“We need to get the heck out of here,” he shouted.
“Do not get panties in knot,” Dimitri responded calmly. “Just a few more minutes is necessary.”
“We are going. Now.” Dick couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so severe with anybody. He was beginning to dislike the small, balding, Russian man.
“You are making difficult zhe enjoying of zhe dance,” he responded. Dick’ patience had reached its end. At a glance, Brandy Champagne stopped her sexy dance and stood up. Dick grabbed Dimitri by the collar of his shirt and yanked him to his feet.
“Listen, I’ve had more than enough of your bullshit,” Dick almost never swore, but it slipped out. “We need to leave. Please.”
He pleaded with the Russian man. But a few drinks had made Dimitri loose.
Dimitri pushed him away and swung a hook with his right hand. The Russian was much shorter than Dick but outweighed him by easily thirty or more pounds.
“Ow!” Dick yelled, “you hit my arm!” Dick swung back with a blow that was more a slap than a punch, connecting with the side of Dimitri’s head.
Dimitri, who had been in half a dozen street brawls before, barely felt the blow at all and tackled Dick to the ground.
Why is the ground sticky, Dick thought, as the two wrestled on the floor. Dimitri, experienced as he was, managed to land two or three good punches on Dick’s face before Big Ricky barreled in and started throwing punches himself.
“What the fuck!” Big Ricky had shouted. “Mushroom dick causing trouble again?” Bouncers converged on Dick and Dimitri from all corners of the room.
They’re all still dancing,
The girl on the stage hadn’t missed a beat and was still swaying her hips to the music. She was either unaware of the brawl or didn’t care.
Big Rick had gotten enough of Dick’s antics, though, and tossed him out to the curb. He and another bouncer lingered for a moment to ensure that they weren’t going to start brawling again and then left with a warning.
“Don’t ever come back here again. Either of you. It won’t end well, you got it?”
Now, typically when someone says something like that, it sounds childish, like something taken right out of a poorly written children’s movie. But when someone as intimidating as Big Ricky says it, shaking with anger so much that sweat was flying off his body, people listen. Dick could feel his cherries rescinding into his body with the threat present in Rick’s voice.
He didn’t think he’d be going back anytime soon.
Traditionally Dick was not an angry person. In fact, over the years he’d commended himself for his level head and rational decision-making skills. Dick hadn’t even been in a fight since elementary, a schoolyard brawl that had broken his nose after some kid had insulted his Mama. He hadn’t done exceptionally well in that fight, either.
Dick knew that sometimes you had to throw your level-headedness out the window. Spit on your hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
Even if your Mama would disapprove.
He felt dirty, embarrassed and used. Delilah hadn’t ever liked him. He’d just been a curiosity to her. A freak show.
Another story for her. And his Mama. What would she say if she knew that he had lost his virginity in a strip club, to a stripper?
Dick was angry. Angry at Dimitri for dragging him into a strip club in the first place. Angry at Delilah for her mockery, and angry at himself for being in this situation in the first place.
He had a considerable welt above his eye which was going to turn into a nice shiner. It throbbed alongside the stitches on the back of his head from the earlier car chase.
He looked over at Dimitri, who was sporting a fat lip, with fury in his eyes.
“You should leave,” Dimitri said with his thick Russian accent, “before I kill you.”
A part of him wanted to challenge the balding Russian man. After all, it was his fault that all of this had happened, anyway.
But the more rational part of his brain told him that it was a bad idea to do that. So Dick sighed and limped away.
As the adrenaline wore off, Dick began to feel more disgusted both by Dimitri and by himself.
That ugly souled man had put him through so much and yet…
Did I go too far?
He wanted to apologize to Dimitri, but he also didn’t.
How does that work?
In the distance, he could see Minute Maid Park, and he wondered if the Astro’s had put up their championship banner yet. Dick hadn’t been a baseball fan, but he had gotten caught up in the excitement of their post-season run like so many other people.
Maybe I should just leave, he thought. I could take the nearest bus to wherever and start over. Make a new home! I could get rid of this awful haircut, maybe even buy clothes that fit!
He could even change his name.
Dick pushed aside the voice of his mother at the back of his mind which told him just to be himself.
I’ve been myself for almost thirty years! It’s not working. I need to be somebody new. Somebody cooler.
Dick thought of Adrian. Somehow the tall British operative exuded something which made people like him. Some natural charisma that Dick craved for himself. He was just so damn cool.
And he was a friend. Adrian had said so himself. Dick couldn’t remember the last time he had a friend. It felt so lovely like he had joined the wolf pack after many years of absence. Could there be a wolf pack with only two people? Dick didn’t know, but he liked to think so.
Friends stuck together. Dick knew that much at least. Besides, he couldn’t leave now. What would he do? The police were working hand in hand with whatever group Brown and Nieminen worked for.
No, he was in far too deep now. If the police had come to his apartment, then they knew who he was and, most likely, what he looked like.
Dick Mitey was undoubtedly a wanted man. But by who? What kind of organization has the police wrapped so tightly around their fingers? He shuddered at the thought.
There was no way to go now except forward. At least he’d made a friend.
The thought brought a smile to his face which caused his head to throb.
Dick sighed at his lot in life and limped back to the warehouse.
Chapter Sixteen
Dick walked into the warehouse rubbing his shoulder and feeling sorry about himself.
Even before he opened the door, he could hear them in there, screaming at each other like feral animals.
Adrian’s typically reserved face was animated, spittle flew from his mouth, and there was a vein on his forehead which protruded significantly. Dimitri, who always looked a little angry, was practically frothing at the mouth.
“Did I say to you ‘create an incident and get into a brawl’?” Adrian admonished.
“Niet, but-“
“Bloody well niet. Go niet yourself! I am beginning to have concerns over you, Dimitri.”
“He deserved good beating,” Dimitri said, his Russian accent thickening in his anger.
“Why, because he interrupted your fun?” Adrian swore. “This is a goddamned operation, not some vacation! No, you will not speak. I can smell the spirits on your breath.”
First, you bungle the job at the dinner party, and now this. I am beginning to have severe doubts over your ability to successfully boil a kettle of water, much less something of the importance of this.”
Dimitri was sullen, looking at Adrian like he had looked at Dick – with death in his eyes, and yet he apologized. Dick wasn’t sure that it was heartfelt.
“I am sorry, Adrian.”
“You’re goddamned right you’re sorry. Don’t forget what we’ve done for you. If it weren’t for us, you’d be rotting away in some Russian Gulag right now.” Adrian took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. “Don’t think we can’t put you there, anyway.”
Dimitri began to slowly walk away, shaking his head and muttering to himself in Russian.
“You shall l
eave when I say you can,” Adrian said. Dimitri turned around, and lowered his head, refusing to meet Adrian’s gaze. “There is no doubt that Lochte already knows about this all. If I were you, my friend, I would step very carefully. Or have you forgotten how long the reach of Black Eagle extends?”
“Niet,” said Dimitri. Was that a hint of fear in his voice? Dick couldn’t say for sure.
But, all of that notwithstanding, what did you think we’d do with this?” Adrian gesticulated towards a van parked in the middle of the warehouse.
It was hot pink in color, with a big lightning bolt on the side, and fuzzy dice in the rear view mirror. There was a painted image of two girls in skimpy clothing about to kiss juxtaposed over the lightning bolt. On the back and the sides were the works “The Cock Block” written in the comic sans font.
In the 70’s they would have called it a “shaggin wagon.”
Perhaps most incriminating was that the van had been stolen from the strip club where Dick and Dimitri had just been thrown out.
“Need I remind you, you blathering Russian idiot, that there are probably half a dozen government agencies looking for us? Don’t you believe that we should maintain a low profile? Does this scream low-profile to you?”
“I am in the thinking that the answer you are searching for is… niet?”
“Go niet yourself.”
“Brawl at strip club ist good, yah? They don’t involve police.”
“By George, that is what you took away from this conversation? You, sir, are a cad. None of this – none of it! Is in our mission parameters. Do you understand? Abelard will hear of this.”
Adrian wiped the spittle from his face and glowered at Dimitri.
“Get out there and get us a car that isn’t going to stand out like a sore thumb. Get a Volkswagon, not a Pussy Wagon!”
“But-“
“Begone!”
Dimitri left, his face twisted terribly in anger. As he passed by he shouldered Dick, knocking him to the ground. Dick put his hands out to stop his fall, feeling the cold concrete beneath his palms.
“Otva ‘li”
Dick didn’t know what that meant, but he doubted that it was very positive. Adrian watched the small Russian man slink out with rancor on his face. He shifted his gaze to Dick and his expression changed immediately.
Dick wasn’t sure what to make of that. How could someone be spitting mad one moment, and smiling and positive the next?
“So sorry that you heard that, my friend. You’ve looked better.” Adrian said with a sad smile, gesturing at the swelling black eye on Dick’ face. He offered him a hand, hauling him to his feet with minimal effort.
“Thank you,” Dick said feeling the growing bruise. “Do you think this will attract the ladies?”
“Almost certainly!”
Dick smiled.
“Is he alright?” Dick asked, gesturing towards the exit where Dimitri had stormed out moments before.
“Certainly! He’s simply stupid. My apologies for his rash behavior. We will ensure that nothing of the sort happens ever again.” Dick thought about the short, angry and balding Russian man and wondered how anybody could control him.
Of course, if anybody were able to control him, it would be Adrian. Dick had seen the fear in Dimitri’s eyes as the British man lambasted him.
“Come, my boy. Let’s prepare to depart. Dimitri will be back soon enough with a suitable vehicle, I pray. I fear that the longer we remain here, the less safe we become.”
Dick helped Adrian carry his dead Lordship Alfred Gunter Katzmann towards the entrance. He then stood by while Adrian lit a fire in an old barrel and burned documents.
“What are you burning?”
“Nothing important my boy! Simply a few items that I’d rather not fall into the wrong hands.”
“Such as?”
“His Lordship’s travel documents, for instance. Now, there’s still more to be done! Pray, don’t simply gawk, busy yourself with the clothes!”
Dick occupied himself with the various tasks Adrian asked him to complete. He was proud that he didn’t complain more than once – when Adrian asked him to sweep the floors.
“Is this really necessary?” He asked.
“Idles hands my boy. Idle hands.”
Dick was on his fourth or fifth pass with the broom when Dimitri returned with an inauspicious looking black van. He burned into the garage and almost hit Alfred’s body, squealing his tires so that the smell of burned rubber filled the air.
“Are you ready, my boy?” Adrian asked, sprinkling gasoline around the warehouse with mechanical precision.
Ready to go home.
“Yes,” Dick said. None of this felt right, and the shame of the strip club weighed heavily on his conscience.
“Good. There’s just one more thing that we need to take care of.” Adrian walked over to Dimitri, who was angrily smoking a cigarette at the entrance of the warehouse.
“Keys, please.” Dimitri tossed them at the British man. They landed with a clang on the concrete by Adrian’s feet. Undeterred, Adrian picked them up and politely said “thank you,” and placed them in his pocket.
Then, in a very nonchalant, casual fashion he took out his gun, cleaned a speck of dirt off the barrel and shot Dimitri in the back.
“Holy hell!” Dick exclaimed. His mama wouldn’t have liked him swearing, but she might have made an exception for this particular time given the circumstances.
“You fucking bastard!” Dimitri said, gasping for breath. His bald head was bleeding from hitting the cold concrete floor of the warehouse. The wound on his back seemed almost harmless – just a little hole.
Dick always thought that when people got shot it happened like in the movies. Pew pew, dead. But that was far from the truth.
People don’t die from the bullets; they die from the loss of blood impacting their vital organs.
Adrian shot Dimitri two more times with his silenced revolver. Thwoop thwoop.
Dick would never forget the terrible sound of Dimitri’s life fluid leaking out onto the concrete floor of the warehouse. To him, it sounded like emptying a flat two-liter bottle of diet coke into the sink.
Glug, glug, glug, glug.
Dimitri, somehow clinging to life, looked like the devil. His face, a grotesque mask of impotent fury, was quickly turning white. He struggled over on his forearms inch by inch and grabbed Adrian’s leg, using his other hand to pull out a knife from some secret holder around the small of his back.
“You Russians never know when to die,” Adrian said. His expressionless face could have been made out of porcelain. He put the gun right to Dimitri’s temple and pulled the trigger one last time.
Thwoop.
And then it was all over. Dimitri’s face wasn’t a face at all. Blood dripped out of his ears, his nose and his mouth from the burst arteries in his skill. Forever frozen in a terrible grimace, his rage seemed palpable even in death.
From the hole in his head smoke emerged, spiraling towards the high roof of the warehouse.
Adrian was saying something to him, but Dick couldn’t understand a word that he was saying. Everything was quiet like someone had turned down the volume on the television way too much.
As silent as the grave.
Chapter Seventeen
Dick was vaguely aware that he was being led away. Into the black van. Somebody put his seatbelt on – it could have been him.
The van drove away. Slowly, calmly. Like they were going to soccer practice. But, looking in the mirror, he could see black smoke pouring out of the warehouse, and the kiss of flame out the windows and that great big door where Dimitri had smoked his last cigarette.
Dick knew right then in his heart that he’d never go home again.
They drove to the airport, once again taking routes that kept them off Houston’s expansive freeway system. But not George Bush Intercontinental. It must have been a private airstrip. Dick had no idea where they were, but Adrian exchanged a few word
s with the security guard gatekeeper, and they drove right onto the tarmac up to a large cargo plane.
Once again Adrian exchanged a few words with the workers. Dick watched as they picked up Alfred’s body, still dressed in cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt which didn’t fit over his considerable gut, and carried it onto the plane.
Dick kept thinking back to the warehouse, that terrible look on Dimitri’s dead face. Adrian, during the car pursuit, had shot fewer bullets at the people chasing them.
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