George nodded, but a vagueness came to his eyes as if he had suddenly noticed something a thousand yards away.

“Shouldn’t be a problem. They do their thing, Odessa is something else. Like with the Armenians. The same, but different.”

“You know of a Michael Darko?”

George rocked back in his chair, the body language telling Pike that George was uncomfortable talking about Darko.

“He killed your friend, Frank Meyer?”

“Looks that way.”

George grunted.

“I know who he is. A hard man.”

“What does hard mean?”

“You understand the word, pakhan?”

“No.”

“A boss. Middle management for now, but he’s on the way up. These people aren’t given their promotions, they take them. Like cannibals eating each other.”

Pike saw disdain in the pale eyes, and realized George felt superior to the gangsters who employed him. Maybe this was why he was adamant that Pike understand he was an independent contractor, and not part of Odessa. All of them might be killers, but George had come out of Spetsnaz-the rest were just animals.

“What kind of crime does he do?”

“A finger in many pies, like all these guys. Girls and sex, hijacking, extorting his own people. He’s aggressive, and trying to expand. Quick with the trigger.”

George made a pistol with his hand and pulled the trigger.

Pike said, “Know where I can find him?”

“I don’t.”

“A place of business? He must have some kind of front operation. He’d need that for taxes.”

“I’m sure he must, but this man is just a name to me. Like I said, different circles. I’m a lamp salesman.”

A lamp salesman who could put a bullet through your head from a thousand meters away. Then George continued.

“They have a nickname for him, the Shark. Did you know this?”

“No.”

“Could they be more dramatic? The Shark. He probably made this up for himself.”

George made quote marks in the air when he said “the Shark,” and rolled his eyes.

“He is the Shark because he never stops moving, and he moves so no one can find him. This is not a loved man, even among the Serb sets.”

Pike grunted, now understanding why Rina didn’t know where to find him. So far, her descriptions of Michael Darko matched with Gregor’s.

Pike said, “He’s been using a home invasion crew to take out his competition. He used the same crew on Frank. I want to find them, and I want to find him.”

George laughed, full-bodied and deep.

“You got part of that wrong, buddy. He isn’t taking out his competition. He’s ripping off his partners. Why do you think this asshole has to keep moving?”

“You know about this?”

“Enough to keep tabs. If he wants to rip off his own business partners, good riddance. If he sends a crew to Odessa, they’ll have to deal with me.”

Pike wondered if Darko was ripping off his partners because he was returning to Europe-get some quick cash, grab his kid, go.

“The tabs you keep include his crew?”

George shrugged, no big deal.

“Bangers from Compton.”

“Jamal Johnson?”

“Never heard of him.”

“A Compton offender who’s come into recent wealth.”

“Is he a Crip?”

“I don’t know.”

“A D-Block Crip called Moon Williams runs Darko’s crew. Another dramatic name. Darko feeds him the targets. Williams splits the take.”

Pike felt a burn of excitement, as if he had taken a step closer.

“Moon Williams. You sure?”

George cupped a hand behind his ear as if he was listening.

“The KGB is everywhere. Also, Mr. Moon has been making much money recently, too. He spends it in a club owned by Odessa. Cristal champagne, the finest rock, and beautiful Russian women. He loves the Russian women. He loves to tell them what a badazz life-takin’ nigga he is.”

George burst out laughing again, an obvious glee in his eyes. For George, people like Moon Williams were here so he would always have targets.

Pike said, “Uh-huh. Does the KGB know where I can find him?”

George considered Joe for a moment, then lifted his desk phone, and punched in a number. George spoke Russian to whoever answered, and had a back-and-forth conversation that lasted several minutes. George was silent for a while in the middle of the conversation as if he had been put on hold. During that silence, he gazed at Pike with his pale blue eyes empty, never once blinking. Then he came back to life, whispered a single word in Russian, and hung up. When he looked at Pike again, he was somber.

“Jon told me you and Frank were close.”

“Yes.”

“So you have business with Mr. Darko.”

“If he’s good for Frank’s death, yes. Is that a problem?”

“So long as you stay with the Serbian sets, go with God, my friend.”

“More than one gun was fired that night.”

“I understand. Odessa won’t like losing Mr. Williams. These girls go to work on him, he’s an outrageous source of information.”

“I’m not asking permission, George.”

George smiled at the phone.

“That’s probably the best way.”

George told him where to find Moon Williams, then stood to indicate their meeting was over.

They shook again, and Pike looked around the store. The lamps were old, and ornate, and each had been lovingly and delicately restored.

Pike said, “Why lamps?”

George smiled softly, and now it was filled with warmth and sadness, and, Pike thought, more than a little loss.

“Oh, Joseph. There is so much darkness in the world. Why not bring light?”

Pike nodded.

“Udachi, my friend. Good luck.”

When Pike reached the door, he glanced back, but George was hidden by the lamps, wrapped in so many shadows the light could not reach him.

18

EVEN WITH HIS SUNGLASSES, Pike squinted against the glare, scanning the cars parked along both sides of La Brea. He stood with his back to George’s door, searching until he was satisfied, then walked up the street to his Jeep. No Sentra.

Pike located Moon Williams’s address on his Thomas Guide map, then pulled into traffic.

According to George, Earvin “Moon” Williams was a D-Block Crip banger with a harsh reputation, two felony strikes, and five 187s tattooed in a neat column on his right forearm. Moon bragged to the Russian strippers that each 187 represented a body he knew for sure he put in the morgue, not the people he cut, stabbed, hit with a brick, beat down, or wounded-just the muthafuckas he saw die with his own eyes. Leaving some muthafucka hopping around in a pool of blood or screaming like a bitch didn’t count, he told the strippers. Shooting into a crowd of people on a porch didn’t count either. Moon had to see the bitch die with his own eyes or he didn’t claim the credit. Moon Williams, he told these girls, was a fearless, heartless, stone-cold killer.

Operatives of the Odessa Mafia, who followed him home on at least three occasions, twice without his knowledge and once to sell him drugs, determined that the stone-cold killer lived with his grandmother, a woman named Mildred Gertie Williams, who the killer called Maw-Maw.

Pike found the address in a weathered residential neighborhood in Willowbrook, just north of Compton, at the bottom of a freeway off-ramp. A small stucco house had probably sat on the property at one time, just like all the other houses lining the street, but at some point the original house had likely burned, and now a double-wide mobile home sat on blocks in its place, with four ancient Airstream trailers shoehorned behind it. Pike figured the no-doubt-illegal trailer park was how Mildred Williams paid her bills.

The trailers might have been nice at one time, but now they were faded and scabbed with freeway dust. The double-wide had a small porch set up with a sun awning and potted plants, but shriveled brown threads were all that remained of the plants, and the yard had gone over to sand, dirt, and litter blown down from the freeway. The litter hugged the inevitable chain-link fence as if trying to escape.