up.”

He cringed at the callous expression. But Makar hunched over his cigarette. Focused on empty space, his vacant stare deflated all of Dmitri’s fury.

“Ivan forbade me from seeing her ever again.” He rubbed his jaw.

“And by forbade, you mean—”

“Beat the shit out of me, with the help of some of the rookie officers from our station.”

“And Gregor?”

“Oh, he looked on with his arms folded across his chest like a disappointed schoolmaster who thought I was getting exactly what I deserved.”

Dmitri knew that look well. Gregor always wore it when somebody broke his rules. “So you gave up, abandoned her?” Suddenly, Elena’s life seemed terribly empty, and not by choice.

Makar shook his head. “She sent me a letter telling me she had an abortion—didn’t want a peasant’s bastard for a child. It was in her own handwriting, kid. She meant it.” He took a long drag. “So I stole the necklace from the Trusses, and used it to buy her way into the University of Moscow. She never knew it was me who paid.”

“You loved her?”

Makar snorted. “None of us were foolish enough to believe in love.”

Dmitri could relate. His chest was tight with a tangled knot of if-onlies. He took a long drag.

“But I wanted her and the baby, if only she’d wanted me.” Makar had sucked down his cigarette to the filter, while Dmitri’s still smoldered, mostly untouched. The old man dropped his butt and rubbed it out, adding another to the collection sprinkling the sidewalk.

“With the leftover money, I got settled here. I’d always told her I wanted to come to San Francisco. I have family out in the avenues, and I guess I hoped she’d find me one day.”

Dmitri rested his head against the bar window. This story just kept getting weirder. “You gave your location away because you hoped to find her?”

“When a buddy told me Gregor was sick—”

“What?” Dmitri’s cigarette fell from his fingers.

“You didn’t know?”

If Boris laughed at him one more time, Dmitri would pummel him, whether it made him feel better or not.

Gregor really was sick. It explained why he wanted Dmitri back in Kiev. His stomach sank, a strange, heavy feeling unsettling his gut. “No. Didn’t know. Or didn’t believe it anyway.”

Boris angled closer, his gaze intent on Dmitri. After a moment, he began to nod. “I know how you feel. He’s a cold son of a bitch, but it’s hard to hate him.”

“Yep.” Still, after all these little revelations, Dmitri would kill him in a second to help Sonya.

“Tell me about your aunt. How is she?”

“She’s well.”

Makar’s eyes softened. “Did she marry, and have a big family?”

“No. Her work is her life. She’s a professor of folklore and literature.”

Boris lifted his chin, suddenly resembling the old photo. “Good girl. Where does she live?”

“Here.”

The old man’s mouth fell open and his cheeks hollowed. If a salmon could have a broken heart, it would look like that.

“Take me to her.”

Dmitri took his last drag and ground his boot over his cigarette. “What if she doesn’t want to see you?”

“You still want to know about the Truss family?”

Want wasn’t the half of it. He’d indulged the ghosts in his past long enough. He had a real-life ghost back at the hotel who was depending on him. “Tell me everything.”

“Not before you take me to Elena.”

The journey of a teapot, in reverse.

That’s what Sonya would name the film playing in her ghost mind like some kind of silent art film. It began where Dmitri had carefully placed the teapot on the hotel room table with a view of the city. Cradled in his big arms, the pot traveled back to the floor, where she’d re-entered it. In her own hand, it went back into his pack. Then it accompanied them through San Francisco, shopping and evading gunfire. It arrived back at Elena’s house.

She studied Dmitri’s expression, his reactions to her, backwards. Even in those first frightening moments, he had shown her kindness.

The film kept rolling right past the beginning of Sonya’s memory, and the teapot sat largely unused on display over Elena’s kitchen sink. That stretch of shelf time, interrupted by occasional tea parties, took a long while. It gave Sonya a chance to think. Maybe some spiritual power guided her backward in time, or not her so much as the teapot. And eventually, the mystery of her murder would be solved. Was this her soul’s last desperate attempt at vengeance before she became thoroughly rusalka? If she saw the truth, would there be time for a journey to Ukraine before she disintegrated into a mindless, dangerous ghost?

The teapot was packed into a cardboard box with Elena’s other
tchotchkes
, and Sonya journeyed to San Francisco. She arrived at the woman’s point of departure—Moscow. A newspaper used to wrap the teapot read 1995. Settled onto another shelf, the teapot sat dusty and rarely used. Elena aged in reverse, her fashions changed, becoming more and more familiar to Sonya.

She observed the other woman’s life guiltily, an unwilling voyeur. Sonya had been dead all those years, but Elena had worked tirelessly. When she had guests, she laughed and told witty jokes, but alone, she slumped over old books and cried herself to sleep. Her lonely existence weighed on Sonya’s heart—or what used to be her heart. Perhaps she was lucky to have shared even just one day with Dmitri. A long, lonely life didn’t seem much better than being dead.

The apartment emptied out gradually, a backwards record of all the belongings Elena had acquired as a young professor, and before that as a student in the capital city. For several all-night study sessions, the woman steeped very strong tea and poured it from Sonya’s pot, warmed on a hotplate through the wee hours.

Elena had said the teapot was a going-away gift before she left for university, so when it went into a suitcase, Sonya prepared for the final revelations. Everything moved fast.

Out of the suitcase, into a gift box.

Out of the box, into a man’s hands. She recognized him from the photo—Gregor.

If she had a body, she would be on the edge of her seat.

Gregor stowed the teapot in a cabinet for some indeterminate amount of time. Days? Weeks?

When the cabinet opened, the teapot was tucked inside the blanket all her heirlooms had been stowed in. And then she was set back onto the muddy riverbank.

The memory should have been flying by. In real life, it must have been only seconds, but the film slowed. Frame by frame, her mind searched the dark, clear night. Trees blew in the wind, obscuring a nearly full moon. The river flowed fast, frothing over a tree stump caught on rocks. From the vantage of the teapot, she saw her own body wearing the tiresome nightgown crawl past and dive into the river. And there he was, looming over the pot and sneering, his gun aimed at the river. Not the face she expected, but one she couldn’t help but recognize.