“Miami?”
“Yes. The father, Vladislav, ran a brutal Russian prostitution and drug-dealing crew there for most of the eighties and nineties—allegedly, at least, since he never got caught for a damn thing. No fixed address.”
“What about the son?”
“We don’t have anything on him in terms of a record. He had a house in Queens up until six months ago, but since then, nothing. No address. No job. No visible means of support. I’m e-mailing you their photographs from their driver’s licenses as we speak. They could definitely be the guys on the video. One older, one younger. They’re looking good on this!”
“Sounds great,” I said. “Yevdokimov will be able to ID these guys once we catch up to him. Really good job, Robertson.”
I hung up and looked at the pictures of the two Russians. They didn’t have goatees in the pictures, but they both had lean, pale faces with sharp features and the same strong nose.
I left the pump still going and went inside to grab a Gatorade and some Pringles when I saw the clerk at the back of the store by the restrooms, standing with a mop by a pool of something that had spilled. I stopped in my tracks by a rack of magazines when I saw what he was mopping.
It looked like blood.
“Hey, what’s up, kid?” I said, rushing over. “Is that blood?”
“It ain’t tomato soup!” the blond college-age clerk said with a disgusted face. “Some guy was just in here, and when he leaves, the next customer comes out white as a ghost, screaming, ‘Ebola! Ebola!’ It looks like somebody hemorrhaged in here. I told my boss, and he said I should start mopping, but I don’t know. You think I should call the cops?”
“This bleeding guy, when was he here?”
“About ten minutes ago.”
I grabbed the mop out of his hand as I took out my shield.
“I am the cops. Show me the camera now!”
CHAPTER 101
“EMILY, LISTEN!” I screamed as I roared along the shoulder on I-95, scanning the stop-and-go traffic. “I just saw him! I just saw Yevdokimov on a gas-station video. I’m about five minutes behind him. He’s in a white Nissan Altima on Ninety-Five outside Stamford, heading north past exit ten. He’s probably heading toward you. New York plates two seven eight FRG. He’s bleeding heavily, and—”
I dropped the phone as I suddenly saw a white Altima ahead in the left lane. I drew alongside it across two lanes of traffic. I checked the plates. It was him.
“I see him!” I said to Emily as I snatched up the phone. “I’m on him. We’re between exits ten and eleven.”
“Stay on him, but wait for backup, Mike, before you try a traffic stop. Chuck’s on the horn with the Connecticut troopers. Hang back. We’re coming to you.”
A horn honked as I cut back into traffic, then Yevdokimov turned and saw me. He had some kind of bandage on his chin.
He immediately gunned it. He got out of the left lane ahead of the SUV in front of me. A second later, I saw him flash into the right lane and onto the shoulder, going for the exit ramp we were already passing.
At first it looked like he was going to make it, but then at the last second, he sideswiped the yellow water-barrel divider that cordoned off the exit ramp from the highway. I watched as he spun and hit the concrete divider on the other side of the exit with a horrible crunch of metal.
I got over to the right and braked and skidded to a stop on the shoulder and ran back toward the turned-around Altima, now almost completely blocking the exit.
I thought Yevdokimov was most certainly dead after this second incredibly violent incident of the day, so I was surprised when the passenger door opened and he staggered out.
“Down!” I yelled over the honking horns as I pointed my Glock at his head.
Because he was bleeding, I probably shouldn’t have cuffed and moved him, but we were in danger from the traffic, so I had no other choice.
I had him in my Chevy, down on his stomach in the backseat, while I was in the front passenger seat rifling through the glove compartment for the first aid kit, when the truck rear-ended us.
The passenger door was open, and I was thrown from the vehicle. It was the weirdest sensation of my life. One second I was sitting there reaching into the glove compartment, and the next I was out in the air banging the crap out of the back of my head as I skidded across asphalt.
I eventually ended up on a berm of newly mowed grass beside the shoulder. My head was ringing. I must have had a concussion. I felt numb as I lay on the grass facedown, not moving. I was definitely in shock.
Eventually I turned to look at my car.
We’d been hit by a big pickup, a Ford Super-something truck with an extended cab and a push bar in front and six wheels. Everything on it was black. The big tires and rims; the body; the tinted windows.