Chapter 17 – Attack, Act One
Nev had seen the Junes in action on two occasions. The first was when four women in bikinis had landed at the end of Stirg’s dock in a boat, and scammed their way into his house, at which time they pulled guns hidden in pockets in their towels. After the women had secured the area, Roger and a Russian accomplice had come out of the boat and joined them. These six intruders had spent two hours in the house, talking shop with Stirg. Gwen June had kept her gun trained on Stirg and Nev the entire two hours. Hers was one of six guns in evidence that were not part of the Stirg household. At one point, Roger had clobbered Stirg in the head with the butt of his gun, practically knocking Stirg unconscious.
The second occasion was the retaliation move by Stirg, two months later. The entire June crew was out on Charleston harbor, eating, drinking, and relaxing on Henric’s sailboat, when Stirg attacked them in his massive power cruiser, which was more of a ship than a boat. The end result of that escapade was minor damage to both vessels, and Stirg’s ship aground on a sandbar on the backside of Fort Sumter. It had to be pulled off the next day by a tugboat.
So Nev had a healthy respect for the Junes, and their willingness to resort to violence when the situation called for it. Nev did not know that during this period of antagonism between the two camps, Gwen had fully armed and trained all the members of her crew. Each of them had carried a concealed handgun for about four months, and each of them knew how to use it. The Ps had been the most resistant to this new regime of personal protection, but Gwen had given them no choice in the matter. They had spent many hours at the outdoor gun range on the Francis Marion National Forest, just north of Charleston, and under Gwen’s tutelage had become proficient in gun operation, safety, and psychology.
If Nev had known about the basic gun training that Gwen had inflicted on the Ps, and that Gwen had made them carry their guns every day for four months, he might have decided on a different course of action than he did, so as to comply with his boss’s order to steal the score. Nev had decided on the direct approach to the problem, the daytime approach. He would grab the Ps as they arrived for work in the morning, brace anyone else that showed up, and demand they give him the score. After all, he was a former commando, and they were two gay ballet dancers. If the Junes showed up, so much the better. He would brace their asses, too.
And that is what he did one morning, a week later. He hadn’t yet worked up to the two hundred fifty pushups his boss had demanded, but he was up to one hundred fifty, which is nothing to sneeze at for a forty-nine year old guy, and he was ready to go. He looked forward to securing a modicum of revenge against the Junes, who had heaped humiliation upon him with their successful attack on Stirg’s house, perpetrated by four women in bikinis. And on him, the supposed bodyguard.
Nev knew where the Ps usually parked their white Lexus convertible, and he waited for them at 8am one Monday morning. They were the first to arrive for work at The Hall every day, they being so incredibly excited to be back in the world of art and culture, after having been exiled formerly to the duties of night-shift security guards at one of the Hermitage Museum compound back gates, for three years. The only contact they had during their work shift at the remote gate was with strange nocturnal creatures scurrying around just outside the lighted zone of their guard post structure. That was where they had met the June’s a year earlier. Now they were living in Charleston, driving a Lexus, and were part of a team that was going to produce a world-class ballet premiere. Every day, for them, was a good day.
Nev followed them down the sidewalk, around a corner, and up to the front door of The Hall. When he mounted the four steps up to the door behind them, they sensed his presence and turned around. The Ps never had met Nev, but they pretty much knew who he was, right then and there. “Morning boys. How we doing today?” he said.
“Things were good,” they said in unison.
“Still can be a good day, all in all, if you do what I say. Otherwise, could be a bad day. Understand?” He showed them the gun he was holding down below his waist.
“Yes,” they said in unison.
“Let’s go on in, then. You got something I want.”
Peter unlocked the door, which led into the rear of the theater, and they walked down a side aisle to the stage. Nev looked around. Nice place. On the stage he saw the folding tables, on one of which sat a computer. Ah, source of his bug. He also saw the white boards on wheels, and other tables, and ten comfy upholstered office type chairs with high backs. He motioned them to sit down. They both removed long, gauzy cardigan style wraps which came down to hip level, the Ps dressing the part of artists. When they also removed lightweight scarves, Nev saw both of them were wearing dancer’s tights and mid-calf height boots. Very la la. Nev never had seen this style of dress in the commando training camps he had frequented in the Sinai when he was younger. The Ps’ shirts hung out the front of their tights, partially covering up rather large bulges, front and center. Nev had seen this thing on the ballet websites he had been looking at recently. He didn’t spend much time looking at the male dancers on these sites, not when he could watch the females, those with really long, amazingly beautiful legs, flounce around the stage.
“I guess you know what my boss wants?” he said.
“Dance lessons?” said Peter.
“We have an advanced age class, Thursday evenings from 5-6pm. We can fit him in,” said Pater.
Cute, Nev thought. He said, “What time do the rest of the fucks get here?” He didn’t need to ask. He knew they would show up around nine. He didn’t care one way or the other if he had to confront them, or not. If these two gave him the score, he would get out of here. If not, he would pick off the fucks, one by one, as they came in. Have a nice party, like they had had at his house. Stirg’s house. “If you two give me what I want, I’ll be out of here before the woman shows up. She doesn’t have to see this gun. Get scared. She’s your bean counter, right? Maybe not used to guns?”
Peter said, “You want the score, right? The Stravinsky score.”
Pater looked at him, realizing there was no sense in denying that was what Nev wanted.
“You got it. Give me the music, and I’m outta here.”
“What’s Stirg going to do with it?”
“What do you think? Take it back to Russia. Make the ballet there. Russian heritage thing.”
“We can’t give it to you. We can give you a few pieces, but not the whole thing. Sorry,” said Peter.
“Why? This is where you’re doing your thing. Must be here, for you to work on it. Give it up. Now.” And he waved the gun at them, commando style.
Peter got up and walked over to one of the white boards. He spun it on its wheels so it faced Nev. Then he spun it around so Nev could see the other side. He said, “Here it is. Part of it.”
Nev saw pictures. Diagrams. He’d never seen anything like them. These were the pictograms Selgey and Bart were using to do their choreography. “What’s that?” asked Nev.
“These are from the score. They’re what the dancers are going to do. Along with the music.”
“I don’t care about the dancers. I want the Stravinsky music. The thing you fucks found. The papers with the music that he wrote in Russia. I want it, now.”
Pater got up and went to one of the tables, where he picked up some large pieces of paper. He handed them to Nev. Nev looked at them and saw musical notation: clefs, bars, and half-note symbols. Ok. This was it. He counted six sheets of paper. “Where’s the rest?” Pater looked around the tables, found four more sheets, and gave them to Nev. “This still isn’t all. I want the whole thing.”
Peter looked at Pater, and said, “That’s all we have. We print out a few pages at a time. It takes a long time for Selgey and Bart to chart the dance movements from the score onto the white boards, and then onto the dance floor. Long time. What you’re holding is a
week’s work, maybe two.”
Nev said, “I don’t care about that stuff. I want the thing you found. The thing that came from Saint Petersburg. Where is it, the old thing?”
“In a bank vault. Not here.”
“What do you mean? You’re using it. Making this dance stuff from it. It’s gotta be here. Come on.”
“It’s not here. The original is in the vault. We have a computer copy, and we print a page or two at a time, when Selgey asks for more. That’s all we have printed out now.”
Nev thought this over. Computers were everywhere, infesting the world. Couldn’t do anything without looking at a computer. “Ok. Turn on the computer, and print it all out. The whole thing. A copy. A complete copy, no fucking around. I’m getting tired of this.”
One of the Ps said, “The computer is on. Go look. We leave it running. But we can’t print out the whole score, because that file is password protected. Only Gwen and the woman have the password. They’re the only ones that can open the file and get it up on the monitor.”
Now Nev was really pissed at the computer, and was tempted to put a couple of slugs into it, but then thought better. Ok. He would wait for the June woman, or the other woman, the bean counter. Whichever one showed up first, Nev would invite her to open the file, and print the document. He hoped it was the June bitch. He had a score to settle with her, and it wasn’t a musical score. It was a personal score. Nev motioned the Ps to sit down. When they did, he pulled up a chair facing them, and sat down too. He kept his gun resting on his thigh. The Ps hoped for the same thing Nev did. They wanted Gwen to walk in first, not the woman. Gwen would handle this guy, commando or not. For the first time in a while, they hoped Gwen was packing.
It wasn’t Gwen or the woman who walked down the center aisle after the three men on the stage heard the door open and close. It was Roger June. He made it halfway down the aisle before he saw Nev sitting in the chair, facing the Ps. He stopped and looked. Yes, that was Nev. Looking comfortable, staring out at him from the center of the stage. Roger thought, not a typical Monday morning. Not a typical start to the work week.
Nev lifted his hand from his thigh, and let it drop over the arm of the chair, hanging towards the floor. Roger saw the gun in the hand. Of course. What else. Nev said, “Come on up, Roger. Join me and the boys. We need some help.”
Roger continued down the aisle to center stage, turned to stage right and came up the stairs. By this time Nev had his gun pointed at Pater. Roger walked up beside Pater’s chair, and stopped. Nev said, “You heeled, Roger?”
This was the second time in the last year that someone had asked Roger that question. And it was a very unusual question. It would not have been unusual if Nev had asked him if he was armed. But using the word heeled made it very unusual. The word heeled came out of the American nineteenth-century west, and was a cowboy word that meant armed with a gun. A year ago, a Russian crook had entered an expensive French restaurant where Roger and Gwen were eating dinner, walked up to their table, and asked him, “You heeled, Roger?” And now this Israeli commando had done the same thing. What was going on? Is the lexicon of the American west no longer sacred? Is it right and proper that Russian crooks and Israeli commandos were appropriating it? Using it for their nefarious purposes?
Roger came back from his mental detour, and said, “Well, I guess I am.”
“Let’s have it.”
Roger slowly pulled out his nine, and handed it to Nev, butt first.
Nev looked at it carefully. “Is this the one you hit my boss with?”
Roger thought for a moment, said, “Yes, I believe it is. Gwen and I keep so many guns in our house, I had to think there for a minute.”
“I remember that. I remember you hittin’ my boss in the head. With this.”
“Not as vividly as he remembers it, I bet.”
Nev stood up and stuck Roger’s gun in his belt, behind his back. “We’ll save that issue for another time. I’m here for something. The music papers. These fucks say the original is in the bank, and the copy you’re using is in the computer, except for a few sheets, here. They say only your wife and the woman can get into that file, get it up on the screen so it can be printed out. The whole thing. The whole document. Is that right?”
Roger understood the situation. He knew Nev was serious, not here to fool around. Stirg had sent Nev for the Stravinsky score, and Nev was going to bring it home with him. He would do what was necessary to get it. That was the Israeli way. And Roger knew his wife was coming shortly. Then what? Well, then Nev would get the score, which wasn’t the end of the world. Keep cool. But Roger had another thought. An interesting thought. What about the Ps? What was their status, vis-à-vis being heeled? He knew Gwen had given the order to the whole team to carry their weapons at all times, when they left their houses. And he knew the Ps didn’t mess with Gwen. The question was whether Nev had de-heeled them.
Roger said, “I know the password. I can print the document for you. Leave them alone.” And he walked over to the table with the computer on it and sat down. Nev followed him, and stood behind him, watching as Roger launched the software programs. It took time for them to boot up, and him to logon. While this was happening, the Ps also got up and came around the table to watch. Nev kept an eye on them and an eye on Roger. Roger glanced at them, noting the bulges in the front of their tights, partially concealed by their gauzy shirts. Then he glanced at their faces. He wondered.
The music software opened, and Roger called up the dialogue box asking for the file password, which he entered. When the file of the scanned Stravinsky score opened, he motioned to Nev to sit down in the chair next to him, and look at it. He said, “There it is.” Nev never had seen a musical score on a computer screen before. For a moment it mesmerized him, all those little black symbols, and he dropped his guard. The Ps were hoping for this, waiting for this, and Gwen’s training kicked in. In two smooth motions they raised their shirts, pulled their Berettas out of the front of their tights, racked the slides, and pointed them at Nev’s chest. Pater’s hands wobbled a little. Peter’s were steady.
Nev didn’t move. He debated moving, raising his gun and shooting, but he decided against this. Not worth it. Not just to assuage his boss’s sense of cultural sacrilege. He stayed motionless, not looking at the Ps, but looking at Roger, sitting next to him. Roger cocked his head sideways just a bit, indicating a sense of irony. Slowly he reached across the space between them, and took hold of Nev’s gun. He stood up and moved behind Nev’s chair. Carefully he pushed Nev forward and got his own gun out from Nev’s belt. He racked the slide in his Beretta nine, and stuck Nev’s gun in his belt, at his back. Nothing like role reversal. He stepped away from Nev, looked at the Ps, smiled, and said, “Ok, all over. Ease down.” They lowered their guns, Pater’s hands now shaking noticeably. Peter took Pater’s gun away from him, and led him over to the chairs. Roger motioned to Nev to stand up, put his hands on the table, and stretch his feet backwards away from the table. He frisked him, head to toe. Roger said, “Have a seat.”
About this time they heard the door at the rear of the theater open, and voices. Gwen, Selgey, Bart, and the woman all entered, and began walking down the aisle. Gwen looked ahead, stopped the others, pulled her Glock, and pointed it at the stage. Roger said, “It’s ok, babe. The Ps got the draw on him.” And he smiled at Nev. This was not going to put him in good with his boss.
The Lost Ballet Page 17