Grigori Laskin is in the chair when I arrive.
He looks younger than I expected, with a soft face and wide eyes. He’s been roughed up — nothing serious, a split lip and a swollen eye, Alexei’s standard introduction — but the real damage is in his posture. He’s slumped. Deflated.
I walk in, remove my jacket, fold it, and place it on the table by the wall. Then I roll up my sleeves.
The chair faces me. Laskin’s eyes track my movements the way a cornered animal tracks a predator, not looking for escape, not yet, but for information. Trying to read what’s coming from the way I fold my cuffs, the way I stand, the way I breathe.
There’s a table between us. On it: a glass of water, untouched. A file folder. A pair of pliers. And a hammer.
“Grigori,” I say.
“Pakhan, please, I can explain?—”
“You can. That’s what we’re doing here.”
I sit across from him and fold my hands on the table.
Tonight I feel a restlessness in my hands that has been building since the kitchen, since the shower, since the hours of staring at camera feeds and forcing myself to close them. The frustration has nowhere to go.
Laskin will give it direction.
“Four hundred thousand dollars,” I say. “Over approximately two weeks from the South Side collections. You took between eight and twelve percent off the top, deposited the difference into a personal account at Chase, and used it to purchase a vehicle, an apartment, and the attention of a woman named” — I glance at the file — “Natalie.”
The color drains from his face.
“I, I was going to pay it back. I swear. I just needed?—”
“You needed a BMW.” I open the file and spread the pages in front of him. Bank statements, receipts, photographs. The car. The apartment. Screenshots of Natalie in a restaurant that charges four hundred dollars for a steak. “You needed an apartment with a view. You needed a woman who costs more than your salary.”
“Rolan — Pakhan — please?—”
“Do you know what you actually needed, Grigori?” I lean forward, my voice dropping. “You only needed to be invisible. You needed to take the money, hide it, and live the same life and wait. Five years, maybe ten. Then retire quietly with a nest egg no one would question. That’s what a smart man would have done.”
I reach for the hammer and pick it up, turning it over slowly in my hand, feeling the weight, the balance. The metal catches the fluorescent light and throws a small, bright reflection across Laskin’s face.
“But you’re not a smart man,” I say. “You’re a man who bought a BMW with my money and posted photographs of it online.”
“I’ll give it all back. Every cent. I’ll sell the car. I’ll?—”
“Yes. You will.” I set the hammer down gently. The tremor it makes on the metal table is precise. “But first we need to have a conversation about trust.”
I stand and walk around the table, stopping behind his chair. He can feel me but can’t see me, and I let that work — let the silence and the proximity do what they’re designed to do.
“Give me your right hand.”
“What?”
“Your right hand. The one that took my money. Put it on the table.”
He’s crying now. The same kind of crying Viktor did, wet, heaving, undignified. But unlike Viktor, Laskin doesn’t have afamily to protect. He doesn’t have a noble motive or a sympathetic circumstance.
“Rolan — please — I’ll do anything?—”
“I know,” I say. “Put your hand on the table.”
He obeys, resting shaky hands on the metal surface, fingers splayed. His nails are manicured. Of course they are. He paid for that with my money, too.
I pick up the hammer.
