Full Black - Brad Thor [113]
Popping the lid of the trunk, he clicked on the flashlight and shined it in Yatsko’s face. He had a small laceration on his forehead, probably from getting bumped around in the trunk.
“We’re here,” said Ralston as he pulled the Russian out and let him drop onto the dusty ground.
Yatsko was somewhere in his late sixties or early seventies. He had a broad, flat face that looked as if it had been hit with a shovel. His greasy hair was dyed unnaturally black.
Ralston used the flashlight to get his bearings. Once he figured out where he was going, he propped the Russian against the car and then flipped him over his shoulder. He weighed a ton.
Despite the pain radiating up his spine from his hip, Ralston kept going. He didn’t have far to go. The wash was just through the brush beyond the clearing.
When he got there, he set Yatsko on the ground, propping him up in a sitting position. He could see, even through his trousers, that his knees had swollen up like basketballs. He’d thought about bringing the baseball bat along, but had decided against it. He wouldn’t need it. All he had to do was tap the guy in the knee with the toe of his shoe and the man would be sent into fits of agony.
The question was, considering the pain he was suffering, would he cooperate? He’d worked with Russians before and had watched them take amazing amounts of punishment. They could be like plow animals.
It was time to find out if Yatsko was going to play ball. Reaching down, Ralston ripped the piece of duct tape from his mouth.
He expected a string of invective to start immediately. It didn’t. The Russian was trapped. He knew it and was sizing up his captor.
“You already have the money from my house,” he eventually said. “I can get you more. Much more.”
“This isn’t about money,” replied Ralston.
Despite the pain, the former FSB man smiled. “It is always about money.”
“How many people during your career in Russia offered you money? Deep in the bowels of the Lubyanka I’ll bet there were many.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m nobody. Just someone who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.”
Yatsko looked at him, a slow trickle of blood running down the side of his face. “Do I know you?”
“No. You don’t know me.”
“Then I must know the man who sent you.”
Ralston shook his head slowly. “No one sent me.”
“Then who are you, damn it,” he spat. “Why did you bring me here?”
“First, tell me who the man is in your trunk.”
“Who cares? It’s none of your business.”
Ralston took his flashlight and swung it at the side of the Russian’s face. It connected with a sharp crack.
Yatsko saw stars and when the pain receded and his vision returned, he looked up at Ralston and spat two teeth out at him. “Fuck you.”
Ralston hit him again, harder. “I’ve got all night and no place to be.”
He waited for the mobster to recover and then repeated his question.
“He’s a vagabond,” the Russian yelled. “Nothing. No one. Trash.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Yes, I killed him.”
“Why?” asked Ralston.
“You already know why.”
“So you could burn the body and disappear.”
Yatsko didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
“Tell me who hired you,” demanded Ralston.
“Hired me for what?”
Ralston brought his foot down hard on the man’s left knee.
“Hired me for what, damn it,” the Russian cried out.
“You sent a team of men to kill a friend of mine.”
“I don’t do killings.”
“Bullshit.”
“I do lots of other things, but never killings,” said Yatsko.
“What the fuck do you call the dead guy in your trunk?”
“That’s different.”
“Tell me who hired you.”
The Russian looked up at him and with a straight face said, “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
Ralston was now at the end of his rope. This guy was one of the worst liars he had ever met. It was going to take him all night to beat the truth out of him. He decided to speed things up.
“Don’t move,” he said, knowing the man couldn’t, even if he had wanted to. “I’ll be right back.”
Leaving Yatsko alone in the wash, he trudged through the sagebrush back to the car.