The bartender’s neck is a tree stump above shoulders built to lift kegs and bodies. When his hand disappears under the counter, I put a round into the wood two inches left of his wrist.
Splinters fly. He behaves.
“Phones on the bar. Hands where I can see them.”
I don’t raise my voice; I let the gun speak. It’s a language the entire room understands. A table of Durov men play dumb, moving slowly. Alex closes the distance, turning one face-first to the floor with the casual care of a man placing a book back ona shelf. He locks his wrist behind his back, shoulder screaming, cheek against filthy floor. One guard takes the front door, the other the back exit; nobody runs.
“Where is Ivan.” A statement, not a question.
Barflies examine their beer bottles like they are the most interesting thing they’ve seen that day. A kid with a wolf tattoo on his neck smirks—the sort of smirk men practice when they want to look tough. I break his nose with the heel of my hand and he goes down. Blood leaps, landing in a constellation across the bar top. The rest of the room starts paying more careful,respectful,attention.
We move through the back hall to the office door. It’s locked. Orlov drops to a crouch, picks the lock, and we’re in.
Initially, it’s empty.
In a storage closet, we find two boys barely out of their teens passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth. One reaches. I put a round into the bag of limes by his hand. They mutter quickly about deliveries, routes, and that they’re not on shift… the liturgy of guilt without detail. Not useful.
In the bathroom, a man is attempting to climb out a tiny window. Alex catches him by the belt, bouncing his head once off the sill. He turns into a name-reciting machine. None of them is useful.
Back to the bar. The wolf tattoo—Mitya—has lieutenant eyes, a lieutenant’s watch, and lieutenant arrogance. Too knowledgeable to be disposable, too cocky to be quiet. I put him on a barstool and turn it so he faces the room. Orlov snaps zip ties tight at his wrists.
“Where is he?”
He spits on my shoe. The bar holds its breath.
I don’t react at first. I simply take his belt, wrap it twice high on his arm, and cinch until the veins argue. Blood sulks. Pain blooms. Then a single knuckle into the brachial plexus, pressing against that small electric place where pain can bloom fast and furious. He yelps without dignity. Alex watches impassively. This is nothing new to him.
“Where is Ivan?”
“He’s not here.”
His teeth meet the edge of the counter once. Though I am not a man of repetition when it comes to questions, I ask again. “Where is Ivan?”
Men at a table in the back stand up together, ready to fight. Wrong move. I nod to my men. They march in and attack them with elbows, forearms, fists. The counterattack ends before it begins.
The bartender decides to be brave again until Alex clears the bar and fishes the shotgun out from under the counter, separating it into pieces in five heartbeats before dropping the parts into separate sinks.
“Health code,” Alex says, deadpan. A couple of men almost laugh, then think better of it.
Mitya breaks enough to try a small narrative. “Ivan moves. No pattern.” He clams up again, as though he realizes he screwed up by saying anything at all.
I try a new angle. “Who set up the grab at Mount Sinai? Names.”
He smiles a bloody grin. “We don’t write down details.”
Translation: He’s ready to die to keep his silence.
I make a decision. I raise the pistol. Mitya looks grateful in the way martyrs do when it’s time for the sacrifice. One round high in the chest. He slips off the stool like a coat sliding off a hook.
I holster my weapon then turn to the rest of the men in the bar.
“Ivan took something of mine. Tonight, he gives it back.”
The bartender nods with the speed of a man who wants to keep all of his fingers. “You should check the Siren’s Steps,” he says. “Vodka and jazz, Sheepshead Bay.”
He says it too fast. The word should is a flare. I file it as a decoy.
Mitya shudders, refusing the decency of death on the first invitation. He gurgles as blood fills his mouth. He grabs my coat and pulls me to him.
