The Russian Heist, page 1
THE RUSSIAN HEIST
Copyright2022byRobertWhite. Allrightsreserved.PrintedintheUnited States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written consent except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address grandmalpress.com
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copyright 2022, White, Robert
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Cover art by Grand Mal Press www..grandmalpress.com SECOND EDITION
THE RUSSIAN HEIST
by Robert White
“Death solves all problems. No people. No problems.”
– Joseph Stalin
Prologue
One Week before Christmas
An adult bookstore in Niles, Ohio He looked at his watch again. No Aleksei. He was never this late. No answer at any of his cell numbers. The three customers made a fluid isosceles triangle as they moved about. His uncanny spatial imagination was a predator’s gift. Once while waiting for his father to sleep off a drunk in Odessa, he had wandered into a waterfront bar and watched some sailors playingpool.Hepickedupacuestickandcleanedtheplaceout.Someconvictswatchingtheactionbeatandkickedhimandtookhismoneywhenhe tried to leave. Although he was big for his age, he had not yet reached his full size and those were rough men.
Theonlytimeinhislifehecouldsayheexperiencedafeelingof melancholy he was sitting on a bench in Gorky Park when an old man took the other end. Dimitri figured him for a pervert, debated whether he ought to let the old man touch him and decided he would demand Deutschemarks or dollars—rubles had fallen so far in the last days of Gorbachev it wasn’t worth more than the paper to wipe your ass. The man ignored him and studied his book. When he noticed he was being watched, he smiled and handed the boy his book on chess moves. Dimitri followed the arrows depictingmovesbyamannamedSpasskyandmarveledatthebeautyof their attack.
The old man laughed. “You cannot understand,” he said. “Those are grandmaster level. You would have to see eight, ten moves in advance and keep them all in your head.”
Dimitri burned with wrath. He knew he could understand what he saw inthosediagrams.Hethoughttheywerecleartoanyone,eventhisoldfool. He did not study in the commune. No one had to tell Dimi Byko that education was not for his kind, all that Marxist rubbish about the sons of labor be damned. In those days he had guile but not much patience. He thought of sticking the old man in the throat with the potato knife he carried in his boot. Instead, he thanked him and returned his book. His father would kill him if he attracted attention.
It was Aleksei, so glib of tongue, who had convinced him to flee the commune, join him in Moscow. Despite the enmity between Russians and Ukrainians, he and Aleksei ran with the Ljubertsy gang, preying on drunks and extorting from vendors and prostitutes from the workers’ tenements. They spent every night prowling the subway station for any kind of action—oncehijackingatruckbetweentheVnoekovoairportandtheKeninskyProspekt.HepunchedAlekseionthejawforspendingboththeirshares andfracturedametacarpal.Later,watchingthedoctorwraphishand,Aleksei was impressed: “You don’t feel pain, cousin.” Dimitri knew he was different in that way too.
Heflippedtheopen-closedsignandhustledthecustomersoutthedoor. He drove Aleksei’s Jeep fast and expertly, slewing over the median so close to traffic he could see the oncoming drivers opening and closing their mouths like goldfish to curse him. After his first conviction, he was sent to a logging camp in Siberia where he drove trucks on frozen rivers in temperaturessocoldhedidn’tdareshutoff theengine.Duringhissecondconviction, he had taken on five zeks in the gulag at the same time and beat them all. Aleksei knew he did not like to wait. Cousin or no, you took your life into your hands when you defied him.
A blur in the rearview mirror caught his attention just before he cut across two lanes to the outerbelt of Youngstown. The car ran a red light to keepupwithhimandhefrowned.Thecarwassixlengthsbehindbutclosing; the driver was using the thinning rush-hour traffic as camouflage.
Instead of taking the 680 loop, he stayed on 422 and used the traffic flow to watch his pursuer. He kept taking turns that brought him closer to Aleksei’s bungalow on Lake Glacier, where the suburbanites built themselves expensive cottages with wraparound decks. The small lake was fringed with fir trees, sugar maples, white ash, and stands of birch. The back window of Aleksei’s house overlooked his neighbor’s sauna. Every weekend the attractive young wife who stayed over while her husband workedinthecityparadednudefromthesaunawhilesteambillowedfrom her pink skin.
Hedoubledbacknorth,butthecarstayedinplaceandkeptitsdistance. He took the Jeep out of part-time, floored it down Valentine, rounded the corner and clipped the wing mirror off a parked car. He saw nothing behind him on the way back to Lake Glacier. Aleksei said the cops liked to ticket him and knew his Jeep by sight, so he wouldn’t let Dimitri carry his guns in any of his vehicles. Ohio’s CCW law didn’t extend to Ukrainians with criminal records and false papers. Dimitri hoped, whatever it was, it didn’t involve those fucking Chechens. You killed one of those animals, you better kill everybody in his clan or spend your life looking over your shoulder. He would call New York as soon as he had his guns strapped on. If Aleksei objected, he’d remind him with his fists who was giving orders.
Aleksei’YukonDenaliwasparkedaroundthesideof thehousebeneath adustingof snow.Hewasprobablyentertaininghisnewgirlfromthestrip club and forgot the time.
Dimitri walked around to the side of the attached garage and looked in the window. Aleksei’s Harley Davidson Shovelhead rested on its kickstand under the tarp. Returning to the front of the house, he climbed the steps and immediately halted. His breathing slowed while his senses rarefied. A set of footprints. Someone bleeding had stopped every few steps, dripped straight down and then staggered on. He saw other craters where the spatter wore tails like elaborate commas. They led to Aleksei’s SUV.
The tinted windows forced him to inch along its side at a crouch. Aleksei was slumped over the wheel, a Charter Arms dangling from a crooked finger.Tinypuffsof condensedbreathmeanthewasalive.Dimitriopened the door and the coppery smell of blood wafted toward him. The front of Aleksei’ pants was stained dark from crotch to knees. He touched a finger to his cousin’s neck and felt the carotid—it was barely ticking. He cursed in their village dialect.
“Fuck your mother, Aleksei, what have you done now?” He loosened the gun from Aleksei’s sticky grip and pushed it into his own belt.
Aleksei moaned as he eased him outside and laid him on the ground. Too much American junk food since their Moscow days made him too heavy to carry. He got an arm under him and dragged him the way he used to carry sacks of beets, one arm holding the gun and his eyes fixed on the house.Dimitrihoistedhimupthestepsandproppedhimagainstthehouse. Herushedthedoorandkickeditwithsuchforcethatitblewoff itshinges. Gun first, he went from room to room pausing only once to look at the woman on the bed. He returned for his cousin and dragged him to the couch. Aleksei wheezed, made a gurgling sound and passed out.
He went into the downstairs bedroom to check on the girl. She lay on her stomach spread-eagled across the bed where they had left her. The air intheroomwasfetid,rank.Herhandswereflex-cuffedbehindherbackby a thin nylon rope that extended to her neck. Dimitri knew death from the stillness it left behind but he also knew she had suffered much pain before she died. The rope bit into her neck hard enough to cause her tongue to protrude between swollen, bruised lips. One end of the duct tape dangled fromherchinwhereithadbeenloosenedbyherkillerstostifleherscreams, so they must have wanted to interrogate her as well. She was lying over a congealed pool of blood. The outer edges showed where the sere had separated.
Her puckered anus leaked. They must have taken the broom with them—sensitive killers, definitely not Chechens. He came back and undid Aleksei’ pants to expose the red wound. There was nothing between his legs. He had lost too much blood, but the cold kept him alive.
Aleksei’s face was chalk. His eyelids fluttered like a butterfly in the wind and then closed. He tried to speak but there was only a hiss between his teeth that Dimitri could not understand. White flecks of spit were dried in the corners of his mouth. He went into the kitchen for water and helped him drink.
Thewoundwasfatal,sohewrappedhisarmsaroundhiscousintokeep himwarmandwaited.JustbeforeAleksei’spupilsdisappearedintothesurrounding black, Dimitri whispered, “You’ll have your revenge, Aleksei Gunin.” He kissed his cousin over both eyes.
He stood and placed the barrel to the thin cap of bone near Aleksei’s templeandsqueezed.Theslugpassedthroughhiscousin’sbrainandexited into the couch carrying a comet’s tail of brain matter. He sat down on the couch to think.
The ground was too frozen to dig a grave. He thought of burning the house with the bodies but dismissed the idea. He had once burned a man todeathandrecalledhowhisblackenedtonguepokedoutof hisfaceasthe muscles contracted from the heat. If the small lake weren’t frozen end to end, he could weight them down. By the time they came up in spring, too bloated and decomposed to remain at the bottom, he would be far from anyone’s reach, even his uncle’s, if need be.
Dimitri’s iron will was forged in a brutal youth. He had no religion, no God,believedinnothingbuthismightandthepowerof money;hehadno attachments he could not sever with a phone call. Aleksei was already sinkinglikeastoneintotheabyssof otherdiscardedmemories.Dimitriwalked over to the front door and shut it and returned to his place near the corpse of his cousin. He slowed his breathing to a measured susurration as the hourspassed,oneaftertheother,inutterstillness.Hecouldalmosthearthe dust motes drifting lazily in bars of smudged sunlight. No other sound besides a vee of Canada geese honking overhead disturbed the silence. He sat thinking until all the light faded from the windows. His plans had changed. It was not Chechens; of that he was certain. These were men he knew well. After all, he was one of them.
Part 1: The Plotters Chapter 1
Christmas Eve: The Professor Invictus Attenminutespasteighto’clockintheevening,theWingDingBar&Grill was winding down to its faithful few before the bar-hoppers and serious freaks arrived. Three were maintenance workers from the Boeing hangars, downingshotsandbeersintheirusualcornerbooth.Themismatchedcouple from last night sat together on their same bar stools, off to themselves, the guy twenty years older than the woman. The sixth customer had become a regular in the last two weeks. Tony, the bartender, told the owner abouthimonedayandsaidtheguymustwearapantsizeinthe50s,straight from Omar the Tent Maker.
Half-wiseass, Tony looked up from his newspaper and said, “Another one, professor?”
Hesidleddownslowaspossibleandlethisfingerstapthenecksof bottles—make him squirm for it. Made a little show of reading the labels. When the professor had first come in, he asked him for a menu so Tony leaned into his face and said, “This is a shot ’n beer joint, pal. You maybe took a wrong turn.” He had sized up the fat man as slumming and stopped himself atthelastsecondfromadding“fromsomefagbarinYoungstown” because the Jew he worked for was on a kick to attract more customers. “Grill” was a complete misnomer because no one in living memory could recall the last time those greasy barbecued chicken wings were served in the place.
The owner thought his dump would attract chicks if he went for the fifties chrome-and-steel look, so he ordered those cute little stools that rotated. Tony had seen thongs that covered more ass. He got damn tired of theregularscomplainingabouthowuncomfortabletheywere.Butnothim, notonce,andthatthingmustlooklikeabuttpluginahorse’sass.Tonyfigured the guy for two hundred ninety, maybe three hundred.
The professor was jiggling his glass in that homo way that made Tony want to reach down for the butcher knife he kept beneath the bar wrapped in towels. Cut his hand off at the wrist, dangle it in front of his nose and drop it on the bar. “This one’s on the house, professor,” he’d say. Instead he reached for the glass, about to pour, when the professor laid a hand on him and said something about “a flagon of rum.” Tony looked down at thelarge,freckledhandtouchinghiswrist.Thefatmanwithdrewit—aspider changing its mind about making love to a tarantula.
“No rum,” Tony said.
“Then have you a good malt back there somewhere?”
“JW, got Black and Red both.”
“Johnnie Red will do just fine. Thank you, Tony.”
Douglas Macbride watched him pour and said, “Ambrosia.” Some of the amber liquid dribbled down the sides and formed a shimmering puddle of gold. He looked at the muscle-bound ape and decided against askingforanapkin.BarcourtesyintheWingDingwasasdeadasJuliusCaesar.
He lifted the glass with two fingers and threw it back. His eyes misted from the liquid heat. The bartender swept the three wet bills from the bar and rung them up without shaking them.
“I was just wondering—”
Tonylookedintothemirrorattheman’sreflection.“Wonderingwhat?”
“If we could bag this snow up and ship it to the tropics, what kind of return on investment would there be, do you think?”
Tony had seen rough factory guys dissolve like sugar in water once they got mopey about their women at Christmas. The talky ones were no problem because he could stare them down to shut their yaps. But solitary drunks, especially at this goddamned time of the year, made him want to puke.
“Nobody’s gonna buy that white shit,” Tony said, “unless it gets them high.”
Tony knew the professor had exactly two more shots coming before he packed it in and waddled out the door. Then he’d see about hustling these airport boozehounds out and call that soldier-boy’s honey.
“Where are you from, Tony—that is, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Tony had a disgusting image of his chin wattles quaking like a pan of Jell-O.
“Vienna,” Tony said.
“Vienna,” said Macbride, “city of canals.”
Tony wasn’t sure whether he was mocking him.
“No,” he said and leaned toward the professor. “That’s Vi-en-na.” “El Dorado,” Macbride said. He made the word four syllables stretching the a. “City of gold.”
“Smackover,” said Macbride. He beamed at Tony, delighted with his new bar game. “Sumac couvreé,” he said.
Tony wanted to reach for his throat, but he said, “What the fuck’re you talking about, man?”
Douglas Macbride, gypsy scholar, was at that moment contemplating the etymologies of place names because he was afraid to think of more immediatethings,suchasthefactthathehadbeenterminatedafterhislast class. He was thoroughly warmed after the long, cold drive to get here. He badly craved the lightening sensation only drink gives the weary sojourner, a burden eased if not lifted.
He said, “French explorers, Tony. They saw virgin forest covered in sumac. Thus, Sumac couvreé. Ergo, Smackover, Arkansas.”
Tony’s shaved head looked as if someone had sprinkled iron filings on it. Macbride’s, however, was genetically acquired through the maternal line. He barbered his Caesar fringe but let his Vandyke get bushy to cover the jowls. He told himself he didn’t want to cultivate that menacing contemporary look.
“What’s-his-name’s from there, Clinton,” Tony said.
“Hope, you mean.”
“I meant the fucking state.”
“Yes, yes, I see. Correct you are, Antoine.”
Tony looked at the professor to see how shitfaced he was. Not showing it, but there was the drunk talk.
Last night the professor went off on some history of medieval romances with lions rampant and azure fields of gules, whatever. Tony’s face saidhedidn’tbelieveawordhewaslayingonhim.Hetoldhimnobody,not even the biggest fairy of a knight, would lie in bed next to his lady fair, his dick pitching a tent with lust, and not have sex with her. “Fuck that shit, man,” he said to him. “That’s just stupid.”
Thefrontdoorof thehutlikefoyerbangedopeninthewind.Aswirling draft of snow was sucked into the place and heads turned as one. A small man in a quilted parka with a hood appeared out of vortex of whirling snow.
“Shut the fucking door, moron!” Tony yelled from behind the bar.
The apparition approached. Beneath the hood, he wore some kind of brightly colored cloth cap with arrow points dimpling the top of his head like knobs with the two ends dangling down either side of his face. Macbride,whoalongwitheveryoneelsestoppedconversationtostare,was mesmerized. It was something that might be seen in a Lapland forest or a Himalayan village where they churned yaks into butter and women marriedaclanof brothers.Butnotinthemiddleof acornfieldinfrozenOhio.
Tony called out, “Smitty, my nigga.”
Theapparitiondustedoff alayerof snowtorevealanordinary-looking man, albeit with a thin physique and bulging eyes.
Tony liked to lay on the black-brothershtikto white boys who hated blacks.Somedayhe’dhireabigugly-assspadefromYoungstowntohidebehind the bar when Smitty came in. Tony knew something else about him; he had a knockout, drop-dead sexy wife. Some hillbilly girl he’d married. Tony remembered seeing her with him only one time, and he was sure she was coming on to him, but it cooled so fast he thought it was because he was cranked up that night. One big, really fine-looking broad, a little older than he liked but he bet she really cooked in the sack. He pictured himself jackhammering her, his back muscles rippling, hearing her moan as he dug his fingers into her creamy white ass and breasts while she raked her nails over his six-pack.
Smith fisheyed him, stamped snow from his boots. A couple airport workers muttered loudly about the cold draft, which made him stomp a couplemoretimesbeforeheheadedtothebar.Hiswristswerethinandred from the cold. He threw the hood back exposing the colorful cap.
“Jesus to fucking Christ,” Nelson Smith said. “Man, it is one cold bitch out there.”
