The film spoke of an America moving forward into the 21st century, a country at the height of its power, hijacked by fear and war. It focused on a simple tailor, a man dedicated to making his idiosyncratic yellow garments, the image of a woman who wasn’t quite the Mother Mary hanging in the background the entire time.
People come in and out of his shop: the Armenian man who disappears without explanation, the single mother who does the tailor’s laundry, the young African for whom he makes the funeral suit. All the while Mother Mary becomes older, darker, more gray.
Then the end comes when the government agents storm in and he begs them in a gibberish language, nearly hysterical as he urges them away. But the small and humble space of his shop becomes filled with brackish water, oozing out of the walls as if Hurricane Sandy had arrived again. The agents ignore it, though, screaming in barely controlled fear at the tailor, while the water rises up to their knees. The tailor doesn’t begin to weep, though, until the tentacles come out of the walls. He watches the unexplained appendages grab each agent by the boots and drowning them in the foaming water. He pleads for each man’s life.
It becomes an underground sensation, the film of this strange tailor standing still as the new America changes around him. People stream out of the theater, shouting and demanding change, unable to describe their motives.
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The owner of the tabac shop, a wiry middle-aged man with veins that went all the way into his eyeballs, got upset enough at my trespass to follow me out into the alley, his voice rising as we went outside. After a few paces I turned to face him down and he shut up. I didn’t want anyone following me right then and he got the message.
The back alley was sandwiched between shop fronts, barely wider than the small municipal garbage trucks. The proprietors tossed out rubbish onto piles of bags and milk crates until the alley was gray with scum and the stream of waste water that ran down the alley’s middle was a sooty black.
I moved down that dirty minefield at a quick pace, hoping to lose Brick in the process. I rolled the phone around in my pocket, trying to decide what to do with it. On one hand Mitnick might use it to call me. On the other, I didn’t want to keep it. Mitnick could probably use it to track me and I didn’t want him to know where I lived. Even the casino had the wrong address on me.
I decided to split the difference. I took a random direction and emerged back onto the white sidewalks and orderly streets of town. A quick look around told me Brick or anyone else resembling a Russian hadn’t followed me, so I headed to the closest tram stop. It wasn’t quite tourist season yet, but the car was still had a handful of people traveling in the off-season, mostly backpackers and pensioners hoping to save a little money. It had started to rain again, but it was light and didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits.
The No. 5 tram glided over the smooth cobblestones, past palm trees and the ochre facades of the Italian architecture that was brought here oh-so-long ago when this part of the country changed hands as often as the nobility who ran it changed pants. Watching the young hikers and old retirees smiling at each other, I wondered if Mitnick and his people weren’t the advent of some new kind of change.
The sporadic rains had slowed by the time I got out at Les Moulins. So much so that a few of Simon’s chairs outside were occupied by some young people enjoying coffee and cigarettes, too oblivious to realize they were in the wrong part of town or getting a buzz out of proximity to it. It was early yet, so they would be fine, as long as they headed back to the Promenade before the sun threatened to go down.
I walked in through the tall wooden doors, noticing last night’s tag that had been added to the entrance was already partially scrubbed off. Simon, appearing both diligent and disheveled, was behind the counter, cleaning out porcelain espresso cups, piling them into a small pyramid as he finished each one. I walked up to the granite counter and waited for him to finish.
Working with his usual efficiency, it wasn’t long before he turned around, drying his hands on a white dish towel he had tucked into his apron. Like any good French waiter, he was happy to ignore his customers for a time, so he gave me a warm smile and a big, “Bonjour.”
I asked him how he was. I knew from past conversations Simon was a widower and he didn’t spend much time outside of the cafe. It was his dry, well-lit place. So no surprise that his reply revolved around the day’s trade.
“Bien, bien,” he said. Once the cafe filled up, Simon never spoke in English. It kept the French customers happy and was a useful barrier to the foreign ones. He continued slow enough that I could keep up with him though. “Busier than usual. I’ve hardly had a chance to remove last night’s graffiti,” he gestured disgustedly to the front door at this, cursing whatever neighborhood rat dared defile his institution. Other than that, he had a few choice complaints about a few of the patrons.
I rolled the phone with my fist in my pocket, feeling its heat as I tried to listen patiently. The quickest way to ruin a relationship with a French merchant was to ask him how he was and then stare at your watch while he answered.
Following custom he returned the question and asked me about my day. I let my impatience get the best of me and I didn’t respond with the usual trivialities. Instead I took out the phone and I told him that my day had been interesting. Simon looked at the device with a kind of contempt most people would have reserved for a roach. “I was wondering if I could leave this here?”
The flames lick the bottom of the cage, hung by a chain above a giant brazier, iron pokers resting inside it, heating their pointed tips for administration to unrepentant flesh. None of this bothers the caged ascetic, who only weeps as he watches the inquisitors feed his books into the pyre. Tombs on astrology, pagan rites of Germanic tribes, the histories of Herodotus, all go into the fire, causing it to grow brighter and heat the cage.
“Stop,” he begs. “Please. You don’t know what you’re doing,” he says, thinking of all the lost knowledge that disappears from humanity with every scorched page.
“We must, brother,” the grand inquisitor intones. “As these books are burned, the flames that consume them will purify your soul.”
Feeling the floor of his jail heat, the monk grips the bars to hold himself away from the heat. He begs, “Christ would not want this brothers.”
With a hiss and spit the inquisitor hurls a book at the cage. “How dare you claim to know the mind of our Lord!”
Without consideration for the soles of his feet, the monk drops himself to catch the book. He is pleased to see it is Homer’s Iliad. Gazing upon the cracked leather of its cover, he strokes it. “If Christ is the representation of God and God is all-knowing, then with every book you burn you take us further from him.”
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I was first officially introduced to Marek Mitnick in the abandoned mansion’s veranda, light coming in from a glass dome ceiling and a long bank of curved, paned glass for an outside wall. Either brought here for staging pieces or for Mitnick’s use, there were two white chairs and a wicker table. Other than that the room was only decorated in sunlight, one of the walls half-painted, as if someone had just walked off the job.
I lowered the pistol as I entered. Without taking himself away from the conversation, Mitnick held up an index finger, indicating he’d be with us in a moment. I noticed that unlike Whip or Brick, he didn’t have any tattoos on his hands or poking out from his cuffs or collar. As he spoke he paced with a clipped, decisive energy and I wondered if he had any formal training. Not a soldier, but maybe something else.
He had good instincts, though – he sensed something was wrong. Glancing up he noted Brick’s teary-eyed state, then gave us all a harder look. Spotting the pistols in my hands, he said something quickly to whomever he was speaking with and ended the conversation with a tap of his thumb.
Since the guns weren’t pointed at anyone, Mitnic gave the faintest of smiles. “Dur and Zakhar were to bring you here. Not the other way around.”
I stepped forward between his two goons, feeling their growing anger and shame as I put them behind me. Pretending I had every confidence they wouldn’t jump me I unloaded the pistols one at a time and laid them on the table. Knowing I was now command away from a beatdown, I put my hands into my peacoat pockets and said to Mitnick, “Yeah.”
After a few moments of silence filling the veranda Mitnick grinned. “You are khladnokrovnyy. That’s rare in an American.”
I didn’t understand the adjective, but I got the idea. I decided to prove his point by only replying with, “Thanks.”
Mitnick chuckled at that and introduced himself, holding a hand to his chest to indicate his personage rather than shaking hands. I did the same, but I kept my hands in my pockets and pretended I didn’t know who he was.
Mitnick reached into his sport coat to produce a pack of cigarettes. The same illicit brand that Brick was smoking, but unlike his underling he offered me one. I held up my hand and politely declined. Lighting his, he said, “I had heard there was an American working at the casino.” He shook out the wooden match. “You’re an outsider like us. Why would you treat us this way?” He gestured towards his two men but said it like he had been in the car as well.
I didn’t answer immediately – Mitnick wasn’t at all what I had expected from a mobster from Belarus. I couldn’t be certain, but below the friendly admiration he was showing me I could sense an undercurrent of anger. Or maybe something darker.
I realized then I wasn’t out of danger, that despite the smile Mitnick took the insult I had given his men seriously. If that was the case then showing weakness now could be the most dangerous thing, so I decided to do a little play-acting of my own.
I shook my head, “Not like you.”
Mitnick raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Not like you.” I repeated, sending my finger roaming through the air to point out Mitnick’s much nicer wardrobe, with his sports jacket and most likely bespoke trousers and shirt. “You look to be doing pretty well for yourself.”
Mitnick smiled through his beard at that, revealing the big white teeth everyone had mentioned. “Perhaps we can do something about that.”
Pretending not to understand I hardened the space around my eyes. “What do you mean?”
“You work at the casino.”
“You know that I do.” I kept my face of stone. A part of me was enjoying keeping Mitnick and his gang guessing. Watching his calculations of me dilute the anger that ran underneath his facade only added to that.
Instead of addressing the questions my statement brought up, though, Mitnick said, “One of the owners has decided that he will no longer allow me on the premises.”
That was one way of describing his confrontation with Carlu. I nodded and replied, “I had heard something about that.”
He flashed another smile, hiding whatever embarrassment he might show at the pasting he had gotten. “It’s very petty really. I am a foreigner here so I have tried to make friends with important people: politicians, judges, bankers, leaders of industry. This is how one makes money.” He bunched up his shoulders, gesturing with his cigarette, as if what he was saying was the most natural thing in the world. “But this man, this Carlu, is jealous of me, so has forbidden me from the casino.”
I shrugged, trying to communicate a disdain for a rich man’s problems that I couldn’t possibly understand. “So? You got so many friends, go hang out somewhere else.”
The smile brightened by a few candelas. “I like to gamble.”
I almost said, “I bet you like to launder money, too,” but thought better of it. Instead I considered Jasper and how easy it would be for someone like Mitnick to get him on the payroll. But here I was having this conversation with him.
Again, I wondered if Mitnick knew about Atwell, but countered with, “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I don’t have any kind of personal relationship with the casino owners. It’s not like I can put in a good word for you.”
Mitnick frowned playfully, conveying he would never ask such a thing. “No, no. I would just like you to keep an eye out for me. To let me know if anything changes on the inside. Perhaps if the situation evolves, I might be able to persuade others to allow me to return.”
“You want me to watch the place for you?”
He nodded.
“So why did you send those three voyous after me?”
Mitnick’s confusion at that question was so plain that I couldn’t tell if he was a very good liar or if he had forgotten about it. How many beatings does one have to order to have something like that slip your mind?
Mitnick blinked as if it were coming back to him. “The idiots?” he asked, forever branding the trio in my mind. They were now and forevermore The Idiots, capital ‘I’.
His smile resurfaced as he gestured to me like he had never had any doubt how that encounter was going to turn out. “I wanted to see if you could handle yourself. I need to know whoever is working for me doesn’t rattle easy.” He smiled more broadly, as if we were sharing an inside joke. “Is khladnokrovnyy.”
I didn’t go to mentioning that the confrontation with Sarti had only happened after he had sicced the voyous on me. It was possible, probably likely, that Mitnick knew trouble was coming before it showed up. But this might be the only opportunity I got to ask about the Corsican directly. “So what was their friend bothering you about? The Corsican,” I added at the end for clarification.
Again a flash of almost too-real confusion, then a moment of dawning recollection and that shrug of dismissal. “The boy? He had lost to me in gambling. He was upset.”
Now that felt like a lie. Mitnick was a little too casual, a little too dismissive. I prodded him with, “He had mentioned a girl.”
The flash in Mitnick’s eyes couldn’t have been more obvious than a magnesium flare. Whoever this mystery girl was she meant more to him than some poor Eastern European brought over to hustle for the mob or some sexual conquest.
Mitnick stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette and stood up straight, buttoning his jacket. If he had been unbuttoning his jacket I would have been worried again about that beatdown – Mitnick was tall, in good shape for a man in his late forties, and something about the way he moved said he could through a punch. But nobody buttons a jacket for a fight. So it wasn’t a surprise when spoke about violence instead of committing it. “A man will say many things in order to avoid a thrashing.” He smiled again, close enough now I could smell the cigarette on his breath. “All you have to say is yes.” He stopped smiling. “Will you keep an eye out at the casino for me?”
I decided that playing to the attributes Mitnick admired was the way to go. “How much does it pay?”
That got a good laugh out of him, rich and filled with appreciation. Hearing it made some lizard part of my brain feel good, like a well-trained dog must feel when it receives praise from its owner, and I realized how Mitnick, at least in part, kept his men in line. They might just love the bastard.
As the echo of that laughter died away Mitnick took a wad of Euros out of his pocket and counted out a sizable number of high denomination bills. “This we will begin with.” He handed it to me and I only paused for a moment before taking it. “When you have news there will be more.”
I made a show of counting the money. It was more than a month’s pay at the casino. “How do I get in touch with you?”
Reaching into his jacket Mitnick produced a small flip phone. I realized how big his hands were – the device looked like a child’s toy in his grip. “Take this.” He smiled, pointing at it as I did. “Now you have me on speed dial.” He gave me that inside joke smile again.
I nodded and put the phone away without giving it a second glance. “OK.”
“I must tend to things now, but soon we will go someplace just as private as this and have drinks, meet women.” He winked, pointing at me. “You will have a good time.”
Stepping forward he placed a hand on my shoulder and turned me around to face Whip and Bull. “Now we are all on the same team, yes?” He took the pointing hand and gestured to all of us one at a time, “We all will get along?”
Bull wiped at one of his eyes again, but otherwise didn’t give any indication that what happened in the car had bothered him. Whip nodded but there was still murder in his eyes.
Mitnick saw this or just knew his men. He indicated Brick. “Dur, you will drive.” He took his hand off my shoulder and gestured to Whip with it. “Zakhar you will stay here with me. I need you for something.”
Whip relaxed a little, his ego assuaged by this. He took the keys out of his pocket and gave them to Brick who turned back towards the garage without a word. I followed him.
I thought for certain he’d say something on the way back down, but staying true to the nom de guerre I had given him, he didn’t. He didn’t even ask me where I wanted to be dropped off, just pulled up in front of a tabac, its neon sign barely showing up in the mid-day sun. I stepped out of the Mercedes and into the tabac shop, passed a protesting merchant and out the screen door in the back. I wasn’t sure how much Mitnick and his crew knew about me but there was no reason to let them follow now.
Bernstein is hawking peaches out of the back of an old Datsun when he notices the two men arguing. They are soldiers, part of the army that is moving through town. Battered and vanquished, most of the soldiers are too tired to bully Bernstein out of his fruit, instead offering what little they have for his produce. The two arguing, though, yell at each other in an escalating series of refrains, angry in defeat, powerless to change the course of things even after having offered up their blood.
Bernstein senses this will end in violence, a tiny echo of the battle that brought them here, men unable or unwilling to settle their dispute in compromise. If it would stop them he’d offer them his fruit, offer to feed them, try to get them to see past their own impotence. He’s seen this too many times before, though, and knows it will end with one man dead and the other walking away.
Bernstein steps away. He would rather hide in a peach tree till his own useless desires pass than be caught in the echoes of this violence that seems to reverberate throughout history.
