Fall of Giants

He lived on a street of dilapidated brick houses subdivided into small apartments. Outside the house next door Marga was sitting on the stoop filing her nails. She was a pretty black-haired Russian girl of about nineteen with a sexy grin. She worked as a waitress but hoped for a career as a singer. He had bought her drinks a couple of times and kissed her once. She had kissed him back enthusiastically. “Hi, kid!” he shouted.

“Who are you calling a kid?”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“I’ve got a date,” she said.

Lev did not necessarily believe her. She would never admit that she had nothing to do. “Throw him over,” he said. “He has bad breath.”

She grinned. “You don’t even know who it is!”

“Come and see me.” He hefted his paper bag. “I’m cooking steak.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Bring ice.” He went into his building.

His apartment was a low-rent place, by American standards, but it seemed spacious and luxurious to Lev. It had a bed-sitting-room and a kitchen, with running water and electric light-and he had it all to himself! In St. Petersburg such an apartment would have housed ten or more people.

He took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and washed his hands and face at the kitchen sink. He hoped Marga would come. She was his kind of girl, always ready to laugh or dance or have a party, never worrying too much about the future. He peeled and sliced some potatoes, then put a frying pan on the hot plate and dropped in a lump of lard. While the potatoes were frying, Marga came in with a tankard of chipped ice. She made drinks with gin and sugar.

Lev sipped his drink, then kissed her lightly on the lips. “Tastes good!” he said.

“You’re fresh,” she said, but it was not a serious protest. He began to wonder if he might get her into bed later.

He started to fry the steaks. “I’m impressed,” she said. “Not many guys can cook.”

“My father died when I was six, and my mother when I was eleven,” Lev said. “I was raised by my brother, Grigori. We learned to do everything for ourselves. Not that we ever had steak, in Russia.”

She asked him about Grigori, and he told her his life story over dinner. Most girls were touched by the tale of two motherless boys struggling to get by, working in a huge locomotive factory and renting space in a bed. He guiltily omitted the part of the story where he abandoned his pregnant girlfriend.

They had their second drink in the bed-sitting-room. By the time they started on the third it was getting dark outside and she was sitting on his lap. Between sips, Lev kissed her. When she opened her mouth to his tongue, he put his hand on her breast.

At that moment the door burst open.

Marga screamed.

Three men walked in. Marga jumped off Lev’s lap, still screaming. One of the men hit her backhanded across the mouth and said: “Shut the fuck up, bitch.” She ran for the door, both hands to her bleeding lips. They let her go.

Lev sprang to his feet and lashed out at the man who had hit Marga. He got in one good punch, striking the man over the eye. Then the other two grabbed his arms. They were strong men, and he could not break free. While they held him the first man, who seemed to be their leader, punched him in the mouth, then in the stomach, several times. He spat blood and vomited his steak.

When he was weakened and in agony they frog-marched him down the stairs and out of the building. A blue Hudson stood at the curb with its engine running. They threw him onto the floor in the back. Two of them sat with their feet on him and the other got in the front and drove.

He was in too much pain to think about where they were going. He assumed these men worked for Vyalov, but how had they found him? And what were they going to do with him? He tried not to give in to fear.

After a few minutes the car stopped and he was hauled out. They were outside a warehouse. The street was deserted and dark. He could smell the lake, so he knew they were near the waterfront. It was a good place to murder someone, he thought with grim fatalism. There would be no witnesses, and the body could go into Lake Erie, tied inside a sack, with a few bricks to make sure it sank to the bottom.

They dragged him into the building. He tried to pull himself together. This was the worst scrape he had ever been in. He was not sure he could talk his way out of it. Why do I do these things? he asked himself.

The warehouse was full of new tires piled fifteen or twenty high. They took him through the stacks to the back and stopped outside a door that was guarded by yet another heavyset man who held up an arm to stop them.

No words were spoken.

After a minute, Lev said: “Seems we have a few minutes to wait. Anybody got a pack of cards?”

No one even smiled.

Eventually the door opened and Nick Forman came out. His upper lip was swollen and one eye was closed. When he saw Lev he said: “I had to do it. They would have killed me.”

So, Lev thought, they found me through Nick.