Page 38 of Roma King
Andrew: Sorry for the late text. I can’t sleep, and I just realized you were probably just getting out of work. See you at Hitchin’s tomorrow night, Zara? Waylon won’t be there until late, but the rest of us are meeting at eleven thirty.
So there it is.Zara.
I don’t known who Andrew is, or Waylon, or who ‘the rest of us’ might be, but none of that fucking matters. Now, all I need to do is figure out where Hitchin’s is.
14
ZARA
GADJE
Idrive home, shaking like a goddamn leaf. I don’t think about Yuri’s mention of a gift until I let myself into my apartment, my heart hammering, and I see the box there, waiting for me on the mail stand in the breezeway. And it’s not a small box; it’s huge, at least two cubic feet, and covered in pink and white striped wrapping paper.
Inside my apartment.
Not by my front door, waiting for me in the hallway.
Inside my fucking apartment.
I yank the front door open again, scanning the lock, looking for any signs of tampering. Scratches. Marks that would indicate someone had picked the lock. There’s nothing, though. Not a single scuff or scrape out of place. Whoever dropped this package off either had a key to my place, or they were very skilled at breaking and entering. Neither possibility is very comforting as I slam the door closed and lean my back against it, my heart hammering like a piston beneath my ribs.
The gift, whatever it is, is a warning, plain and simple.Do not fuck with us. Do not disappoint us. Look what we can do.
I could have been asleep in here when they let themselves in. I wouldn’t have known, wouldn’t have sensed the intrusion. They are showing me how easy it would be to murder me in my sleep.
Shit.
I grab the baseball bat I always keep by the front door, and I complete a sweep of the apartment, praying to the universe and any god that happens to be listening that Yuri’s messenger hasn’t decided to kick his feet up in front of the television and make himself at home. Once I’ve established that there’s no one hiding in my closets or behind my shower curtain, I head back to the breezeway and pick up the gift-wrapped package. It’s heavy, but not too heavy. I shouldn’t open it. I shouldn’t fucking open it. I place the box on my coffee table and sink onto the couch, gnawing on my thumb nail as I sit and stare at it.
What if…
What if it’s a bomb? That would be a sure-fire way of keeping me quiet.
What if it’s anthrax? An anthrax coated KitchenAid. It’s common knowledge that the KGB likes to poison people.
Thirty minutes pass, and I begin to think I might be overreacting a little. Yuri was careful about what he said, what he admitted to me, but for all of that he was pretty damn candid. He made it clear that he had ties to the mafia. Didn’t deny it for a second. He asked me for a favor and thanked me for the concern I’d shown for his son. I swore I wouldn’t tell anyone about Corey’s kidnapping, so why the fuck would he be trying to kill me? I take a deep breath as I lean forward and lift the box into my lap. It isn’t a bomb. It isn’t poison. It’s a warning, yes, but nothing more serious than that. At least that’s what I tell myself as I tear through the paper and discard it on the floor. A plain cardboard box sits in my lap. Innocuous. Harmless.
“Here goes nothing,” I mutter under my breath. The box opens easily, and inside…
Fur.
Wait,fur?
I slip my hand inside, tugging the contents out of the box, frowning as the piece of fabric unfolds. It’s a fur coat. A perfect, stunning, luxurious, expensive fur coat—it must have cost thousands—and I know that because it’sreal. No faux fur here. The silken, soft light grey fur, shot through with darker grey, almost black markings, looks like chinchilla or maybe mink.
I drop the coat, horrified. The garment’s a bribe from a dangerous mafia boss, but more than that, it’s a collection of dead animals, all stitched together to create a grotesque status symbol that frankly makes me want to throw up into my mouth.
I can’t accept this. I don’t even want it in my apartment. It’s not as if I can just take it back to the Petrovs, though. Walk into one of their laundromats and drop it off with a polite note, explaining that I don’t like to wear the carcasses of dead animals. I’m sure to Yuri this is a fine gift. A real show of gratitude. Russia’s cold as fuck, and the women there are probably grateful for a plush fur coat in the winter. It’s cold here in Spokane, too, but I’m going to get paint thrown at me if I wear this outside. And rightly so.
I can’t return it to Yuri. I don’t want it here in the apartment. It would be criminal to just throw it away since animals died to make the damn thing. It takes a moment for a solution to dawn on me. Aperfectsolution.
* * *
Sarah stares at the fur coat out of the corner of her eye, like she’s afraid to look too interested in case I decide to rescind my offer. Outside on the street, loud metallic clangs disturb the early morning quiet as keg after keg of beer is heaved out of the back of a delivery truck and wheeled into Hitchin’s. Sarah slowly unfastens the rollers in her hair and removes them one at a time, placing the plastic tubes into her kitchen sink.
“You’re sure you don’t want it?”
I thrust the coat at her for the third time, grumbling under my breath. “I already told you I don’t. It’s a bribe.”
