Chapter 52 – They Meet
Jinny stood in the wine shop looking at a bottle on the shelf that said Ménage a Trois. He didn’t know what it meant but his intuition told him it was something interesting. He’d ask Gale when he got back to the theater. Laleh was with the shop owner selecting a mixed case: two French burgundies, two German Rieslings, two California cabs, two Australian shirazs, two Italian barolas, and two French sancerres. Jinny went to the front of the shop and stared out at the passing coeds, wondering what is was like to go to college. His education had been elementary school on the Saint Petersburg docks, high school in the Russian army, and higher education at The Hermitage on janitor’s duty. Then he got into crime. Two guys stood together across the street, not exactly fitting into the King Street crowd, which around here was a mixture of students and tourists. Laleh hefted the case of wine and walked to the front of the store, where Jinny said, “Gimme that,” and tucked in under one arm like a loaf of bread.
They walked the five blocks back to The Hall, trailed by The Colonel and The Lieutenant, The Private having been left on sentry duty across the street. Three blocks after leaving the wine shop, Lewy stopped at a vacant lot and picked up a brick that had been made out of Wando River clay in 1844. He hefted it, getting a feel for its weight and proportions. Aliaabaadi said, “What’s that for?”
“Weapon. We don’t have anything yet, so gotta improvise. Assassin’s Rule 312, ‘A man skilled in the assassin’s art can make a lethal weapon out of anything when the need arises. Even an ostrich feather can kill horribly when wielded by a master of mayhem.’”
“What do you mean? You’re gonna try to kill her now? Here, on the street?”
“The vengeance of the Red Scimitar brooks no delay when the honor of Islam has been stained,” said Lewy.
“How do we find the money if you kill her? Isn’t that what we’re after? The money?”
“I thought our mission was to exact vengeance. Teach the infidels not to fuck with us.”
“That too, yeah, course. That’s important, no doubt about it. But our secondary mission is to return to the People what is rightfully theirs. Right?”
Lewy thought for a moment and dropped the brick. “The money thing is important. Gotta get that back for the People. The other thing can wait, I suppose.”
The Colonel was happy to see his foot soldier enthusiastic about his work, but he wished there was a stronger connection between his brain and his hand.
Laleh and Jinny entered the street doors of The Hall, and Jinny dropped the case on a table on the stage. He continued to the back of the stage, out the employee door, down the short flight of steps, and down the alley out to the street. At the end of the alley he poked his head around the corner of the building, and saw the two guys who were across the street from the wine shop, now with a third guy. They still were out of place. He walked back up the alley and continued to the other end, where he turned and walked around the block, back to John Street. He took off his red pullover, under which he had on a black t-shirt stretched wide by his barrel muscled chest. He unclipped his Sig Sauer nine millimeter from his belt at the rear of his right hip and rolled it up in the pullover. Then he walked down the street, where he stopped next to the three dark skinned guys and said, “Hey, how ya doing?”
Even though Jinny’s voice was congenial, neutral, and non-threatening, the boys knew they were being braced. Here was this guy, build like a concrete bollard protecting the main entrance to The White House, standing close in front of them and pretending to be friendly. Who was as out of place among the students and tourists as they were. They could see he was in the strong arm business, same as they were, maybe not a certified assassin, but still prone to violence on occasion. Lewy noticed Jinny wasn’t holding his pullover in his hand but rather had it wrapped around his hand in an unusual manner that screamed weapon. Lewy knew all the tricks about concealing weapons. The Colonel was quite sure he’d break his hand if he tried to punch Jinny in the gut, and Priss thought here was a guy who’d probably standup to water boarding pretty well.
The Colonel said, “What the fuck do you want?”
Jinny smiled at this, wondering if today was going to be a really unusual day. It had started out interesting, with Gale fainting in George’s hotel room, and then Gwen leading the way through the two fundamental issues of what kind of production this was going to be and who was going to star opposite Big George, and now he had these three bozos to deal with who he knew were watching them and The Hall. Who are they? He could see they either were southern Mediterranean or Middle Eastern, and from their accents he would bet on the latter. What did they want with June Enterprises? This wasn’t as strange a question as it might appear, because Jinny had gone through the conflicts of the two previous productions, the ballet involving Stirg the Nazi hunter, and the rock opera involving two sets of kidnappers, one a crew of neo-Nazis from Idaho and the other composed of an aristocratic Charleston woman and her English butler. So the idea of some Middle Eastern guys hanging around casing the joint was odd, but not particularly surprising. As Jinny had said to George and Soderberg, the June’s productions always seemed to attract trouble in one form or another, which was one reason Jinny liked to hang around them. And here he was, gun in hand, staring down three guys, one of whom just had used a swear word in his salutation, “What the fuck do you want?”
Jinny replied with equanimity, “Saw you guys down the street when we were in the wine shop. Now you’re here, watching our place of business. Just curious, that’s all. No problem, really.”
“We’re looking for the best shrimp and grits, that’s all. We’re tourists, from Greece, like to eat the local specialties,” said Priss, him conducting a less confrontational brand of psychological warfare than his boss, employing trickery and subterfuge. “You know a good place for that?”
Jinny smiled at the bullshit, thought, ‘Keep your enemies close,’ said, “Shrimp and grits is the best thing Charleston has to offer in the way of high culture, and I am an expert on the subject. I make it as well as anyone and will eat it three times a day if subjected to the right influences, like some honest tourists wanting a real southern culinary experience. Why don’t you come on in to The Hall for a few minutes, meet some people, and then we’ll go out for some eats.”
Lewy looked at his buddies, then back to Jinny and said, “You want to invite us into your place? There?” pointing at the doors of The Hall.
“That’s what we do here in Charleston, friendly. We’s number one in amiability, according to Conde Nast Travel Magazine. Come on in.” Jinny wanted Gwen and Roger to vet these characters right away, before the production really geared up, and if they told him to, then he’d take ‘em out and dispose of ‘em in the usual place, the rocks on the back side of Fort Sumter, far out in the harbor. Dump a body there and it’s out in the Atlantic in no time. He motioned them to follow him across the street, all three of the boys thinking, ‘These Americans are even dumber than I thought they’d be, inviting three avenging angels right into their foul nest. This mission is going to be a cakewalk, and profitable to boot.’ Jinny opened the doors and led the way down the center aisle towards the stage.
Gwen saw them first, noticing Jinny had his pullover draped around his right arm and hand, and realized something was up. She knew he always carried his gun on his belt, and it wasn’t there now. Casually she walked to the side of the stage, picked up her purse, and brought it back to one of the tables at the center of the stage. Roger noticed his wife do this, then noticed Jinny and his followers, and instantly went on alert himself. He knew Gwen had her gun in her purse, and he felt for his at his hip under his sweater. The others on the stage were oblivious to these precautions.
Jinny stood near the front row of seats below the stage and yelled up, “Hey Gwen. Got some folks here from out of town, met ‘em outside, they’re lookin for good shrimp and grits, local culture, so I thought
I’d invite them in, meet you and Roger.”
Gwen and Roger came to the front of the stage, Gwen with her purse over her shoulder now. Roger said, “Welcome to Charleston. Welcome to The Hall. Where’re you from?”
“Greece,” said The Colonel. “Athens. Our first trip to America, and people said this is a friendly place, so we came here. We’re friendly, too. And we heard about this local seafood dish, and then this man introduced himself outside, and here we are.”
While The Colonel talked, Lewy and Priss both looked at the people on the stage, saw Laleh talking with George and Monique, and looked at each other knowingly, a gesture not lost on Jinny or Roger or Gwen. Roger said, “My name is Roger and this is my wife Gwen, and that’s Jinny you’ve met, and we’re rehearsing a show here. If you’re still around in a while, maybe you’ll come and see it.”
The Colonel also saw Laleh, and said, “Thank you for the invitation, but we’ll just be here for a few days. We know what we want, some good food, meeting nice people like yourselves, maybe a day or two of duck hunting, we like to hunt, then we have other parts of your wonderful country to see.” Lewy and Priss smiled up at Gwen, saying to themselves, hot, hot, but no virgin, and an infidel, remember that.
Gwen said to Jinny, “You know the places that have the best shrimp and grits. You should tell them where those are, then we need you for rehearsal, ok?”
Jinny nodded and turned to lead the boys back up the aisle to the street, where he told them the name of a place nearby that had the worst shrimp and grits he’d ever tasted, like glue flavored with powdered fish flakes. The boys knew for sure he had a gun under the pullover, no one would keep that draped over their arm for this long. There was some tension now, the boys having penetrated the enemy’s perimeter and seen their target, and Jinny and Gwen and Roger sussing out the BS about being Greek tourists. The boys kept up their posture of friendliness, but Jinny sent out warning vibes they picked up. ‘Don’t come around here again. If we see you, there’ll be trouble.’ He waved as the boys headed up the street towards the bad food, and Jinny went back into The Hall.
Gwen and Roger were sitting on the edge of the stage as Jinny came down the aisle, and they spoke softly. Gwen said, “Where the hell did you find them?”
“They were outside the wine shop when Laleh and I went there, and they followed us back here, outside. I decided to introduce myself and check them out. They stunk badly, so I brought ‘em in for you to see.” Jinny threw his pullover on the stage and clipped his gun back on his belt. Roger motioned to him to hide it from the others on the stage.
Gwen looked at Roger, asking what he thought of them. He said, “I think they’re from the Middle East somewhere, not Greece. And I don’t believe in coincidence. And we have someone here from there, whose background we don’t know. I think something’s up. Serious.”
Gwen nodded and said, “Ok, let’s keep this to ourselves for now, but the alert is on. We go armed all the time now, and we share a watch over all the others. Let’s get the production rolling, give Steven the reins, and then we can figure out what’s going on. We’ll have a talk with Laleh and find out if there’s a connection; and I’m guessing there is. Jinny, you’re the man now, bodyguard for everyone, twenty-four seven.”
He smiled and said, “Here we go again.”
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