Asia pushed through the doors. Inside was a haven. A sanctuary. People packed the tables and crowded the bar. The music was loud, and condensation ran down the windows. In the corner by the fire, a group of young people was singing along to the jukebox.
Asia looked for a seat. At a table in the back, a woman sat alone. There was a spare chair. Asia walked over. The woman had a bottle of vodka on the table, and a single glass. She had her head bowed. She was staring at the floor. Or somewhere else.
“May I join you?” Asia said. “I’m sorry, but there’s nowhere else to sit.”
The woman looked up. Asia was struck by how beautiful she was. But she had a black eye, and a split lip, and you could tell she had been crying.
“American, huh? Sure, hon, sit down, sit down. Misery loves company.”
Asia sat. “Shit, what happened to you?”
“You should see the other guy,” the woman said. “Hey, waiter, bring another glass, please.” She turned to Asia. “You don’t look so hot yourself, hon. Man trouble?”
Asia smiled a wan smile. “Yeah. You could say that.”
The waiter brought a second glass. The woman filled both glasses and handed one to Asia.
“Well, ain’t we quite the fucking pair?” she said. “To men.”
She slammed back the vodka. Asia did likewise. The woman reached across the table and held out her hand.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said. “I’m Fanny. Fanny Lemming.”
***
There was some kind of commotion outside the hospital. A guy was lying bleeding in the snow, and the cop cars had their lights flashing.
“What’s going on?” Endless Lee said to the policeman who was with them.
“I no know. Some dyead guy not as dyead as they think. Please to follow.”
The policeman led Endless and Momo down dim, forbidding corridors. It was damp, and the lights flickered. The halls smelled of disinfectant, and something else: despair. Somewhere a man coughed and a woman screamed. A haggard man in striped pajamas, smoking on a bench, stared at them with lifeless eyes as they passed.
“In here,” the cop said.
Inside it was cold. The bare white tiles were cracked and greasy and there was dried blood in the grout. The intern had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He shuffled over to a row of steel cabinets and pulled out the drawer. The stiff was covered in a grimy sheet with holes in it. There was a typewritten tag on his toe. There was something wrong with the letter P on the machine. Seb. E. Ty*e, it said. The intern pulled back the sheet.
Momo gagged and turned his face away. Endless stared.
Sebastian Type’s face was bloated. There was a small blue hole right in the middle of his forehead. The back of his skull was fastened on with bandages and tape. His lips were twisted into a lascivious leer, and one of his eyes was open, as if he was winking. As if being dead was a joke.
“Iz that you friend?”
“Not anymore,” Endless said. “C’mon, Momo. Let’s get the fuck out of this slaughterhouse.”
They crossed the road and went into a bar. It was just a giant square room with benches set out in rows and a high corrugated roof. It smelled of fish and stale beer and vomit. In one corner a fight was in progress, but nobody was paying it much attention. A waitress came over. She had huge hands with reddened knuckles, and peroxide hair. Her dress was cut low and one of her areolae was exposed. She had a tiny dark mustache. She leaned on the table. Her breath reeked of vodka and tobacco.
“Gentlemans. What the pleasure?”
They ordered vodka, and watched her walk away. Her calves were covered in downy black hairs and there was a deep red crease on the back of her thighs where she had been sitting on a hard chair. Momo felt himself becoming strangely aroused, as if after what he had just seen, he needed some life and warmth in all its rawness.
“So,” Endless said. “That shitbird Hyatt.”
Momo forced himself to withdraw from his fantasy of a sordid encounter in the restroom. “Yeah. The prick must have wasted Sebastian, recorded himself, and then used the R3 to con us.”
“Do you think he knows it was us that waxed Zalupa?”
“How could he?
“So what’s our next move?”
“Seems pretty straightforward. We find Hyatt, then we find the R3.”
“I don’t see how that’s fucking straightforward, Lee. We’re in Russia. The little prick could be anywhere. And he’s fucking deadly. Just ask Sebastian.”
“Well, it might be that we won’t have to find him at all.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Well, maybe he’ll find us. He’s got to do business somewhere. It’s not like there’s a buyer on every corner.”
“And Sebastian?”
“Maybe it was just aggressive negotiation. Maybe Hyatt thinks with Sebastian gone, we can’t make it work without him.”
“Well, either way, it makes him a ruthless little son of a bitch. And if you’re wrong, and he’s got his own plans, he must know that as soon as the R3 comes to light, in any form, we’re going to trace it back to him. I mean, what would you do? And we’re on his turf.”
“Yeah, well, don’t worry. I recruited some local talent. Drink up. Let’s get to it.”
Momo downed his vodka and followed Endless out into the dismal street, glancing wistfully over his shoulder at the waitress as she leaned over a table, laughing with a bunch of men in white coats.
***
Monsoon was feeling on top of the world. The sun was even shining, and the snow crystals glistened in the perpendicular light. He was sitting on a rough bench outside the cabin, with Sasha curled up at his feet. The air was chill, but he was wrapped up in an old coat Yevgeny had given him, and he had a heavy woolen scarf wrapped around his head, and the half a bottle of vodka that he had inside him had his boiler stoked good and proper.
Yevgeny came out and handed him his own clothes, which he had washed and dried.
Monsoon beamed at him. “Man, I don’t know how to thank you for this. You saved my ass for sure.”
“Ah, forget it. It how human beings supposed to treat each other. Here.” Yevgeny threw him a small leather bag.
“What’s this?”
“How should I know? It’s yours.”
“Mine?”
“Yes. You had it fastened to your belt when I found you. Don’t you remember?”
“No. I’ve never fucking seen it before.” Monsoon opened it. His eyes flew wide open as if someone had sneaked up and goosed him. “Holy shit!”
“What is it?”
Monsoon’s expression turned suddenly shifty. “Oh. Er, nothing. Nothing, man. Hey, er, listen, I’m really grateful for everything, but I gotta split, man. I got things to do. Is there a bus or something? I gotta get to Moscow.”
“Oh. I can’t let you leave.”
“Don’t worry. I’m fine. I’ll be seeing ya. Thanks.” Monsoon started walking away.
“I said I can’t let you leave,” Yevgeny said in a tone that made Monsoon turn his head. Yevgeny had a large WWII vintage service revolver pointed at his belly button.
Monsoon froze, bewildered, his mind rifling through disconnected pieces of information looking for an explanation. He stared at the black, baleful eye aimed at his stomach. Time seemed to become as frozen as the fields outside. He heard the crunching of car tires in the snow. A door opened. He heard muffled footsteps in the house.
Hyatt walked out into the yard. Relief and suspicion jostled for elbowroom in Monsoon’s brain. “Hyatt, my man, what…?”
Hyatt pulled out a semiautomatic. “Throw me the fucking bag.”
Relief stopped jostling. Suspicion grinned. Monsoon tossed the bag. He threw it short and it fell on the hard ground. The R3 and the Fab 13 rolled out onto the snow.
***
It was the catharsis that they both needed. It started with a warm place, a common language, and a shared sympathy between two likeminded women who had both re
cently been given graphic and explicit reason to doubt the wisdom of the respective courses that they were pursuing, insofar as they were both somewhat fucked.
Asia and Fanny downed the bottle of vodka and ordered another. Out of sympathy grew empathy, and out of empathy grew the seeds of friendship and understanding, and in that foreign place two empathetic souls reached out to each other and began to unravel the warp and weft of their lives, and began to reveal to each other secrets that were theretofore known only to themselves and perhaps then only understood at a visceral level but not acknowledged, and here they were brought into the light and laid bare upon the table.
There were tears and consolations and laughter and moments of quietude and their small table was an island in all that sea of discord, and though they appeared as prey they were not, and the many pirates who tried to board their ship were repelled with attitude and choice epithets, and eventually they were left alone to wallow in their misery and bathe in the balmy waters of their memories, and when the joint finally closed, Fanny gave the waiter a hundred bucks and he went out into the street and stopped a cab and said the magic words, and at one o’clock in the morning they were sitting at a table in a dimly lit club with gently glowing orange and green lights, in the middle of fuck-knows-where, and the improbably sized gentleman who stood by the door in an ill-fitting dress suit had been suitably remunerated for the service of ensuring that all lowlifes and scumbags left them the fuck alone so they could continue their investigations into what the fuck had gone wrong, exactly.
“So, how’d you come by the shiner?” Asia said.
“Oh, honey, you won’t believe this. What a sap. I wish I could have seen it myself. I was all dressed up for the dance, so to speak. I was hot to trot; you know what I mean. I heard the footsteps in the hall, and obviously I was expecting Khuy and his exceptional assemblage, so I walked over to the door, closed my eyes, and let it all hang out. I stood there with my lips pursed and my hands on my hips, and some creep let me have it right in the kisser.
“When I woke up, I was in the back of a car, tied up. Whoever did the trussing-up was a real amateur and I was out of there in less than ten. When I stood up, I felt a pain in my ass. I found a bruise and I realized that whoever did it had given me a shot of something. I could have been out for hours. Who knows? Anyway, that’s when things got real weird and scary, let me tell you.
“I crossed over into the house, leaving all the lights off. For all I knew, the lowlife that slugged me could still have been inside. It was real quiet, and there was a funny sweet smell. I tiptoed up to my room, to get my purse, but it was gone. I ran back down the stairs, and tripped over something. My hand landed on a face. A cold face. I guess I panicked, thinking it might have been Khuy. I probably screamed, I can’t remember. I hit the lights, terrified of what I was going to see.
“It was carnage. There was blood everywhere. A little fat guy was lying dead at the bottom of the stairs, and a big dog that looked like it had been torn to pieces. I ran back out to the car I’d been tied up in. The keys were still in the ignition, so I got the hell out of there. I called Khuy a million times, but I just kept getting the machine. I needed a place to have a drink and calm down and think things through. I knew enough to lose the car, so I dumped it and grabbed a cab, and he dropped me off at the bar where I met you.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to find out what happened. I’m going to start at the beginning and follow the yellow brick road until I find the wizard so I can go home. It’s what I do.”
“Do you think something might have happened to…? Oh, I’m sorry.”
Fanny smiled. “To Khuy. No, hon. You don’t know him. Nothing can happen to him. He’s a force of nature. All I have to do is find him and everything will be A-okay. What about you?”
“The same, I guess. Only I don’t really know where to begin. It’s not my kind of thing. I’m lost. I guess that’s what happens when you think with your heart instead of your head.”
“You said it, hon. But don’t worry. As soon as I find Khuy we can…Shit!”
“What?”
“It’s Oleg. Fucking Oleg.”
“Who?”
“That evil, ugly bastard who just walked in. He works for Khuy. And those two mugs with him. They’re the guys Khuy was doing business with. They’re the ones that were at the house.”
“Well, then. You can ask them what’s going on.”
“No. No, I can’t. Something’s not right. I never trusted that creep Oleg. Something’s wrong. Something’s happened.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I need to find out what’s going on. I need to find Khuy. He needs me. Listen, you better split. Here’s my cell number. Call me tomorrow, okay?”
“Maybe I should…”
“No, hon, you got enough shit to deal with. I’ll call you.”
Asia leaned across and kissed Fanny on the cheek. She stood and walked toward the door. Oleg and the Americans turned to look at her ass as she passed. She stopped at the door and looked back at Fanny, but Fanny wasn’t there.
***
Some people can only listen to “Lara’s Theme” a certain number of times before it starts to get on their tits. Like once, for example. Some people just find balalaikas annoying, per se. Baby Joe was included on both counts.
They were in some atrocious tourist trap restaurant with people in baggy pants and fur hats leaping about all over the place, and some fat bitch in a blue and gold dress and too much makeup kept warbling on about dawn over the Dnieper or some shit. Oblov had thought they would be impressed.
“I come here all the time,” Oblov lied. “You might say it’s my local.”
“So are you making any progress, Major?” Agent White said.
“Well, the investigation is underway, and I can assure you we are making strenuous efforts to…”
“How hard can it be to find two fuckin’ Americans in Moscow?” said Agent Black.
“Ah. Well, it appears they may be using aliases. And anyway, what makes you so sure the Americans are involved?”
“Who wears fuckin’ cowboy hats, slim?”
“Er. Cowboys?”
“Correct. So who carries American flick knives?”
“Listen, Major,” said Agent White. “A senior partner in a major American IT company, who we know to have been here on business with his two partners, and who we know to have been in contact with Khuy Zalupa, ends up in a Moscow morgue, with a hole where his occipital lobe used to be, at around about the same time as Mr. Zalupa manages to get himself seriously perforated. You don’t think the other two might be in a position to shed a little light on the mystery?”
Baby Joe stared into his vodka and decided he was through with the bullshit. He didn’t know why he was doing what he was doing, other than that it was something to be doing, a way of keeping at bay the thoughts and emotions that he was going to have to deal with sooner or later…but preferably later. Maybe he could even manage to get himself shot, and then he wouldn’t have to worry about it. He stood up.
“Where ya goin’, slick?” Agent Black said.
“Listen. Either this cunt couldn’t find a fucking giraffe at Fenway Park or he’s stalling. I’ll see you back at the hotel.”
Baby Joe left them staring after him as he walked out. He took a cab back to the hotel. Before he got out he turned to the driver. “You speak English?”
“Da. A little.”
Baby Joe took out a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to the driver. “That’s for the ride,” he said. He produced a hundred-dollar bill. He tore it in two, and handed one half to the driver. “This is for something else. I’m looking for two Americans. About forty. One’s a black guy with a thin face. The other guy is blond, going a bit thin on top. They probably aren’t using their real names. They’ll use taxis. Call some of your buddies. When I find them, you get the other half. I’m in room 2010, and my name is Young. Okay?”
&nbs
p; Baby Joe climbed out and walked across the frozen pavement toward the revolving doors. A woman in furs walking a small dog on a leash looked at him. The dog was also wearing furs. The dog looked at him. Baby Joe resisted the temptation to boot it into left field and pushed in through the doors.
He walked up to the concierge desk and repeated the procedure he had used with the cab driver, except this time he used two bills. He went up four flights of stairs into the bar, ordered a bourbon and back, told the bartender to keep them coming, and went and took a seat at a table by the window.
He stared down into the gathering night and watched the lights coming on and the people rushing past bound for fuck-knows-where, and what happiness or sadness and what wealth or destitution, or what assignation or romantic interlude or which drudgery and servitude and thankless task, or which fascinating volume or what bowl of potatoes to be peeled, or which ledger to be kept or account laid down, or which desperate and holy mission, or to pursue what calling or cheer for what team, or which table burdened with steaming dishes and surrounded by laughing children or what lonely garret where the only things that spoke were ghosts and even then in whispers.
He was on his third boilermaker when he got a call from the concierge telling him that two Americans fitting the description, and calling themselves Crick and Watson, were staying in the Savoy Hotel, near the center, and it could be known by its symbol, which was a salamander, and that he owed the concierge two half-hundred-buck notes.
***
The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2) Page 25