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The head tilted up. “How do you know my name?”
This brought an open-handed slap across the man’s jaw.
Cartwright demanded, “Where are my stones?”
I suppressed a shiver.
“You’re a dead man, red savage.” His voice was a baritone with only hints of a Slavic accent. “When my people…”
Another slap, harder. The Russian fell sideways and Cartwright sat him back up. My black eye began throbbing in sympathy pain.
“Your people are dead.” Cartwright said the words matter of factly. “You won the lottery, Bogdan. You’re alive because you get to give me answers.”
The Russian coughed up some phlegm and was about ready to spit when Cartwright snapped his fist against the bottom of the man’s jaw. The move was so quick it caught the tip of his tongue between his teeth.
This time silence was not possible. Bogdan screamed.
“Don’t you bleed on my stuff, you commie bastard.” Cartwright used both hands to tip the man’s head up. “Swallow it all, blood and spit. How’d that work out for you, genius?”
Three minutes.
Five minutes.
I watched the time pass on a wall clock that needed to be straightened. Housekeeping was not the strong point of Ed’s RV. The heat increased and the air was stagnant.
The man swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving like a rickety elevator.
Cartwright reached back into a cabinet and brought out a flimsy dirty brown something. He pushed it against the Russian’s face until he gagged.
“You know what that is, smart guy? That’s the scalp I took of a Russian adviser behind the lines in North Vietnam. Sliced it off with my Ka-Bar while he was still alive. Then I gave him an Indian lobotomy. Might have been your daddy or uncle.”
I caught a whiff
of rotting meat and suppressed a dry heave of my own.
Cartwright tossed the scalp aside and leaned in, “Why did you send the Mexican to rip me off?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” The Russian’s answer was slurred by the damage to his tongue.
“Yes, you do. We had a deal that I would pick up the shipment from the jeweler at Sky Harbor on Friday morning. When I got there, the Mexican had been hired as a second courier. Nobody told me. Why’d you do that?”
Bogdan shook his head.
“Here’s my theory,” Cartwright said. “You brought him in to take the rough for less money, cut me out of my commission. Too bad he was a crappy shot.”
“Fuck you.”
Crack. Ed’s open hand knocked the Russian nearly off the bench. He pushed him back into place and cinched up the seatbelt.
Another long silence, before Cartwright spoke again. “The only way out is for you to tell me the truth, Bogdan. You knew the diamonds were coming in. You knew they were hidden in the suitcase.”
The tattoos on Bogdan’s chest rippled and his face reddened but he said nothing.
“Enough of this.” Cartwright reached into a cabinet behind him and held up a black cylinder with holes in the sides and heavy multi-sided top and bottom. It was about the size of a travel container of shaving cream. But the shaving cream didn’t have two safety rings on the top.
My un-muscled-up abdomen tightened and I looked longingly at the door.
Cartwright ran the device across the Russian’s face.
