by Mark Nolan
The man glared at Zhukov and said, “I thought I smelled the foul stink of a cigar. The hotel rules say there is no smoking here, so you’re going to have to put that thing out, right now.”
“Excuse me,” Zhukov said politely as he turned his phone so they could see the screen. “Is that your wife there beside you on the balcony in this video, with both of you wearing the hotel bathrobes and perhaps nothing else? Or would it cause you a problem if I upload this video to the internet for the whole world to see, and to gossip about for years to come?”
The man’s face paled, and the woman put her hand over her mouth.
“That’s what I thought,” Zhukov said.
Zhukov set the phone on the table and propped it up against his basket of croissants, where it continued to take video of the couple via the front-side camera, so they could see themselves on the display. Next, he touched the screen of his tablet computer, took a picture of the man’s face and used a facial recognition app to instantly find the man online. In seconds, the man’s social media pages began to fill the screen, and Zhukov held up the tablet so the man could see it all.
The man stared in surprise at the tablet as it displayed photos of his face, from various business and family related web pages on the internet. He closed his eyes for a moment with a deep feeling of panic. His personal secretary had complained of the smell of the cigar coming in through their partly open sliding door. He could have simply closed the door, but he’d thought he would impress her with how he bossed this stranger, the same way he harassed his employees at the corporation. Now he was at the mercy of a dangerous-looking foreign man he’d been rude to, and the man could destroy his life with a few taps on the display screen of his tablet.
Zhukov noticed the adulterer’s discomfort, and he said, “With facial recognition software it only took a moment to find out your name, place of employment, social media pages, home address and the phone number of your wife. I could contact her right now and send this photo to her phone. But here’s an even better idea. Why don’t you apologize to me and then shut your mouth, go back into your room, close the door and mind your own business? If you do that and hurry up about it, I might just forget that I want to teach you a lesson in humility and manners that you’ll remember painfully for the rest of your life.”
“I’m very sorry to have bothered you, my deepest apologies sir,” the man said.
The man retreated hastily into the hotel room, and he pulled the surprised young woman in after him, closing the sliding door with a thud. Zhukov smiled and puffed on the fine cigar, and poured himself another cup of the strong black tea. He held a sugar cube in his mouth and sipped the tea so it passed over the cube as he drank, the way Tatiana used to do it. That caused him to see her smile in his memories, and he felt a familiar sadness. For a moment, the thought crossed his mind that perhaps he should jump to the next balcony, enter the suite of the annoying adulterous couple and kill them both, just for practice.
Zhukov’s phone vibrated and he saw that it was Chairman Banks calling. He cursed in Russian and said, “Why can’t a man have a moment of peace?” When he answered the call he said, “Good morning. What are you eating now, an insect omelet for breakfast?”
Banks said, “Good morning. Today you have an important business transaction.”
“Yes and the sun rose in the East. Thank you for stating the obvious. What is your point? Why are you calling me?”
“The additional complication, will it be taken care of today also?”
“Today Wolfe is going to a funeral, and he will die at the graveyard,” Zhukov said.
“That will be convenient for the undertaker,” Banks said. “Let’s hope it works out better than it did last night when you failed to deal with him. That made The Council even more concerned.”
“Sometimes a fool like that photojournalist gets a lucky break. Today will be different. He is running on borrowed time. But I do not understand the man, what does he gain by interfering with my plans?”
“I believe that Wolfe is an Irish name. You won’t have any luck trying to understand him. Sigmund Freud said it is no use trying to psychoanalyze the Irish.”
“Once I have eliminated his involvement it won’t matter if I can understand him or not because he’ll be dead.”
“If you successfully complete the second transaction today, and also the additional complication, you will receive a large sum of currency at one of your offshore bank accounts,” Banks said. “And we will have dinner tonight so we can discuss the third and most important transaction.”
“Thank you but you’re in Mexico City and there’s no need to come up here to San Francisco for dinner. I have everything under control and today will be a very busy day for me. Besides, I don’t want to eat insects.”
“The third transaction is the most important one. Dinner will be in San Francisco at eight o’clock. I’ll send a trusted driver who will take you to the restaurant.”
“Sorry but I don’t get into cars unless I know where they’re going. If I’m tricked into traveling blind, somebody usually gets hurt. So far that somebody hasn’t been me.”
“I had to promise never to talk on the phone about the name or location of this very private establishment, however my driver will tell you the address before you get in the car. You can check it on your phone’s GPS and if he deviates from the route you can express your disappointment to him with the usual extreme prejudice.”
“It is not a good career move for drivers or anyone else to disappoint me or surprise me,” Zhukov said. “I’ve left a foolproof plan in place that will cause a lot of suffering for anyone who causes me to suffer. It will proceed automatically on autopilot after I’m gone, even if I die of natural causes or just disappear. So wish me good health and a long life. See you at eight.”
Zhukov ended the call without waiting for a reply from Banks. He spread some butter and raspberry preserves on a croissant, took a bite and followed it up with a drink of tea. In his mind’s eye, he imagined snapping Chairman Banks’ neck like a chicken meant for the soup pot. The time would come for that, but today was not the day, not quite yet.
Banks set his phone down and used a silk handkerchief to wipe sweat from his brow. His hired killer Zhukov was a loose cannon. That was a fact. Banks had control of the loose cannon at the moment, but he had to be very careful that the cannon did not accidentally turn around and end up pointed at him. He decided that after this assignment in San Francisco was completed, Zhukov would find himself in a rather inconvenient automobile accident, complete with a flaming gas tank, twisted metal, and a charred corpse.
That thought made Banks feel much better, and he forgot about Zhukov for the time being. He focused on enjoying his gourmet brunch at an internet millionaire’s exclusive private mansion in the hills above Silicon Valley in Northern California.
The two wealthy tycoons enjoyed a lavish meal that featured deep fried guinea pig on a stick, complete with the head. And side dishes of lamb testicles in cream gravy, along with pickled pigs feet with onions and peppers. These dishes and several more were washed down with a variety of premium wines from around the world. For dessert, they had illegal Foie gras baked into a buttery flaky pastry with a touch of vanilla bean, and a bottle of German ice wine named Joh Jos Prüm Bernkasteler Badstube Riesling Beerenauslese. Banks had been told that the only hope of pronouncing the name of the wine was to drink several glasses first.
Chapter 30
“I’m sorry to eat and run, but I have to go to work,” Alicia said as she stood up.
“Couldn’t they get a substitute teacher, so you could go to the funeral?” Jake said.
“I got one, but then the school principal decided to schedule me for evaluation.”
“I’ll give your best to Stuart’s parents,” Terrell said.
“Thanks, I’ll see you tonight.”
Terrell went out the front door with Alicia and stood outside on the walkway. Boo-Boo stood inside the screen door and lo
oked out at them while wagging his tail.
Jake drank his coffee as he waited for his friends to kiss and say goodbye. After a few minutes, Terrell came back inside, and he had a dazed look on his face.
“It’s really nice to see you two getting along so well,” Jake said.
Terrell sat down and looked off into the distance and said, “It’s dawning on me how important Alicia is to my life. She’s like oxygen. I can’t live without her.”
“Oxygen is good, I hear it is highly recommended by two out of three people who recommend things,” Jake said.
Terrell nodded, but his mind was miles away at the school where his wife Alicia worked as a third-grade teacher.
Jake poured them both some more coffee and added a touch of Hennessy’s cognac to their cups. He’d contributed more than a few bottles to Terrell’s liquor collection and had free reign to pour whatever he wanted.
“Here drink this. It’s like medicine to fortify you after a long night of making up. An Irishman named Hennessy traveled to France and showed them how to make their cognac even better. This is the amazing result of that fateful collaboration of genius. It’s so good it’s probably illegal in Washington D.C.”
“So it’s good for what ails you?”
“It’s guaranteed to make rainbows shoot out of your ass.”
“Good to go,” Terrell said, and he nodded absentmindedly as he drank some of the coffee.
Jake slowly waved his hand in front of his friend’s face and said, “Earth to Terrell.”
Terrell finally smiled and brought his eyes back from far away.
“What?”
“It’s great to see two people who are so happily married. It gives me hope.”
“It wasn’t so happy last week, but we made it through that mess.”
“It was a noble effort.”
“I don’t know what Alicia sees in me.”
“It could be the chef’s hat and the pancakes, for real.”
“Women go for that huh?”
“Absolutely, it was in Cosmopolitan’s list of top ten sexy turn-ons. Of course, they suggested you wear only the chef’s hat.”
“I’ll put that on my to-do list.”
“I’m going to use your guest bathroom for a quick shower before we get going.”
“Roger that, you need to wash off your stink as a matter of public safety,” Terrell said. He stood up and headed off to the bedroom to get dressed in a dark suit for the memorial service.
Zhukov finished his cigar on the hotel suite’s balcony, and then went inside and put on his disguise. Once he’d changed his appearance, he left the hotel and walked several blocks away to where he’d parked the car.
“Time to kill another attorney,” Zhukov said as he drove down the street. “This could become habit forming. But first, a quick stop at a funeral to rid the world of Jake Wolfe.”
Chapter 31
Jake went out to the Jeep and grabbed a carry-on suitcase that held some clean clothes. All of his other clothes were at the condo, but he’d rather not stop by there and take the chance that Gwen might shoot at him with her pistol.
After a quick shower, he changed into black pants and a charcoal gray shirt. Then he put on the black boots and black leather jacket he’d already been wearing.
Jake went down the hall and found Terrell sitting at the dining table, dressed in a dark suit and tie. He was drinking a cup of coffee, as always. Jake thought that the man must be keeping a lot of coffee growers employed with his daily habit. He probably got a Christmas card every year from Juan Valdez.
Terrell looked at his phone and smiled and held it up so Jake could see the photo he’d received. It was the face of the shooter, caught by a security camera at the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge. “There’s our boy, he looks pretty angry in that pic.”
“That’s when I was chasing him, I seem to have made him mad for some reason,” Jake said.
“You have that effect on a lot of people,” Terrell said, and he smiled. “I’ll text the picture to you. Put his face on the news, and tell your viewers he is wanted by the police.”
Jake received the photo, and he forwarded it to his editor’s secretary. He added a short blurb.
Hi Deb, this is probably the real face of the attorney assassin, not wearing a disguise. Please remind Norman that I deserve a raise in pay. Meanwhile, I’m still working on that buffalo problem for you. Thanks.
Jake and Terrell went outside, got in the Jeep and drove off toward the cemetery. They rode in silence for a while, on the all-too-familiar drive. The cemetery was located south of San Francisco in the nearby town of Colma, just like most other cemeteries in the area were. The land was so expensive inside the San Francisco city limits that there were no cemeteries located there. When Jake turned onto the main road leading to the memorial park, he didn’t notice that a Dodge Challenger with darkened windows pulled out of a side street and began following his car from a distance.
“What were you fighting with Alicia about this time anyway?” Jake said. “It’s none of my business, but I was wondering what dumb man thing you did lately. Maybe I could learn from your mistake and avoid doing it myself.”
“She asked me to pick up some bread at the store on my way home from work, and I totally forgot,” Terrell said. “Then she got hella mad.”
“Been there, done that and got the t-shirt. It’s not the bread. It’s that you were not thinking of her. She was not on your mind. That’s the real issue.”
“That’s how guys are. We’re not always thinking of our wives or girlfriends all the time. It’s just a fact, a reality.”
“Yes but it’s a fact that bothers them.”
“Where is the guidebook about how to be in a relationship?”
“I saw one once. It was titled Everything Men Know About Women. The inside pages were all blank.”
“Sounds about right. Another thing is, the bread wasn’t for Alicia, she doesn’t eat bread. She started making sandwiches for me to take for lunch because I was eating too much fast food.”
“That’s really nice of her, old-fashioned even. Now I’m jealous. I spent thousands of dollars on a wedding ring for Gwen and I never even got one sandwich out of the deal.”
“So my next lunch had a plastic bag with some lunch meat and cheese and lettuce but no bread. There was a note that said B.Y.O.B.”
“Bring your own bread. Alicia has a sassy sense of humor.”
“Just another reason I love her so much.”
“Writing a to-do list on a yellow sticky note has saved many a man from forgetting milk or bread or whatever.”
“I’ll go buy a whole case of those notes then, so I won't do something that drives her crazy.”
“The late great philosopher George Carlin boiled it down to this,” Jake said. “Here’s all you have to know about men and women. Women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid. That pretty much sums it up.”
“Carlin might have explained the secret of life there.”
“The dude should have won the Nobel Prize.”
“They should set up a scholarship in his name.”
“My theory is that it’s all about hormones.”
“Why hormones?”
“Testosterone can make men act stupid, and estrogen can make women act crazy.”
“You just proved Carlin’s theory with science. But how do you know all of this stuff about women?”
“I don’t know anything, I’m just winging it and trying to learn from my mistakes,” Jake said. “However I did read that book, Women are from Venus and Men are from Penis.”
“Are you sure that’s the title?”
“Sure I’m sure. Do I look unsure to you?
“No, you look like an asshole, since you asked,” Terrell said, and he raised his eyebrows.
“That’s Mister Hole to you pal,” Jake said with a grin. “And in that case, I must look good because mine is a work of art no doubt.”
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“Do you study it often, or have you received positive comments?”
“No visitor feedback, just my best guess.”
They both laughed, and then they got quiet for a while. Terrell drank some coffee. Jake looked in the rearview mirror and saw a late model Dodge Challenger with darkened windows following behind them. The driver was wearing a hat and sunglasses. Jake thought about it and realized that the same vehicle had been behind them for several miles. The car was probably just going in the same direction they were, but he mentioned it to Terrell anyway.
“Does that Dodge behind us look familiar to you? It’s been there for a while.”
Terrell looked in the Jeep’s right side mirror. “No not in particular. I’ve seen plenty of those cars driving around the city. But if it gets any closer to us, let me know.”
As Zhukov followed behind Wolfe’s vehicle, he noticed the men checking their rearview mirrors. He cursed and turned off at the next street, drove several blocks and pulled over. He would wait five minutes and get back on the road to the cemetery after a few other cars were in between him and his prey. He’d been planning to shoot Wolfe when the man got out of his vehicle. But now he’d have to drive by and take the shot while Wolfe was standing around and waiting for the funeral to begin. The police report would call it a drive-by shooting, and the crime would never be solved.
Jake saw the car behind him turn off onto another street, and he was glad to see it go. He looked out his window at the cemetery grounds they were approaching. Soon he turned the Jeep into the long driveway, and they drove through the center of acres of green lawns that were filled with headstones.