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Someone give me a goddamn PHD or my own psychic hotline.
And this guy wasn’t some American born, second generation Russian American like Roy and his mates. This guy’s accent was Russian through and through, a variant of Muscovite, but from the rough side of the city. The Moscow equivalent of South London, but without the charm. He must be the muscle the boss flew in from the old country.
Yeah, this really wasn’t my day.
“Really?” I ask, quickly using my bad American accent to play the part of stupid yuppy that can’t take a hint. Then, checking my watch, I added. “It’s only nine-thirty.”
“Closed,” he growled, in a way that seriously gave off the Arnold Schwarzenegger vibe from Red Heat. Or maybe it was just the way he was glaring down at me that gave the impression he was considering ripping my leg off to see if I had a couple of keys of coke stashed up there.
Undaunted, but keeping to character, I injected a bit of a tremor into my voice as I nodded to the bright red neon sign in the window. “Sign says open.”
“Sign Broken. Bar closed,” he hawked, then spat a dark glob of phlegm on the ground, just missing my shoes, before bending so our faces were close enough for him to exhale a cloud of vodka and Russian tobacco smoke on my face. “And if you don’t fuck off, I am going to fuck you up like the little bitch you-”
The malice in his threat dissolved into a fit of choked wheezing as I rammed the cradle of my right hand up into his exposed larynx. It wasn’t a crippling strike. For all the damage inflicted in the movies, unless you pulled a Patrick Swayze and got sufficient purchase to rip the throat out, the larynx is a very sturdy, elastic muscle. The moment the hand is pulled back, it’ll just spring back into place like it never happened.
But that sensation of suddenly having the windpipe jammed shut, like an invisible fist had closed around your throat and was squeezing hard? That was as bad as it got.
If you could just shrug it off and throw it down, you were doing bloody well.
This guy didn’t do so well. Unprepared for the sucker punch, no sooner had I pulled my hand back than his hands were clawing at the invisible noose in a mad, desperate panic.
And as he struggled, all my instincts screamed at me to take my knife and end his miserable life. I would have done it once, if our paths had crossed in NYC, back in the good old days. I’d have taken the steel and buried it in his eye and then left him in the street as a warning to all who would dare cross the DeCampos. A reminder that their white ape, their most feared enforcer, the Tarzan of New York, showed no mercy.
But that man was dead.
He died five years ago. Executed by his big brother before the most feared Pakhan in all the Americas. His corpse, dumped into the river to feed the fish and eels. It had been the price of peace, and for that reason, he would stay dead.
So instead, I grabbed his head and smashed it sideways into the brick wall, hard enough to send chunks of masonry flying like shattered china. He slumped down after them, alive but unquestionably unconscious, and with the mother of all headaches waiting for him when he woke up.
Stooping down onto one knee, I leaned over him and I reached into his coat, felt the cool of textured pistol grip, and pulled out a classic. A Beretta 92.
“Oh, this is very bad for you,” I told the unconscious goon, before ejecting the mag, racking the slider to clear the chamber and giving it a quick rub down with my shirt to remove any fingerprints. Then I drew back my bowling arm and hurled it around and sent it spinning end over end, across the car park and over the cliff edge, down into the dark depths of the straight.
Never use a strange gun. It was the golden rule of firearms.
If the cops caught you with it, and could link it to any crime, anywhere, they’d pin it on you and not let a silly little thing like innocence get in the way. Even if you had an ironclad alibi. Even if you were lucky enough to be caught enjoying a ménage à trois between Kate Beckinsale and Madison Ivy, and a photo of it was doing the rounds in every supermarket tabloid and celebrity blog out there with a timestamp detailing the exact time and date of the crime in question, they’d then just charge you as an accessory. In either case, depending on the potluck of crimes, it could cost you anything from five months to a couple of lifetimes.
Hell of a price to pay for carelessness.
Long story short, if the piece wasn’t untraceable or cleaner than a vestal virgin, I wouldn’t touch it.
And I certainly would not leave it with the sleeping goon here. With the way my luck was going today, he would probably come around as I was leaving and give me another hole to breathe out of.
With his gun out of the question, I quickly rolled him onto his back and patted him down, but only found a set of car keys and a wallet. Looks like someone wasn’t a part of the Stalin Youth. The wallet contained an American Express, $250 in cash, and a fake ID that must have cost a fortune. I couldn’t tell it was fake from looking at it, but not even Muscovites were cruel enough to call their kid Brooklyn Kennedy.
It was an excellent picture, though. Had all the right government markings. Even the paper felt right. Definitely not the sort of thing you’d pick up from the back of a dodgy pawn shop. Would definitely pass muster with any bank teller or post office clerk until Brooklyn Kennedy started gobbing off or scribbled his John Hancock in Cyrillic handwriting. Then they might just twig it.
Returning the wallet and keys, minus the $250 which I took as compensation, I left him there and instead just stepped over him. It would have taken too long to move him and there was no point restraining him. After a hit like that, he wouldn’t be going anywhere on his own for a while.
Inside, the Whale looked much as it had done before my earlier visit. The tables had been rearranged and there was no trace of broken glass. Even the pool cue was back atop the table. It could have passed for any other bar on a Monday night, except that it was almost entirely deserted for all but four guys around the bar, and I somehow doubted they were here for the burgers.
I recognised two of them.
The first was the owner of the bar. Ned Gates, a fat little grease ball with blanched skin, sunken eyes, and slick, oiled, dark hair who always came to the bar dressed in bright gaudy suites that struggled to contain his barreled chest. He looked like he was trying too hard to emulate Robert DeNiro, but ended up giving off John Cazale vibes.
The other guy was Roy, who had Ned laid out across the bar with a hand to his throat. A younger dude I hadn’t seen earlier was behind the bar, bent down and telling Gates something. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it twisted his mouth in a rictus of a grin and his head was bobbing like one of those dog ornaments I’d seen on car dashboards. He must have spent an hour a day styling his floppy brown hair.
The fourth guy was off to the side. Tall and so straight-backed he could easily have had a cane shoved up his arse. He might have been middle-aged, but there were no visible tattoos and his dark hair and goatee were neatly trimmed without a hint of grey. He wore a medallion of an old Russian saint around his neck, probably Vasily the Blessed, the saint that could inspire fear and respect amongst the powerful, and a favourite amongst the Bratva. This must have been the boss. That suit and tie were very middle of the road, definitely not Savile Row, but not off the rack either. Sharp with a good tailored fit. Not the sort of thing a foot soldier would wear. One of Roy’s friends, as he’d put it. Not bloody likely. This guy would have even fewer friends than I did, and that was saying something.
