His right hand on the chain link fence, he looked out across the water
at the skyline of New York and thought of Elena. They had walked the
streets of the city many times together in the years before she died,
but the view from where he stood was unfamiliar to him. No matter. They
had lived in a half dozen cities together; he had no special love for
this one. The picture of her smile came to his mind, and he closed his
eyes a moment to distill the image, to exclude all else. He smiled back
at her. He wiggled his fingers through the fence; a small wave to Elena.
This, he thought, they could not take from him. If they took his Elena,
they might as well kill him at once. Then he heard the step behind him,
soft and quick on the gravel. He should have turned or moved or opened
his eyes at least, but how could he part from his Elena?
A
man grabbed his left hand, pulling it straight out behind him, twisting
the arm in a move police have used for decades to subdue the unruly.
Viktor felt the pain and his reaction, as always, was to return it
tenfold. He stabbed his heel down on the man’s foot, breaking a
meta-tarsal bone. His attacker released him and started to fall to his
knees. With a quick spin, Viktor caught the man by the throat with his
right hand, keeping him from the ground. A Latino, young. Viktor
didn’t know his name. Someone else was rushing at him. He loosed the
first attacker, turned, caught the second man in the jaw with his elbow,
knocking him to the gravel. The man’s jaw was dislocated by the blow
and put back in place when he landed. Another Latino, young, unknown.
With the two men at his feet, Viktor looked about himself. There was a
perimeter of young, tough men, his fellow prisoners. They were rapidly
losing interest in what they thought was going to be a sound beating.
The outer fringe of the group began to turn away.
“Leave
me alone!” Viktor roared.
A
couple of the nearest prisoners nodded to him. A prison guard standing
near a far gate looked up at him. The group broke up and Viktor stepped
over the man with the broken foot. He had one hour per day in the fresh
air and for the weeks he had been there that hour had been his only
anxious one.
In
another section of the yard, Viktor closed his eyes and tried to bring
Elena back, but he couldn’t. When it was time to go in, a prisoner, a
Russian nodded to him and smiled. The man had tried several times to
start conversations, but Viktor had avoided him. The man was fat and
sometimes wore a gold chain, a thing not allowed on Riker’s, but it
hung on his neck nevertheless. Viktor didn’t need to be told this
other Russian had powers. He suspected the man of arranging the attacks
he had endured the past month though he had never met him before getting
off the bus on this island.
“We
must talk my friend,” the man told him as they filed in.
“Tomorrow,”
Viktor said. It wasn’t the first time he had said this same thing. The
man sighed, and Viktor knew his patience was running short. He didn’t
care.
In
his cell, alone, Viktor brought out the pad of drawing paper his lawyer
had been allowed to bring to him and thin sticks of charcoal. He would
need a greater supply of each material if he were ever to get any
better. On a clean sheet, he roughed out a circle, then he filled it in,
then he saw the circle was not fully round. He tried to smudge the edges
into shape, filling and wiping, but it didn’t help. The circle became
larger and less round. He stared at the paper and wondered how he had
gone so far wrong in something that had seemed so simple.
“You
have company,” a guard said. The man was one of two guards waiting
outside the cell with chains.
Viktor
tucked his pad of paper away, got up and let himself be chained, hand,
foot and waist.
The
interrogation room meant lawyers or detectives. Detectives this time.
Homicide.
Eddie
Santos, tall, athletic, good-looking, Viktor imagined. Joey DiRaimo, not
so tall, but a big man, older, called Fats or Fat Joey. The only police
officers that Viktor had ever liked. The men who had put him in jail.
Viktor sat. So did DiRaimo.
Santos
opened a manila folder and pulled out a photo, sliding it across the
table. Viktor looked and sat back.
“We
found Buch,” Santos said. “I told you we would.”
Viktor
shrugged. He thought of saying “Congratulations,” but he wasn’t
sure whether the word would roll off his tongue or if the syllables
would crash into each other on his lips.
“Do
you have anything you want to say?” DiRaimo asked. He leaned in toward
Viktor as though waiting to hear a secret. He was the good cop now, as
he had been a month earlier, and Viktor wondered if the detectives
remembered their former roles.
“Now
is the time to talk, Viktor,” Santos said. He also moved in closer,
but it was meant as menace.
Viktor
looked again at the photo.
“You
don’t have all of Buch,” Viktor said.
“We
have enough,” Santos answered. “We have the head with a bullet in
it, and a little more.”
DiRaimo
threw in “If you tell us where the rest of him is, that would go a
long way toward helping you in sentencing.”
“I
didn’t kill him,” Viktor said. “I did not kill him, and I did not
bury him.” The word “bury” was pronounced carefully.
“But you know what happened to him,” Santos said. He was leaning
over Viktor now.
“I
know he was shot in the head and his head was cut off. That I can see in
the picture. More than that, I don’t know.” Viktor shrugged again.
It wasn’t as expressive as he hoped. He wanted to show that he was
willing to help but simply had nothing they could use, but this was hard
with a limited vocabulary and his hands chained to his waist.
Santos
stared at him a moment, then stood straight.
“Let’s
go,” he said. “We don’t have time for this.” He gathered the
picture back up into its folder. DiRaimo pushed himself to standing.
Santos
pointed the folder at Viktor.
“Let
me tell you. We’re going to put this murder on you. Buch was your
business partner and now he’s dead. He was probably screwing you out
of money. Even if he wasn’t, when we get through with you, it’ll
look like he was. That’s motive. With everything else we have you for,
we’re going to go for the death penalty. And you know what Viktor?
We’re going to get it. Once people know about your past, all the DA
has to do is say, ‘Do you want this guy loose on the streets?’ and I
guarantee you they’ll put a needle in your arm. You may not think too
much of American prisons. You may think Riker’s is a health spa
compared to where you’ve been, but the death penalty is the great
equalizer – whether it’s a needle like we have here or they hang you
like in the Motherland, you’re still dead.”
Viktor
nodded as though agreeing with the wisdom of what Santos had to say, but
said nothing. Santos waved the folder at him a last time and turned to
go. He banged on the door for the guard to open. DiRaimo came in close.
“You
understand, right? I mean, we have to do this. Nothing personal.”
“Yes,”
Viktor said. “Sure.”
Back
in his cell, Viktor sat and thought about what had happened to Buch.
What was the point of cutting off a dead man’s head? A message maybe?
Then why hide it? It took the police six weeks to find it, but it was
still fairly well preserved. Frozen maybe? After a few moments, Viktor
shrugged the thoughts out of his head. He had seen the faces of many
dead; he knew what drove men to kill; he had never hidden a body or
preserved one.
That
night, before sleep, Viktor brought out the pad of paper. Tucked between
the sheets, a folded paper of a different color and texture. Carefully,
he revealed the six portraits of Elena in pastels, in pencil, done by
her hand. He traced the outline of her face, smudging nothing, and he
stroked the edges of the paper because her hands had once touched them.
This was his ritual each night – how he slept.
In
the showers two days later, without word or warning, one inmate attacked
another, smashing the man’s head into the wet wall, bringing out blood
with the first hit. He had the man pinned face first to the wall with
one arm and used the other to land a half dozen blows. Viktor watched
the fight while rinsing himself. It was no affair of his.
Later,
he was thinking about the game of baseball – how slow it was, how
little strategy it required, how simple the confrontation between the
man with the bat and the man with the ball and yet how dramatic it all
felt to the American men who loved it – when he heard the quickening
of steps behind him. He turned and seized the fist aimed at him, a
wooden shiv flying for his kidney. He pulled and twisted and there was
the crackle of ligaments wrenching free from the eight wrist bones they
had held knit together. He twisted and pulled and the man’s forearm
came free from its elbow joint.
The
man on his knees in front of Viktor – a boy really, eighteen years old
Viktor had heard, in Riker’s for only his fourth day, only his first
offense – had his mouth open in a silent scream. Tears coursed along
his nose, into his mouth.
Viktor
took a quick look around. No one seemed too interested in what was
happening.
“Who
are you?” Viktor asked. His accent was heavy, but he knew from
experience that he was understandable. The boy didn’t seem to hear
him.
“Why
do you do this?”
Still
no answer. Viktor looked around again, then stooped to the boy’s
level.
“When
I let go, you will feel pain, yes?” he told the boy. This, the boy
seemed to understand. He opened his eyes and looked at Viktor, bleary.
Viktor
was about to let go, but stooped again instead.
“If
you tell anyone I break your hand,” he said, “I will break your
other one. Okay?”
The
boy nodded and Viktor let go. There was a gasping scream of pain, but
Viktor was walking away and, in the corridors of Riker’s Island,
screams were fairly common and not a cause of much concern for anyone
who could actually do something about them.
In
the yard again the next day, the fat Russian introduced himself. “Sasha,”
he said. Sasha said nothing about the large man who followed him a few
paces behind.
“Can
we walk?” Sasha asked. He laced his arms with Viktor’s, and they
walked arm in arm as they might have on a sidewalk in Moscow.
“I
see you were military and prison,” Sasha said. He referred to the
tattoos on Viktor’s back, chest, and arms. Viktor said nothing.
“Enforcer,
no?”
Viktor
still said nothing.
“No
difference, you have killed men.”
Viktor
still said nothing.
“And
I need someone like you.” Sasha came to a halt before an empty bench
and motioned Viktor to sit. He did.
“I
don’t kill people anymore,” Viktor said.
“What?
Did you become a priest all of the sudden?” Sasha asked. He was
laughing. “Look, Petrenko, you need me and I need you.”
“Go
away,” Viktor said. He got up from the bench and a hand, large and
firmly placed landed on his shoulder, pushing him back toward his seat.
Viktor resisted.
“Tell
your monkey to leave me alone,” he said. Monkey pushed down harder.
Sasha raised his hands as though to say all was out of his hands though
he would help if he could. Monkey’s second hand came down on
Viktor’s other shoulder and Viktor turned and whirled a punch straight
into Monkey’s nose so fast and hard Monkey’s next thought was about
the need to roll off his back and get on his feet again. If only his
body would move as he wanted it to.
“Idiot,”
Viktor heard Sasha say. “Were you going to dance with him?”
Viktor
took a look back over his shoulder to memorize the Monkey’s face.
Monkey had no career without a reputation for toughness, and Viktor knew
the man would try to reclaim it, probably soon.
Back
in his cell, Viktor took out the paper and charcoal again. He tried
another sphere. When that came out wrong, he thought he might try to
turn it into an apple. He was much closer with that, but it was still
unsatisfactory to him. He wondered how Elena could create the art she
created without feeling the frustration he felt. “She was gifted,”
he told himself out loud. “Gifted by God.”
The
next morning, Monkey showered next to him, glaring at him over a broken
nose. Viktor looked back at him with unconcern.
The
staring continued throughout the day. Next morning, breakfast, Monkey
jostled Viktor, making him spill his orange juice as he made his way to
his bench.
“Monkey,”
Viktor said loud enough for anyone to hear.
“What
did you say?” Monkey asked, closing in on him. Viktor answered him
with a fist to the throat. Monkey went to the hospital. Viktor was sent
to solitary confinement for three days. At the end of that time, the
detectives were back.
“We’re here to break you,” Joey DiRaimo started, “Viktor
Petrenko, we will make you beg.”
DiRaimo
moved his body in close to Viktor as he said this. He had been the good
cop last time.
“We
have the goods on you, my friend.” DiRaimo stepped back and nodded to
Detective Santos. Santos opened a folder, looked things over and with
some pleasure read out the litany of Viktor’s troubles.
“We
found out that you own half a restaurant in Alphabet City. The city took
that. You had a quarter share in an apartment building in Flatbush. We
took that too. You had some electronic valuables – nice stuff, too –
in a storage place in Hunt’s Point. We got it. If we can tack on a
possession of stolen goods charge, believe me, we will.”
“I
told your people about the restaurant. I told them about the apartment
building. I never had a storage place in Hunt’s Point. I don’t know
who that belongs to,” Viktor answered. His response was measured and
slow. He didn’t want to deflate any egos; after all, detectives are
powerful people and can add charges that aren’t entirely true if
they’re angry.
“Ah,
but that’s not the best part,” Santos said. Viktor couldn’t tell
whether his enthusiasm was real or an act. Santos nodded to his partner
who leaned in again.
“The
restaurant and the building?” DiRaimo said. “They’re both
connected to Buch. He was your partner on these things.”
Viktor
shrugged.
“That
doesn’t mean I killed him,” he said.
“No.
You’re right there, but the accountants found something that you
didn’t tell us – Buch was skimming.”
Viktor
squinted at the last word.
“Skimming,”
DiRaimo repeated louder. “He was stealing from his partners. He was
taking money out of your pocket.”
Viktor’s
eyes widened.
“I
did not know this,” he said.
“Sure.
Let me guess, you’re the only Russian mobster who can’t tell when
he’s being robbed. Stick with that story.”
“I
am not mobster,” Viktor said.
“Whatever.
Look. If you want to help yourself with the Buch case, the idea is to
start talking right now. This stealing thing is a perfect motive. Any
jury in the country would find you guilty. Hell, even a jury of friggin’
Russian mob guys would hang you.”
Viktor
put his hands palms up.
“I
don’t know anything about Buch,” he said. He hated to say it. It
hadn’t worked in the past.
“You
do know about Buch,” Santos said. “I figure you did him yourself.”
“Never.”
“Or
you know who did it. Either way, if you don’t talk, it goes on you.
You will do some hard time for this, maybe even get a needle.”
“You
can’t.”
“Why
not?”
“I have alibi.”
“Alibi?”
Santos said as though the word was new to him. “What alibi?”
“Tell
me when Buch died, and I tell you my alibi.”
Santos
opened his mouth then shut it. The game was over for just then. He
banged on the door.
“Ah,
so you don’t know when he died,” Viktor said. Santos ignored him and
walked out. DiRaimo came closer.
“This
is no good Viktor. If you’re protecting somebody, tell us. We’re
just going to keep digging and keep finding stuff that makes you look
worse and worse. That’s how these things go. We never find the smoking
gun… Well, sometimes. Usually, it’s just a mountain of little
details. Anyway. We’re going to keep squeezing you, finding your
assets and taking them for the police auctions. We’re going to strip
you bare.”
“Take,” Viktor said.
DiRaimo
looked into his eyes a few seconds, trying to figure him out, before
leaving the room.
That
night Viktor thought of all the things he and Elena had bought together,
a house, a car, paintings and sculptures that she admired. They had
lived well in London, Paris and New York. And he thought of how he had
earned the money that bought the things. For a few years he had worked
as a mercenary. It wasn’t a particularly lucrative line of work, but
he was good at it though it ate away at his soul and everything his
hands touched was covered in blood. Twice, he had been able to loot from
the enemy he was paid to fight. A drug lord and a political dictator
both with giant fortunes a part of which they kept near them at all
times, even when they died. These stashes – the spoils of war – had
helped fund businesses, helped Viktor get out of the business of
killing. The money had helped Viktor spend the last few years of
Elena’s life with her. Now if it all ebbed away, if it was all sold at
police auctions little by little, it had served its purpose. He fell
asleep with that thought.
The
next day Viktor spent his yard time in a special area for problem
prisoners. The prisoners were let into the yard only a few at a time and
there were more guards than usual. Sasha passed by as Viktor was about
to go out to the yard. He looked worried.
“Work
for me,” he said. “I need you. Just a little thing I ask.”
“Go
to the devil,” Viktor answered.
“Bad
answer,” Sasha said.
Viktor
moved on and saw the difficulty almost instantly. One guard left the
yard, another turned his back to Viktor. Someone punched him in the back
of his head nearly knocking him off his feet. When he turned to face his
attacker, there were two men waiting for him and someone kicked him in
the small of his back with their heel. He went off balance and almost
staggered into the arms of the man who had hit him first. He threw a
punch wildly, hit nothing, and got a kick to the side from a fourth man.
Viktor went to one knee. He remembered for an instant, being in a
similar fight in similar circumstances years before when he was younger
and stronger.
Someone
kicked him hard in the chest with the toe of his foot while Viktor
crouched trying to find his balance. They did it again and again. The
fourth time, Viktor caught the foot, pulled and twisted. The man fell
into a split and clutched his knee. Someone kicked the side of
Viktor’s head so hard he toppled over and hit the concrete with his
face. Viktor rolled with the fall and sprang up to his feet. Someone
punched him twice from behind. He spun and caught the man in a reverse
headlock – for a moment the attacker’s chest and belly were up to
the Sun, and if Viktor had had a bayonet, one stroke would have
unzippered him. He settled instead for pounding the man’s solar plexus
once, lifting him off the ground, then slamming him down. Then the two
others left in the fight were on him.
A
half-minute later, five guards broke up the fight. By then, one of the
remaining attackers had broken his hand punching Viktor’s skull, but
the other man was freely kicking Viktor and Viktor was on his knees
trying to bring the blur of his vision into focus, his hands hanging at
his sides.
As
a guard poured water over his face to wash it and reveal the source of
the blood, all Viktor could mutter was “Monkeys, they are all
monkeys.”
Two
days later, Viktor was returned to his cell from the infirmary. He
walked slowly. Sasha left a message with one of the other prisoners:
“I have been vindicated and am a free man. Sorry for the fuss.”
He
tried another charcoal circle that night, but could barely manage to
fill it in for lack of energy. “I’m sorry Elena,” he said. “No
lessons today.” He fell asleep recalling the time she had tried to
teach him how to draw. They had just settled in London, two gallery
owners had offered to exhibit her work, and there was nothing in Art
that she could not do. Except teach him. They had laughed at his
inability to draw even a straight line. His failure burned him as he lay
in his cot on Riker’s Island, but it had made her smile, and that was
the image that stayed with him.
The
next day was bad. There was pain everywhere and before stepping out,
Viktor practiced standing straight and walking with purpose. He didn’t
feel he had those things under control, and he would need them if he
were to fend off attacks. No one attacked though some stared and all
took at least a look at the wreck of a man.
In
the afternoon, another trip to the interrogation room, Detective DiRaimo
and, this time, Viktor’s lawyer as well.
“Jesus,
Mary, and Joseph,” DiRaimo let out. “What the hell happened to
you?”
Viktor
sat and shrugged. Even that hurt. “The hospitality of the state,” he
said.
“Are
you saying the guards did this?” DiRaimo asked.
Viktor
shrugged again and said nothing.
“Viktor,
this is serious,” his lawyer told him. Viktor couldn’t remember his
name.
“Why?”
Viktor asked. The lawyer didn’t have a ready answer.
DiRaimo
sat across from Viktor and shuffled one folder from side to side,
thinking. Viktor got the sense that he had been prepared to play the bad
cop but he was rethinking the role.
“Where
is Santos?” Viktor asked. He wanted anything but silence. He knew he
looked grotesque – one eye was swollen closed, his bottom lip was
split, his upper lip had a knot in it, his nose had come open at the
tip. He didn’t want pity, however.
“He’ll
be by.”
“Viktor,
Detective DiRaimo is not telling you that Detective Santos is executing
a search of your cell. More importantly, there is an issue with the case
of Simon Buch…”
“We
found the arms, Viktor,” DiRaimo cut in.
“So?”
“So?
There’s evidence of torture. Burns, some kind of work on him with a
pair of pliers. That makes this a death penalty case that we’re
talking about…”
“The Bronx District Attorney has jurisdiction and he is willing to
discuss lesser charges, but frankly I think the case is weak… so
far,” Viktor’s lawyer assured him.
The
lawyer seemed to have gotten into the business of defending the accused
on the assumption that they were most likely to be actually guilty. He
so often suggested to Viktor that he should take deals offered by the
state, that Viktor wondered where his loyalties were.
“The
point is,” DiRaimo said, “That this whole thing has gone from maybe
a death penalty case to definitely a death penalty case.”
Viktor
thought for a moment. He wanted the right words to come out.
“So
you’re telling me to confess?” he asked.
DiRaimo
said nothing.
“Even
if I did nothing, I should confess so I don’t get killed.”
“You
did nothing?” the detective asked.
“How
many times I say that? I did nothing. I know nothing about Buch.”
“It
gets worse, Viktor,” the lawyer said.
“Yeah,
well, it turns out this Buch was a real character. He had a couple of
people whacked – people you also knew. We know Buch put out the hit,
but the only person we see in his life who might be able to do something
like that is sitting right in this room, and it ain’t me,” DiRaimo
said. He looked over at the lawyer a second then gestured. “And it
ain’t him neither.”
“Wasn’t
me,” Viktor said. His W came out like a V. He slumped in his chair.
Detective
Santos was admitted into the room. He had a big inter-office envelope in
his hands and a smile on his face.
“You’ve
been naughty,” he said wagging a finger at Viktor.
He
opened the envelope to reveal a clear plastic bag. Inside the bag was a
piece of paper – Elena’s self portraits.
Viktor
sat up in his chair. “What do you want with that?” he asked.
“Funny
you should ask. This, my friend, is contraband.”
“It
is my wife. Pictures of her face.”
“No.
It is contraband. You’re not supposed to have this.”
“She’s
my wife!” Viktor said.
“You
have photos. A guard was tipped off about this particular drawing, and
we just had a guy in your cell to appraise it. He’s some guy who works
for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He says Elena Kojic drawings go for
up to a thousand dollars. He said self-portraits might bring more.”
Viktor didn’t know what to say. If his life were a sand castle, this
was the tide that washed it away, and there is no arguing with the tides
no matter what they do, what pain they inflict.
“You’re
not supposed to have this piece. It’ll be up for auction soon. You
have to pay your debt to society, Viktor. This is just the beginning.”
“I
drew it myself,” Viktor said. It was the only thing he could think to
say.
“Bullshit.
I saw the book. You can’t even draw a circle. I don’t know why you
even try. The museum guy says not only is it an authentic Kojic, it’s
a damn good one. I got to say, I like it myself. Maybe I’ll bid.”
“No.
Not this. Not this piece,” Viktor said. He was speaking to DiRaimo.
DiRaimo sat back in his chair.
“Tell
us about Buch,” DiRaimo said.
Viktor
thought for a second. He weighed the options – life in prison with the
portraits of Elena, or life without it.
“Yes,”
he said. “Buch. I shot him. I burned him. I used screwdriver…”
“Pliers.”
“Yes.
You’re right. Pliers. And I cut him into pieces.”
“How
many?”
“Five.”
“Six.”
“Okay.
Six.”
“And
you dumped the pieces?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere,”
Viktor said.
DiRaimo
sat back in his chair, and Santos had a puzzled look on his face.
“What
are you doing, Viktor?” his lawyer asked.
“Cooperating.
They want confession. I want drawing.”
“Are
you saying you’re lying to us?” Santos asked.
“No,
no. I just…”
“Forget
it,” Detective DiRaimo said. He was talking to his partner. They stood
up to go.
“No,”
Viktor said. He strained his hands toward the detectives. “DiRaimo. As
a man. I beg you. DiRaimo. As a man, leave me this one thing, this small
thing. I’ll confess. Anything you want.”
DiRaimo
looked at Viktor with pity, opened his mouth as though to say something,
but he and Santos left the room. The portraits of Elena went with them,
tucked into the envelope.
Viktor
balled his fists up, hot, quick tears ran from his eyes, and he sobbed
out loud. His lawyer didn’t know where to look or what to say or do as
Viktor slumped forward in his chair, letting his head hit the table in
front of him and his body convulsed with a pain beyond his ability to
describe or control.
Copyright 2007 by
Steven Torres
Steven Torres
is the author of THE CONCRETE MAZE (Dorchester, August 2007) along with
many short stories including others in the Viktor Petrenko series. Visit
him at www.steventorres.com.
