Page 67 of Boardroom Ties
His timing is so unbelievably, biblically bad that I almost wonder if I’m hallucinating him. Maybe three days was really enough to drive me completely batty. But, as it turns out, I’m not hallucinating. Every sensation is way too amplified to be anything but painfully, horrifyingly real.
There’s water sliding down the back of my neck. I can feel each drop in turn. The rug is thick and lush under my heels.Raymond’s eyes find mine. His face is contorted into that furious, purple rage of his.
He holds up the little orange bottle so the label catches the morning light from the closet window. Even from here, I can read the text printed on it.
Prenatal Multivitamin with Folate, 90 capsules.
“Cassandra,” he snarls. “Care to explain these?”
21
MAT
I’m ready to fucking murder whoever is pounding on my door.
I’m awake already. Have been since two. I haven’t slept a full night since the Pierre. I’m sitting at my kitchen island in a pair of sweats and an undershirt, halfway through my second espresso, when three hard raps on my front door jar me into action.
I rip open my door to find Uncle Afon in the hallway in his black wool overcoat, hands in his pockets, hat pulled low. His grey beard is freshly trimmed. His eyes are the same flat grey they’ve been my whole life, the color of a river that’s about to ice over.
“Get dressed,” he says. “We’re going for a drive.”
He doesn’t tell me where. He never does, when he gets in moods like this one. I’ve learned not to ask.
I dress fast. I clip the Glock to my hip out of habit, then think better of it and lock it back in the drawer in the hall console.
In the elevator, he doesn’t speak. The Mercedes is idling at the curb with one of his men behind the wheel, a kid I half-recognizefrom a wedding two summers ago. Afon takes the back; I slide in next to him. The kid pulls into traffic without a word.
We head north. The FDR is empty at this hour, the river still black, the bridges hung with their string of orange lamps. The city looks softer when nobody’s awake to mess it up. I’m guessing that’s exactly what we’re on our way to do, though.
We cross the Henry Hudson into the Bronx, then up into Yonkers. The streets get wider and uglier. Warehouses with sagging roofs. Chain-link strung over chain-link. A wig shop with its grate still down. The kind of neighborhood where the street lamps only work every other pole.
The car turns into a body shop with a faded sign that readsROCCO’S COLLISION & PAINT.The bay door is rolled up just enough for the Mercedes to slide under. Inside, fluorescent tubes hum overhead and the air goes thick at once with the heavy stench of solvent, primer, motor oil, and nastier things beneath. Old blood, seeped into the concrete. Years of it.
The kid kills the engine. “This is one of ours?” I ask.
Afon grunts something approximating a yes, and gets out. I follow.
There’s a steel door at the back of the shop, padlocked. A man I don’t know, big and quiet, unlocks it for us without a word and steps aside. Afon goes through first. I trail him into a dingy back room, low-ceilinged, lit by a single caged bulb.
In the middle of the room, there’s a folding metal chair, and in that chair there’s a man.
He’s maybe my age. Maybe a year or two older. Dark hair plastered to a sweating forehead. He flinches when the dooropens, then sees Afon and goes still in a different way. “Afon,” he croaks gratefully.
“Yura.” Afon’s voice is gentler than I’ve heard it in a long time. “Sit easy. We’re not here to add to it.” There’s a second folding chair leaning against the wall. Afon picks it up, unfolds it, and sets it down beside Yura’s, angled in. Then he turns to me and gestures. “Sit, Matvei.”
Stone-faced, I take the seat.
Afon doesn’t sit. He stands behind us, one hand resting on the back of Yura’s chair, and looks down at the man’s bowed head.
“Tell Matvei here what happened,” Afon encourages. “From the beginning, the way you told me.”
Yura’s gaze drags up to mine. He doesn’t know me from Adam, but he clearly trusts Afon. He wets his lip, then starts to talk. “I run the Bensonhurst route for the Bratva,” he explains. His English is thick but clean. “Three years now I’ve been doing it. Pickups, drop-offs. Nothing fancy. I am not a— I am not anybody important.”
“He’s been loyal,” Afon interjects quietly, to me. “Lukas trusts him.”
Yura nods eagerly. “Three nights ago,” he goes on, “I come home late. My wife, she should be in bed. The lights are on. I think, okay, maybe the baby is up. She is teething right now, she does not sleep. I think nothing of it. Until…”
He stops. His eyes fill, and he blinks hard until the tear disappears.
