[Anthology] Close to the Bones

by Martha Carr

  “Are you here to drink, or are you here for the real menu?” A sultry female voice spoke from behind him. A puff of cigar smoke billowed around his head, catching her words in the air so they seemed to hang around his ears.

  He turned to find Madame Luba Sevrizy herself smiling seductively at him, a long thick cigar raised to her mouth. Her brightly painted red lips sucked smoke through the tightly rolled tobacco leaves in a manner that elicited a cough of surprise as he forced clearly sinful thoughts to the back of his mind. It took more effort than he wished to not be drawn in to her seduction. He felt his face flush, heat rising in his cheeks and cursed his prudish conservative Lutheran upbringing. While the curse of sexual diseases one could get from such women terrified him, he hated the fact that in spite of the knowledge of the horrendous suffering such diseases could bring, his automatic male physical reaction still made it very difficult to be a convincing secret agent in the real world. Even worse, he instantly blushed like a schoolboy around women like Luba.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “unlike most establishments I will neither kick you out nor force you to bed with my girls. You are perfectly welcome to just sit here and look, as long as you are willing to pay double price for the drinks, and tip the bartender nicely.”

  “Thank you ma’am,” he said, saluting her with his glass and taking another sip.

  “You are Swedish,” she said when she heard his accent. “Here for business?”

  “Yes, mostly.”

  “Mostly?”

  “I am in Estonia to do some business deals for my company,” Torvald said, “but here to meet a one-time business partner I’ve not seen in a while.”

  “Oh?” She took another overtly sexual puff of her cigar, her tongue flicked out and licked a few loose bits of tobacco off the cold end of the stogie, her eye’s staring seductively into his in an obvious ploy to make him lose his mind, “Is your friend here?”

  “He’s not a friend, just a business associate. And I was told by another associate that he would be here,” he said.

  “Do you see him in the bar?” She motioned to the crowd of fifty or more men lounging around the place, some alone, some talking with other men. Others sitting on couches or chairs, ‘getting to know’ their menu choices.

  Torvald glanced around and shook his head, “No, I do not see him.”

  “Then he must be upstairs,” she said around another arousing puff. “Do you prefer to wait for him to come down? Or would you like me to send someone to find him?”

  He seemed to think about it for moment. Before he could answer she added, “Your friend is a ‘he’ right? Or are you seeing one of my girls after hours?”

  “Are they allowed to see men other than your clients?”

  “My girls have their own lives outside of here,” Luba said, her voice was husky, sultry in a way that was often heard from women who smoked, drank and spent their days in bed and their nights also in bed…but wide awake and very active. “They are free to do whatever they like as long as I get my cut of whatever they do between dusk and dawn Monday thru Saturday.”

  “Your girls have Sunday off?” Torvald smiled at that, as if it seemed to justify the whole arrangement. “Seems rather pious of a woman in your business.”

  She smiled, tapping an inch of burnt ash into a brass tray on the bar. Luba wrapped her lips around the phallic object again, drew a deep inhalation and let the smoke curl from her nostrils in a blue mist like the breath of a dragon.

  “I figure we are here to screw men, not to screw God.”

  “A religious whore,” Torvald said, “my mother would faint at the mere idea.”

  “He lets me have six days for work, I and my girls give him his one day for confession before the priests,” she gave him another flirtatious look, grabbed his collar and gently tugged him closer, then pointed to two men sitting at a table on the other side of the room, large sweaty pints of lager on the table before them, a girl on each of their knees, hands groping at breasts and thighs, “two of whom spend a lot of time right here….taking ‘confessions’ in the girl’s private quarters.”

  “I see,” he frowned. “Well I can assure you neither I nor my business acquaintance are men of the cloth.”

  “What is your friend’s name, perhaps I can tell you if he is here.”

  He looked at her considering his options. He’d already paid several people, with cash, food or drink, to get him this far. Dropping names to one more person would not hurt if it helped him find his target and get this mission over with.

  “Mitrofan,” he said.

  “Mitro the Russian?” Her eyes went wide. She motioned with her hands to describe him, smoking cigar between her fingers, “Tall, thick chest, brown hair, scar on his neck?” She pointed to the left side of her own neck and traced a line from jaw to her collarbone.

  He nodded, “Sounds like him.”

  “You are friends with that psychotic bastard?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If you are a friend of Mitrofan Budurov,” she pointed the glowing end of the cigar at Torvald, “I will have to think again about letting you drink in my bar.”

  “What has he done?”

  “Don’t you mean, what has he done now?” She gave him an incredulous look, “I cannot count how many times he has hurt one of my girls, beat up other clients, or been a general ass in my establishment.”

  “What?” Torvald feigned shock, “I only knew him as a business associate in Sweden and Denmark. I had no idea he was been such a terror when he was back home.”

  “Home,” she grunted, “this is not Mitrofan Budurov’s home. He is not Estonian. He’s Russian. Even compared to most of his own countrymen he is a very unpleasant man, and that is saying something.”

  “Hrm, I…”

  Luba interrupted him, “If his cousin in Russia didn’t cover his debts here and in other places around this city he would be sitting in a prison cell and the key would be thrown into the Batlic Sea. He is only tolerated because his cousin is willing to pay whatever bill I send him, which often includes broken furniture and doctor bills for my poor girls.”

  “Oh my,” Torvald said, “I had no idea.”

  “You men seldom do realize the havoc you wreak,” she gave a wry smile. “But you don’t seem to be the same type as him. Not at all.”

  She gave him another, more detailed glance over.

  “I’d say you’re a family man, maybe even a civil servant with a good job and a nice pension in your future. How are you friends with such a pig?”

  “I am an international trade broker,” Torvald allowed, “specializing in lumber, coal, and other natural resources. I only know Mitrofan through mutual business dealings and a few dinner parties with various ambassadors and big business contacts. I am not the woman beating kind, I assure you.”

  “Last year, your supposed friend,” Luba growled the description of the Russian, “cut one of my girls so badly she will never be able to make a living in this business, or anything that requires her to show her face.”

  “That’s horrible,” Torvald had not intended to open the can of worms like what was swirling faster and faster around him.

  “I was about to pay for a gang of rather unsavory men to cut his prick off and toss him into the Baltic,” she said, her face twisted in disgust at the memory, “but his beloved cousin paid out the nose to cover it up.”

  “How much could cover that up? It sounds horrendous.”

  “It was,” she said. “His cousin has plenty of gold though, and that is what he paid, actual, real life gold. He sent enough gold directly to Ingrid to cover the costs of her medical care, as well as buying out her contract and then some, providing Ingrid with a place to live and money to live on for enough years for her to easily find a husband, or at least become some rich man’s mistress or concubine for life, as long as they could handle her scars. Not that the scars inhibited the particular specialties she had. That girl could make most men whimper in delight and beg fo
r more, scars or no. Now though, once the lights are turned up most men turn away in disgust.”

  “Why’d he do that to her?” Torvald asked, genuinely curious.

  “Because she said he had a small prick compared to his body size,” Luba said. “She wasn’t even insulting or mocking. I know for a fact she preferred men with small pricks. She asked me to weed out the horse sized men because it hurt her. She honestly liked the small ones,” she held her cigar between them, “like this size was what she liked, what felt best inside her, six to eight inches and no thicker than a cigar.”

  “But he took it as an insult,” he said.

  “Yes,” Luba gave a hateful grimace, “and he got angry, slapped her around and then pulled out a razor knife that was longer, and probably thicker, than his flesh-sword. He sliced her face half a dozen times before my boys managed to get to the room and throw him out from the second story window.”

  “Was he badly hurt from the fall?”

  “Sadly no,” she shook her head. “He not only survived the drop, and pavement landing, but got up, brushed himself off and managed to walk to another brothel where he acted like we were the bad guys for throwing him out.”

  “Why do you let him come back now?”

  “Because of his rich cousin,” Luba said. “His cousin sent me enough money to buy out every girl here and make me a rich woman for the rest of my life.”

  “Really?” Torvald’s brows twisted in confusion, “If he sent you that much money, why are you still in this business?”

  “Because that was a stipulation in him repaying the damages Mitrofan had caused,” Luba said. “We have to stay in business both so that no one links the events to him, and to be here to provide him with his entertainment whenever he is in Estonia. Mitrofan’s cousin bought me out. I am to supply him with all the girls, vodka, and opium he wants whenever he is in town.”

  “Opium,” Torvald said. He had never heard about Mitrofan Budurov having a rich Russian cousin, especially not one with the kind of wealth Luba was describing. And he had no idea Mitrofan was an addict, “Who is his…”

  Luba interrupted him with a poke to the chest and a finger pointing toward the wide staircase that lead down from the upper ‘business offices’.

  “There he is, the bastard,” she muttered, contempt thick in her voice. “How about this deal,” she motioned toward his glass and the half-finished plate of smoked herring, “You take your monstrous ‘friend’ out of here for the rest of the night, and give my girls a break by making him go anywhere else for the next few days and I will provide you free drinks, as much smoked fish as you can handle, and one hour each night with the girl of your choice for the rest of your stay in our wonderful city.”

  Mitrofan stomped down the stairs, a pretty blonde girl under each arm. He was laughing at something, his voice a deep rumble that was more menace than humor. Just as he reached the ground floor two other women appeared at the top of the stairs, one sporting a red bruise on her cheek that looked unmistakably like the mark of a hand that had slapped her very hard. The other girl had a black eye and swollen lip. The pair staggered at the top of the staircase, two of the security men rushed up to keep them from falling down the stairs.

  A surge of fury boiled in Torvald’s chest. So, this is how he treated women whose job it was to give him pleasure. He imagined how badly Mitrofan had probably treated Randall Jorgenson, an actual lifelong friend.

  “Don’t worry Madame Luba,” Torvald said with real sincerity, “Mitrofan will not bother you, or your girls, again.”

  Two blocks from Madame Sevrizy’s Brothel

  Reval Estonia

  Just after Midnight

  June 3rd, 1896

  Torvald stepped up to the curb as the Russian shoved an old man out of his way, drunkenly stomping toward whatever he thought his destination was.

  “Hey Mitro,” Torvald shouted across the distance. “You forget about me?”

  Mitrofan stopped and turned on his heels, wobbling slightly as he faced Torvald. He stared for a long moment, eyes taking time to focus on the figure that called to him.

  “You?” Mitrofan replied, “Why do you think I’m waiting for someone?”

  His words were slurred, forehead beaded with heavy droplets of sweat that seemed barely to resist gravity’s pull, slowly dripping into his eyes. He wiped a hand across his face, a stream of sweat ran down the edge of his palm in a line that splashed on the pavement. He was not just drunk on alcohol, eyes had the unmistakable dull look of one under in the influence of a much stronger substance.

  “Who are you,” he muttered as Torvald drew closer.

  “You don’t remember me Mitro?” Torvald kept drawing closer. As he closed the last twenty meters Mitrofan’s face started to stretch in recognition.

  “You,” he stumbled over the words, his eyes seemed to grow more glazed as every second passed. “You look famil…famliler….famili…..”

  He couldn’t complete the sentence. The Russian wavered on his feet. Torvald could almost see the drugs and liquor boiling in his brain.

  “I didn’t mean…” Mitrofan started, then mumbled something and leaned against the lamp post.

  Torvald paused, Mitrofan seemed too weak for the man he was known to be. He expected him to pounce any moment. Instead the giant Russian’s face went slack and he collapsed face down onto the cobble stones of the street, his thick forehead sounded like a massive stone slapping the pavement with a loud crack. Torvald rushed forward to search his pockets before someone else came on the scene.

  He reached into the inside jacket pocket and found exactly what he was looking for. The idiot had not even bothered to put it into an envelope, or otherwise tried to conceal what he was carrying. The coded list was simply folded up and stuffed in a pocket next to his wallet, on the same side as the pistol he carried in a leather shoulder holster.

  Torvald pulled out the paper, gave it a once over and stuffed it into his own pocket. He reached in and slid the pistol out of its holster. The Russian suddenly lurched upright, thrusting himself from the street’s filthy surface with a speed that made the Swedish spy leap back in surprise. The gun flying from his grasp.

  “You took my prize!” The Russian roared drunkenly as he struggled back to his feet. He balled his fists into meat hammers. Mitrofan charged. Backpedalling, Torvald grasped an edge of the wrought iron trash receptacle and swung it up. It slammed into the huge man’s face and chest, eliciting an audible snap that signaled a broken jaw and maybe more. Judging by the blood that sprayed from the side of Mitrofan’s head, it looked like a lot more. A scream from behind made Torvald spin that direction, fists up to fight.

  A woman screamed as she saw the body and the blood, the sound made his eardrums roar. She ran up, skidding to a stop. It was Luba. She stared in shock, then whispered, “You murdered Mitrofan!”

  “He attacked me!”

  “That doesn’t matter! Didn’t you hear what I said back at my place?”

  “What? About his rich cousin?”

  “Rich cous…you’re not from here are you?”

  “No, I told you I’m a Swedish businessman from Denmark.”

  “You really meant that?”

  “Yes,” Torvald replied, half lying.

  “Mitrofan Budurov’s cousin is not just rich,” Luba said, “he is Nicholas.”

  Torvald stared back at her with a blank expression.

  “Nicholas,” she repeated, “son of Alexander.”

  Recognition dawned on his face, “The new Russian Czar Nicholas?”

  Her replying look was as an incredulous ‘yes’. Footsteps slapped the pavement in the distance, running up the street in their direction.

  “His men,” Luba hissed, “Follow me.”

  They ran down a short alley, turned the opposite direction from the brothel and ran several more blocks, twisting into alleys and behind buildings until Torvald was thoroughly lost. He was surprised that Luba could move so fast in her tight-fitting dress. The
sound of footsteps faded behind them as their pursuers lost track and moved in an opposite direction.

  “You must run, and never ever show your face here again,” Luba said, “if you show your face anywhere the Czar has eyes, you will be a dead man.”

  “I have been invisible until now,” Torvald said, “What do I have to be afraid of?”

  “Estonia is not its own nation. The Czar is my emperor just as he was Mitrofan’s emperor,” her eyes pleaded with him. “Nicholas can reach here just as fast as his own house.”

  She stared into Torvald’s eyes, “You are a family man yes?”

  He did not answer her.

  “Your silence is your confession,” she replied. “If you love your wife and children then you need to get out of here, and take them someplace no one will ever find them. Not even your own relatives.”

  “I am a Swede, descendant of Vikings,” Torvald insisted. “I will not run.”

  “Then your children will die because of your manly pride,” Luba shot back at him. “Look, you are not a soldier, you are a spy. Soldiers die honorably, and their families mourn them as heroes. Spies die tragically, usually tortured until they have told everything they know. Often, they confess only after watching their wives raped and their children murdered before their eyes. No one mourns the spy, even less the assassin. You are both. Run, and live, and let your children grow old in peace by your feet.”

  A gunshot in the distance snatched his attention. The clack, clack of Luba’s boots on the cobble stones told him she was gone. He knew better than to follow her.

  Torvald raced back to his rented room and retrieved his suitcase. He left enough cash on the room’s small table to cover his bill, then jogged in the direction of the nearest train station. Once at the station he forced himself to as calm a state as he could muster as he moved toward one of the ticket kiosks. A man strode by, mechanically handing out sheets of paper and shouting, “Help arrest this murderer! Cash Reward!”

  The man shoved one into Torvald’s hand and kept walking. He glanced at the paper and nearly fainted as his own eyes stared back at him. It was a rough ink-dot imprint that looked like newsprint, a Pantelegraph copy of his passport photo. Rough as it was, there was no mistake that it was him. The title written in Russian above the image read, “Most Wanted For the Murder of Imperial Russian Prince Mitrofan Budurov!”