The Cruelty, page 17
“Whose party is it?” I say.
A nervous laugh. “It is at my boss’s apartment, but don’t worry. I told him you were cool. It’s like—for my mates who died. A ‘celebration of life’ we say.”
A funeral after-party. At the boss’s apartment. Nervous terror stirs in my stomach. Where did all the confident bravado I felt last night on the train disappear to? “So—a memorial service.”
“Yes. A little fancy. Which is why I thought—maybe a dress for you. But whatever.”
“So tell about your boss,” I say. “Cool guy?”
“Paulus? Supercool. And his apartment—you will see.” He exhales sharply and shakes his head. “Two units, one on top of the other. And he put in a stairway so you can go between them. Mahogany bar. Jacuzzi on the roof. Sweet-ass TV, like, I don’t know, two meters wide.”
“Cool.”
“I think in a few years, maybe I can get such a place.” He claps his hands together in excitement. “Maybe they’ll have a TV three meters wide by then.”
“And what work do you do, Christian?” I say, casually as I can. “You didn’t tell me last night.”
His voice deepens by a half octave all of a sudden as he plays the grown-up. “I’m a wholesaler. We buy things, sell things. Computers. Whisky. Car parts. Whatever. West to east, north to south. All over Europe.”
“And here I thought you did something, I don’t know, dangerous.” I give him a sideways look and a smile. “I like dangerous.”
“Oh, it can be!” he says, eager not to disappoint. “Maybe all the tax papers aren’t there sometimes. Maybe an import stamp is missing.”
“Sounds scary. All those forms. You might get a paper cut.”
His face changes to embarrassment. “There’s more to it than that. These people. My crew. We’re nobody to fuck around with.”
“Mm,” I say, making sure he hears the doubt in my voice. “Is that right?”
But he pulls back and his voice becomes defensive. “Five hundred euros this jacket cost me, you know. Fucking limited edition. Believe me, Sofia, you don’t get what you want in this world by being a meek little loser bitch.”
“Genau,” I say. Precisely.
* * *
The Celebration of Life is in a graffiti-covered building at the very end of the street. House music and rattling windows, men laughing and shouting. Christian leads me by the hand up the building’s stairs, past couples making out and smoking weed. The guys look like slightly older versions of him, and the girls in short dresses look like better-dressed versions of me. He enters the party with a triumphal shout that receives a few shouts back. There’s a thick crowd around the enormous TV Christian told me about, playing some shooting game set in a destroyed world.
We squeeze our way to the kitchen at the back of the apartment, and Christian hands me a bottle of beer and a full shot glass. I don’t see a way around it, so tactical awareness be damned. We clink the glasses together, and I swallow the shot in one go, a thick, sweet liquor that leaves my lips sticky as glue.
Christian takes my hand, twirls me around, and presses his body against my back. His lips, also sticky, start exploring my neck. I try to wriggle away, but he just holds me tighter. “Hey!” I say, swatting at his head. “Nicht doch!”
One of his bros from last night at Rau Klub approaches with a wide grin and gives Christian a hard punch in the shoulder. “Where’s your fucking manners? She said knock it off!” But Christian brays with laughter at what is, evidently, a joke. The two start play wrestling, or maybe wrestling for real, but either way, I’m able to break free. I slip through the jostling crowd, their noise deafening, and look for someplace less crowded. I find a corner where two women in short dresses are smoking and speaking Russian to each other.
A pale woman about twenty with white-blond hair gestures to me with her cigarette. “Russkiy?”
I nod.
“God, not another one of us,” she says. “Which one do you belong to?”
“Him,” I say, pointing to Christian. “Red jacket.”
“Oh, Christian’s just a baby,” says the other woman, this one maybe in her late twenties with elaborate pinned-up black hair. She’s swaying back and forth a little, already drunk, and introduces herself as Veronika. “I’m with Paulus. You can have him if you want.”
The women laugh, and I try to.
“Which one’s Paulus?” I say.
Veronika points to a man standing nearby. Late thirties, with his head shaved completely bald, and a tailored black T-shirt over a body that’s muscular and very lean. He’s doing shots with Christian and two other young men. He pours another round. Then another.
“They get grabby because of the coke and liquor,” Veronika says, the words slurring out of her mouth. “Trick is to hide downstairs until the coke runs out, and they pass out playing video games.”
At an open window on the far side of the room, a group of men are gathering. A well-muscled guy wearing a tank top roars as he lifts a beer keg over his head. Shouts of encouragement. Chanting. Then the beer keg disappears through the window. There’s a crash. The wail of a car alarm. Weeping shrieks of laughter.
The blond crushes out her cigarette on the floor and takes me by the arm. “Time to disappear.”
We slink discreetly through the party toward a spiral staircase in the room’s center. Veronika catches the eyes of a few other women and gestures with her head for them to disappear, too.
The blond leads the way, while I follow with Veronika, who’s gripping the railing tightly, heels clicking uneasily down the stairs. “The boys know the rules,” she says. “This area is just for the boss and me. Private. Access denied.”
* * *
The lower level is much quieter. White leather couches, a glass coffee table, a shitty abstract painting in a curlicue gold frame on the wall. Three other women join Paulus’s girlfriend, the blond, and me on the couches. Someone produces a bottle of vodka. Someone else a small mirror and clear plastic tube full of white powder.
Besides me and the two Russians, there are two German women and an Austrian. Conversations the women started upstairs continue and I catch a few pieces. Sex problems. Where to shop. Clinics that won’t report black eyes.
Veronika sits next to me and drains a glass of vodka. As she refills it with the bottle, she speaks to me in quiet Russian. “Is Christian treating you well? I started drinking at noon, so I’m being a nosy hag.”
“Oh, yes,” I say. “He’s a sweetheart.”
“Well, he’s young. Look around. You see what bastards they become,” she says, taking another sip. “This business of theirs. It makes them mean. And after Paris, they’re all acting like madmen.”
Paris. How drunk is she, and how far do I dare push her? “Christian told me about that,” I say. “Gunther and Lukas, so sad.”
“Sad? Please. They were idiots and thugs, just like every one of those monsters upstairs.” She puts a hand on my shoulder, another on my leg. Commiserating girlfriends. “Anyway, I’m sick of talking about it. At least Paulus can’t blame me for that shit show. No, he cannot. I should dump his gangster ass.”
I smile and pat her arm conspiratorially. “Just like my aunt used to tell me: A woman needs a man like she needs a silk scarf. Nice to have, but if you lose it, who cares, right?”
“So true! And they never listen, you know. It’s like they’re born without ears. I told Paulus he always regrets the jobs he takes from that ghoul Boris or Bandar or Buh-something. Always. Too much work, not enough money. Fucking Paris.” Veronika slides the mirror and coke in front of her and makes two narrow lines with the edge of someone’s health club card. “You want? Keeps a girl thin.”
“No,” I say. “Thank you.”
“Won’t have that figure forever, you know.” Veronika bends at the waist, snorting first one line, then the other. When she comes up again, her nostrils are red and she wears an immense smile. She grabs my hand and places it on her chest. “Feel my heart. Feel it. Kicking like a racehorse.”
And so it is. “You okay?” I ask. “Maybe, you should—slow down.”
Veronika stares at me for a moment with what looks like anger. Then lets out a raucous laugh. “Oh, little girl. Do yourself a favor and get out of here. Get out of here before you become me.”
Heavy footfalls on the staircase. I look up to see Paulus coming down. He stops halfway, stares directly at Veronika. “Why are all of you down here? Up! Now! Let’s go!”
The women all rise, and Veronika curtsies to Paulus. “As you wish, Liebling.”
I follow them halfway up the stairs, then stop. The party is louder than before, in full swing now. They won’t even notice I’m not there.
* * *
I slip back down the stairs into Paulus’s home and look around. It’s just a gangster’s gaudy apartment—Schlägertypen. Too much leather, too much glass, too much expensive, ugly shit. How long do I have before someone comes looking for me? Ten minutes? Two?
I pass the kitchen and head into the hallway. Here’s the bedroom, an enormous bureau, an enormous armoire. Here’s the bathroom, marble everywhere. And here’s a locked door. I pause, listen to the party again. The clomping of a hundred feet, screeches of laughter, a shout, something landing hard on the floor.
Paulus, where would you keep the key? In your pocket, of course, but maybe—I head to the living room. Quietly as I can, I open the closet, rummage around through coats and jackets, but come up with nothing. Shit. So maybe Paulus changed before the party. Maybe the key is in his pants, lying on the floor in the bedroom.
But the bedroom floor is tidy, the top of the bureau, too. In the armoire and drawers of the bedside tables I find nothing other than a novel in Russian, loose change, a few receipts. The fear is coursing through me now like a narcotic, but I give myself one last moment. In desperation, I search the hamper: T-shirts, socks, underwear, Veronika’s and his. Fucking gross. I search a department store shopping bag: silk nightgown, price tag still attached. I search under the bed: a single cardboard box from a courier.
I slide it out and see it’s already been opened. There’s no shipping label inside, no customs form. Only a beautiful wooden box packed in foam. It looks like a humidor, but when I lift the lid, I see it’s something else entirely.
A pistol plated in gold nests in a bed of form-fitted velvet. I move a little notecard aside to see it better. It’s gaudy as hell and exactly the sort of thing I’d expect someone like Paulus to collect. A brass plate in the lid says:
Česká Zbrojovka Uherský Brod
Made in Czech Republic
Limited Edition 64/100
The notecard on top of it, though, isn’t gaudy. It’s made of thick paper with rough edges and feels like linen. On the inside, written in blue ink, it says in English: As ever, a pleasure doing business. Your admiring friend, BK. For a moment I squint at the initials. What had Veronika said? That ghoul Boris or Bandar or Buh-something.
Time’s up, I tell myself. Time to get out of here, back to the party. With the package put back exactly as it was, I slide it under the bed and head down the hallway toward the living room. Forget the key to the locked door; it’s just too risky to be down in the area Veronika said was private, access denied.
As I’m turning into the living room, I freeze. Christian is standing at the bottom of the stairs. He stares at me, eyes narrowed with anger. “The fuck are you doing?”
Swallow the terror, I tell myself. Be Sofia. I approach him, put my hands on his chest, and give the sexiest smile I can manage. “Waiting for you,” I say.
He yanks my hands away by the wrists, gripping them tightly. “You can’t be down here. You know that.”
Knee to the groin, thumbs to eyes. Blind him. Run. But I don’t. “Christian, let go, you’re hurting me,” I say instead. “I wanted you to come find me, so we could be alone.”
His face slackens, and I see uncertainty. Then he releases his grip.
More footsteps on the stairs, hurrying this time. I wrap my arms around Christian and pull him into me. His mouth meets mine, and I slide my tongue between his teeth. I feel his body tense with shock.
Then he’s ripped from me with a violent shove. Paulus switches his eyes from me to Christian and back again. “You little bitch,” he says. “Little street thief.” Then he turns to Christian. “And you. Either you’re stealing, too, or too stupid to realize she was.”
Christian tries to stammer something but fails. Paulus grabs me by my jacket and pushes me hard against the wall. “What’s your story? A thief, or were you planting bugs? You working for the cops?”
“Paulus!” cries Christian.
“Shut up.”
“Paulus!” Christian shouts again, stepping forward, the awkward teenager, forcing himself to be brave. “It was me. My fault. I invited her down here. I wanted—I wanted someplace to be alone.”
“Bullshit,” Paulus says. “Veronika told me she didn’t come up with the others.”
Christian inhales sharply, rubs his mouth with his hand. “All due respect, Paulus. But Veronika is drunk and stoned. No offense. But you saw it yourself.” He gestures toward me. “She said she would, you know, sleep with me tonight. But I couldn’t wait. So I said we could sneak down here.”
My eyes are trained on the side of Paulus’s head as he stares at Christian. Then his hands relax and he lets go of my jacket. “Fucking children,” Paulus seethes.
“I’m sorry,” says Christian.
Paulus seizes me by the back of the neck and shoves me toward the stairs. I grab the railing and manage not to fall. “You,” he says, pointing a trembling finger at my throat. “Get out of my house.”
Then he turns to Christian. “And you. You stay right the fuck here.”
Sixteen
With my phone plugged into the wall and the power cord stretched as far as it can, I lie on Marina’s couch, staring at the screen and the three unanswered messages I’ve sent to Christian:
Bist du ok?
Bist du ok?
??????????
I typed the first on the U-Bahn back to Marina’s, and the second an hour later, and the third an hour after that, the whole time wondering in what ways Paulus was torturing him. The fact is I need Christian. He was my way in. Then I screwed it up for both of us. Without him, there’s no more access to the men who took my dad.
And while the thing inside me worries and clenches its teeth at the strategic loss, my heart, my human heart, aches for the boy, just a little. He’s a thug, and a sloppy, grabby drunk, but he was brave in the end. He stood up for me. That’s worth something, right?
After a long while, I’m able to sleep in fits and starts but wake up every so often to phantom vibrations of the phone resting on my chest. I get up just after dawn, pace the living room, and send Christian another sad, hopeless Bist du ok?
I brush my teeth and shower, phone turned all the way up and resting on the edge of the sink. But no reply comes in. As I brush my hair and get dressed, I hear Lyuba and Marina moving around in the kitchen. When I open the door, however, I see a third person standing between them. He has a scrubby red beard and a round, bean-shaped belly. Lyuba points to me, and he cocks the lapels of his denim jacket, taps the toe of his cowboy boot on the floor.
For a while, he and I look at each other silently. Then he turns to Marina and sends a hard slap across her cheek. She lets out the high-pitched but undramatic yelp of someone who’s used to this. I watch as she shrinks back, slouching near the kitchen door, the confidence she always wears gone.
The man steps toward me, and I step back into the living room, keeping a few meters between us. Better to be here in an open space if I’m right about what’s going to happen next.
“I’m Leo,” he says in Russian. “And you call yourself Sofia, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
Leo nods, steps closer. I don’t retreat this time. “The protection tax is three hundred a week. Which is pretty fair, right, Marina?”
She looks up, her cheek red from the slap. “Yes, Leo.”
“What’s that now?” he says.
“Yes, Leo,” Marina repeats. “Very fair.”
His eyes narrow. “But for you, with late fees, penalties, I figure a thousand. How about it?”
My muscles tense, poised and at the ready. Whatever fear is in me blurs into the background of my mind, behind the desire to punish this man, behind the knowledge that I’m capable of doing it.
I cant my head to the side. “I’m going to take my things now, Leo. Then I’ll walk out the door.” My voice sounds certain, even cocky, in a way I’ve never heard it before. And I like it. “As for my money, it’s mine. It belongs to me. That means I’m not going to give it to you.”
I step to the side, take up my backpack, and shove my phone and charger and the few things of mine that are lying around inside. Leo is staring at me with an expression of curiosity. I’ve presented something new to him.
As I move toward the door, I face Leo and turn as he turns, never letting him see my back. Then he makes his move, a sloppy grab for my left arm.
The muscle memory Yael beat into me kicks in. I catch his hand and twist it away from me. Leo’s arm is now a lever steering his body to where I want it—groin pushed forward and to the side. I launch my knee into his balls with the force of a baseball bat. As he doubles over, I seize the sides of his head, digging my nails into his hair and scalp, holding him tight.
Two more knee strikes, to Leo’s face this time, and on the second strike, I hear something crack. I let him go, and he takes a few steps back, falls to his knees. Then Leo raises his eyes to mine. They shine with humility now. This is what happens, Leo, when you try to take what isn’t yours.
Marina’s right about Leo being a teddy bear. It took me maybe four seconds to bring him down, and that just isn’t acceptable. So I pivot on my right foot and arc my left leg through the air. My toes meet his head at the temple and snap his neck to the side. He does a half turn and collapses, landing hard on the floor.
Leo is unconscious, or near enough that he doesn’t protest as I fish a small pistol from the pocket of his jacket along with a roll of euros. The roll is made of smaller rolls, paper-clipped together, one from each girl on this morning’s rounds, no doubt. Leo stares back at me dumbly. Maybe comprehending what’s happening to him, maybe not. His nose has swollen to twice its natural size and is the color of eggplant.
