The Price You Pay

by Aidan Truhen

  I think you’re just a little jealous because she’s like under thirty and she can kick some digital ass and get laid at the same time is what.

  …I beg your pardon?

  You heard.

  Price listen you may want to take a step back okay. Just step the fuck back from me and listen to yourself. Right now this far I am not in your face right? I nearly got you the other day with Tuukka and today you nearly got him congratulations right? But we both know that you can fight this war only so long. You got money and if I am upset with you and crazy enough I can do something about that. Seven Demons can. They don’t know this so they don’t propose it but you don’t wash your fucking mouth out and get down ON YOUR FUCKING KNEES RIGHT NOW YOU LITTLE SHIT I WILL FUCK YOU IN THE EYES SO HARD YOUR MAMA WILL GET HEMORRHOIDS OKAY? OKAY PRICE YOU MISERABLE LITTLE FUCK? DO YOU HEAR ME YOU BEG ME RIGHT NOW OR I WILL MAKE YOU—

  Yeah yeah.

  Price what the fuck is that noise?

  That’s me farting on my handset you lonely crone. You know why we’re friends? Because you look at me and see someone you would have fucked in your glory days when you were hot. That’s it. I’m like a trophy. So fine whatever. You’re right that would have been awesome back then except I was five so you know it never happened. But let’s not pretend okay?

  …You’re done Price. Is over for you.

  Bring it, Karenina. I double dutch dare ya. Plus tell Tuukka I said hi and his brother’s probably dead by now.

  Silence on the line.

  ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WERE two Finnish brothers. They were brothers. Not like friends or whatever and not the kind of brothers you get in places where the snow is less than six feet high four months of the year. They were brothers the way people used to be, like rock and ice and night and day and they were brothers. Akilles could talk to Volodya all he liked about taking Tuukka’s place but never was he going to betray him and for sure never was he going to kill him. Not never no how, no more than Tuukka would ever take something he thought his brother really wanted be it a job or a girl. Like Tuukka okay: you know in the end that guy would walk in front of a train before he fucked his brother’s wife or whatever. All Akilles ever had to do was say no man that is not okay that is my girl my true desire and Tuukka would treat that woman with so much respect it would break your heart like blown glass falling on stone and they both knew it. The party girls who shared them knew it. Everyone knew it.

  Volodya knew it. And I knew it.

  So we didn’t set out to recruit Akilles. We just wanted him to think so. We wanted him to talk to Volodya the sniper, the great tribal elder, and get to know him. We wanted Akilles to have this big secret like a magic evil demon daddy and keep it to himself just for a while and then after he had made a real relationship there obviously what he was going to do was bring Volodya to his brother to have that same experience. A gift to his brother in the language they both spoke.

  Volodya the sniper, with that long case on his back.

  A man who kills with his hands, with a gun, with a knife. The kind of icon you can admire if you’re a half-mad Finnish murder junkie with a hyperviolent profession living in the shadow of your brother.

  The kind of man you drink with because he might stab you over the waitress and he might kill you for honour and he might shoot you in a fair fight but he’s never going to drop tetrodotoxin in the vodka luge just as you put your mouth under it. Never going to look into your eyes as it hits and tell you you’re just dizzy. Never carry you back to your table while your lungs stop working and prop you up with his arm around you. Never tell you Jack Price says hi and there was never a friendship, just a ruse of war. Never break your heart while you die.

  Except if it was professional. If the job required it, Volodya would do any of those things and more.

  I gave him a very great deal of money and other suitable considerations. It was a contract.

  Seven Demons, man. Nothing personal.

  INCOMING TEXT MESSAGE: Hey Price.

  Sarah.

  Hi Price it’s me.

  Yeah Sarah it’s maybe not the time.

  Why not I see you did another fucking appalling thing.

  What thing?

  Price a guy was attacked in the middle of the street by a wedding confetti death drone full of liquid nitrogen and you think I’m not going to recognise the style? You think that doesn’t scream Oh! Look it’s the same mad motherfucker who shot a man with a severed head last week?

  Yeah okay I grant you there is some continuity of ethos.

  There is some continuity of fucking ethos Price.

  Yeah.

  You okay Price?

  I got shot. Not much but a little. It hurts. No big deal.

  No big deal?

  Well okay it’s a huge deal because I got shot and it hurts. But it hurts like you know a sprained ankle or whatever it’s fucking awful but it’ll pass. I’ll get better.

  Can you move?

  Yes. It hurts.

  Poor baby.

  What now?

  Shall I put on a nurse’s outfit?

  Yeah sure if it makes you happy.

  No point though because you can’t tell me where you are.

  Nope.

  So I could put one on but you’d never see it. Unless you opened my pictures.

  Yeah.

  Unless you did that.

  Sarah I do not understand what is going on here.

  Sure you do. I’m alone in the world and I’m afraid of dying and I know you like me. Want me. You’ve been good to me in your fucked up way and I know what you want even if you’re saying you don’t. The psychology isn’t all that complex.

  No I guess not.

  It’s not and it pisses me off but that doesn’t stop it working okay?

  Okay.

  Say something.

  I wish I could take advantage of your obvious sexual need.

  I wish you could too.

  …Fuck.

  Yes please.

  Fuck.

  Yes. Say it again. Say fuck.

  No.

  Bastard.

  This is all kinds of no.

  Say fuck again and I’ll take off my clothes.

  Don’t.

  What?

  …Don’t take them off. Leave them right where they are.

  Okay.

  Now send me a picture.

  Of what?

  Whatever the fuck you like. You’ve got about ten seconds before I change my mind.

  Accept multimedia image: y/n?

  y

  IT TAKES A SECOND TO DOWNLOAD because MMS not email. And then it takes me a moment longer to understand what I’m seeing. It’s a wrist. I recognise the watch, one of those little chainlink things, dial the size of a dime. Sarah’s watch. Slim wrist, brown and strong. Muscle on the bone. The top half of the hand visible, not quite as far as the knuckle. A rippling V of denim and zipper, a line of black lace just below the iliac crest. The barest whisper of close-trimmed hair. The outline of fingers pressing down.

  You like that Price?

  I do.

  Then say fuck again and let’s see.

  No.

  Come on. Say it.

  No.

  Seriously?

  Yeah.

  You’re out of your damn mind you know that? Out of your damn mind. You wanted this and I’m right here. Right here and now you’re what you’re all shy? Stupid typical man bullshit. Chase what you can’t have don’t want what you can.

  Yes. I’m going now.

  Jesus yeah okay you go. Jesus.

  Sometimes you just have an instinct. I get up and walk out. Don’t hang around to see who comes. Probably nothing. Probably just Sarah with Stockholm Syndrome like she said. And Karenina’s busy right no
w you know that. She is busy. She is angry and she is doing something huge and stupid. No time to sweat the small stuff, like hunter killer malware searching random SMS exchanges for my name. After all, over ninety per cent of SMS is marketing and automated sales offers, and all that shit says “half price.”

  But sometimes you just have an instinct. Something wrong. Get gone.

  MORNING IN THE CITY, sun coming in sideways and bouncing off the architecture. The weird transformation of natural light into artificial making every scene an interior. Who the fuck wants to live here really? In this place clamped over nature like a steel plate jammed over a missing eye?

  Incoming VoIP call: number listed as the fucking Tokyo police. Like excuse me what now?

  Hello Mister Price?

  What the actual fuck?

  Mister Price?

  Yeah this is Price. Who the hell is this? No one has this number.

  Actually I have this number because it is cut into the face of a dead woman with a knife Mister Price and I therefore also want to know what the actual fuck.

  What the actual fuck?

  Yes I also want to know that. Who are you please?

  I’m a professional criminal but not like Mafia like modernised and digitally distributed and disruptive but not in Tokyo I got no interest in Japan whatsoever except that I went once and it was really nice. Like I would go back to see the city but just as a holiday right strictly no business. It’s not my area and you guys have a perfectly good criminal system of your own.

  Also good law enforcement I assure you.

  Yeah that too although I read where a lot of criminals pretty much just hand themselves in like it’s cultural. Is that so?

  Well it is to a certain extent but you got to have a look at these other individuals we must deal with Mister Price they are quite entirely serious and have almost their own historical culture and sense of position in society and they do not do that.

  Yeah that figures. Whatchacallit like an embedded criminal stratum?

  That is not something I would say near a politician in this city. They do not like that idea at all despite knowing it is perfectly true. Honne and tatemae, although I do not myself subscribe to the school of thought which places that discrepancy at the heart of our culture.

  Yeah okay I hear you. So all right just to reiterate I am—wait this dead lady was she by any chance a postdoc in some kind of mathematical discipline?

  That is a most interesting speculation.

  I’m taking that as a yes.

  I could not possibly comment on the matter to a foreign lawbreaker.

  I get you that would be way inappropriate.

  Yes Mister Price. Way inappropriate. I hope you will not draw any conclusions from my admission that I find your guess interesting. That would be a grave embarrassment to me.

  I completely missed that.

  How convenient for me.

  You mind I ask your name?

  I am Inspector Ando of the Public Security Bureau. Watashi no namae wa Ando Hideaki desu. That is like a cross between the FBI and the NYPD counter-terror unit.

  Okay Inspector Ando look I don’t see why we shouldn’t have a perfectly cordial conversation here because we got no direct conflict in our interests because you work inside Japan and I got no intention of ever doing that. Are we going to discuss this without reference to the obvious polarities of my position vis-à-vis the local criminal code?

  Yes I believe I can do that.

  What I figured. So a little while ago is what it is the lady lived downstairs from me got shot execution style. I don’t like that because it’s my building not like I own it but I live there. That kind of thing makes me nervous you see?

  I do.

  Well okay so I ask a couple questions in my off time. I’m usually a high-end cocaine dealer, modern small operation, almost no consequences of any kind except occasionally a scaffolder gets a little high and drops a pole which obviously freaks the shit out of everyone.

  Scaffolder?

  Construction worker. Metal rods for working on the outside of buildings?

  Oh here they are very insistent those are tubes.

  Yeah—really is that like an international union or—nevermind. Okay so that’s my thing and it’s quiet and profitable okay not like the movies just everyone gets on with it and the worst thing happens is manscaping. Yeah no you don’t need to hear that part.

  Thank god.

  Oh yes. Anyway okay it turns out then that for whatever reason some rich kid hires the Seven Demons to take me out.

  Chikusho fuck a duck.

  I—what?

  Japanese does not have a wide lexicon of obscene expressions for expressing surprise and dismay. For example there is no equivalent to your motherfucker that really works for me.

  Chikusho fuck a duck?

  It is imperfect but it gets the job done. Please proceed.

  So you know the Seven Demons.

  I am PSB Mister Price of course I know of them just like you know that if you came to Tokyo and tried to run your schemes I would be up your ass inside a day.

  And you know it wouldn’t be that simple but okay. So here are the Seven Demons and they are all over making a ruckus and I have been maybe a little flamboyant in my response to this situation and maybe they’re getting fractionally extreme now.

  Extreme? Getting extreme? Forgive me I thought extreme was the defining characteristic of that group.

  Yeah well it is but at this point they may be a little emotional?

  Because you are still alive I take it.

  That and it turns out that someone shot Johnny Cubano in the chest with a severed head and since then Li Dong-ha fell in a human blender and Akilles Mäkinen was poisoned by a daddy surrogate. While all of that was happening I put a pretty tame strain of anthrax in some of their cocaine so no one wants it and I freezeburned Tuukka Mäkinen’s left hand and quadricep which I’m calling a draw because the fucker also shot me a little, and then I got a friend of mine to put a picture on all of their phone screensavers of a cartoon horse cornholing their logo. So you know right now I’m saying they’re not in their happy place.

  Chikusho fuck a duck.

  You said that.

  Yes but last time I only thought I knew what it meant. Don’t get me wrong Mister Price I admire what you have achieved but if you ever come to my country I will arrange to have you hit by a goods vehicle before you arrive at your hotel. I am making a note now.

  I really wanted to come and sit in a hot spring with those little bathing apes.

  That is in any case not possible because it is a nature conservancy and they would bite your face off.

  Yeah probably they would at that.

  Also strictly they are monkeys.

  Yes okay anyway I am guessing the dead lady was a postdoc with a cryptography sideline who went by the online name of LuciferousYesterGirl and some of the Demons just dropped by your place and tortured the shit out of her for all and any information pertaining to the setup of an Icelandic dark web service name of Poltergeist.

  Why?

  Because that is how I get money without having stash houses and the Demons are tired of my having money and doing bad things to them.

  And why did they not do this straight away?

  Because there are quite a lot of people use Poltergeist and maybe it’s not the smartest thing for even the Seven Demons to be seen to try to compromise it like really not smart at all but I guess after a certain point Karenina didn’t give a fuck about that and she maybe didn’t entirely explain to her friends quite how ill-advised it would be to cross that line after I called her a washed-up old lady with no prospect of getting laid ever again.

  …You are quite a spectacularly awful person Mister Price.

  Clausewitz grade.

&nbs
p; Unbelievable. So they killed this woman in my house to get to you?

  I guess.

  And they left your number—

  So that you would call me and tell me and I would know I am about to get dead.

  This Karenina I have not heard of.

  Naw she’s a tryout. Old friend of mine actually which is why there’s maybe a little additional friction there.

  Why do I get the feeling you like all this?

  Well Inspector like you said I am an asshole. The Demons this is a contract for them but for me it’s something of a holy calling and I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life.

  That is sad.

  …Yeah I guess it probably is.

  Thank you Mister Price.

  You’re welcome.

  Don’t come to Japan Mister Price.

  Understood Inspector. You’re always welcome at my place though because there’s just not that many people I meet I can really talk to.

  Chikusho fuck a duck.

  Yeah well so long I guess.

  Goodbye Mister Price. I think I should not wish you good luck but somehow I do.

  Thanks man.

  COFFEE BUT NOT FROM SUNBY because you do not go back to where you were. I’m waiting for a delivery, guessing it’s my last Poltergeist so I made it a big one. I can feel the jitters in the network already. There are local services that have gone offline, been taken down. Local providers who are missing. That’s just prep work to let me know how fucked I am. Flying time from Japan to Iceland, travel time by air from Reykjavik to the middle north, time for digging, torture and cracking a database, dehashing whatever blah blah I should still be safe right now but not after this. I’ll need a new source of funds. Poltergeist is going down for a while or at least I have to assume so. That means no more digital hijinks: it’s all analogue now.

  LOCAL NEWS: there’s a crazy, bent-over muscular murderer wandering the streets of the city apparently, guy with his leg all strapped up and like an actual hole in his hand and he is killing people who used to work at some office in downtown some tower place with a lot of international connections. Got five of them so far and still clearly looking for fun.