"You're out of your mind." I snap the cigarette off him and inhale as hard as my lung can take before repulsing and slamming the butt of the smoke down by my feet as sparks jump like buckshot across the moving van. Igor acts as nonchalant as amused and leans back on the bench. "With all due respect somewhere next to my bed. I will pay this back in my own way, you know more than anyone else I'm good for it...."
"именно из-за этого. You're the reasonable one, you talk, you bargain, you make promises, and you hears the weight of favors and debts.
But you're also the unluckiest bastard in the world." He crooks his left combat boot up and rests it by the right knee. "This ain't a negotiation, they were going to piao Jie, you broken their bones, now you're going instead of them. Consider it....however you want."
I stare at his eyes in the dark while he's as confident as always about my decision. Igor didn't have to tell me what would happen if I refused. Long as there's a reason, everything is possible in Faust no matter how ludicrous...
I can feel the corner of my left eye twitch in the slightest discomfort as my heart raises even faster than the van deliberately picking up speed as we enter the outer rim of Chinatown.
Calm down….
Think.
I take my eyes off the old cocksucker and turn to the younger cannon folders. Clinging teeth, blood and endorphin and deliriousness shooting through their eyes. Barely focused on the task, hands hugging and releasing the gloves, face about the same color as the seldom escaping street light through the window.
Bunch of lost causes.
Igor's out for blood tonight for those two scouts just days ago. A perpetual fucking gristmill of corpses. These kids are instruments for a message, revenging someone they've never met.
And there's the dirty rag hanging in the air in the name of peace like plank between stalls. What a joke. I smile out to myself and Igor draws a white dotted brow upward which I pay him no mind.
Adding up to the irony. I'm supposed to keep the rag on between these animals.
I lean back and start wrapping the band on my grazed hand. Shedding every ounce of my tension off my body by dropping down my cares completely. I pull off the fastener and let one end roll off to the ground before my feet stomp on it, pulling it up tight and start the first ring by my thumb four times before taking it off and press the folds on my knuckles. Moving to my wrists as I pull it as hard as the brink of blood in my vain flowing abide. A turn, a raise of my foot off the band. First wrap on the cut absorbs whatever's coming out, the second renders the pain back with its strangling palm, and the third and fourth made my entire right hand feel like a clutched fist even when it's flat on the bench and not a tinge of sting remains.
"In that case," Pulling the fastener back on, I give it a couple of squeezes. "I'll consider a discount." There never was a choice for me. Refusing heeds too much uncertainty, the truth is everyone in the car is on edge. (Except for the bloody driver obviously, the cunt's tabbing a rhythm on wheel)
By agreeing, I'd be throwing myself in a pit of scorch. But it's also the only way to control the events waiting to unfold. At least it's the only reason I can justify this.
Half of my face's still numb and my eyes bags surely covered in black and blue, first two knuckles of my left palm poke and sting on every turn as do my wrist, the cuts under cheap boxing wrap pulses like a drum as if my heart was relocated. And my jacket's a bloody mess full of spilled tobacco so I shed it off too.
Naked and itching with pain laced on my bones, on my skin, and a headache in waiting.
Fist clenched and unclenched. It was about this dark too. The van passes the branches of the heart of Piao Jie, outside there was as lousy as ever.
Bitter iron, pungent sweat, mold-embedded brittleness in the air. My eyes wander not, what will be done will be carried out. Some will die tonight, few, a few, a many, one of many.
"What's the work?" Folding the jacket twice, I toss it on the ground.
***
"An opium dig south of Via Martinase
far north crossroad between the Qins and wops." I nod dully as I strap the holster tightly hugging my back and straining my arm.
No man's land, not too far off the target audience, not too close to the sensible bits of the beast. The perfect place to leave a mark, and hitting this far off also shows the Russian's control over the south.
"Opium and?"
"Laundromat."
More of a jab than a slap.
"How far?"
"16 minutes..." Driver crooks his head.
"To the ground," Igor states, the driver rolls his eye through the rear mirror. "Down to debris."
Maybe a bash in the head.
"You got a light? Didn't bring mine." Igor hinges his foot back, the sole bumping into some sort of crate under the bench and the noise of rivets trembling sends a quicken of heart to everyone in the van.
"The place's structure is as flimsy as any roof in Disalos. The basement's where they do the dirty laundry. Set it in flames and the rest will go down." I give the other three fellas a glimpse before drawing the 9 mil. The two by the back door lean forward with arms on knees and Eugene's latest favorite Damali... Damogh?… Dimitri...Budimir! I think.
Budimir's relatively calm with his postures still upright but his stare never stops near me.
"How big is that junkyard?"
"Two floors, a basement. The first floor's the lobby, mats, pillows lying around and two maybe three suits by the kitchen door behind the counter. Behind it is the staff-only, the path to the basement is said to be straightforward. The stairs down are located at the southwest corner of the first floor. Second floor is the booths, stairs are hung by the north wall behind the lobby." I hum a reply and turn on the safety before extracting the mag and tab it against the grip before inserting back. Pulling and halting the slide to check if the one in the chamber is still sitting soundly.
"Is the joint exclusive or are we in for a party scene?"
"From the scouts and some...less volunteering spirits, the place has seen better days but no it doesn’t look exclusive by the bums that goes in and out daily. Therefore, yes.
You might find a lovely family celebrating their firstborn's or just a couple of brain-dead fucks lying in ruins like body bags." Igor shoulders a shrug and stares plainly at a spot left to my head but the pulsing taupe in his eyes speaks a longer monologue of his condescending indifference.
Another bewildering fact about Igor is that his hatred for drugs more than anyone had any reasons to.
"Igor. I'll ask again, how far are you taking..." The one sitting at the far end of the bench snaps like a short-leashed bull. His head tilting at a split and through the action, exposed his bloodshot eyes, muddy pupils under the light through the back door.
"Yer fucking deaf or what?" He scorns, almost illegible by how fast that was. I calmly turn to him, give a hum, and back to Igor.
"I hope you got cops on three different districts by the end of your stick, otherwise there will be turmoil if civilians are involved."
"And who exactly are you to be giving lecturers..." He takes each syllable like singing a bloody tone and before neither me nor Igor get the chance, Budimir shuts him up.
"Har, would you zip that shithole please?" By a crook of his head, the blonde kid got off the wall barking with an irritation boiled long before Har started blabbering. "Sir," He turns to Igor with an open mouth before words are pronounced. "What if there are others inside? What then?"
Igor's sighted grey eyes embark a malicious in the form of disregarding and to its great contrast, Budimir, filled with a stern hold like an anchor suspended in the air. And the Russian shrugs as if it's the dumbest question in his years.
"Whatever the fuck you want." He states with a bewilderment deeply rooted in the concept. Budimir nods, and I can see what he has in mind now. I jerk with a shake of my head, part in disbelief this is happening again, part to rid of the deja vu.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
"And the cops?"
"Three minutes. The Italians are turning a blind eye, the crooks downtown would take their sweet savory time coming down south if they even bothered. The local mannequins of Chinatown are the main issue, but even they have to take this long before reaching this bone fuck nowhere. As long as ya'll squeeze it in three minutes we'll be off before they get here."
The Russian takes a peak at the front over the blackened windshield, the stretching of the street grows desolate as turns become more often. The lights and sidewalks narrow and wither next to us. He stretches and strengthens his neck up before pulling the wooden crate out under the bench.
"Выбери платье, мальчики." Igor plows the lockets on both corners and the hinges squeak the last sound of a funeral. The combination of flimsy reflection of moonlight and the dying streetlights shed its gourmet off like a nightgown on sheets. Plated on a crate full of botched rifles, carbines, some 9 mm, a pump action sawed off. Cuts on their barrels glint the iron lines of silver under the light, the smoothen wooden handles, slides of pistol wobbles on each bump on the road.
My spending in the last two days worth more than these junks combined.
Budimir was the first to dig in, in a literal sense as he pulled a pistol off from the pile, weights it in hand before dumping it back and pulling another out. Har picks the bulky carbine while Budimir's still excluding his options, out of the crate resulting in a series of aluminum, steel, and iron colliding in trumpets of short heartbeats as the loose bullets and magazines at the bottom are in sight.
Igor and I sit unmoved as the fellas get to work. The silent one sitting between Budimir and Har pickes the shotgun after a short while. He pulls the polyester fore-end back to check the chamber with the stock on his thigh, muzzle at the ceiling tilting it into the light. His thumb brushes the small white dots by the receiver and tarnished trigger guard. Wordlessly he starts picking loose shells in the crate with one hand while the other keeps the shotgun sturdy on his thigh. He was the first to finish. After pushing the safety on, he leans back on the moving van.
Budimir eventually settled for a Russian knockoff of browning. Index on the safety, extract the mag, rack the slide twice before setting it back, he would raise the chamber by his ear and dry fire it with each gun. To tell the trigger spring's condition as well as the general state of how fucked these batches are.
Picking parabellum cartridges in insufficient light doesn't bother Budimir the slightest. He leans forward, almost crouching on the bench as he probes and salvages under dissected carbine magazines, random spare slides, botched barrels. He would roll one up between his index and thumb and nib the tip to tell apart 9mm and 45s. Anyone with a leak of sense can tell by his efficiency in mundane tasks that he worked for Luthier.
Yet still no silver bracelet on the wrist.
Not in the icebreaker basement, not in a hearse riding to hell.
"Budimir isn't it?" I address the lad in a clean tone with eyes steadily on his. He pushes the last 9mm in squeaking magazine and gives me a nod with quick glances. Can't tell from his eyes in the dark but it sure as imaginable ain't nothing nice to say in those baby blue.
"Do you know the kid in the alley?"
"Which?" He rests the gun flat on his thigh before skidding the mag in, racks it, and pulls another cartridge out from his pocket.
"The one from your neighborhood, standing in a bloody mess." Budimir frowns a little with the edge of his brown dipping the moonlight white and changes his posture to face me. Beside him, Har pulls away his hound-like ferociousness in eyes and turns subtly to the quiet one by the window.
"I knew him, but never spoke to him." His thumb bends as his grip moves inwards to push the magazine out of the piece of scrap in his hand.
"He got a name?" Topping off, clocks it against the handle before pushing the magazine back. Budimir's face's a conundrum.
"They call him Visilii." Igor speaks mindfully slow with each word like smithing iron. "Don't you Har?" He states without turning his glance instead he picks up the botched rifle with an L-shaped stock that looks like human bones glued together. Now all eyes (except Igor's) are on Har who gives Budimir a look before shrugging.
"I don't know him either. Other sons of bitches call him Vislii, so do I."
Ignorance at its finest.
"Vislii the unlucky?"
"The what?" I blink twice to urge off rolling my eyes and waving my hand to nothing in particular. By the motion I noticed Igor's getting busy all of a sudden.
He slopes the tool on his thigh and starts to push the cartridges in the curved mag round by round it squeaks a rusty rasp by either the string or the lips. The noise of cheap-as-shit polymer and flimsy iron pieces echoes through the short lived silence.
"Do you have more business with him?" Budimir shoots the question out of the blue like a knife through the sheets. I trace my eyes back on his peering, and for the span of a thought those blue in the dark remind me of Ivan, the one planted on a leather armchair, not the one I knew a decade ago thank god. The pressing, invigorating self with mind firmly where he set his eyes upon. I snicker a scornful grin across my cheek that lets out more than intended.
"Depends on how he greets me." I turn to the dying of the light through that grime-covered window at the end. "But I got to say, he's good. Bit of a fucking hot head, but he knew what he was doing." My line of sight swims to Igor before turning back to the blonde lad. "Believe it or not I was but a scared…citizen trying to get home." Igor drags a flat smile with pursed lips but utters not.
And surprisingly.
"What about those dented skulls on the wall." It was the mute that spoke the piece on everyone's mind. Still resting his head on the tittering interior of the van.
"They wouldn't let me." I sit back with palms up, shoulder rested, eyes glaring them all. "Simple as it sounds."
I take a slow breath in as the voice comes from both the logical and impulsive parts of my mind. Should've brought the inhaler with me. Exhaling, I speak in the most unassuming manner I could bring myself to.
"I've been...off, for some time. Some of you may not know me, take me as one of the cocksucking slanted eyes we're about to send to the nether. I blame none for the idea, but also, instigated none of the matters," Igor's left eye bag twitches as if a tear of cloth being pulled in sew. "Go ask around. I've been hopping Nochnaya before the Qins were more than a notion on the betting table of gossip and rumor and now it's mine on those same tables. Believe this, you've heard of me." My gaze jumps from one to another, surveying the audience.
"But don't be mistaken, I'm no part of the company," To Budimir. "No stranger to what we're about to do," To Har. "No intentions for retribution despite the transgressions of your compatriots or contrition for bashing their faces." The mute. "Ya'll can call me Lee, nothing else.”
To Igor. "I'm a freelancer. Not a cent short, nor a dime more."
A silence hangs like a tangible abomination that escapes the eyes, it crawls and slithers by your ankle and pulls your shoulders higher than it's supposed to set. Igor let it grow on him as if oblivious, Budimir stares quietly contemplating a million things through small sways of his pupils. Har's more obvious, the lad turns his sight to Igor then his mates rinse and repeat, the mute nods to himself with chin hinging to the left as if chewing something tough.
By the 30th press of standard 7.62 (Wishful thinking honestly) Igor clocks the mag in the rifle and gives it a quick wack to make sure it's locked in place, turns it sideways and right thumb brushes the safety on with a plastic 'tick’
"Well put." He stands the stock on his left palm with the fore-end on his shoulder, barrel by his weathered cheeks. A pull and a drop of weighting later he folds the stock and somehow makes it seem twice as unreliable.
"See boys?" Without a glance at me or the rest of the wannabes, he declares with a grin like a very contained madman. "Some people were born with a mouth, mercs, freelancers, lawyers, generals, two-bucks Suzzy-Mai's at Lesnaya."
Har lets off a quick smirk while the brows are still knitted. "Some were born for other purposes." Toying the rifle around leaving no piece of metal or a bolt of screw unchecked.
"Some got the eyes for opportunities," He lunges forward and starts tossing and turning the pieces left in the long crate, punching off the tinkering sounds of steel colliding with lead. "Some know just when to put all in." Through the rackets and shit, he grips a particularly long cleaning rod and pulls the mag out, and aligns the pole on the retaining pin of the folding stock. "And some others such as me," A twist of palm, his closed fist hammers down, again and again the rifle shakes. "Did what's best in the given situation and get what's due. But this isn't the army, there are no pensions or stipends, and unlike the fucking army there's no one telling you not to take what's yours." Throwing the rod back in, he pulls and twists the other end of the pin poking out. Finally, with it gone Igor removes the cheap stock altogether and places it back in the crate.
"And that's what we do. Born lucky, born unlucky, born rich, or the gutter by some clinic.... Гавно! It all meant jackshit. In this city, folks like us have something in common with those above and the liabilities on streets. At the end of the day you will fight to keep yours or you fight to take from others, there is no in-between, in-betweens are for the vagrant and crackheads that didn't do either. The land of chances is a moving place, you have to run and scream and yearn and grab with bloodied palms. That's your permanent of exiting." His voice was a groan, like a feral animal with busted vocal cord. And the crowd listened, some more obvious than others but all swallowed it down the throat.
Tis times plague, when madman leads the blind. I snicker an audible laugh and lean back on the bench. His prologue gets longer over the years.
"Расчетное время прибытия пять минут." The driver gives the final notice haphazardly but with heed.
"Alek, take your foot off the pedal." Igor bumps his right fist on the back of the driver seat before picking up the 7.62 magazine, pull the bolt to lock a round in. Finger swipe on the receiver.
Hand on the fore-end, muzzle at the ground, he throws the rifle to me without a notice. My left palm hints an aching down the carpal bones as I just barely stop its flat trajectory at my face.
"Your fee for the job, Lee." I stare at him for a very explicit sign of what the fuck
"Crowd control?"
"Big ones are always good for first impressions." He grins with an underlying sense of humor. I take a closer gander at the piece of scrap, a clear rip off of the Zastava lines since it looks about an M70 missing a stock but feels like an IED with screws falling off internally as I hold the uncomfortable grip.
This better not have come from Eugene's.... The memory of that ghost town came flashing back and consists mostly of how those things can operate and shoot properly at left, right, up, down, backward but never straight at the target.
"You want me to send the rest of the receipt or pay in cash later? My standard fee for work like this is around 45 large and that's me being more generous than I've ever." Igor's grin turns into a smirk that protrudes the chin to the side. Budimir and Har furtively frown and scorn in bewilderment at the number.
"While on the subject," He turns and half crouches to the left at those wannabes. "Bring the gears back. It doesn’t need a statement when you're burning the place down."
"Three minutes!" The driver turns and shuts in English. Igor leans forward and peers through the windshield, a drop on both corners of his mouth before he presses them down.
Wordlessly, he digs through the corner of the crate pulling out a puffed rag... then another from a different corner, and another under some sort of busted pistol slide... One by one he passes the dark green rag down the line while almost all of them are either rolling their eyes under lids or biting down their tongue looking at the window.
It wasn't until he pulls a spare one out under the bench and tossed it to me do I noticed there are two holes rigged with pilling on the rim. I grin silently with a bob of my head and it is as sardonic as it gets.
Hanging the balaclava on the rifle's muzzle and setting both by my feet, I bend forward and snake my hand in my jacket pocket for the lighter and a spilled-out cigarette. It's twisted and crooked and the first centimeter's tobacco's already gone making the spark instantly melt its tip. The scent of coco temporarily occupies my mind until I notice the tar burning especially fast with the bitterness growing large.
Cricket mixed old packs into the carton.
Smiling to myself, I take two more hard drags that felt like each burnt one of my lungs before snuffing it in my fingertips, all in due moment did the pain flee but that's about as much excitement I can prepare myself.
A million thoughts can be shooting through my mind and they wouldn't change what's upon me and them. I spit out the cigarette end and put the balaclava over my head.