To start at the beginning of the story go here.
The Russian that was following me was younger than Mikhail, with sharp Slavik features that were unmistakably Russian. From the side, I thought for a moment he was wearing gloves, but then realized his hands were covered in intricate tattoos, some so close they blended, swirling together in cryptic meanings that were lost on me. I knew enough about prison, though, to recognize jailhouse tattoos and that his meant he was initiated, a made man of some outfit, and probably one tough bastard.
After how much trouble Mikhail had given me, I wasn’t going to give this guy a chance. There was no subtle way to do it, so I decided to be fast. I walked up behind him and said, loudly, “Nice gloves.” Before he faced me, I clacked him on the back of the legs with the umbrella and sent him down to his knees. That put him in a good position to crack him on the head and drop him all the way to the floor. After the beating on the seaside cliff, it was tough to stop there. With my feet already beginning to swell, I took a deep breath and counted to four.
Finished, I rolled him over. He groaned, telling me I hadn’t overdone it. I grabbed him by the ankles and pulled him in a shadow between cars. A quick search of his pockets came up with very little – a Greek passport, a roll of Euros, and a pocketknife. The knife was a savage little throat-slitter, but not so long as to be illegal.
I slumped him on the ground between a Peugeot and a Renault, and slapped his face, my knees braced against his shoulders. Between the facial impacts and the difficulty my weight must have given him breathing, he slowly blinked his eyes open with me holding the umbrella across his throat. Not surprisingly, he bucked like an angry younger brother pinned by a bullying sibling. He was quick and strong enough that I thought I might lose control.
I ground my weight against his shoulders. A short, involuntary cry of pain came out of him and gave way to cussing. I tried to keep my voice calm as I leaned on him. “Stop it or I’ll have to break something.”
His stream of curses trickled off as his eyes focused on me, anger rising again as they did. He made a sound, his mouth too dry to spit, and followed it with more cursing. I let him get that out until I asked, as if I didn’t know, “Why are you following me?”
He spit out more curses which I answered with a quick jab to the nose. Not strong enough to concuss him, but enough to bounce his head off the floor and shut him up. “Why are you following me? We both work for Mitnick.”
He tried to spit again, this time getting out a little blood, which only obeyed gravity to land on his face. “I do not work for Mitnick.”
I remembered that Mitnick had come into the country using a Greek passport, so I took a guess. “He got you your passport. You’re staying at his house.”
“I do not work for Mitnick,” was the simple, defiant reply.
I couldn’t hazard a guess at how many times this guy had been interrogated, so I changed tact. “Then who do you work for?”
I don’t speak Russian, but I’m fairly certain that what came out of his mouth had something to do with my mother and her relations with a barnyard animal. That was just a guess, though, so I shifted my weight to put a swelling foot onto a few of his fingers. He gave out a loud enough cry that I jammed his wad of Euros into his mouth.
When his breathing had returned to pained gasps I took the wad out. He only glared at me to say, “I work for Mikhail.” It was more threat than confession.
Despite everything that implied, I tried to appear confused. “Mikhail works for Mitnick.”
Gloves threw back his head and laughed. It wasn’t a real laugh, it was a weapon, a braying sound intended to mock. Despite that I knew I was being taunted, it was effective enough that I thought about beating him into the ground right there.
Instead I asked, “Then who does Mikhail work for?”
Again, more Russian, but I’m pretty sure it was the equivalent of, “Go fuck yourself.”
I leaned my entire weight into him, the steel-cored shaft of the umbrella pushing into his windpipe. “Listen, pal, I don’t want to do this. Mikhail did me a favor.” That second part was sort of true.
In pain, starved of oxygen, I could still see angry defiance in the Russian as he spit out, “And you killed him for it.”
“I…” I hesitated, feeling Mikhail’s last gasping breath leave him as I tightened the hose around his neck, my knees grinding into the cement floor of the station. I found all of that made it very difficult to lie, so I conceded, “I may have gotten him killed.”
He spat out something in Russian, and my frequent encounters with the tone he was using told me it was some variant of “Bullshit.” When I let him go on he continued, “He left with you, the man who kept asking about Sergei, and never came back.”
“Sergei? Sergei Molotov?” I asked, trying my best to feign confusion, “What’s he got to do with all of this?” After a moment I took the lampshade off my emotions and let the light of a bulb going off in my head light up my face. “Did Mikhail kill Sergei?”
Sullen silence that told me everything I needed to know. I said, “Huh,” as if this were new information, then released some of the pressure from him. “Look, pal, I barely knew Sergei. I wouldn’t kill anyone for him. I was just looking for him because I thought he might be at the party and I didn’t know anyone else.”
The hard sheen of anger and defiance that had armored his eyes cracked for a moment and I saw a sliver of doubt. I moved to pry it open with, “I don’t know who told you what, but Mikhail helped me out. Hell, when Sartre’s boys showed up, he may have saved my life.” That lie came out with surprising ease, so I doubled down on it. “But I don’t know where he is,” which was, at the time, technically true. I had no idea where the police had taken him.
“You were the last to see him.”
“I doubt that. When things went sideways, we had to fight our way out. He went one way, I went another.” I said, repeating the same story I had told Mitnick.
Echoing what I was afraid Mitnick had been going to say, Gloves replied, “I do not believe you.”
“I don’t care.” Another surprisingly easy lie. I dug the umbrella’s steel into his throat. “But stop following me.” I got up off him and gave him a short, sharp kick to make sure he couldn’t get up quickly if he decided to try. I straightened myself, taking a moment to flip through his passport. “I’m going to keep this…Pyotr,” I read his name off the ID. I didn’t have any expertise on forgery, but the document appeared legit. “That’s your real name, isn’t it?” He held his nose to try to stop the bleeding and didn’t answer. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
I slipped it into my pocket. “I’ll be at Mitnick’s again at some point or another. If I don’t see you between now and then, I’ll give this back to you.” I walked away, leaving him him between the cars. I was into the stairwell headed down before I heard him begin cursing again.
To read the next chapter, go here.
To read the previous chapter, go here.
To read a polished and published prequel to this story go here.
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