Gatac

  Sean hadn't said anything for the duration of the food-ingesting component of breakfast, and Anne knew he'd been saving up his smart-aleck-ing for the moment they stepped over the threshold of the back-alley exit from the kitchen onto the street. She could hear him suck in his breath as her eyes scanned the area left to right, and while her head kept right to look at the main road a moment longer — had any of the parked cars moved since they came here? — her ears couldn't help but track Sean's steps as he walked around her back and toward the car.

  “Say it,” he demanded. “I'm an asshole. It's okay, I've been called worse, let's just get it over with.”“Hm?” Anne said, slowly turning her body further away from Sean as her eyes fixed on one of the cars parked on the opposite side of the main street. She'd seen it before —“But you said it yourself, I'm a Detective, I get information out of people, that is what I do,” Sean said. “Sometimes it's by being nice and listening and letting them tell me a story, but other times I just have to smell the blood in the water and go for it. Okay? And the only way we've made any progress whatsoever in the st 24 hours is because I keep asking questions and gathering information, you know, same thing I do for a living. I know that makes me hard to be around in a social capacity, I mean, I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings here, but it's just…ugh! You people are keeping everything to yourselves and if you were just fucking straight with me for five minutes I could actually sort this shit out and we wouldn't be in this intractable fucking mess suffering for some Russian gangster honor bullshit nobody actually seems to like. Okay? Anne?”“I know,” Anne said.“Yeah, I mean, we're professionals, right?" Sean continued. “I'm doing what I do best, it's not personal, you get that. We're both professionals, we do different things — very different things — but we're more simir than we're different, right?” He paused for a reaction that didn't come. “So, I mean, you may think it's enough to give me the cold shoulder right now but I'd much rather we clear the air and get back on the case, so if it helps with that at all, I mean, really, at all, go ahead and call me an asshole.”“Sean,” Anne said, “I need you to stand behind me and ready your gun.”

  On the face of it, Anne's request made no sense to Sean, but that didn't transte into hesitation. Taking a sidestep to put Anne between himself and the alley's exit, he lifted his polo shirt up and pulled the Beretta free — well, pulled it free with such enthusiasm that he hit the magazine release button on the grip, but his left hand was quick enough to catch the magazine halfway on its way out of the weapon. He pushed it home again, then slingshotted1This just means to grab the slide, pull it all the way back and let it snap forward under spring pressure. I am using the term here instead of ‘rack’ because, to me, racking as with a pump-action shotgun implies positive control of the part going back and forth, whereas with most automatic firearms you’re very much supposed to let it close on its own. Not letting it go is also calling ‘riding’ the slide/bolt handle and can lead to all sorts of malfunctions. This is because most automatic firearms are actually not designed to maintain positive control of the cartridge throughout the entire loading process, but instead rely to an extent on inertia guiding the tip of the cartridge into the chamber after it is stripped from the magazine. Why, you ask? Because it’s easier to design that way and allows for using a wider variety of ammunition with a variety of bullet shapes. But if you cycled the weapon in slow motion (which is what riding the slide/bolt handle effectively does), that would give the cartridge the opportunity to wiggle and go off course or even fall out of the weapon through its ejection port.Now, supposedly the 1911 pistol was designed to have positive control of the cartridge throughout cycling, so in theory even riding the slide should not have been a problem because the cartridge had no room to escape on its way to the chamber. But that was only for use with the ball ammunition of the times and the proliferation of modern 1911 types with different magazines/feed ramp angles has defeated that, uh, feature. That those guns still work pretty much fine in practice tells you something about how actually necessary this was in the first pce. the slide as he came up behind Anne.

  “What are we doing?” Sean whispered.“Blue car, opposite side,” she said. “I know I have seen it before.”Sean carefully took a half side-step, leaning out just far enough from behind Anne to get a good look at the car. “Yeah,” he said, lowering his Beretta. His Beretta — well, with Kyrill confirmed dead, was it his now? Could he stop pretending it wasn't? “Yeah, that's our car,” he added before he could follow the thought further.“Our car?” Anne mumbled.“I mean, the slick top I checked out yesterday, with Joe,” Sean said. “So, you know, we can deduce2Well actually, he said, adjusting a non-existing pair of horn-rimmed gsses…Deduction is a form of reasoning where you start from a set of premises and then work forward to a logical conclusion. “All swans are white, this is a swan, therefore it must be white” is a deduction. The conclusion isn’t true, of course — the first premise is false, because there are bck swans, too. Note that it’s possible to have a valid conclusion even if one of the premises is false and therefore the conclusion isn’t true. Validity only speaks to whether your deductive method was correctly used. A valid deduction that is also true is sound. Also note that you’re going from the general to the specific. So, the reasoning is certain: if your premises are true and your logic is valid, then the conclusion must be true also. I’m not actually going to give an example of a sound deduction in real life because I can’t think of something general that doesn’t also have any exceptions whatsoever.Abduction is when you start with the conclusion and then work back to the premises that it must be rooted in. “There’s a knife in my chest, we’re the only two people on this mountain and the knife has your name engraved in it and there is no other pusible expnation for how the knife could have gotten there, therefore you must have stabbed me” is abductive reasoning. The difficulty here is coming up with the whole “The only possible cause of C is A” part.There’s also induction, where you reason from something specific to something general. Something like “All the sheep in this meadow are white, sheep are probably the same all over, therefore, all sheep everywhere are white” is inductive reasoning. Note the ‘probably’. The truth of such statements is uncertain; even if you’ve personally looked at millions of sheep and found them all white, you can’t exclude the possibility that there’s a bck sheep somewhere. Still, most of what we take for granted about how the world works is based on this inductive kind of logic. It’s not for nothing that epistemology - “What is truth?” - is a rather rge field of philosophy.So, three things we should take from this:1) People tend to overrate the certainty of conclusions drawn from inductive reasoning based on the data that they have access to, while minimizing the influence of data that they don’t have. (Remember the bck swan example.) That’s avaibility bias.2) It would be cool if we could just deduce everything but unfortunately, it’s very hard to come by general premises that are actually verifiably true.3) Pretty much everyone who talks about deduction in the context of detective work, whether it’s Sherlock Holmes or Batman or Sean Collins, is actually using abduction or induction. But hardly anymore knows that and so we’re stuck with yet another vernacur use of a term that means something completely different in its original context. it’s Joe in there.”“Either way, we have a problem,” Anne said. “We are not dressed for this dance right now.”“Like, what?” Sean said. “What are you even talking about, what ‘dance’?”“A potential firefight,” Anne said. “If I had expected trouble, I would have brought equipment suitable for scouting the situation.”“Okay, let me guess,” Sean replied. “You have opera gsses in your belly bag?” He didn't even wait for her to answer before he chuckled.“Compact binocurs, yes,” Anne said.“Opera gsses,” Sean insisted.“Whatever you call them, they wouldn't go amiss right now,” Anne said.Sean's chuckling became harder to suppress. “What else do you have in there, bat-shark repellent?”3This is another Sean Collins joke that falls ft due to him being ignorant of the actual thing he’s referencing, i.e. Batman The Movie from 1966. First off, it’s the "Shark Repellent Bat Spray", and Batman didn’t have said spray on his utility belt when he needed it to, well, repel a shark biting down on his leg. It was stored, sensibly enough, in the "Oceanic Repellent Bat Sprays" compartment of the Batcopter, and the whole point of the scene was that Robin had to climb down the rope dder from the Batcopter in mid-flight to get it to Batman.Honestly, Sean. At least do a little research.“What, pray tell, is a ‘bat shark’4It’s not that Anne doesn’t know who Batman is. As we know, she watched the Tim Burton movie with Alexander not that long ago. It’s that she doesn’t know about the 1966 TV series incarnation, so she doesn’t get the Bat-noun reference.…this joke will probably work better in the movie adaption. and what does it have to do with this situation?” Anne said.“…forget it,” Sean said.“I see,” Anne said. “I suppose there is nothing to it but getting closer and taking my chances, then. You go hug the wall to the right and keep your gun down, but stand ready to cover me. If you see anybody move, fire over their heads. No sense in trying to win a shootout, just keep their heads down long enough for me to get out. After that, you follow my lead, I know my way around this part of the city. We will circle back to the safehouse as soon as we are sure we have broken contact with whoever is following us.”“Or — wild idea — I put the gun away and we both walk up to the car and talk to Joe, who is 100% the guy in the car. You know, act like we're not paranoid jackasses,” Sean said.“We could, but we won't,” Anne said. “Somebody is following us, and even if it is just Detective Berkovitz, it poses the question of how he tracked us here. We also have no guarantee he is alone, intentionally or not. Now take a look out there, Sean. Plenty of perches for snipers, but no good cover.” She noticed his eyes scanning the parked cars and shook her head to that. “Concealment isn’t cover. I will grant you the engine block is better than nothing5Cars are not bulletproof. I’m pretty sure you know this. You may be shocked to hear how not bulletproof they are, though. I mean, you would think that they could be, but they’re pretty easy to penetrate, even with handguns and shotguns, nevermind rifles. The trickiest part of a car door to shoot through with a bullet might well be the window, not because it’ll stop anything more powerful than a BB, but because gss can deflect bullets — in fact, people who work personal protection details receive training in how to adjust their aim when firing out of a car through the windshield. But look past the gss and you’re seeing sheet metal, pstic and sandwiched materials, stuff that is lightweight and pretty good at absorbing blunt kinetic energy to provide impact protection in collisions, but it doesn’t do much to stop bullets. The conventional wisdom is that engine blocks, being big hunks of metal, provide the best protection, which is why in more ‘realistic’ movies you’ll see characters duck out of the car and hunker behind the front wheelwell when fired upon. But even that nod to real tactics minimizes just how desperate a move that is. Car engines are not magic bullet magnets and they don’t exactly provide much ‘shadow’ behind them when you consider their cross-section versus a possibly plunging trajectory from an elevated shooter. If at all possible, your Pn A is to get the hell out of the area at best speed. If that isn’t possible, seek out a sturdy structure to use for cover and break contact, then evade opposing forces and make good your escape from their perimeter. Now, failing even that, a car might make for concealment in a pinch, but if it’s your final fighting position, chances are pretty good it’ll be your final fighting position, if you know what I mean.Of course, if you’re riding in a properly armored car to begin with, the best move is to stay inside until your bodyguard tells you to get out. You’re probably still screwed if your adversary can keep the car from driving off, because nothing resists a concerted attack forever, but it’s not like you could push away roadblocks or fix shot-out tires during a running firefight, anyway, so there’s no point in abandoning the vehicle. (Simir logic applying to ship wrecks or pne crashes — sure a damaged vehicle may be dangerous, but it’s ready-made shelter and it’ll be the first pce rescuers look for you.) All that said, if you can afford to ride in an armored car with bodyguards, why are you making your personal assistant read you these footnotes?, but more than likely they would just spray at the car to keep you pinned down while they send someone to fnk you.6Find, Fix, Finish is Small-Unit Tactics 101. It’s not fancy, but it works. An empty sidewalk with buildings on one side and cars on the other is as good as a funnel for any bullets fired down the length of it. Anything we shoot back, on the other hand, has to go through the length of the car when they are pressed up against the grill, and that is not counting actual bricks if they duck into a house entrance. Anybody with a clue could cut us down quicker than a cat can lick its behind.” 7I swear I didn’t make that one up, though admittedly there was a rather less polite word for derrière in there. West Virginia has some downright poetic turns of phrase.“ — quicker than a what?” Sean said.“Very quick,” Anne expined. “I suppose this here is as good a pce as you could pick for an ambush.”“You've thought about this,” Sean said.“I have done it,” Anne said.“Well,” Sean said. “Thanks for scaring me, I guess.”“You are welcome,” Anne said. “Now keep your head down.”

  Stepping out onto the street, Anne felt like she imagined a Roman gdiator might in the old days, walking into the Colosseum to the cheers of the crowd to gamble her life for fame. Sure, Sean had a point. More likely than not, they were safe for the time being. But when you accounted for one of the possible outcomes being rapid-onset lead poisoning8There have been several theories going around that ancient Romans actually did suffer from chronic lead poisoning due to using lead pipes for plumbing. So ha ha, isn’t that a funny turn of phrase in the context of the start of this paragraph! That said, my research turned up that while the Roman use of lead pipes did lead to measurable elevation of lead levels in their drinking water, the effect on the Romans was likely not significant. Cold running water does not leech that much lead to begin with, but the Romans themselves were aware of the issue and preferred to use cy pipes wherever possible. Other likely sources of lead ingestion were fruit syrups boiled down in vessels made of (lead-contaminated) copper or lead itself, which could leech dangerous amount of lead into the syrup, but a) the experiments that tested this are not altogether very confident on whether they can truly recreate the circumstances under which the Romans prepared these syrups, b) Romans knew many other types of sweeteners and c) even sweetened wine — the most commonly assumed vector — seems to have been rarely enjoyed without first significantly diluting it with water. I don’t know about you, but I find this whole issue altogether too shaky to just make a reference to it without also expining why I personally don’t buy it.I was also advised not to expin my jokes, but I thought this time I’d just draw some more attention to both my sense of humor and my inability to follow good advice, as well as my tendency to mispce crucial writing effort on passing trivia. You know, in the spirit of full disclosure., 'more likely than not' was nothing to be comforted by. If anything was going to happen, she reasoned, it would be when she was crossing the street proper, in the open and clear of anything to hide behind. When she took her first step over the street's median, her eyes snapped to movement in the back seat of the blue car and she steadied her stance against the feeling of her stomach entering freefall. The door on that side cracked open, and her hand was already under the left side of her jacket closing around the grip of her pistol.

  “Easy, Simmons!” was the muffled cry from inside the car. Her hand stayed in position as her eyes flicked left to right to quickly assess the scene for other threats trying to fnk her, but then the door slowly opened the rest of the way and gave her the sight of Detective Joseph Berkovitz lying on the back seat under a dark bnket, trying to look up and hold his hands from his prone position like a core muscle exercise he clearly wasn't in the shape for.“Are you alone?” Anne asked. Knowing it was Berkovitz gave her enough titude to actually turn her head and look around, though her hand still didn't budge from near her holstered gun.“I was until you walked up,” Berkovitz said. “Are we good?”“We will see,” Anne said, sidestepping around the car until she was near the trunk. She waved Sean forward with her left hand. “Get out, Detective. I suppose we are going to take a little drive.”

  Berkovitz mumbled to himself as he climbed out of the car. Climbing out wasn't as easy as he wanted it to be. For one, he had some difficulty casting off the bnket, as it snagged first on his leather belt and second on the heels of his brown shoes. Then he had to lift out the thermos of almost-still-hot coffee in the legroom behind the driver's seat, and that only left one hand to actually grab the frame and steady himself. By the time Sean jogged up, Berkovitz had moved on to the Sisyphean task of straightening his rumpled shirt while still filing around with the thermos in his right like it was somehow a fact of life that he needed to be holding it for this.

  “I shouldn't even be here,” Berkovitz mumbled, loud enough to be sure Anne heard him. His look at Sean was enough to make the younger cop remember he was still holding his Beretta, and led to an awkward moment of Sean trying to push the gun into the back of his waistband again, then looking at the car, remembering he would be sitting with the gun pinched between his spine and the seat, and therefore pulling it out again and trying to find a pce in the front section of the waistband that wasn't an open invitation to a negligent discharge into his unmentionables. “I shouldn't be here,” Berkovitz mumbled again, louder, and held out the thermos to Sean.Anne took pity on him, taking the thermos off Berkovitz’s hands. “I agree,” she said. "Detective, take the wheel. Sean, passenger side. I will go in the back.”“Cops taking orders from a killer,” Berkovitz said, forcing a chuckle and a smile for Sean. “What is the world coming to, eh, kid?”

  Only Sean wasn't smiling, and he wasn't chuckling either, not even the forced kind.

  “The shit I put up with,” Berkovitz said — said, not mumbled — but he got no takers for that, either, so he pulled the driver's door open, sat and turned the key in the ignition, lighting up the dashboard without starting the engine quite yet. “You two assholes run around town shooting people and I get to clean up after you,” Berkovitz said, fastening his seat belt before closing the door. “And what do I get?” Behind him, Anne took her sweet time getting seated just so.“Thank you, Joe,” Sean said. He was still fighting with his Beretta to find a position that would actually let him sit and buckle in comfortably.“Yes, that's right,” Berkovitz said, starting the engine and putting the car in gear. “Thank you, Joe. Thank me. You should be thanking me because you stepped in it and I'm working my ass off trying to pull you back out.”“You told me to keep quiet and go with it,” Sean replied, having moved on to pulling the seatbelt with his free left hand. “I thought we were on damage control here.” His buckle clicked into position and he closed the door.“Looked more like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic to me, kid,” Berkovitz said as he pulled the car out of its parking spot. Then he got it rolling down the street like he had nowhere to go and all the time in the world to get there. “The facts are these, in words you'll understand: this ship's going down and you two are gonna have to start looking for a lifeboat. Lotta people are hearing about your name, Sean, and they’re not the kinda people whose attention you want. The Captain's keeping Carmen at bay for now, but the mansion was one coincidence too many for IAB and they want to dig into the warehouse shoot now. Coasties didn't like it when we sent them on a wild goose chase. And Huntington Bay PD isn’t giving up jurisdiction over the Ignatyev mansion, plus they want a copy of your statement. You got one of these, kid? A statement?”“I've been busy,” Sean said.“Oh, that's a good one,” Berkovitz said. “That's a great freaking answer, kid. ‘Hey guys, I’ve been busy.’ ‘Oh, no, we didn’t know you were busy, does next month work for you or do you need more time? Just take all the time you need, Detective. So sorry, we just didn’t know.’ Shit, why didn't I think of that? I guess that’s why we keep you around. You’re our ideas man, after all.”“You are in an especially good mood today, Detective,” Anne chimed in.“Running into you will do that,” Berkovitz shot back. “Two times this week, it’s getting to me. Serious life-fshing-before-my-eyes moments.”“And both times in pces you shouldn't be,” Anne said. “I suppose you have a good expnation for this as well.”“None of your beeswax, Simmons,” Berkovitz said.“I am making it my business,” Anne said. “And if seeing me reach is enough to test your bdder, you truly won't enjoy my company when I act ugly.”“Anne, please,” Sean said. “Let's…let's back up a little, okay?”“Anne?” Berkovitz said. “Oh, hey, Anne, Sean, did I hear that right? Aw, that’s cute, kid.”“Uh…” Sean began, but when he looked to the back seat, he caught her shaking her head. “The point is we're up against the wall here, and the st thing we need is keeping secrets from each other, okay, partner? I leveled with you and the Captain, so now please give it to us straight. How did you find us here?”“You hear this, Simmons?” Berkovitz said. “’Please’ and ‘thank you’? Magic words, but what do I know.” He snorted. “Would you believe I've been staking out the restaurant on and off, figuring you would show sooner or ter? It's not like your family's got a lot of pces to run to. I know there's supposed to be a safehouse and you know what, I don't go running off trying to find that, because it ain’t public record and I figure somebody might be watching me, too, and I don't want to lead them pces nobody should track down. I'm watching your backs.”“You are the truest of friends, Detective,” Anne said. “I have half a mind to hug you right now.”“If your boyfriend doesn’t have a problem with it,” Berkovitz said, turning to Sean.“What?” Sean shouted. “No! That's — no! What the fuck, Joe? We never…I mean, no!”“And that,” Anne said coolly, “is why 'please' and 'thank you' are a privilege, not a right.”“Can we,” Sean began, then held up his hands and closed his eyes. “Can you…you two, both of you!” He took a deep breath. “You know what I want for Christmas? Five fucking minutes where we work this case together. Okay? We're all on the same team here.” He opened his eyes and let his look volley back and forth between the two. “Kind of.”“Well, I don't know,” Berkovitz said. “Christmas doesn’t figure into it for me. I'm on Team Arrest Sidorov, and I'm going by my pybook, knocking on doors, hitting the records, waiting in cars. You two are celebrating shootouts by having fancy breakfast with crime bosses. Is that the same team? I'm not sure that's even the same sport.”“We saw a chance to resolve the situation peacefully,” Anne said. “We took it.”“How the heck are you gonna make peace with Sidorov, without Sidorov?” Berkovitz said.

  No response from either Sean or Anne.

  Berkovitz clicked his tongue. “That’s a real stumper, huh?” he said. “Lucky for you, my CI came through again. The yacht pulled back into Sheepshead Bay thirty minutes ago and Sidorov hasn't left it yet. I’ll get a call if he pops out, but zilch so far. So he's still there.”“But…why?” Sean asked.“If he didn't get off before the Volk returned,” Anne said. “And was ever on it to start.”“Well, Simmons,” Berkovitz said, “I'd say chances are still pretty good, considering your friends have been turning the city upside down and shaking it a couple times since st night. Guess you hadn’t heard about that either, huh?” Anne’s silence was all Berkovitz needed to continue. “Oh, I’m sorry, you were also busy, doing whatever the heck you were doing. I’m sure it was important. But do me a favor and ask your friends what they’re up to when you have a minute, yeah? Thieves put five guys in the hospital st night and who knows how many didn’t go to the ER because they were scared…how many might be dead in some gutter. And wouldn’t you know it, nobody’s talking to us. Whole lotta people knocking their teeth out on the sink or stumbling down the stairs when they got up at night to piss, I guess. Anyway, that’s the city pretty well covered. There's no other pce left for Sidorov to hide in. Now here’s critical new information, his freaking yacht, the apple of his eye, is back at its pier. If I just got told that, I'd go check it out, at least, not write it off before I see it with my own eyes, but that's me, yeah? I understand you're a little two ways about putting your ass on the line. But hey, my partner says we're all one team and we don't keep secrets, so be a team pyer and tell me, what's your surefire pn to end this? Power lunch?”“I suppose the doggy bag would shut you up, at least,” Anne said.“Did you just call me fat?” Berkovitz said.“No,” Anne said. “I implied it.”

  Sean banged his ft hand on the dashboard, popping the glove box open.

  “Guys!” he said, keeping his face stoic even as he tried to close the box again without looking. “Enough.”“Yeah, yeah, keep your shirt on, kid,” Berkovitz said.“Enough,” Sean said. “Is the Captain still sure we can pull this together if I get Sidorov?”“Surer than me,” Berkovitz said. “But I trust him. You don't get to sit at his desk if you can't deliver on your promises.”“Wonderful,” Sean said. “Well, then —““Even if we do reach him, we can't touch him,” Anne said. “No unsanctioned violence.”“Little te for that kinda restraint, ain’t it,” Berkovitz said.“Right,” Sean said. “But we can go there and check it out, right? Confirm he's there? You tell Alexander, he calls Nikoi, a deal is made. We've got leverage. I mean, what's the likely outcome?”“The council will demand that Ilya come in to expin himself,” Anne said. “Unless they come to believe that his actions speak for themselves. In either event, with any luck, we will be called upon to deliver the message.”“Oh, yeah, luck, that’s what it is,” Berkovitz said.“You got something to say, say it,” Sean said.“Sanctions are their racket, kid,” Berkovitz said. “Thieves don’t get blood on their hands, but its organized crime, so people always need to get bloodied. Gets even stickier when it’s one of their own they need anywhere between five and seven feet deep. But Simmons is the loophole. She’s no Thief. And when the dirty work is done well, so well you can contract it out, you write your own ticket, like Ignatyev Sr. figured out.”“Huh,” Sean said, turning to Anne. “I was wondering about the money and your outsider status, actually. So, you're basically the organization’s version of Burakumin?”“The what now?” Berkovitz said.“I can't rightly say I know what that means,” Anne said.“Burakumin were outcasts in Japanese feudal society,” Sean said. “Well, I say were but I guess they kinda still are, family registers are a big deal in Japan, like real make-or-break-your-life.9Admittedly, Sean’s working off post-WW2-era information here, where family registers were indeed still quite the thing in Japan. Discrimination against people with Burakumin family names was accordingly endemic. I’m told this has essentially stopped mattering in modern times, but I guess the takeaway here is that you don’t need a different ethnicity to create an undercss in your society. (As for the treatment of ethnic Koreans and the indigenous Ainu, whoo boy, not touching that one.) You've got tanners, butchers, gravediggers…executioners. Everyone associated with unclean work.”“Like Dalit10The more famous ‘Untouchable’ group of castes. in India?” Anne replied.“Yeah!” Sean said. “That's…that's kinda like it. How do you know about those, do you read Gandhi or something?”“Kipling,” Anne answered.“Well, if you want to know what India is like when you're the face under the heel of Empire and not the foot in the jackboot, you should read some Gandhi,” Sean said. “I mean, really, for a top-level view, you should read Ramesh Majumdar11Author of the 11-volume book series The History and Culture of the Indian People, long considered the standard work on Indian history by a historian who’s actually from India., but Gandhi made history instead of just writing it down, you know?”

  Berkovitz murmured. Sean ignored him.

  “Anyway, Burakumin analogue,” Sean said. “So you guys do the jobs for the Thieves they don’t want to do themselves. Makes sense, I mean, it's economics, when you're locked out of what society considers proper trades, you take what you can get and corner the market on the essentials nobody else is willing to touch. You got a mini-society that mostly excludes your family, so Arkady figured, let’s make money. Stay out of the day-to-day squabbles and act the part of a brick wall whenever somebody tries to get under your skin. You pull it off, they’ll still hate you, but they’ll trust that your agenda is money, not power. Like, this type of unclean work, that’s how some of the Burakumin got rich, some legitimately, some as mercenaries and criminals. You know, they still make up the majority of Yakuza members today, apparently up to 70%, at least according to government sources, but considering the discrimination Burakumin face and Japanese w enforcement in general12While I fortunately have no personal experience with this, several US service members arrested for various offenses in Japan painted a thoroughly unfttering picture of how due process pys out in Japan. Now I certainly believe that, as Wikipedia cims, a >99% conviction rate for criminal trials may be based on only bringing those defendants to trial who have open-and-shut cases…but these guys cim to have been isoted and made to endure repeated hours-long interviews to pressure them to plead guilty, all because it wouldn’t do for the prosecutor to lose face over bringing a case that gets thrown out. I don’t know what to think of all that — US service members stationed in Japan don’t enjoy a particurly stelr reputation for good behavior, either — but I do know I’m not gonna do anything that might get me arrested in Japan., you really have to wonder how accurate the data —”“Pete’s sake, kid,” Berkovitz said. “I thought you were going somewhere with this.”“I’m trying to work out what’s going on,” Sean countered.“There’s plenty to understand without five-dolr words,” Berkovitz said. “Nobody cares about your…barracks men.”“Burakumin,” Anne corrected.“Yeah, yeah,” Berkovitz said. “Now, do you two geniuses want to crawl back into your hidey-hole and chat about sociology for the rest of the week, or do I drop you off at the marina so you can get eyes on Sidorov?”“We are not equipped for surveilnce,” Anne said. “Or a confrontation, if it comes to that.”“Now that’s a fine excuse,” Berkovitz said. “Must be nice, sitting on the sidelines of the war you started.”“There is a way in which such things must be handled,” Anne said.“Your way of handling things sucks,” Berkovitz said. “I don’t know if we can do better but sure as the sun shines, we can’t do worse.”“Well, we’re not accomplish much just showing up at the pier,” Sean countered. “We need to take some time to think this through and prepare. Taking a swing at Sidorov without a pn gets us nowhere.”“And exactly how long is that ‘some time’ going to be?” Berkovitz said. “Sidorov’s not like you guys, he’s not sitting there on his ass waiting for the world to come to him. You have met this guy, right, Simmons? Is he the patient type?”“He is not,” Anne confirmed. Berkovitz nodded.“And Sidorov ain’t a boob, either,” he said. “Whatever he’s there for, he’s got a reason. And as soon as he’s done what needs doing, he’ll blow town. And with him every chance of getting this thing settled while there’s still someone left breathing in Little Odessa.”

  Sean felt the beginnings of an idea crawl from his brain to his mouth. With no one moving to shush him, he set it free.

  “Me,” Sean said. “Actually, he is waiting for someone to come to him. He’s waiting for me.”“…I don’t rightly see what he gets from luring you to him,” Anne said. “As traps go —”“No, no,” Sean said. “Forget it, I mean, you’re right, it’s a shitty trap, it’s too obvious, so…what if it isn’t? He’s desperate, Anne, I know it. He’s out of moves with Nikoi locking everything down and having all the proof he needs that Ilya’s working against the council. And he’s got to know we would find out he’s there, so…so he’s there waiting for me, because…I’m the only one who can get him out of the mess he’s made. I’m the only one who can cut a deal with him before the council sanctions him.”“That’s a pretty big leap, kid,” Berkovitz said. “Look, all I’m saying is take a look and we go from there.”“Most definitely not,” Anne said. “There are too many unknowns.”“Do you have a pn to fix that, then?” Berkovitz said. ”Or do you just want to hole up, sit on your ass and watch the city burn?”“The city is not my concern,” Anne said. “Our safety is.”“But this is as close as we’ve gotten to a solution,” Sean said. “I mean, think it through, Anne. Do you have a better expnation for why he’s putting himself out there?”Anne thought about it. “Yours does seem an unlikely interpretation of the facts in evidence, but I can’t stretch to say it is impossible,” she said. “You want to arrest him. That is a better fate than other roads he might go down. Ilya is rash, but he is not too proud to change his approach when it doesn’t work. Though I cannot conceive of how he would expect you to actually show up without having any way to contact you and tell you come.”“Right,” Sean said, “but again, he knows he’s just lit a signal fire. He knows no reinforcements are coming.”“Leaving only the matter of his bodyguards,” Anne said. “He might kill one or both of us, but if he tries he will not likely live to enjoy it. That has to weigh on his decisions.”“You just keep lowering the bar for 'good outcome', Anne,” Sean said.“I suppose I am a realist,” Anne said.“The age-old battle cry of the dejected,” Sean replied.“Hey!” Berkovitz said. “Are we going to the freaking marina or what?”

  Sean looked back to Anne; after a quite reasonable few seconds to mull it over, she nodded.

  “Yeah,” Sean said. “Yeah, we're going.”

  Boris was awake by the barest of technicalities. His eyes responded to the small fshlight that Ky was shining at them, but otherwise showed no conscious movement — though with wrists and ankles shackled to the bed, he couldn’t have moved much. Talking was out, too; his mouth was half-packed with gauze to stem the bleeding, while a rubber tube went through his nose and throat directly into his airway to keep him breathing freely despite the swelling all over his face. The only upside for him in this whole situation was an Fentanyl13A synthetic opioid said to be about 50 times as potent as morphine. Because it can be synthesized, it is often abused as an adulterant in “cut” cocaine and other recreational drugs. It doesn’t have a much better record as a prescription drug, either. drip strong enough to make anything Ky had ever shot up with feel like a half pint of light beer. She looked at the bag attached to that IV line a few times, more often than she would have liked; her fingernails bit at the itchy skin of the racetrack marks in the crook of her right arm.

  “No, no,” she muttered, briefly pondered whether she should strip and scrub and put on new gloves, but then she remembered that she wasn't alone, that she would be seen leaving the room, and more to the point, it meant leaving Boris alone — and the way things had been going tely, she wasn't so sure whether she would be coming back to a living patient.

  Her worry was reasonable enough. Although the gorils who had carried Boris inside had been cussed out of the clinic, Ky was not exactly alone with her new patient. Back at the reception desk, Dolr was busy handling the business side of the treatment, which is to say he was roughly forty thousand dolrs into counting out two fat stacks of Benjamins when Nikoi Dolzhikov lost interest in st night's earmarked car magazine, spped it down on the end table next to his row of seats and rose to his feet.

  “It is all there, Doctor Dolr!” he insisted. “You are making an obstacle in my day.”“Getting pissy with me won't speed this up,” Dolr said, not taking his eyes off the money for even a moment. “Sit down before I lose my pce.”“Do not tell me what to do,” Nikoi said. “It is my granduncle I pce in your care!”“Yeah, I see you and your care,” Dolr said. “Lots of bruises and nothing to show for it.”“So do it better,” Nikoi said. “Your price for this, I would hear first.”

  That made Dolr actually look up. A cold sneer settled over his face, and for the first time in their acquaintance Nikoi looked like he was on the losing side and knew it.

  “Are you fucking asking me if I torture people for money?” Dolr said. “No. You don’t seem to want to understand, but I'm a doctor. You want to piss on that, don't do it to my face.”“No insult to you,” Nikoi said. “Bad things I had to do, and I am sorry for thinking so bad of you — you work for my granduncle. You do not like to see him in pain.”“Oh, what, Boris?” Dolr said. “Like I give a fuck about him.”Nikoi sneered right back at Dolr. “You say this about my granduncle —”“Ease off,” Dolr said. “He ain’t special to me ‘cause nobody who walks through my door is. Got it? It doesn’t keep me from doing my job well. It's a business retionship. So don't get it twisted. I don’t work for free, but when I do y hands on people, I'm helping them, no matter what.” Dolr added a shrug to try and calm the situation. “Now the way I see it, when you do what you do to your granduncle, it ain't blood on my hands. I don’t wanna see it and I don’t wanna hear about it, but at the end of the day it’s your business. You don't fuck with me, you don't lie to me and you best not get between me and my payday. That’s the trinity. You follow that, we're cool.”“And you have no problem with —“ Nikoi began.“Ain’t give a fuck,” Dolr said. Having clearly articuted his mission statement, Dolr went back to counting money. “You know what I can't fucking stand? Assholes roll up here and they go on and on about all the drama that got 'em stuck or shot or whatever. Shit got fucked up, you're here now, that's all I gotta know. You got a knife in your back, well shit, I ain't care who put it there.” One st bill counted, he took the stacks and squared them up, one after the other. “Fifty,” he said. “We're square. We'll try to have him stable by noon tomorrow.”“Very good,” Nikoi said. “I will see you —”“One more thing,” Dolr said. “Stable doesn’t mean fine. He’ll need more treatment to recover. And my professional opinion is he won't make it if you put the screws to him again. Got it?”“I have got it,” Nikoi muttered through gritted teeth. “Tomorrow, Doctor.”“See you around, Mr. Dolzhikov,” Dolr said.

  Back in the patient room, Ky turned away from the door she had pressed up against; her gloved hands were simirly touching the door, pushing the contamination issue well past even rexed standards of medical care, but at least the audible cng of the outer steel door closing got her breathing back under control. The shotgun under the front counter clearly wasn't enough. If that Dolzhikov bastard ever got the drop on Dolr, then Ky would be left with — what, exactly? A dirty scalpel and the multitool on her belt?

  “Hrmm,” Boris rumbled. Ky hurried to his side to check the drip — not touch it, because if Dolr caught her doing anything with an opiate drip, well —

  “Hrrm!” Boris insisted. He moved the shackle on his unhurt arm until it banged against the rail it was attached to, then started to tap out a pattern. Ky wasn't fluent in Morse, much less its Russian variant14Yep, there’s a Russian variant of Morse to deal with the cyrillic alphabet. Of course, when one party knows neither the more famous “International” Morse code nor country-specific derivatives, and the other is grievously injured and hopped up on painkillers, communication might run into difficulties., and even if she had been, she had no way to make sense of whatever letters Boris was tapping out. What she did understand, however, was that her patient was capital-C conscious.“Hey,” Ky said, leaning over Boris in an attempt to catch his eye. “Hey, man, it's cool, rex. I’m Ky, remember, the nurse? You gave me this awesome chocote once? It’s cool. You're at Dolr's. We're not gonna hurt you, alright?”Boris produced a louder “Hmpf!” in response.“Rex,” Ky repeated. “Keep breathing. I know it feels weird as shit, right? Just, you know…in and out, like” — she took an exaggerated breath — “like you do. Right? You focus on that.” Her smile wasn't reassuring, and so she quickly decided to stop subjecting Boris to it, instead turning away. “Yo, Doc!” she shouted. “He's awake!”“Yeah, yeah, I'm coming!” Dolr shouted back at her. Ky guessed he was still in the process of locking up Nikoi's money in the safe. These were the moments where Ky asked herself if she should be shouting louder or feigning some sort of medical emergency to get Dolr to reconsider his priorities, but as usual, she dithered too long on the point until Dolr did finally open the door and enter.“Bring him up,” he ordered.

  Ky did so, reaching underneath the bed to elevate the upper end and sit Boris up. In the process, she bumped the nightstand next to the bed, knocking down an almost empty syringe left over from the rather hasty intubation process. It cnged onto the ground, and for a moment Kyle was caught in between the bed adjustment and reacting to her mistake, as if she could actually hear Dolr rolling his eyes behind her back. She took a breath to calm herself, finished with the bed, then bowed down and went crawling underneath to catch the syringe. As she grabbed it, she glimpsed the bel, written by hand in Dolr's no-frills script: “SUX”.15Suxamethonium chloride, a paralytic commonly used to prepare patients for intubation. No kidding.

  “Damn, Boris,” Dolr greeted the old man. “What's your grandnephew's problem? Didn’t get a kiss on both cheeks at the st family meet?”Boris made a sound that approximated a chuckle in the same way a burnt-out ruin approximated a house.“He made me give you those nice bracelets, too,” Dolr said. “Seems real afraid of you walking outta here and getting your revenge on. Newsfsh, that ain't happening, chains or no, but he didn't listen. Fuck it, customer service, right? We had to shut him up so we rolled with it. We can lose them real fast, but first I gotta know you’re with it — you keep your hands to yourself, you don't poke or prod or pull, or reach for anything. You got me? Just nod, pops.”Boris nodded.“Alright, here's the deal,” Dolr said, tossing the keys to Ky — who more or less promptly began to undo the shackles on Boris's wrists and ankles. “You took some big blows to your chest and head, so there's some swelling going on all over, and if it pushes your airway closed, you got a problem. Plus you're bleeding in your nose and mouth and you might hurl — you don't want this shit getting into your lungs. The tube in your nose keeps you breathing. I know it sucks and you want it out, but trust me, you're in no shape to be making the call. Nod if you got it.”Boris nodded.Dolr nodded back, then squeezed past Ky and rummaged around in the nightstand's lowest drawer, finally producing a notepad and a pencil, ying both on the bed next to Boris's right hand. “Best thing we got for you,” Dolr said. “Now don't trip if you gotta write slow or big or whatever. You're beat to hell and hopped up on the good shit, that’ll fuck with anyone. And you let us know if the good shit ain't good enough, right? We can't crank it up forever, but I'm a specialist in pain management, we'll figure it out. Nobody deserves fucking breakthrough, so if you feel a burn or a sting or can’t fall asleep, you make some noise. Ky's gonna take care of the rest — change your dressings, do wet swabs for a dry mouth, whatever.”“Oh, hey,” Ky cut in. “You gotta pee or shit or something? You…you might wanna shit while you can. The medicine” — she eyed the IV — “it, like, it shuts down your pipes.”16Constipation from opiate use is very real. We don’t have to go into what happens when you can’t void your bowels, do we? She looked to Dolr. “Right?”Boris shook his head, though it was slower than his nod.“Right,” Dolr said. “We'll handle it, too, but rex, pops. We got you. Nothing we ain’t seen before. That’s why we make that professionals money.”Boris didn't nod or shake his head. He looked down at the pad instead, and with some effort scratched out four letters with the pencil: ‘ILYA’. He looked up at Dolr, who seemed unable to parse the demand, so Boris added a question mark at the end.“I ain't heard nothing,” Dolr said.Boris gripped the pencil tighter, then started to run it underneath the scribble, underlining the word again and again until Dolr gently grabbed his wrist to stop him.“Yeah, I got it,” Dolr said. “Look, you just lean back and try to catch Zs. I'll call some guys, see what's what.”

  Volk wasn't quite the rgest yacht moored at Sheepshead Bay, though that was a judgment fraught with controversy. How to boil down ‘size’ into one single measurement? In overall length, it was a clear loser, just 140 feet to Stargazer II's more regal 147 feet, and even Opal's 142 feet edged it out. The race was a little closer when considering length at the waterline, as Stargazer II had a particurly elongated bow section and a shallower draft that saw it fall short of both Volk and Opal in this regard, but one might then argue this was too dependent on the vagaries of each ship's loading. The natural next consideration was dispcement, a prize which would go to Opal with its massive stern unching ramp and its dinghy, but then, wasn't it cheating to add a whole big boat on top of the yacht's own dispcement? It was a pity, then, that Volk could only cim a clear victory in regards to its beam: it was the widest of the three by a good three feet over Opal, and that was difficult to dispute, though one couldn't help thinking this was also the least important measurement, rendering Volk's victory in this department hollow. After all, what self-respecting enthusiast magazine would ever sort its glossy charts by how wide the damn ships were?

  All that would no doubt py an important part in the police auction for the yacht, Sean figured. Anne and he were standing on narrow Pier 5, opposite two of Ilya's men — what remained of Ilya’s crew, by the looks of it — and said men were quite busy guarding the gangway to the yacht proper. Both had the same way of staring past Sean, the same high cheekbones, even the same Van Dyke-style beard. Sean’s mind seized on the minor differences: the man to the left of the gangway had about an inch, maybe two, on his counterpart. The man on the right, though slighter, kept Sean’s attention, and after about a half minute of intense staring Sean figured out the origin of a pale line rising from his colrbone to his Adam’s apple: someone had tried to cut his throat. Whether one counted the scar as a success or the man’s obvious survival as a failure remained open to interpretation. After figuring out the gatekeepers, Sean returned to wrapping his head around the yacht. As far as he was concerned, standing next to the moored ship, it was both bigger and smaller than he'd imagined from the pictures, which unsettled him because Sean considered himself to have a fairly good mental eye for ship sizes. The size of it, especially this close to it, had admittedly overwhelmed him for the first minute or so, which accounted for the 'bigger' part, but then he'd started looking at it and mentally fitting the interior into its hull contours, and ended up with a design that seemed almost reasonable and rustic compared to pleasure craft at the billionaire level of decadence, a field of human endeavor Sean had been hate-following for years. (Seriously: yachts with helipads?)

  “I suppose he is reconsidering right about now,” Anne offered, tearing Sean out of his nautical thought process and reminding him of exactly how uncomfortable he was in his thin clothes.“Hm?” Sean said. A bck-backed bird circled zily above the piers, its cry making it sound like it was ughing at him. No, bad thought. He pushed that one away quickly.“Well, we haven't been sent away so far,” she continued.Sean nodded, thought about nothing for a moment, then considered why Anne of all people was trying to start a conversation. Obviously because she wasn't here by choice and preferred they give up and leave, but to confront her with that —“Heads up,” she muttered, and so Sean turned his attention to the yacht, but what Anne actually wanted him to see — what he did see after looking to the left — was a bck car now parked right in front of the pier, and the four heavyweights in cheap suits walking down the pier toward Anne and him. Sean was spoiled for choice trying to pick the worst news of the bunch. For starters, how about a dude with a buzzcut and boxer’s ears and no expression whatsoever? Or was it Mr. Slickback with brass knuckles glinting in the winter sun? No? Well, how about that tall fel with sungsses and twitches from God knows what in his system? And the leader of the four was — who else? — Yan, grinning and ready to pay the two back for the night before.“Oh fuck,” Sean said, immediately followed by a sting of shame for having said it out loud. Sean would have preferred to walk into this trap with a little more dignity, or maybe, ideally, not at all.“That changes the calculus,” Anne said.

  “Ah, we're all here at the boat,” a voice called, and Sean's head snapped back toward the yacht, where he saw a man in scks and a fur coat over a partially-buttoned silk shirt standing at the top of the gangway. Ilya Gavrilovic Sidorov had a face that would look just right pressed up against the hood of a patrol car while getting his rights read to him, but Sean had to admit to himself he had no idea on how to turn this mental picture into reality.“Mr. Sidorov,” Sean began, “I’m Detective Sean Collins, and —”“I know who you are,” Ilya said. “Such an honor to be visited by Detective Hood and his Maid Marian.”“…sorry, what?” Sean asked, his volume rising as he tried to py it cool in front of Anne. “Uh, Anne, I thought you were kidding earlier about the jokes. Do they really call you Maid Marian?”“Some of them do,” Anne said, eyes fixed on Ilya.“I mean, it makes more sense than Detective Hood, but I've heard better insults.” Sean craned his head to look past Anne, to see the men walking up the pier, and tried to assess exactly how screwed they were. “It is an insult, yeah? Or at least supposed to be one? I mean, I get the reach for something to pair with your nickname, but it’s just such a stretch, you know, the Detective Hood thing, it has no assonance with Robin Hood, there’s no thematic connection either —”“You have made some mistakes, Ilya Gavrilovic,” Anne said, ignoring Sean. “You are about to make another."“This is how you say hello?” Ilya asked her. “No apology for the brothers you killed?”“You and your men were marked for death the second you started working behind Mr. Dolzhikov’s back,” Anne said.“Coppin Hood?” Sean offered, getting roundly ignored for it. “Yeah, you’re right, that’s…not good.”“You call me traitor, yet you have made an alliance with this garbage,” Ilya said. “Perhaps we are both not so righteous.”“Righteousness has no pce in war,” Anne said.Ilya feigned struggling with his composure just a little bit too long before letting out his fake ugh. “I think not,” he said as his men moved to surround Anne and Sean. “Oh, I think not,” Ilya said. “If you think this is war, then you must show up with an army, not with this…boy.”“Hey!” Sean objected, to which nobody reacted.“And I thought you were such a good soldier, too!” Ilya continued. “You are a shame, Simmons. The woman had no problems, but then she bought a…porosja?17Russian idioms are pretty good, you guys. Oh, I forget the right word. I'm sorry, sometimes my English still fails me.”“Okay,” Sean sighed. “Now we’ve all had a good ugh —““A pig,” Yan said.“Mr. Sidorov —” Sean tried again.“Yes!” Ilya said, then brought up his hand to show himself almost pinching thumb and index finger together. “A little pig.”"A piggie," Yan added."Yes," Ilya confirmed. "Thank you, Yan."

  This wasn’t the conversation Sean wanted. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to have that conversation at all. But Sean hadn’t gotten to where he was by shutting up.

  “Look, Mr. Sidorov, I'm still not entirely sure if I'm supposed to be mortally insulted here,” Sean said, eyes flying from one goon to the next when Ilya pulled out his cellphone. “Like, I got nothing concrete right now but I think the Sheriff, you know, Nottingham, combine it with the pig thing, maybe that would work?” He smirked. “Now how about we have a serious conversation first and then we workshop the jokes?”Ilya ended the buzzing of his phone with the push of a button and pocketed it again.18We’re a few years too early for SMS to be a thing, if you were wondering why it’s important that Ilya not take this call. He smiled at Sean. “So, you think you are a funny man!” he said.“Well, mostly I’m a Detective,” Sean said. “But off the clock, yeah, I think I’m hirious.”“I don’t hear anyone ughing,” Ilya said. “Yan told me about you, Detective. He says you talk quick and you draw quick, but it won't help you now.”“Hey —” Sean tried.“What you did not do is listen,” Ilya continued. “You did not listen to my friend Kolya.” Anne tensed up at the mention of the name as Ilya turned to face her. “What trouble you gave us, Maid Marian! You ruined our deal, you killed my brothers and you killed Kolya’s friend, too. You even stole from my office.”“All of that will be the least of it,” Anne whispered.“I was angry, like you!” Ilya answered. “But Kolya, he kept his head. He had a pn. He always has a pn. He knew you would come to attack me if I showed myself. And here you are, standing at my boat. Just like Kolya said you would.”“Did he also tell you how this will end?” Anne spat.“Hey, hey, take it easy, Anne, we’re here to negotiate, remember?” Sean said, then turned to Ilya. “Please excuse…whatever she just said.” His thoughts looped back to the st thing he had understood. “And who exactly is Kolya? You keep saying it like I should know who that is, and —"“Nikoi,” Anne said.“But we're…” Sean began. “No, he’s — he told us…“

  Sean traced his logic. Nikoi had lied to them about Boris Dolzhikov, that much Sean had felt all along, but it had made him think Nikoi was simply eliminating everyone in his way. Sending a cop and a killer to do his dirty work was a sensible move, wasn’t it? And Ilya appearing couldn’t have been a trap without the men to pull it off, and he didn’t have the men because Nikoi had either imprisoned them or killed them. At least that’s what Nikoi had cimed. But what if he had just lied about it? What if Nikoi’s conflict with Ilya was all pretend, what if Sean’s leap of logic had been too clever by half and another obvious answer was the correct one instead? Ilya’s aggression being supported by Nikoi from behind the scenes was, Sean now thought, a perfectly reasonable alternate theory of the crime he should have been developing all along. After all, he went on thinking, he had come across two things out of pce and not just one. But such retrospective was of limited utility. Soon there would be no witnesses left to tell his version of the story. He also realized he should have brushed up on his Russian diminutives, because if he had, he wouldn't have asked such an obvious question and thereby maybe not looked like a complete ass in his dying moments, insofar as walking into this trap to begin with hadn’t already taken care of him looking like a complete ass in his dying moments.

  “Fuck,” Sean concluded."Your friend’s life is already forfeit,” Anne said. “If you have any sense left, Ilya Gavrilovic, you will return to your boat right now and leave the city for good. That you draw breath even now is only for the cop’s benefit.”“Anne, you know, even the Russians aren’t speaking Russian,” Sean said. He looked at Anne. When had she figured it out? How long had she known, how long had she chosen not to tell him? “So, can we just…not do this?” he continued. “Can we please not do this, right now?” He forced a grin. “Because, uh, I don’t know if I brought this up within the st five minutes, so I’ll just go ahead and remind you, as a courtesy: I don’t speak Russian. At. All. Didn’t learn it st night, either, not for ck of trying. So, can we…not?”“Oh, you are missing nothing of importance, just a few empty threats!” Ilya said. “You are so angry still, Maid Marian, for no reason. The war is decided now and you win a prize even for losing! Yes, you get a free cruise! Many women would sell their babushka for a cruise with this boat.”

  Anne said nothing. Her own cellphone was ringing insistently — back in the trunk of her car, parked behind the restaurant. The ringing being inaudible at the pier, then, made it much easier for everyone there to hear Sean mutter “Ship” under his breath.

  “You say something,” Ilya said.“Ship,” Sean repeated, louder this time, as he felt everyone's eyes on him. “I said ship. I didn’t mean to say it out loud so I said it quietly but apparently you heard, so, uh, point of order, it's a…it's a ship, actually.”“I do not understand you, Detective,” Ilya said.“Well, your yacht is not a boat, it's a ship,” Sean said. “Why do you say it's a boat? Look, you know it's a ship, not a boat, because ships carry boats. Okay? That’s pretty much the definition of a ship.” He looked around himself. “I mean, the distinction can be a little fuzzy at the lower end but most yachts are considered ships. You got a little tender thing in the back, right? That’s a boat. Boats don’t carry boats. Ships carry boats. Plus, it has a name. Ships have names. Ergo, your yacht is a…uh, it’s a, you know, a ship. Logically.”“You are a cop and a funny guy and a sailor, hm?” Ilya said with a genuine chuckle. “I wonder if I am saying anything else wrong.”“No, I just…sorry,” Sean said. “I mean, it's your yacht, you bought it, I mean, I assume you bought it, I’m sure you did, like how would you even boost a yacht, right? You’re a Thief, not a pirate. You can…you can call it whatever you want. Fine, it's a boat. It's your boat. That's cool! That's just fine. I mean, I'm one to talk, right? Still saving for my first little fishing boat, hah! Now if I owned a yacht, which I don't, but if I did, maybe it would be my pce to go around correcting people, like, at a yacht owners’ club meeting over brandy and cigars. But I don't own a yacht and I don’t like hanging out with old rich farts, plus I hate brandy and cigars anyway, so I wouldn’t be in a club meeting smoking brandy and sipping cigars” — Sean paused for a ugh that didn’t come — “you know, even if I did own a yacht, so…so it isn't my pce. Hey, it's a boat if you want it to be a boat. No sweat off my back. Yeah?”“No, no, I try to always make my English better,” Ilya said. “You say ship, I say ship.” He smiled. “Now, please. Come have a cruise on my ship, Detective.”

  Still all eyes on Sean. As long as he could hold their attention he could stave off the killing. No pressure, then. After all, he couldn’t make it any worse now. He swallowed a wad of saliva.

  “Uh, to be honest, I think what I want right now is for us to go our separate ways,” Sean said. “Look, I came here thinking this was gonna be a negotiation. A negotiation made sense knowing what I knew back then. Turns out it’s a trap, and knowing what I know now, that also makes sense, more sense, even. And you gotta know, I’m not just a Detective and a funny guy and a sailor, I’m also a graceful loser. Here, let’s make it official: I lost. I’m beat, I’m done-zo, I’m fucking defeated. You win this round, right? Good move, great move, outmaneuvered us fair and square. Nice one! But you guys don't really want me dead.” His look left Ilya and made the rounds across the assembled Russians. “Really. You don't want that. Think this through. I mean, cop-killing? In your position? You can't afford this. You’re already on the run, do you want the whole city after you? Let me go.” He thought for a moment. “I mean, let us go. If you wanna talk we can still talk, but if you don’t wanna talk, the least you can do — the least you should do is just let us go now. Nobody has to get hurt here and now.”“Somebody has to get hurt sometime, that is what war means,” Ilya said. "It is you that must think this through, Detective. Let us not imagine. I kill you or you kill me, in the end.”“Okay, maybe I’m asking too much of your English,” Sean said. “One more time, real slow. I’m a cop. I’m the good guy on this pier right now, okay? I’m protecting all of you just by being here. And I want to talk. Not kill. Talk.”“You want to talk, maybe, but Maid Marian, she is very quiet now,” Ilya said. “I have no reason to give you a do-again.”“Do-over,” Yan corrected.“A do…over,” Ilya said. “I am not sure. But your English is better, Yan. I believe.”“Yes, boss,” Yan said. Ilya looked to Sean.“Uh, yeah, it’s do-over,” Sean confirmed. “I mean, do-again has a certain charm —”“Do-over, then,” Ilya said. “I have no reason to give you a do-over, Detective. If there is, I don’t see.”

  Sean had no smart answer for that.

  “Come on, then,” Ilya said. “You will still have time to think of better begging for your life over a drink.” His eyes narrowed. “I have the best vodka, you will see.” He looked over to Anne. “And after we are done pying with the garbage, I will have my apology from you. I think…your hand for Kyrill, your eye for Rusn and your tongue for Bolesv. Your teeth…well, I don’t want to be greedy. My friends and I, we will take turns.”While Anne gred at Ilya, Sean shrugged. He felt light, buoyed by the simple desperate logic of his pn. Just keep throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks. “Uh, actually, if we are gonna go that way, I could definitely use a drink right now,” he said. “I am technically off duty.”Ilya ughed at this. “You are funny, Detective,” he said. “Let me do you a favor, then. You will be the first man to dive in Hudson Canyon!”“Well, shit,” Sean said. “If you'd told me that before, I would have brought my own weight belt.”

  That got another ugh from Ilya, and a chuckle from Yan, too. He had no way to make Ilya reconsider by making him ugh, and Sean knew it. He was not going to save his life by being the evening’s comedy act. But he could give Berkovitz time to move in, let Anne think of a move, maybe even create an opening for himself —

  Ilya's neck exploded and sprayed them all with a thin cloud of bright red blood, frothed up from his st ugh.

  Sean had no time to be shocked. He was shocked, he just didn’t have the time for it. He had no time for the shot ringing from the distance, either. He had to react to the problem at hand: being surrounded by six angry but distracted Russians. He thought about what he had to do to solve it. He couldn't run past them. They were going to attack him. He had to fight them. Use the gun. Stone cold self defense. So, get the gun out first. Lift shirt with left hand. Grab gun with the right, pull it out, don’t fucking drop it. Let go of shirt, rack slide with left hand. The chamber’s empty, rack gets it ready. Like the shotgun. Find target. Bring gun to bear. Then shoot — no, the safety! Take off the safety first! It’s a semi, manual safety — wait, was the safety on? Decocker would put it on safe, but then he’d have put it back on fire, because no safety needed for empty chamber. That was…that was all correct so far, yeah? Okay. Okay! But brush a thumb over the safety lever. Be sure. Safe is down, so — up is shoot. Make sure the safety lever is up. Then shoot.

  Right?

  Sean got as far as grabbing for his gun. Then Yan seized his shirt and punched him across the side of his jaw, sending Sean to the pnks. Sean's head filled with pain and light, enough of both to squeeze his brain almost to the point of shock, but he was still holding on to his Beretta. He didn’t break his fall, but instead yanked the gun out and pointed it at the big bck shape looming over him. Hadn’t racked it, hadn’t worked the safety, he was barely even aiming it. He should have been sure. He wasn’t. But he still pulled the trigger. Bang!19Pop quiz: did you remember that Sean put a round into the chamber earlier when Anne told him to cover her from the alley and then didn’t clear the chamber afterwards? If so, congratutions, you have a better memory than Sean. This could have been averted by a press check before walking into this situation, but Sean’s not in the habit — he wouldn’t have had to be with his service revolver. The takeaway here: if you’re gonna carry a concealed weapon, learn how it works and be damn sure about what condition it is in at all times. And if you’re not confident you can be sure? Don’t carry it. The shape stumbled back. The only thing in focus were Yan’s wide-open eyes. The gun that had been aimed at the Russian gangster the night before had gone off. It shouldn't have, Sean thought, he always kept the chamber empty — but then the Yan shape looked like it was reaching for a gun and Sean pulled the trigger again. Bang!

  The shape colpsed.

  That took care of the immediate problem, but Sean turned to see another shadow heading toward him. Sean squeezed his eyes closed and rolled to the other side, two full revolutions with no damn idea why this required his eyes being closed and where he was even going with it, other than away. This was how he banged the back of his head against one of the steel posts holding up the railing, which in turn was how he managed to open his eyes again. He struggled his gun arm free from underneath himself and tried to acquire the target, the threat, the hammer coming to smash his face in. But it was just a man after all, a tall man with a nice pair of shades and caked mud on his glossy patent leather shoes and a knife sticking out the side of his neck, but why would you even wear patent leather shoes when you know you’re gonna walk through mud and —

  The knife. Its matte bck bde. And Anne’s left hand on the grip.

  She was behind the man, crouching down with him as he sank to his knees. Her right hand wasn’t idle, either, aiming her gun over his shoulder. She wasn’t firing, but she didn’t seem too far away from dumping the rest of her magazine into the houses across the street in what might have, in a less complicated world, passed for suppressing fire. Sean was no longer quite sure what to do, because everything he could do seemed equally likely to get him killed.

  “Into the water!” Anne shouted.

  The moment Sean heard it, it seemed like the right course of action, if only by default. To Sean's credit, his brain not only still knew what those words meant, his body was also still willing to go along with what his brain ordered. On hands and knees, he scrambled forward, past Anne and her expiring human shield. He crawled straight into a scene that could have come from a Greenpeace pamphlet about the cruelty of whaling. The wooden pnks of the pier were slick with freshly spilled blood and crowded with the trembling bodies said blood used to belong to. How had they all died? Sean had heard his own gunshots, maybe the sniper, but certainly nothing else up close. He was very sure.

  Almost entirely sure.

  But that was a moment’s thought, not a grand accounting of his sensory perceptions leading up to crawling through blood and guts. Heck, he hadn't even gotten as far as thinking about what it meant Anne had killed five Russians in the time it had taken him to kill one. All he knew was the rail ahead and the water beyond and that he'd damn well better get into it.

  So he scampered over the safety rail, slipped and fell into the bay, shoulders first.