Page 37

They never see me.

It takes less than ninety seconds from the first shot to the last. When it’s over, there are eight men on the ground in the parking lot at Belmont Harbor, a black van with its horn still blaring, and a little blue Fiat with a bullet hole through the driver’s window.

Andrik is sitting against the dumpster with his hand clamped to his shoulder, swearing in Ukrainian.

“Through and through,” he tells me, before I ask. “Go.”

I look down the dock.

The Lyudmila is moored at slip nine. White with a blue stripe, exactly as Galana said. The cabin curtains are drawn. While I watch, the engine coughs and catches. Water churns white at the stern.

He’s running.

I make the jump from the dock to the stern as the boat’s pulling away. Four feet of open water. I land hard on the deck and go down on one knee, and the cabin door bangs open.

Geoff Orlik comes out with a pistol.

He’s bigger than he looked on the camera. Sixty-four years old, thick through the chest, with a gray mustache and big scarred hands. One of them is wrapped around the gun. He’s wearing a fisherman’s sweater and no coat, and his face is gray.

He looks at me. Then at the gun in my hand, pointed at the center of his chest.

He doesn’t lift his.

“She sent you,” he says. “Didn’t she? Galochka.”

“Put it down.”

“She was always too clever. Nobody ever saw it. I did.” He laughs, a terrible sound. “Thirty-one years I worked for Yaroslav. Thirty-one years. And in the spring, he tells me I’m getting old. He’s bringing in an American with computers. He’s going to give me a pension and a watch.”

“So you sold his information to the highest bidder.”

“So I took what I was owed.” His hand tightens on the pistol. “Selin came to me. In March. He said Yaroslav was dying, that everyone knew, that when he went the vultures would come. He said I could take some money, or I could die with the old man. I took the money.”

“You let Brenner in, in May.”

“Yes.”

“You gave Selin the July rotation.”

“Yes.”

“You walked him through the front door in August, past his daughter in the kitchen.”

He flinches. Just slightly. “Yaroslav was supposed to sell. Selin went to make him an offer. The Port District routes, and he’d keep the house safe. The old fool wouldn’t take it.”

“So you sold his daughters instead.”

Geoff says nothing.

“She made you a cake,” I tell him. “When she was twelve. At Christmas. So you wouldn’t be lonely.”

His face crumples.

For a second, I think he’ll drop the gun. I think he’ll go to his knees on the deck of his stupid white boat and cry.

Then his eyes go flat, and his arm comes up.

I shoot him twice.