by Travis Hill
As they led me along hallways or pathways or some ways—I could only tell that I was now inside a large enclosed space—I made peace with my fate. Tanya would survive, and hopefully she’d run off with the money once it was clear I wasn’t coming back. After I’d gotten the text to meet Petrovski, I made her memorize the combination of the safe at the place out in Jersey Village, then drilled a plan into her head.
I made her promise that ten minutes after I left, she was to take whatever cash we had on hand, about nine thousand dollars, and go to San Antonio. She was supposed to come back in a week, and if I wasn’t home, she was to go to the safe house, empty the safe, and find a quiet new life as far away from Texas as possible. And she was to stay off the grid for the rest of her life if she could. I knew it was asking a lot for her to be able to carry out all of those plans, but I’d done my best to get her to realize just how serious it was.
Most of my friends were dead. My family didn’t exist in my life. I didn’t have any children, responsibilities, or people who would miss me other than Tanya. I even made peace with the fact that as depressing as it was to only have one person in the entire world give a shit about me, it was enough. I’d do anything for her. After all, I’d agreed to a crazy Russian mobster’s dumbass assassination scheme.
Metal doors opened and I was dragged for another ten seconds or so before we came to a stop. I tensed up, afraid that a knife, a bullet, a lead pipe, something was going to surprise me in a bad way. I gritted my teeth at the sound of footsteps approaching on concrete. The feet came to a stop right in front of me. I could hear heavy breathing as the owner of the feet worked himself into a fury. Bright light sent a bolt of pain to the back of my skull when the hood was snatched from my head. I must have won the bonus round, as he also got a good handful of my hair along with it.
The man in front of me was familiar, but he looked insane. Psychotic. Like a demon unleashed in the physical world. Gennady Konovalov stared at me for a good fifteen seconds before stepping forward and driving his fist into my stomach. I’d tensed as well as I could, knowing it was coming, but it still hurt like hell. At least the Ivans that had beaten on me for a few days had stayed away from it. He stared at me again, as if trying to decide whether or not to kill me right then and there. Petrovski assured me that Konovalov would make it into a big production so that his men and Petrovski’s men could witness it, and I guess be filled with awe. I smiled and spit a mix of blood and snot into his face.
The scream of rage was drowned out by the high pitched whistling in my ears as he unloaded his fists into my face and my guts. All I could do was hold on to the thread of consciousness that screamed at me to stay alert, to not let him put me out. I felt the .45 shift in the small of my back, my fear at hearing the sound of it clank off the concrete floor much greater than the fear the Russian would beat me to death with his bare hands.
I didn’t realize he’d stopped hitting me until I felt the Ivans jerk me upright. Gennady Konovalov stared right through me, his breath coming in big, heavy gasps, his fists covered in bloody splotches. I couldn’t tell if it was my blood, or his from opening his knuckles up on my teeth. I wanted him to hate me as much as possible. Spitting in his face might have been a little too much, but I needed him completely convinced that I was to be his prize.
“Come, Gennady,” Petrovski said, stepping up next to Konovalov and putting a guiding arm on his rival’s back, gently turning the man away, shaking his head in disgust at me. “Let me show you what else I’ve brought you. I’ll call Luzhkov to let him know you are satisfied, and then we’ll take care of this unpleasant business so that we can celebrate our new partnership.”
Petrovski snapped his fingers and two more Ivans came forward, each carrying a briefcase. They both put their briefcases on a metal table, unlocked them, then stepped back into the shadows. Petrovski gestured at the briefcases with one hand while swiping his thumb across the screen of his mobile phone. He began speaking Russian into it, paused and asked Konovalov something, then talked into the phone again.
Petrovski turned and began to walk toward the door, but paused again, putting the phone against his leg. “Gennady?”
Konovalov waved him away with one hand while the other opened the lid of the briefcase. I could see the glint of the overhead lights on jewelry. “I will step outside and coordinate while you finish. It wouldn’t be professional to force Viktor to listen to this one’s screams.” He gave me a withering glare and walked toward the double doors.
I put weight on my feet, keeping my knees bent but able to support myself without help from the two Ivans holding me up. They sensed what I was doing and relaxed their grip, the one on the right practically letting go so I could slowly reach my hand behind my back. The clink of Konovalov pawing through his jewelry stopped and he stepped to the side to open the second briefcase. The gun had slipped low in my pants, and I almost panicked when I was unable to free it enough to get my palm on the grip. Just as I succeeded, I heard a sharp intake of breath.
Konovalov turned and marched directly toward me, holding a piece of paper in his hand. He waved it in my face.
“What am I supposed to ask you about Nikolay Fetisov?” His voice was beyond dangerous. The rage consuming him practically made his eyes glow. I hoped I wasn’t hallucinating. “What do you know about Nikolay?”
“I know he’s the one who helped me plan the job,” I said, trying my best to sound like a smarmy prick, as if giving up Fetisov would somehow save me.
“You are a liar,” the Russian said. His eyes still blazed with hate for me, but they also said that he didn’t think I was lying.
“I could be,” I said. “But how would I know all about your money laundering, your insurance scamming, the exact times and dates when your goons would be moving shit out so it could be smuggled back to Africa to melt it all down and start over?”
He glared at me for a few seconds before turning around and shouting at his men in Russian. I heard Fetisov’s name, so I assumed he’d instructed someone to fetch the man. Two of Konovalov’s henchmen exited through the double doors. I stood straight up, praying my legs wouldn’t buckle. The Dolgo boss turned back to me. His eyes grew wide at the sight of a .45 pointed at his face.
I didn’t say anything. I pulled the trigger twice. I immediately swung it around to the nearest Dolgo Ivan and put three more rounds into him. The noise of a sudden gun battle breaking out didn’t even faze me. I heard both of the Ivans that had carried me in begin shooting. Something slammed into me, right above the hip. I thought maybe someone had kicked me, or hit me with a blunt weapon, and turned to shoot whoever it had been.
My leg gave out and I crashed to the concrete floor, my wrist banging against the ground hard enough to send a jolt of pain all the way into my shoulder. The .45 bounced out of my hand. The Ivan to my right saw it and took a step forward, knelt down and picked it up with his free hand, then turned around and duck walked the two steps back to me. He’d just put the grip in my hand when the front of his face exploded in a bloody eruption.
The shock of getting a sudden face full of hot blood and brains made me jerk back. I couldn’t see anything and raised a hand to wipe the blood and brain from my eye. The dark shape looming in front of me flashed in the light as he raised his pistol. I pulled the trigger on my .45 until the hammer felt on empty air. It fell out of my hand and I put my head down and covered it, afraid to stand up, afraid to even scoot along the floor on my stomach to grab a dead Ivan’s gun. I knew I was going to die, so I waited for someone to come along and plug the back of my head with a few rounds.
Within a minute, the shooting tapered almost completely off. I heard what sounded like a quick succession of shots from outside, then silence. I felt rough hands shoved into my armpits, then the world tilted twice as an Ivan picked me up and put me in a fireman’s carry. He walked quickly toward the double doors, my face bouncing off his ass a few times until I got control of my neck muscles. The pain in my hip had turned into agon
y, and was inching into whatever was worse than that.
I turned my head enough to watch another Russian snap the briefcases shut and pick them up from the table, falling in behind my rescuer. The floor was littered with bodies along with small puddles and rivers of blood. I had no idea how many of Petrovski’s men had been killed, and I didn’t care. All I cared about was whether or not they were going to make me ride in the trunk again. That was followed by whether or not they would even take me to a hospital.
I’d been in a lot of trouble before, including having my skull cracked open twice, stabbed twice, and had even been the victim of a nailgun once when Tommy Granger shot me five times in the leg with one after I’d failed to pay for a fair amount of dope. I’d never been shot with a real gun. I never wanted to get shot with a real gun again. The addictive part of my brain reminded me that I’d get some morphine if they took me to the hospital.
I felt the world tilt again as the Ivan pulled me off his shoulder and stuffed me into the back of the Mercedes. He leaned me back in the seat and pulled the safety belt across my chest. The door closed and he thumped the roof of the Mercedes with his palm twice to let the driver know to take off. Whatever my eyes were seeing kept shifting around, as if I was on a pitching, rolling boat in rough water.
“Billy!” Petrovski cried out, right into my left ear. I felt his arm slip around my shoulders, his hand catching in the seat belt for just a second before he slid next to me and gave me a friendly hug. “I told you that you were capable of Hollywood! You should be a stunt man. A director!”
He laughed, and I tried to laugh with him, but all I could do was try to keep from throwing up. I could feel my body growing cold, a radiating chill spiraling out from the gunshot wound just above my left hip. It was an odd sensation, the feeling of warm blood seeping onto cold skin. Petrovski looked down, noticing my wound.
“Ah,” he said. “We should probably get that looked at.” He gave my shoulders a squeeze once again, his tone changing back to the happy Russian uncle. “Then we will celebrate! Billy, I truly am in awe of you. Of course, my best men were with you, but Yuri says you are a cold blooded killer.”
I said nothing. There was nothing to say. The fear, the panic, the horror of everything that had happened over the last three days, it all landed on me at once. I hated myself for losing it in front of Petrovski, but I couldn’t help it. Dave, Kenyon, Gally, Stephen, Dana, all dead or missing, which meant dead and disposed of properly. I knew Konovalov needed to die, and he would have surely made me die a slow, agonizing death if the tables had been turned, but it still weighed heavily on my conscience.
The worst, though, was the memory that replayed in my head repeatedly of the Ivan handing me my gun back then his face erupting like a volcano, the blood and brains spraying into my face like someone had just hit me with a cherry pie. I’ve been scared a lot in my life, and I’ve always told myself that the fear was good, it was helpful. It would keep me from making stupid mistakes and getting caught. But the pure terror that had burned through me at the moment I felt the hot, wet, slimy, chunky mess of Russian gangster glop into my face, something broke in me. I didn’t know why.
Petrovski gave me a fatherly squeeze then said something to the driver in Russian. He turned back to me and said, “We’ll get you to a proper doctor.” He removed his arm from around my shoulders and sat back on his side of the luxury sedan, pulling out his mobile phone. His fingers swiped across the screen twice then he spoke to whoever had answered.
“It is done.”
EPILOGUE - Recovery Management
Petrovski didn’t take me to a hospital, but I guess he had a place that was just as good, maybe better. A couple of the Texas Care Clinic offices were under Petrovski’s thumb. The Houston-only chain of walk-in clinics was a perfect front for being able to handle life and death situations that would cause too many questions at any other hospital, not to mention the ability to have access to any pharmaceutical a doctor could prescribe.
Then there was the whole money laundering thing, as well as the profits from the real business of milking insurance plans for as much as possible. I could never understand why anyone would have to pay up front if they didn’t have insurance when it came to healing a sick or hurt child, or even a spouse. Anyone. Maybe I was bitter because I’d been refused three times before finding a hospital that would take Tanya when she broke her leg just after we graduated from high school. It was probably the morphine that coursed through me that made my mind wander through old memories.
The doctor had done a perfect job, according to the doctor. Petrovski had agreed wholeheartedly, but my doped-up mind had tried to get my mouth to announce that Petrovski was as qualified to make a medical prognosis as I was to give him a rectal exam. A few slurred words had come out along with a lot of drool, then I laughed at the vision in my head of giving the Russian (and maybe his doctor too, I wasn’t too impressed with the man’s smugness nor the way he seemed to latch on to Petrovski as if the mobster had him on a leash) a Billy Jensen Rectal Examination Special. I passed out in the middle of a good joke and didn’t even get to see the expressions on their faces.
When I woke up again, Dr. Savard, who turned out to be a pretty decent guy, smugness and all, told me I’d have to stay laid up in the back room of the clinic for two more days. Apparently I’d already been here for three. He also got his life threatened when he told me he was powering down my growing addiction for morphine. He gave me the spiel about heroin and prescription opiates until I threatened to cut off his cock and jam it up his ass.
I thought it was funny the way that gunshot victims high on morphine think such things are funny, but I guess the doctor wasn’t amused. He came back an hour later and handed me a mobile phone. Petrovski politely informed me that I would indeed be cutting back on my morphine, and I would also not be seeking it or any other opiate beyond whatever the doc prescribed. He told me there was a celebration planned on Friday, three days away, and I was to attend. His final instructions went back to the horrible things his Ivans would do to me if I threatened the doctor anymore.
The day before I was released, an Ivan named Donat brought me some street clothes, a new automatic and shoulder holster, a burner mobile phone, and a light brown briefcase. Donat set it on the little table next to my bed and opened it. I nearly ripped my stitches out trying to sit up to see if I was hallucinating. It was full of money. A lot of money. And a small padded envelope. I gestured to the Russian to hand it to me.
Donat gave me a wicked grin when he set it in my hand, the clink of metal inside making more curious than afraid. I’d been expecting the guy to waste me. Nothing crazy like shooting me. That would be too loud, too messy. Something more personal, say, a rope around the throat, or an overdose of my morphine. Hell, if he’d just unlock the limiter on the drip, I’d hit the plunger fifty times in less than two seconds if I could. I was feeling the pull of the stuff, and it was making me shake a little.
Of course, my shaking could have been attributed to the stacks of hundred dollar bills in the case, and the padded envelope that had a good handful of assorted jewelry. I never really paid attention to the stuff we’d ripped off from Konovalov, but I assumed whatever was in the envelope was part of it.
“Finder’s fee,” Donat said when I looked up from the pile of sparkling metal and gems in my lap.
“How much is in there?” I asked, tilting my head toward the briefcase on the table.
“One hundred thousand for the job. One hundred fifty thousand bonus. There will be another two hundred fifty thousand for the bonds after you are on your feet.”
I stared at the Russian. He looked more like he belonged in a boy band than beating up dumbasses like me or delivering cash to dumbasses like me. He gave me a smile that showed me all of his perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth. I wondered if Petrovski had a few dentists locked into a never-ending payment plan. Houston was a huge city. There was probably no shortage of dentists with drug or gambling problems
that somehow ended up finding their way to one of the many arms of Petrovski’s operation.
“What kind of name is ‘Donat?’” I asked, handing the envelope back after putting the jewelry in it. He took it from me, set it in the briefcase, then closed it and engaged the locks.
“Six-three-six,” he said. “Donat is a nickname.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means I will kill you if I reveal the meaning of my nickname to you.” The toothy smile never left his face, but I sensed that he wasn’t bluffing.
“All right, all right,” I said, holding up both hands. “It just doesn’t sound very Russian.”
“What does it sound like?”
“Uh… I don’t know. I’m not an expert on foreign affairs and shit. I know American and Mexican names and I can make up some Asian names real easy.” Amazingly, the snide insult that I would have found humorous but Donat would have probably found cause to murder me over didn’t make it out of my mouth. Maybe it was a good thing I was getting cut off the morphine. It might have saved my life.
“Tell me what it sounds like or I won’t bring you your other gift.” The Russian folded his arms and glared at me.
“Fuck, man, I don’t know. Czechoslovakian or German or something. I told you, I’m not Dora the fucking Explorer.”
Donat leaned in close to me. “I will excuse your anger. Go easy on the dope. The boss, he does not like junkies.”
He turned and walked to the door. I watched him go, part of me enraged, another part of me starting to jones for a dose, part of me wondering what my other gift was. I’d have shot him in the back multiple times if I thought he had a fix or a few pills on him. I was getting too edgy from withdrawal. Three days of heavy use and a fourth of having it dialed back didn’t seem like enough time to get hooked on the stuff, but it was easy for me. I had an addictive personality. Heroin and I had friends, even lovers, in the past. Both times had ended in near disaster.
