Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [45]
Jack got him to listen to Howlin’ Wolf from a playlist on Emma’s iPod. His eyes lost their focus as he sank deeper and deeper into the music. Thatë might be a teenager, but he had the eyes of an adult who had already been witness to too many despicable acts. It was likely he had committed some of those acts himself.
At length, the playlist came to an end and Thatë pulled off the earbuds. His face seemed transformed.
“Shit,” he said.
“Yeah.” Jack gestured to the refrigerator. “Beer?”
The kid nodded, still half in a trance.
Jack rose and opened the refrigerator, which wheezed like an asthmatic. Beer, Coke, a couple of half-eaten slices of congealed pizza, and not much else. At least the beer was imported.
“That girl’s too young for you,” Thatë observed.
Jack handed him a bottle, then twisted off the cap of his own bottle and took a slug. “She’s my daughter.”
Thatë looked away and picked at a scab on the point of his elbow.
“Where are your parents?”
Thatë took a swig of beer. “Don’t have parents.”
“You mean you don’t talk to them.”
“I mean I never met ’em.” The kid rolled the bottle around on the table, making a pattern of wet circles. “Good thing, too. I’d probably kill them.”
“Maybe they’re already dead.”
“Christ, I hope so.”
“No school for you, I see.”
“I’m in school. I don’t want trouble with the law.”
“So who’s subbing for you?”
“Fuck if I know,” Thatë said with a sly grin. “Twenty bucks a day does it.”
“I doubt that,” Jack said.
“Okay, an eighth a week.”
There was an upside-down cross and a skull with an arrow through it on the kid’s right biceps.
“Where’d you get the tats?” Jack said.
Thatë shrugged. “Here and there.”
“Not in this country.” When Thatë made no reply, Jack added: “Albania.”
“Shit, no,” the kid said rather defensively. “Russia.”
That told Jack a lot. “Which family?”
The kid was still picking at his scab. “What?” His fingertip was bright red.
“Which family of the grupperovka?”
Thatë jumped as if Jack had jabbed him with a burning needle.
“I know about the Russian mob,” Jack said. “I’ve had dealings with them.”
“No shit?”
The kid stared down at the Monster earbuds. He handed them back with no little reluctance. His body shifted subtly. By the alert way he sat, Jack could tell that his disinterest was feigned.
Jack leaned over to take a closer look. “Initiation, right? So which family became your parents?” He had seen these same tattoos on Ivan Gurov in Moscow last year. “No, wait, let me guess.”
The kid laughed, but he shifted again and Jack knew he was uneasy. “Izmaylovskaya. Am I right?”
“Jesus Christ!” Thatë stared at Jack as if he were a demon from hell. “Who the fuck are you?”
Jack finished off his beer and set the bottle down. He had nowhere to go until after dark. “I’ll tell my story,” he said, “if you’ll tell me yours.”
* * *
“I THINK we should split up,” Naomi said.
McKinsey regarded her with no little skepticism. “Are we really gonna do this?”
“I am.”
“What the fuck’s in it for us?”
She contemplated him in the same way someone would a slice of moldy meat. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“I just don’t like taking orders from some entitled prick.” He shrugged. “I’m just a working stiff.”
“Yeah, in a Giorgio Armani suit.”
“What? I like to look good on the job. You think I’d be caught dead in one of those Simm’s specials the other guys wear?”
Naomi shook her head as they headed toward their car. “No matter. I think you should follow up with the state police chief who’s taken over this case.”
McKinsey raised an eyebrow. “And you?”
“I’m going to check out the guards’ background.”
“A complete waste of time, if you ask me.”
Naomi hauled open the car’s door and got behind the wheel. “Then it’s a good thing I didn’t ask.”
* * *
AFTER DROPPING McKinsey off at his own car, Naomi drove to G Street NW, where Fortress Securities had their offices in one of those gigantic stone-faced buildings,