School of Fish (Fish Out of Water #6) - Amy Lane Page 0,134
damned sure of yourself, weren’t you?”
Henry’s grin didn’t dim one iota. “Yup. Face it, you guys cut me out of the fun last time. Maybe I wanted to get into a car wreck and shot. Did you ever think of that?”
Ellery’s knee was down to a low-level throb, and his back and shoulders were flexible enough to not hinder movement, but his wrist was going to be in that cast for another seven weeks.
“Frankly, no,” he said shortly as Jackson opened the car door for him. He slid inside and waited for Henry to hop in the back. “I think you and Jackson are insane, and if you didn’t have keepers, you’d pretty much be self-extinct by now.”
“Word,” Henry said, holding his fist up over the front seat for Jackson to bump.
Jackson didn’t leave him hanging.
HENRY AND Jackson kept up the shits and giggles on the trip to the hospital. Ellery let them because Jackson’s fear of hospitals would have been hanging over their heads otherwise, and they managed to contain themselves as they gained entry to Avi Kovacs’s room.
Kovacs was probably a good-looking man when he was well. He had high cheekbones and a full mouth. Today, pale and grief ridden, he looked like a wraith, a tragic ghost, and Ellery had a moment to pity him. Not the best of men, no, but his entire world had been turned upside down in the space of a week, and he’d been asleep for the whole thing.
“Mr. Kovacs?” Ellery asked while Jackson brought him a chair. Ellery sat, conscious that Jackson and Henry were both standing behind him like twin blond bodyguards.
“Da,” Kovacs said, but he had no accent. Maybe he used the word as habit—or irony.
“How are you doing today?”
It was a courtesy, really, but Kovacs jiggled his wrist against the handcuffs that held him to his hospital bed and looked dourly at the two armed officers who stood guard at the room’s entrance.
“I’m champagne and fucking roses,” he said sullenly, closing his eyes. He opened them, though, and sighed. “And that was rude. I’m not normally such an asshole.”
“You threatened to shoot up the public defender’s office,” Ellery pointed out.
Avi groaned. “God, yeah. Not my finest hour.”
Ellery and Jackson exchanged glances. A self-aware bad guy—apparently they existed.
“Then why’d you do it?” Jackson asked.
Avi looked at him, frowning. “Do I know you guys?”
“We’re the guys who stopped you,” Henry told him. “Last time you and me saw each other, I was barring a door against you with a fireman’s axe.”
Avi groaned again. “Bathtub meth is bad,” he said seriously. “So bad. Stay away from drugs, kids. They will make you stupid.”
“You don’t look like a habitual user,” Jackson observed. “The doctors didn’t say anything about withdrawal symptoms. What happened?”
“My fuckin’ cousin,” Avi muttered. “Ziggy Ivanov. Sacramento happened, because God, Vegas was such a clusterfuck.”
“So…?” Ellery led, because apparently the jig was up for Avi. He didn’t see any reason to be discreet. Well, that worked for them.
“So,” Avi said with a sigh. “About Vegas being a clusterfuck. So a year ago strange shit started to happen.”
Ellery and Jackson met eyes. “Strange shit?” Jackson asked cagily.
“Yeah. Like small cells just taking each other out. Cars getting busted for no apparent reason. Guys dying in what looks like accidents but we know are actually hits. Anyway, weird shit. Vegas and the surrounding areas are toxic as hell. So Alexei starts looking for ways to get the fuck out of Vegas. We’ve got rumors of Batman in a yellow car with an eight-foot-tall Robin and assassins who can literally predict where we’re going to be when we don’t know ourselves. Life ain’t fun in Vegas. Alexei starts fishing around for somewhere else. LA’s too big, and their mob life is covered. So he looks up in Sacramento. Now, Dima’s got a decent operation, really. Smooth, doesn’t draw attention to itself, lots of respectable Russian community going on to cover our bullshit. But he hasn’t done anything to us, and we got no reason to move in on him.”
“You guys don’t just take each other out for kicks?” Henry asked, and Ellery winced.
Avi, however, didn’t take offense. “Not if we can help it. Man, every man in your organization is a fucking investment. They’re either raised in the life or trained in the military. Russian, American, it doesn’t matter. You think we’ve got a Bad Guys ’R’ Us outlet where you can lay down cash and get some brothers to have your back?