Free Walking Dead by Greg Rucka Page B

flight of stairs to the street. It wasn't quite evening yet, but the apartment was close enough to the mountains that the sun had dipped out of sight behind them, and the shadows were growing long as the air grew cooler.
     
“You talk to Vladek?” Arzu asked me.
     
“Recently?”
     
“In the last day or so.”
     
“He's not one for chatting unless it's about business, and right now my business is with you.”
     
Since I'd last seen Arzu, he'd left four voicemails on Vladek's phone, and sent two texts, the most recent just after nine this morning. I'd reviewed the lot, and they'd all been pretty much the same, with Arzu asking about David Mercer, trying to confirm the contact. The last one this morning had added, at the end, ALSO, ANOTHER 14?
     
I'd considered responding to the texts, but had discarded the idea as quickly as I'd found it as one that would only make trouble for me. If Vladek was capable of responding to a text message, after all, why wasn't he answering his phone? Best to let it lie.
     
“That's true. That's very true.” Arzu motioned toward a black Honda CRV parked nearby. “Let me drive you back to your hotel, David.”
     
I waited for him to unlock the car, climbed into the front passenger seat. He snapped his seatbelt into place, started the car, then immediately reached for the radio, silencing the blast of hip-hop suddenly pouring forth. I made a mental note of the street we were on, the number of the apartment block, then put my attention on Arzu. It might have been his mention of Vladek, but I was having trouble reading him, suddenly. There was no doubt that, by now, Vladek Karataev and his friends had been discovered in Batumi, which meant there was no reasonnot to assume that Arzu had learned that Vladek Karataev was dead. It would certainly explain why the calls and messages had stopped.
     
Whether or not Arzu suspected me for it was something I couldn't hazard. Based on what I'd just seen, combined with the last text he'd sent, I was sure that Tiasa was long gone, that Vladek had been correct and that Arzu had already trafficked her someplace else.
     
Just like in Batumi, I had lost time, and Tiasa was gone. Unlike in Batumi, I didn't have the first idea as to where.
     
Showing Arzu a picture of Tiasa Lagidze and asking him what he'd done with her, asking him where she was, wasn't going to work. Even questioning him about her in the most general terms would be problematic. The women Arzu dealt with weren't people, they were merchandise. Any assertion on my part to the contrary wouldn't just raise suspicion, it would mark me as his enemy. Right now, he believed we were alike.
     
I needed him to believe that. Unless I was willing to do to him what I'd done to Vladek, it was the only way I would get a lead on Tiasa. I needed Arzu to believe that I was willing to be his friend, rather than someone who wanted to use his head to shatter all the windows on his car.
     
But dammit if I wasn't thinking about doing it anyway.
     
     
We'd gone all of a kilometer, winding down out of the mountain terraces that faced the Black Sea, when I asked him if he had paper for the women.
     
“We have their passports,” Arzu said, almost absently. “Took them when they arrived, you know.”
     
“If I'm going to move them, I'm going to need clean paper. Can you arrange that?”
     
“I'll give you their passports.”
     
“You're not hearing me,” I said. “Clean paper. I don't want some customs official in Rome wondering why a sixteen-year-old girl from Romania has entry stamps for Ukraine and Turkey in her passport, each of them less than a month apart. They're cracking down on this stuff, you know that.”
     
“They say they're cracking down on it. We both know they're not.” Arzu slowed for a light, letting the car coast to a stop. “Where are you taking them? Kuwait, right? Or Abu Dhabi?”
     
“Maybe.”
     
“You're being like that with me? Don't you trust me?”
     
“I trust