Chapter 5 - The Red Hook Docks
The Atlantic basin at Red Hook smelled of salt, diesel oil, and rotting timber.
By 2:30 AM, the fog had rolled in off the bay, thick and heavy enough to swallow the massive shipping cranes looming over Pier 4. A single light burned inside an old corrugated iron office at the end of the dock, where two men in heavy parkas stood smoking cigarettes under an overhang.
I walked out of the shadows of a stack of rusty shipping containers, holding my hands casually in the pockets of my dark denim jacket. I wasn't carrying a heavy arsenal—just Jimmy’s 9mm tucked into my belt and twenty years of muscle memory.
"Hey!" one of the parkas barked, tossing his cigarette into the dark water below. "The pier is closed! Get the hell out of here!"
"Tell Viktor that Leo Vance is standing in his driveway," I called out, my voice carrying clearly over the slap of the tide against the wooden pilings. "And tell him I brought his bird back."
The two men exchanged nervous glances. One of them reached into his coat and pulled out a heavy radio, whispering rapidly into the mouthpiece.
Ten seconds later, the heavy iron door of the office slid open with a metallic screech.
Viktor Kozlov stepped out onto the catwalk. He was broad-shouldered, balding, with a thick grey beard and a black leather trench coat. On the back of his right hand, visible even under the dim yellow dock lights, was the dark outline of a spreading hawk tattoo.
"Leo Vance," Viktor shouted down, a booming laugh echoing off the metal containers. "The ghost of South Brooklyn! I heard you were busy playing family man at the elementary school!"
"I was," I said, stopping twenty feet from the base of the metal stairs. "Until one of your dogs started hanging around my daughter's playground."
Viktor’s laughter died instantly. His grey eyes narrowed into two slits of cold steel. "She isn't your daughter, Leo. She’s the kid of a forty-dollar-a-night waitress who owes three months of back rent to a company Falcone owns."
"She’s mine now," I said simply. "Which means any man who talks to her answers to me."
Viktor stepped down the stairs, his heavy boots rattling the iron grate. Four more armed men emerged from the darkness behind him, their submachine guns lowered but ready.
"Falcone offered me twenty percent of the Pier 4 freight if I helped him squeeze you out," Viktor said, stopping five feet away. "He said you were soft. He said you spent your afternoons crying over tea in a vinyl booth."
"Falcone is an idiot, Viktor," I replied, taking a slow step closer. "And if you believe him, you're a bigger idiot. Look at my eyes, Viktor. Do I look like a man who’s soft?"
Viktor studied my face for three long seconds. The air between us grew so cold you could see our breath mingling in the damp night air.
"What do you want, Vance?" Viktor grunted, his hand resting on his hip near his holster.
"I want Falcone," I said. "You hand me his shipment schedule for the Pier 4 containers, and I leave your Red Hook operation untouched. You refuse... and by sunrise, every federal customs agent from here to Manhattan will have the GPS coordinates for the three stolen art crates sitting inside Container 402 behind you."
Viktor froze. His jaw tightened until a muscle in his cheek twitched violently.
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"How do you know about Container 402?" Viktor whispered.
"Because I used to run this pier, Viktor," I smiled coldness itself. "I know every floorboard, every bribe, and every hidden compartment in this harbor. Now... do we have a deal, or do I make a phone call?"
