The pistol was an old Tokarev, complete with the star on the handle and no safety, a piece of surplus equipment that had probably been killing people in France’s underworld since World War II. And now it was pointed at the Beard.
Everyone, including Thibalt and me, stopped dead, the jabbering of the crowd going quiet in a rush of inhalation. When Thibalt did try to say a calming word to Sartre, one of Carlu’s boys punched him in the face.
Panic began to jabber at the back of my mind and my feet suddenly felt too big and too hot for my shoes. Stomping around Fallujah, I had thought the heat was responsible for that particularly physiological reaction, but had learned in the years since it was just part of my brain that poked out when things got violent.
I watched Sartre for what felt like a very long time, afraid to move, afraid that any action might set off the pistol.
The Beard stood there and smiled, a cavalier half-grin, but I could see him sweat. Sartre said something and several of his heavies started throttling Whip and Brick. Two descended on Brick, one holding him from behind by the arms while the other landed body blows from the front, another team smacking Whip around. The eyes of both men filled with impotent anger, unwilling to fight back while the Beard was under the threat of death.
The smarter people in the crowd began to use the distraction of physical violence to quietly move away. The rest of the fools stood rooted in place, just like me. Sartre was saying something to the Beard, but it was in a language I couldn’t understand, not French or Russian, but something else.
The initial panic began to recede from me, replaced by a disassociated shock. I marveled at the possibility that Sartre might actually shoot, here, in the casino, in front of all these people. Staring at the pistol, my mind couldn’t quite function enough to conjure up what the consequences would be, but some gremlin in the back of my brain began to speak with a lacquered tongue. It whispered about the resulting loss of business or official sanction, its honeyed tone speaking promises of destruction, joyful at the idea the casino might burn to the ground. Not even Sartre could get away with this.
The spell was broken by Sartre reaching forward to crack the Beard on the head with the Tokarev. Being shorter he had to reach up so he didn’t have the leverage to land much of a blow, but it was enough to cause the other man to bend at the waist. Sartre grabbed him by the back of his collar and began to wrangle him towards the exit. To my horror I realized he was taking the Beard to the palatial and very public front entrance.
I considered stepping in front of Sartre and trying to direct him towards one of the many side exits. Even with the gremlin whispering about sweet destruction the man in the driver’s seat wanted to do his job. But then I thought about the pistol and decided Sartre knew exactly what he was doing. Trying to divert him, even with everyone’s best interests in mind, might just get me shot.
Instead I followed him. Sartre and his group of apes beat on Beard and his crew, ushering them out in a parade of domination and submission. Behind me I heard the crowd collectively release its breath and break for the room’s other exits (even though they’d probably be safer stayed put).
Sartre was making a show of it, pushing the Beard out in front of him, kicking him in the ass, grabbing him by the neck again. He had stopped waving the pistol around but made sure that anyone they passed by saw his treatment of the bigger man. The crowds parted for them with the occasional gasp or disapproving glare from someone shocked at such unseemly behavior. I followed in the wake of Sartre’s crew, a reassuring institutional presence that kept anyone from feeling a need to call the police.
Out in front, under the blazing lights of the casino’s marquee, Sartre didn’t stop. He tossed Beard down the short flight of steps to the wide sidewalk that ran between the casino and the Promenade that separated it from the Mediterranean. I could feel the sea breeze make its way cross the traffic that darted over multiple lanes, over the wide pedestrian walkway, and finally to my grateful, overheated face.
The Beard had clearly been roughed up before. He took his roll down the stairs in a way that minimized physical damage, absorbing it into his shoulders rather than his head or neck. The early spring air guaranteed that the damp of the sidewalk stuck to him, along with whatever detritus he rolled through. But he came up with that cavalier half-grin on his face and waved to Sartre as if he had shown to the door by a genteel host. I could see the flint in his eyes, though, the hard anger that promised future retribution. I had to admire his self-control.
His boys didn’t manage so well. While Brick was too big to be thrown down he lost whatever dignity he might have retained by turning to scream obscenities upon being released. He only succeeded in drawing the attention of passersby that might have otherwise ignored the entire spectacle.
Whip didn’t resist the launch down the stairs as well as Brick and didn’t manage it as well as his boss. He came up with blood on his face and joined Brick in his screaming. The weakest of the three, I noted.
A moment later a long, sleek sedan, resplendent in the reflective lights of the casino, shuttled up in a cloud of quiet German engineering. With another flash of his white teeth, brittle and promising reprisals, Beard stepped into the car and disappeared behind opaque glass.
Sartre stood at the top of the casino’s stairs, arms akimbo, his own grin wide and victorious. His entourage joined in the glow of their boss’ triumph until one of them leaned forward to whisper in the shorter man’s ear. Reminded that he had just committed a rather public crime, Sartre’s facial expression changed to someone who had just remembered a soon-to-be missed appointment. Perhaps, it said, it was time to leave. With that, Sartre began to walk away from the casino, his boys following in his wake. He didn’t go far before another car pulled up and he stepped into it.
The casino was already abuzz with what had just happened and the rumors of what might have caused it. Those who hadn’t seen the pistol expressed skepticism of its existence, that disbelief growing with each retelling of the story. This was bolstered by the casino staff acting as if nothing had happened.
I returned to the dungeon of the slot machines, where the scuttlebutt eventually reached even me. I listened and learned the Beard’s name was Marek Mitnick. Not surprisingly, he was another rumored crime boss.
Now I had the name and the face of the guy who had sicced Balaclava on me. So what did he want with me?
Read the next chapter here.
Read the previous chapter here.
See the author’s published work here.
Related Posts
In Flagrante Delicto Next Post:
Hanging Haman
