“I’m not going to hurt you,” Nick said. “I just want to talk.”
The man let loose a string of what could only be expletives in a language Nick didn’t know, although he would have guessed it was Eastern European.
“Do you speak English?” Nick asked.
The man hesitated, his eyes bright with rage, then nodded.
“Good,” Nick said. “Listen, I have a gun. I don’t have much of a problem using it, except for the noise and the attention it will draw, but since I really do need to talk to you, I’m going to start with your feet and legs and move onto your arms, let you bleed a little while you think about whether you want to talk to me. Or we can just go for a drink, my treat, andyou can tell me what you know about a man calling himself Matis Juska.”
The man’s eyes burned with fury, his breath raspy as he struggled for air, Nick’s knee still wedged against his chest.
Finally Kovaks turned his head, spitting blood against the nearest building. When he spoke, his voice was guttural and very pissed off.
“Get the fuck off me. You owe me more than one drink.”
Nick leaned back in the booth, watching Kovaks through the smoke in the bar. Apparently you could still give everybody else lung cancer Gibraltar, at least in this part of town.
Up close, Kovaks’ face was more refined, with angular cheekbones and a defined jaw under features that might have been described as classical if not for his wide forehead and the distraction of his pockmarked skin. His eyes were dark, studying Nick with such thoroughness Nick was almost surprised Kovaks hadn’t seen him outside the store where he’d bought his cigarettes.
He didn’t strike Nick as a man who missed much.He must have been distracted. It happened to the best of them.
Kovaks lit a cigarette, took a long drag, and downed one of the drinks in front of him in a single swallow. He pushed the empty glass aside and pulled the second one close.
“So,” he said, meeting Nick’s eyes. “What do you want to know?”
His accent was thick, but Nick had no trouble understanding him.
“Whatever you can tell me about Juska,” Nick said.
“Never heard of him,” Kovaks said.
Nick held his gaze. “But you know who I’m talking about, even if you know him by another name.”
“You could have asked,” Kovaks said.
“Believe me, if I’d have been sure it would work, I would have asked,” Nick said. “As it was, I didn’t know what kind of reception I’d received. Figured I better play it safe.”
“Safe for whom?”
Nick was surprised by the precision of Kovaks language. He wasn’t some street thug with no education. Kovaks had been educated somewhere, knew more than one language and knew how to speakthem properly.
“I’m sorry about your face,” Nick said. “I’ll keep the drinks coming as long as you keep talking.”
Kovaks leaned back in the booth and took another drag on the cigarette. “Why do you want to know about this man, this man who calls himself Juska?”
“He works for someone in the States,” Nick said. “Someone who’s trying to hurt someone close to me.”
“Is this individual a woman?” Kovaks asked.
“That’s none of your fucking business,” Nick said, his voice a warning.
Kovaks held up his hands as if in surrender, the cigarette still burning between his fingers. “I only ask because it may be pertinent to your question.”
“Pertinent?”
Kovaks shrugged. “This man — we’ll call him Matis Juska — doesn’t like women.”
“Is he…?”