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Maxim welcomes me into his study.
It’s a long room with good light, a desk, two chairs, and a map of our routes on the wall behind him, all lines in black, except one. The southern lane is marked in a different color now. He sits with his back to it.
He is thirty-something and only looks his age around the eyes where the lines are deeper. One strand of black hair has come loose over his forehead, and he doesn’t push it back. He reads the pages I’ve brought him all the way through, the warehouse receipts, the weigh tickets, the Tuesday load arriving at Zorin’s dock with a time stamp on it, eleven hours after Zorin billed the Perez brothers for losing it.
When he finishes, he straightens the pages on the desk.
“He isn’t keeping it,” he says.
“No. He doesn’t have any buyers. He’s transferring it to somebody who does.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know yet.” I’m still working on it. I’d have had an answer by now if Zorin’s foreman hadn’t found a use for his knife ten days ago.
Maxim nods once. “Zorin has been asking people in the north what we pay our captains,” he says. “Anton thinks it’s curiosity. Maybe it is.” He watches me closely. “Thursday after next, the load goes to Zorin as scheduled. We don’t touch it. We don’t let anyone near his dock. I want him to think the universe is on his side.”
It’s a great deal of money to hand a thief on purpose. The Volkov Pakhan says it the way other men discuss a game of golf.
“The one who put a knife in me?” I ask.
“After we locate Zorin’s buyer,” Maxim says. “I haven’t forgotten him.”
“And when Zorin moves the load?”
“You’ll be right behind it, and we’ll know who he’s moving it to. The Perez brothers get paid what he billed them. Today. From us. Tell them we were wrong.”
He leans back. His eyes go past me to the door and back again, and something in his face is slightly less closed than it was before.
“Anton says you’ve found a reason to like Chicago.”
“Yes.”
“Then finish this before Zorin learns where you spend your evenings.”
The cold dread that’s been pooling inside my gut since Vera opened the back door of the bakery to me solidifies. If anyone tries to get too close to her, they’ll have to go through me, and they’ll understand how it feels to hit a brick wall at speed without a safety helmet.
Grisha’s report on the tenth night is longer than usual.
Man at front door 23:05. Tried the handle. Waited 2 mins, looked up at the windows. Gray sedan parked on the corner. Plate below.
The dread grows a little heavier.
On the eleventh night:
Same man. 23:20. Handle again. Knocked once. Nobody came down. Left.
Anton’s contact at the Secretary of State takes four hours to send the information I need. The sedan is registered to Daniel Reed, twenty-seven, address in Berwyn. The license photo shows a clean-shaven man with an easy, practiced smile, the kind of face that has talked its way out of parking tickets.
On the twelfth day, Yevgeny takes the stitches out.
“You may drive,” he says, dropping the last one in the steel dish. “You may not be stupid.”
“I’m never stupid.”
He looks at me over the top of his glasses, debating whether to call me out. The clock on the wall says eight forty, and I’m already reaching for my coat.
“No,” he says. “Of course not.”
