by Mike Leon
Once he is out of sight, he pounds harder on the gas and takes a sharp turn. There’s a store in Inglewood that sells spy equipment. He can get a new wire, find Volchenko, and try to get something out of him before this maniac kills them both. It’s a long shot, but it’s a shot.
His phone rings. He glances at the cell in its mount on the Audi’s dashboard and sees the name of Tony the Tiger flashing on the screen. He picks up the call and prays not to hear the bogeyman’s voice coming through his car stereo.
“I thought you were dead!” shouts Tony. Dmitry breathes a sigh of relief. “Some lunatic just set YMS on fire!”
“What? Are you there now?” Dmitry says.
“Yeah! It’s nuts! The building is burning to the ground, boss! To the fucking ground!”
“Did you see him? What does he look like?”
“I don’t know. I got here right after it happened.”
“Listen to me, Tony. You call Moldovich and Piotr. Tell them we’re going to ground, and meet you somewhere nobody, not your wife, not your mama, not Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny fucking knows about!”
“Is it the Koreans? I heard Eddie Seong is back in town.”
“It’s fucking Rambo! We did something that pissed off this guy and he’s the God damned devil in the flesh! He killed Sergei and Nikos and most of their people! He just blew up my apartment! He knows everything! I think Nikos talked!”
“Pizdet!”
“Do it, Tony! Call them! And get as far from that building as you can!”
Dmitry ends the call as he merges onto the 405 going way too fast for the flow of traffic. He swerves around a dump truck as he yells into the steering wheel mic to place a call via voice command. He hears ringing on the phone line and hopes for the best. “Come on. Come on. Pick up!”
A click and some soft room noise signify someone has answered. “Boss?” says Arkady Volgin. “What’s up?”
“Thank God. Arkady, where are you?”
“I’m at the stash. I was just about to call you. There’s a guy here who says he needs to talk to you about something urgent. He says it’s about your mama.”
“What does he look like?”
“I don’t know. Tall. His arms are all cut up like he had a fight with a weed wacker. Piotr is with him in the other room.”
“You need to leave. Just run. Go out the fire escape.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Just do it, Arkady! He’s killing everyone!”
“Boss, we’re doing a count. There’s six of us here. We’re all strapped. We’ll put him down—Hey! You can’t be in he—”
The loud report of gunshots assaults Dmitry’s ears through the speakers, followed by screaming and curses. He can’t identify all of the voices. He gets only snippets. “Shoot him!” “No! My eyes! He took my eyes!” BAM! BAM! “Oh God! So much blood! Sooooooooo much bloooooood!”
Then it all fades to silence.
“Fedosov!” the bogeyman growls at him through the phone once again. “Did you hear them die? I wanted you to hear them die.”
“Why are you doing this?!” Dmitry yells into the steering wheel as he weaves between a bus and some geriatric who doesn’t understand the purpose of the freeway.
“Because when I kill you, I want to taste your fear.”
Dmitry ends the call. He doesn’t need to hear any more of that. It will do him no good. This maniac is too smart to tell him anything useful over the phone. He just wants to frighten Dmitry. He truly is a bogeyman in that way, potentially capable of anything. He certainly has no aversion to senseless bloodshed.
Arkady and Piotr were gangsters, but they weren’t monsters like Engine and Volchenko. They sold drugs to people who wanted them, found customers for whores who wanted them, and found whores for customers who wanted them. They were not saints, but they were not baby killers. They were Dmitry’s friends…
Dmitry pulls off the 405 and reflects on his luck at the bottom of the exit ramp. It is practically a miracle the police didn’t stop him. He slows down as he makes his way through the side streets to his destination.
Spy’s Eyez Spygear is a little painted brick building that looks like it might have been a quick stop once. The windows are covered by steel mesh cages and the place has a telltale smoky stench, even though it is illegal to smoke in businesses in California. Dmitry walks through the front door to encounter a chubby middle-aged man with a scraggly white neckbeard and a crotchety glare.
He wastes no time getting to what he wants. “I need a wire,” Dmitry says.
“What gauge?” says the spy store owner, with what barely qualifies as even a cursory glance away from daytime television.
“What?”
“It’s a joke,” his tone never fluctuating and his face remaining solid as stone. He has the demeanor of someone being forced to study the Dewey Decimal System. “What’s your budget?”
“Unlimited. Give me the best one you’ve got. Three of them, in fact. Just put it on this.” Dmitry slaps his credit card down on the countertop.
INT. BILL’S GUN’S - DAY
Sid enters Bill’s Gun’s of Inglewood, passing under the grammatically incorrect awning sign with another duffel bag tucked under his shoulder. He pulls the front door out to the jingle of an actual bell dangling from the handle, rather than the electronic chimes that are so common, and he steps onto a smudged and dirty white tile floor. The walls are white slat boards supporting a modest array of long guns with wood furniture. The counters are glass display cases, populated by handguns. A man stands behind one of the cases running a patch through the barrel of a nickel plated Smith and Wesson Model 29.
“Help you with somethin’?” the shopkeeper says.
“Yeah,” Sid says, setting the duffel bag down on the display case in front of him. “I have some money and I’m looking to buy some equipment.”
“You came to the right place. What are ya lookin’ for? Hunting rifle? Skeet? Plinking? Home defense?”
“I’ll be assaulting a fortified compound at night, alone. I expect heavy resistance. Twenty to thirty armed sentries that will likely be wearing body armor. Attack dogs are also a possibility.”
The shopkeeper narrows his eyes. “Uh huh.”
“I’ll need a short barreled rifle or carbine, select-fire, preferably a five-five-six with holographic or red dot sight, adjustable stock, and underslung grenade launcher. I’ll also need a ballistic vest with MOLLE webbing and twenty standard magazines.”
“Uh huh.” The shopkeeper puts down the Model 29 and leans to look outside the front doors. “And you’re gonna shoot who with this gun?”
“Russian mobsters. Total assholes.”
“Is this that punk show? Where are the cameras—OH MY JESUS!” the shopkeeper yelps as Sid unzips the duffel bag and flips it upside down, dumping piles of rubber banded one hundred dollar bills onto the countertop. He didn’t bother to count it all, but he estimates there to be an excess of a hundred thousand dollars. The money quickly overflows and begins cascading onto the floor from the counter. “You gotta be ATF. I know a setup when I see one. You people are crooked! You know that?”
“Is this enough money?”
“I’m one hundred percent compliant with California law!” The shopkeeper turns around and hoists a rifle from the peg hooks behind him. He plunks it down on the countertop next to the mountain of cash. “You won’t trip me up no matter how many jackbooted thugs you send in here. I follow the law to the letter. To the letter!”
The rifle on the counter hardly bears a passing resemblance to an M4 or AR-15. Sid cannot identify it, and he knows just about every gun that has ever been manufactured. It is black in color, and has the usual milled aluminum AR-15 lower receiver, but the stock is missing and has been replaced by a simple tube containing the buffer spring. The pistol grip has been bent upward into an almost horizontal direction which extends into a shoulder stock. The box magazine is far too short to ever contain more than ten or twel
ve cartridges, but more perplexing is the absence of anything where the pin for the second seer should be and the safety lever positions which are labeled safe and fire. There is nothing in the third position at all. It is just blank. This is only a semi-automatic rifle.
“What the fuck is this shit?” Sid says.
“Featureless AR-15 rifle. No pistol grips. No telescoping stock. No flash suppressor. No bayonet lug. Ten round magazine. One hundred percent California compliant.”
“A ten round magazine? What do you do if you have to kill eleven people?”
“Son, are you on drugs?”
“I’m not your son.” Sid hates when people call him that. Now he wants to hit this guy. He considers it for a second, but decides to let it go. “Just ring it up.” He sighs.
The shopkeeper turns around and sets the rifle on the counter space behind him and slaps an eight by ten sheet of paper down on the display case. It is a photocopied form with dozens of checkboxes and a letterhead which reads: Firearms Transaction Record Part 1 - Over-the-Counter.
“What’s this?” Sid sneers.
“Forty-four-seventy-three. Fill that out, and I need to see your FSC. And there’s a ten day waiting period.”
Sid shakes his head. “I don’t have time for this.” He slams his knuckles into the shopkeeper’s jaw with a force that is forbearing by his standards, but still exceeds the capabilities of Mike Tyson in his prime. The shopkeeper drops like a sack of flour and Sid hops over the display case to retrieve the rifle.
He locates the shop’s inventory of 5.56x45mm ammunition underneath the counter and turns to grab the duffel bag. Then he sees something really cool stashed in a cubby underneath the store’s cash register. He ignores the rifle rounds and instead goes for all of the shotgun shells.
On his way back to the van, Sid passes a man sitting on the sidewalk with his back up against a parallel parked luxury car. Beside him is a plastic shopping bag which loosely contains two glossy white boxes labelled PX11 SoundWave: one-way transmitter. Another identical box sits open on the sidewalk as the man strips off his buttoned dress shirt and reaches for a roll of nearby electrical tape. He never looks up as Sid walks on by.
Los Angeles is a very strange city.
EXT. VOLCHENKO ESTATE - DAY
It is near dusk when Dmitry Fedosov steps out of his car at the bottom of the steps leading up to the palatial Volchenko estate. In front of him sits parked a black Maserati GranTurismo S Mansory, a sports car he recognizes as one of the most expensive in the world, though he lacks his usual interest in such things. He hurries past it up the stairs toward the front door. There is no need to knock, as an armed man stands in the open doorway looking out across the sprawling green lawn and its looping driveway.
“He’s been waiting for you, Fedosov,” the guard says. “He doesn’t like to wait.” An assault rifle hangs from a strap around his shoulders. Dmitry doesn’t know what kind of rifle it is, only that it will be used to perforate him if the guard pats him down and finds the wire hidden under his shirt.
“Then don’t keep him waiting,” Dmitry says, waving his hand for the guard to step aside. Amazingly, his gamble pays off without delay. The guard miraculously lets him pass.
Dmitry was foolish in his haste. He didn’t even properly test the hidden microphone. He just strapped it to himself and set it to the frequency of the recording equipment in the trunk of the Audi. He hopes the mic is picking up well, but more than that he hopes he can coax Volchenko to say something incriminating. Wintergreen wants to bring Volchenko up on RICO charges, and that makes this even more difficult.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act is a federal law that allows for extended criminal penalties and expanded authority in the prosecution of criminal organizations. Specifically, a RICO indictment would allow Wintergreen to freeze Volchenko’s assets so he doesn’t flee the country. RICO requires at least two charges from a list of predicate offenses including murder, extortion, money laundering, arson, and a number of other exemplary behaviors. That means Dmitry needs Volchenko to make incriminating statements regarding—not just one—but at least two crimes. Given a few months, he could get the soundbites he needs. Given only a few hours, he is engaging in sheer lunacy.
Dmitry walks into the Volchenko mansion’s sprawling atrium once again. It seems less impressive now, darker somehow, older, and not so spotlessly clean. As he enters the atrium, Katya stomps across the open floor dragging a waterlogged beach towel and dripping wet. A modest grey and black patterned one-piece swimsuit sticks to her body. She wrings her soaking hair out on the marble floor as she moves and dumps the towel near the puddle she makes. Madec trails behind her from a double door that leads out to the mansion’s swimming pool. From his business suit and annoyed expression, it doesn’t seem he was enjoying a swim.
“Your father doesn’t want you outside,” Madec says.
“He’s such a fucking idiot!” Katya shrieks back at him as she ascends the staircase on the balls of her bare feet. “I can’t have tan lines in my profile pic! And where is Jean-Christophe with my crème brûlée?”
Madec stops his pursuit of the woman-child and meets Dmitry near the entryway. “He’s in the conference room. Follow me,” he grunts lethargically.
On the way out of the atrium, Madec hangs the beach towel on a coat hook. Dmitry follows him through an aged wooden door and down a long carpeted hallway past many other doors, and finally to a large open room adorned with four grand paintings. Dmitry recognizes one of them as a Karl Bryullov, but he has no idea if it is original, though he suspects it is. A great walnut live edge table occupies most of the room, and is surrounded by faces both known and unknown. There’s Yuri Moldovich, the oldest bratok in the organization; Gafur Kumarin, a hitter sometimes hired by Sergei for big jobs; Grigoriy Kuznetsov, the syndicate’s primary accountant; and Vasiliy Popov, notorious in the underground for his daring heists. The ones Dmitry doesn’t know outnumber the rest, but he is relatively sure they are Volchenko’s security people and nothing more.
Volchenko spots Dmitry walking in right away and announces his presence to everyone. “Fedosov! Where have you been?” The criminal mastermind paces like a caged animal at the far end of the room.
“I stopped at the stash house to see if I could save anything,” Dmitry lies. “It’s all gone.”
“We know,” says Yuri Moldovich. “Why would he burn the stash? You think Petrovich is working with the Koreans?”
“Petrovich?” Dmitry blurts.
“Yeah,” says Kuznetsov. “This is his play.”
“He’s dead. His whole crew is dead.”
“Pizdet!” Kuznetsov puts the statement down with smug assurance, even as Dmitry fishes through his cell phone for the picture that will prove the accountant wrong. “He’s trying to push us out!”
“No. The killer sent me this.” Dmitry slides his phone down the table, past Yuri and Gafur to Kuznetsov, face-up for all of them to see the picture of Nikos’s disembodied head. The strongest reaction the photo garners from the hardened gangsters is a shrug of concession from Kuznetsov.
“Huh. Petrovich is dead,” Kuznetsov says.
“Why is this on your phone?” Popov asks with a suspicious eye to Dmitry.
“Because the killer sent it to me. He’s playing games with me! He blew up my condo. He torched YMS. He’s hitting everything Nikos knew about! Nikos must have talked before they killed him.”
“Then who is it? The Italians?”
“I don’t know! Arkady said he was big and had cuts on his arms.”
“Just a second,” Kuznetsov says. He returns to the suspicious tone he had earlier. “Are you saying one person did this?”
“Yes!”
“That’s crazy,” Popov says. “They hit a half dozen places since noon.”
“More,” Yuri adds. “We just found out about the butcher shop.”
“It was the Tongs. Alexey saw a car load of them casing the stash house yesterday.”
“It was not the Tongs! Everybody who has seen him says it was one man, and he does not look Asian.”
“Dmitry,” Igor Volchenko slowly shakes his head incredulously. “I do not think you should believe everything whores tell you.”
“He’s real, Mr. Volchenko!” Dmitry shouts. “He takes out our people like they’re blind men. He told me he won’t stop until we’re all dead. We’re not safe here! Nikos knew where you live. You can be sure this psychopath beat it out of him.”
“I assure you, Mr. Fedosov, we are quite safe here.” Volchenko nods with smug indifference. “Especially now that he is here… The Koschei...” Volchenko raises his right hand to trace the sign of the cross over his body.
The others in the room follow suit. “The Koschei…” they whisper in awe, each of them crossing themselves.
Dmitry decides it best to join in. “The Koschei…” he says. “The Koschei is here?” he asks when he finishes crossing himself.
“Yes, Dmitry. I have called him,” Volchenko says. “He is in east wing now, in chapel. I want you to go with him. Figure out where the Tongs hit next. Make sure they find you, your whole crew, and The Koschei waiting for them when they get there.”
“He already hit everything in the city but our vending machines. All that’s left is this place. And that other place...” Dmitry levels his eyes toward Igor Volchenko and waits for the boss to pick up the meaning. This is his shot. If Volchenko mentions the snuff house, Wintergreen could get a tactical team to knock that hellhole over by morning.
“What other place?” Yuri says. Nobody else in the room responds. Either they don’t know, or they’re smart enough to pretend they don’t. Volchenko is quiet too. Dmitry decides to test his luck.
“Could Nikos have known about that?” he says.
Volchenko turns his gaze to Kuznetsov, who responds only with silent worry. Igor clears his throat. Dmitry watches as his mouth begins to crack. That’s right, you old bastard. Say it. Spill the beans on tape.