by Aidan Truhen
THREE
LEAVE BEFORE DAWN. SAUL COMES TOO. I like Saul he is like having a really huge scary support animal. We talk about old-time TV, which is to say I talk about old-time TV and Saul says he prefers old-time radio, like apparently Richard Diamond is his jam. I say Peter Gunn is better and he says no it is not better it is the same stories on TV but with Craig Stevens.
Train to the west and south. Guard has a nose piercing and sits down to talk about Spanish politics. His mother is Spanish Catalan. She is conflicted. Madrid is wrong but so are the separatists. None of it is what matters. What matters is that his brothers cannot find work and people are saluting Franco’s bones. I say that only a total asshole would have an ongoing dialogue with the skeleton of a dead monster and the guard says yes I have a clear understanding and Europe right now is full of such assholes.
I say that is very bad and I do not say that Saul has a sawed-off shotgun in his luggage because that sort of thing often offends. Sawed-off like at both ends like pistol short. It’s a murder stick not a marksman’s tool and it would be a huge disappointment in any sort of gunfight but as a discussion piece like face-to-face it is super persuasive.
When the guard has gone I tell Saul that I one time made a cannon out of pipe and a gas cylinder and Saul says he doesn’t have much time for improvised weaponry generally. Saul says that of course all weaponry is improvised in one way or another but he makes yogurt at home and is familiar with the variations of flavor and intensity and texture that come with fluctuations in climate and he does not look for that kind of variation in his professional tool kit. I say that Saul is hooked on the gun crack of the military industrial combine and toxic masculinity and Saul says that we are not in a competition about our genitals so it is okay for me to have a homemade cannon and for him to have a room full of specialized mercenary stuff.
For the record anyone who is male and alive is in a competition about genitals with Saul. The only reason I am not actually destroyed by the mere existence of Saul and Saul’s genitals is that he bivouacs with a landscape designer and I am the recognized sex partner of the world’s premier psychopathic bioscience researcher. My boy parts may or may not be physically equal to Saul’s but they are fucking intrepid. Doc’s present erotic jam is an experimental memory drug called Fisahypnozerasol. FHZ is the next thing I will illegally sell if I ever get back into the illegally-selling-things business because it is fucking brilliant. It acts on the brain to blur memory around the point of orgasm so you can remember the fact of having amazing sex but not exactly what was amazing about it or what led up to it, which means you can ask your partner to do something motherfucking weird without fear because both you and they will forget details of the whole thing the following day. On the downside if you do not orgasm you remember everything and therefore it is crucially important to have a backup plan because you do not want to collect a mental library of frustratingly incomplete sexual experiences. But that is fine because you also can do the same amazingly obscene thing over and over and not get bored of it. So Doc and I are having exceptional sex right now and every time it is nervous and new and intimate and totally disgraceful and then we get to do it all again. A month ago I woke up with scratches from my ankles to my ass and words from a Swedish road map written on my junk and I can safely say I will never see the Frösö bridge in the same way again.
I sit and think about the astonishingly obscene things I have done that I cannot remember until we reach the next station.
Cross the border into France. New guard is silent. She drinks coffee. She has a mark on her finger where there used to be a ring. Clips my ticket and we’re done.
Like that.
I read half a book and leave it on the table. Monte Carlo station looks like a golden bathroom with trains.
Short walk across town.
* * *
—
I let us in to Sharkey’s apartment and we get in the shower. Water comes out hard and hot because billionaires love not paying tax but they still expect good pressure or they start to think they’re getting ripped off.
I stand in the shower in my clothes. Saul stands next to me. Saul stands next to me in the shower in his clothes getting soaked and he is okay with that because he is a professional.
“Saul this is super professional I am impressed.”
“To be honest Jack I was thinking about porn. This is a kind of a porn scenario here.”
“That also makes perfect sense but the point is that I could not possibly have known that if you had not told me. That is professional.”
So we stand there being professional and now I’m also thinking about porn. I think about Doc and all the terrible things we have done to each other and about the way she moves and about the terrible terrible things she will do to Agent Hannah and—
Professional.
Sharkey gets in the apartment and hears the water and makes the obvious wrong deduction that his lovely lady Crystal is here and no doubt that in his mind there is also baby oil because he comes through the door naked and flings open the shower cubicle and after a minute or so where we all just look at one another. Because it’s there I guess Saul just rests the emphasis gun right over Sharkey’s erection like a cloche on a cake.
Sharkey passes out on the bath mat.
* * *
—
While I work I am still a little bit unhappy about the sawed-off situation like I feel I am the boss I should definitely have the coolest gun but the gas cannon was a very specific moment in my life and you know what they say you cannot go home again.
Sharkey wakes up.
Sharkey says: “What the fuck do you think—”
“No Sharkey no. Please not today. Today is a me day I am taking a me day.”
There is something in my voice or Saul’s face or maybe just the emphasis gun because Sharkey listens.
“I am unhappy Sharkey. I wish to converse in honesty and openness as between professional men. Men of commerce Sharkey who respect one another and who understand the ebb and flow of economic totality and who recognize imperatives.”
“What fucking imperatives Price for—”
With my free hand I point one finger downward. “Whut wait whut now,” Sharkey says, and looks. Then after a while he says: “What. The. Shit?”
I say: “That is a suicide vest for your scrotum.”
Because it is.
* * *
—
The vest is not absolutely a vest because it is more like a snood. I crocheted it out of detcord. It will not actually kill a person outright. Not immediately at least. Having your scrotum explode is not necessarily fatal it is just what you might say a turning point in a life such that there is a time before and a time after. That said, Doc assures me that very few people will voluntarily act in such a way as to cause explosive testicular vaporization. It is psychology plus also even in the event you are not real into scrotal lifestyles—and Sharkey is—having your sac blown into orbit by a detcord snood is no one’s idea of rock and roll.
Sharkey gets some clothes on like baggy sweatpants and a sports jacket so now he is real on-trend for the Yacht Club brunch and he says that I have his full attention which I do.
* * *
—
“Here is how we will do this Sharkey are you paying close attention? Say yes Jack.”
“Yes Jack.”
“I am right now in a mood Sharkey. I am in a pisser of a mood. But I will trade your continuing scrotitude for information freely and unstintingly given.”
“Aw come on Jack I cannot—”
“No Sharkey NO. I am TALKING.”
“…Okay Jack.”
“I do not want your general business details or your confidential shit. I just want to know about my confidential shit namely who WHO sent a tiny evil Sound of Music–looking motherfucker and a dude with a long gun
to do me wrong Sharkey WHO?”
“Not me—”
“Of course not you or you would be on a fucking magic hideaway island somewhere hoping I cannot track you like a bloodhound, which I can. From now on always I can.”
“You can like forever?”
“Once I have tied detcord around a scrotum Sharkey I can always find it again. Unless I have exploded it then basically it becomes a concept scrotum more like a concept piece than something you could hang.”
“Fuck it Jack FUCK IT this is precisely what I was saying with reference to your team being weird that kind of statement is—”
“Sharkey. Say Yes Jack.”
“I do not—”
“SHARKEY.”
“Yes Jack.”
“I am prepared to accept provisionally that you are not enough of a stupid fuck to send a prepubescent to stab me with an oyster knife and leave me alive although also too I am blessed with an exceptional team of persons and it is possible you just messed up your knockout in some way. But seeing as you are going to be super-duper frank with me—and bearing in mind always that there is detcord around your man apples—I am gonna go with the idea that you are not at fault here.”
“Okay.”
“For now.”
“Okay.”
“But that then creates a problem Sharkey because then we touch on the tender area of your professional connections.”
“O shit.”
“Yes. We do.”
“O shit Jack.”
“Yes Sharkey here is the problem it was you or it was one of mine or it was Mr. Client.”
“Okay Jack can I say something?”
“Yes Sharkey.”
“I don’t wanna disrespect nobody at this point in time Jack but someone has to say this.”
“Go ahead man I will be indulgent.”
“You gotta be real calm.”
“I will be motherfucking papal.”
“Did you consider it might be Volodya?”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“Please don’t explode my balls.”
“What—oh—naw man I was not thinking that.”
“Okay.”
“That suggestion more than anything Sharkey is reassuring to me that you are really giving this some thought.”
“It is?”
“Yes it is because that is an intelligent suggestion and it is left field. You are thinking that he fakes getting shot then slips out of the mail truck while I am unconscious and he dumps some vagrant or what have you into the mill engine and now he is invisible and he is coming for me for whatever fortune and glory or just because he is an evil old fuck?”
“I do not know what any of those things are in the middle but yeah I guess something like that.”
“It is a classic and you got to respect your history.”
“Yes?”
“Even if that history is largely like eighties movies. But there is a problem with your theory Sharkey.”
“There is?”
“Yeah man I saw half of his face in a basket before I left this morning. Brain still somewhat in the factory-standard housing.”
“…Oh.”
“Yeah so while I completely respect that you took a risk there and that was very cool of you under the circumstances it does not really get us anywhere. But kudos man that was—”
“…”
“I was going to say ballsy but it seems in poor taste.”
“Yeah okay I hear ya but then Jack you know there’s the doctor and Charlie and—”
“Sharkey I see what you’re doing here and again I got to respect the attempt man because I get that confidentiality is your all but—”
“Jack—”
“There’s no help for it Sharkey you’re going to have to tell me who Mr. Client is.”
“I—”
“Otherwise I will be subject to a reciprocal negative obligation in regard the aerosolization of your ballsack.”
“Balzac?”
“Jesus Christ Sharkey answer the fucking question.”
“…It was a shell Jack I swear.”
“Of course it was a fucking shell we are crime people we do not—”
“It was a shell is what I’m saying so I DID NOT KNOW or I would have never—”
“You know now.”
“Now I’m putting it the fuck together Jack I know something okay SOMETHING but I don’t know how much of it is right and I was honest-to-God wondering whether I should call you today but I—”
“Sharkey.”
“Yes?”
“Papal-fucking-indulgence Sharkey. I am pissed with you but so long as we can get through this conversation I consider actually hurting you a waste of resources.”
“You do?”
“I do and Sharkey this is also the point I am making to you and the world: I am Jack. Fucking. Price. I am not some cowboy I am a professional I like things to BE CALM. That is my fondest hope and in furtherance of things being motherfucking calm I will trade you your fondest hope, which I assume to be retaining your scrotum in non-aerosol form am I right?”
“…You actually did shoot a guy with a severed head that time.”
“And it was huge fun Sharkey and it made a hellacious mediapathic attention-getting mess but my point is it was appropriate and it was proportional to need, okay? Sadly it did not function as a prelude to sensible discussions but that is because other parties who should have known better became needlessly emotional about the whole situation and I cannot legislate for the behavior of others. However exigent fucking circumstances obtain right now, that is to say I have been shot in the Ukrainian and there are—you know Sharkey there are rules and conventions but above all this one, which is we provide a service and we do so according to the norms established by time-honored criminal practice and, you know, all that shit. Okay? We are a service entity and I just want the information necessary to carry on my business in all the relevant directions.”
* * *
—
Sharkey says he does not know like know like something you could use in court, and I have grown as a person in the last few days and months so I do not blow him up by the balls right then. Instead I say: “O RLY?”
And Sharkey says that he thinks it may all have been Hans Eiger all along.
* * *
—
Hans Eiger owns the Kircheisen Festung. Obviously it would be not unheard of for a guy who owns a bank to rob that bank. But I offered him a bunch of money for his bank like waaaay too much. Hans Eiger does not care about money or at least he does not care about money only or money in that way.
I say this to Sharkey and Sharkey says that he is once more thinking about the whole business with whales and the thermocline and Saul says quickly I am not to explode Sharkey’s balls so I just frown my ball-exploding frown that I have just made up. Sharkey gets the message because balls.
Why would a man who does not care about money rob his own bank?
Sharkey says Hans Eiger does care about money because Hans Eiger is oh so very broke, but he cannot sell his bank because if he tries he will probably die.
The thing is that Hans Eiger did not create Die Festung because it was a good idea, he created it because he wanted it to be a good idea and honestly it is a terrible idea. But Hans Eiger cares about stability so much that he cannot see that and someone who cannot adjust to reality is not a good person to be running a company. No sir.
The truth is that no one gives a shit for physical storage these days except a few old folks and Hans Eiger. You care that much about physical stuff and you are that rich, you build your own vault in a volcano—but honestly wealth is vapor now. It is concept more than it ever has been and the hoarding of British Empire diamo
nds in gold nests like an evil chipmunk is no longer considered a sign of taste and distinction. There’s a certain class of person that has shit that needs to be hidden away somewhere like Die Festung and that class is old-money sinners with no future and there are fewer of them every year. When you have a dwindling client pool you got to be the only sensible choice for the evil-chipmunk people and as it turns out Hans Eiger is not. Not only is Swiss law getting less and less amenable to the stashing of secret money and secret stolen stuff but also there is competition for the evil-chipmunk market. There’s private islands and there’s Hatton Garden and old nuclear bunkers in Dipshit, Milwaukee, and there’s museum loans with maintenance grants and a condition that the item not be displayed for twenty years, and a dozen other ways to get the job done that do not require putting your expensive and illegal shit in a bunker with a rob me sign on the door.
Eiger built his dream just in time for almost everyone else to realize they didn’t need it.
He cannot sell because the moment he does the few remaining customers he has—the legacy mob, your older Chinese and Russian oligarchs with fixations on physical wealth, some real traditional gold-standard believers and yeah likely also some of Those Guys that Ottavio Leopold was talking about—those good friends will feel that he has betrayed a sacred trust. A few of them will probably take steps to prevent any sale. Hans Eiger needed an alternative and that alternative was me.
Oh indeed this was not about running off with the proceeds of robbing his own bank and balling dancers under Mexican stars. This is about the darkest reaches of the human heart.
I’m talking about advertising.
* * *
—
Sharkey says he figured Eiger was legit intending to rob his own bank and claim the insurance on goods he actually still had. Sharkey is wrong. Sharkey is uninterested in revolutionary change. Sharkey is lumpen.
Hans Eiger was not thinking along those lines. Hans Eiger was looking to make a point. A splash. A revofuckinglution in personal financial security. To demonstrate that his bank was unassailable. That his bank had the largest banking genitals in all the wide swinging world of steel and concrete and holes in the ground.