Page 38 of Dressed to Kill
"Boss."
"Bespoke shop on Bridge, between Third and Fourth. You know it?"
"I know it."
"Get me there. Now."
He took the next exit and sped up. I dialed back the CPD number.
"Murphy."
"He's stopped at the address."
"Pull your cruisers. All of them. Nobody within four blocks of that shop until I call you back. Somebody comes in hot before I'm out and I don't get my package back. You hear me? Pull them."
"You want this on me, Aleksi?"
"You'll be square with us for the goddamn year. Pull them."
"Done."
I hung up. The folder was on the seat next to me. The photographs of Pavel at Saggio's and the wire transfer, and the woman in the hallway were all useless now. Pavel had stopped being a problem we were going to solve quietly the second he'd walked Fin out my front door between two men with a hood over his head, and now Pavel was a problem we were going to solve loudly and once.
The shop was twelve minutes out. The car drove through the twelve minutes in silence while I checked my piece, the spare magazine, the second piece at my ankle, the knife at the small of my back. I'd been carrying all of it since I was twenty-two and checked it every morning like other men checked their watches.
This was my city. Fin was mine.
He thought he could take what was mine.
Mine. I sat with the word for the first time. Fin was mine. Fin had been mine since I'd cut him out of a zip tie and put him in my safehouse, brought him to my apartment to let him work my father's jacket. Mine since he'd put his hands on my face on my entryway floor and breathed me through it without asking for anything in return. Mine on Sunday night, when his lips had been on me and he had been on his knees and I had been too much of a coward to keep him in my bed after I'd come down. Mine this morning, when I'd walked past his door without a word because I hadn't yet been able to say to my own face what I was about to say to a man bleeding out on the floor of a clothing store.
He was mine, and Pavel had touched him, and Pavel was about to pay for it with his life.
The car turned onto Bridge.
"One block out," Gregori said.
"Pull up around the corner. I'm going in alone."
"Boss."
"Alone, Gregori. You stay with the car. If I'm not back out in ten minutes, you call Nikita and you tell him where I am, and you let him decide what to do next."
Gregori's jaw tightened, but he did what I told him. He pulled up around the corner from the shop and put the car in park and kept his hands on the wheel, because Gregori was a professional.
I thumbed the safety off, slid the piece back inside my coat, and opened the door.
The rain had stopped. The sidewalk was wet under a sky the color of dirty steel. The bespoke shop sat halfway down the block, lights on, the CLOSED sign turned to the street.
The door of the shop had a brass bell hung on the inside. Pavel was going to hear me coming. I didn't fucking care.
I woke up feelinglike dogshite. My head was full of wet socks, and Pavel had put them there this morning at the flat. I was in my pants on a wooden chair, hands tied behind me, shoulders gone past complaining and into proper protest. The rope at my elbows had been done by somebody with a grudge. Under the wet socks, my blood was running high and sour. I was hours past a dose, and whatever Pavel had stuck in my leg hadn't come with a kit.
I kept my eyes shut and listened. Two of them were in the room, one American, one Russian, both whispering softly. The Russian I had straight away. It was Pavel. Cardigan-and-cross Pavel from this morning at the flat.
The American took me a second longer. When I got it, I wished I hadn't.
It was Mr. K. Of course it was. Who else would Pavel sell me to?
