by Travis Hill
Donat was gone only about fifteen seconds when the door burst open and Tanya ran into the room. Her eyes were wet, her mascara and eye liner and whatever else she piled on was sliding around her face, leaving little smears and trails that painted her cheeks. She practically jumped into the bed with me. I let out a howl as I felt a stitch or two either blow apart, or it just felt as if they had. I looked down where she’d rammed something bony into my hip and saw a small spot of blood seeping through to the surface of the gauze.
Donat and Dr. Savard peered their heads around the door frame to see what I was making noise about. I heard the door shut, but I didn’t see it, as Tanya leaned into me and gave me an awkward hug. I carefully scooted to one side and patted the bed for her to lie next to me. We held each other for a long time, long enough for both of us to sleep for a while. I woke up to Dr. Savard standing next to the bed, staring down at us. I opened my mouth to say something, but he held up a hand, then pointed to his wrist as if he were wearing a watch, letting me know it was time to close up shop and go home. He left a small paper cup with a couple of pills in it on the table next to the briefcase then let himself out, turning the lights off just before the door clicked shut, leaving only the soft glow of the LED strip above the hospital bed.
“I’m hungry,” Tanya complained sleepily from my chest.
“So go get something to eat.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Yeah, for whatever is in that cup over there.” I pointed to the pill cup on the table.
“You need to eat.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“Fine. Starve to death. I’ll spend all of your money on a man who is at least smart enough to eat between fixes.”
“Ouch. That’s low.”
“That guy said you would get to go home tomorrow,” she said, changing the subject. Dope was a sore topic between us. She had the same addictive personality as I did.
“Yep. You get to play nurse for a while.”
“I don’t know anything about being a nurse. Can’t you just hire one?”
“Jesus, Tanya. It’s nice to know I got shot just so we could both live. You could pretend to at least give a shit.”
“I do give a shit! I just don’t know how to play nurse. You know you always had to shoot me.”
She loved to put the stuff in her veins as much as me, but never once did it herself. She hated needles, hated cooking it up, hated messing with the stuff in any way other than feeling it slide into her arm all the way into her chest and then quickly to her brain.
“I know. Fine. I’ll hire a nurse. I’m going to make sure she has tits that would make a stripper jealous.”
“I’ll use the money to hire a hitman to kill her.” I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.
“Listen, baby,” I said, deciding we had better have this talk before I got out. “Things are going to be different now.”
“Different how?”
“Well, for one, I guess we won’t be worrying about any stupid tweakers or dealers looking for revenge. Instead of looking over our shoulders for that, we’ll be looking over our shoulders to make sure one of these Russian assholes isn’t sneaking up on us. Petrovski hired me. It’s kind of a full-time thing, I guess.” I still didn’t really know what I was going to be doing for the man.
“You’re going to work for him?” she asked, unable to believe I’d do such a thing after all we’d been through.
“I’m not really being given much of a choice,” I said. “But for now, it’s a good thing. There’s a quarter million dollars in cash in that briefcase.” Her face looked like it had been pumped full of air the way her eyes got wide and nearly popped out of her skull. “And some of the jewelry. You can go through it and find a nice ring.”
“If that’s your way of asking me to marry you, go to hell.” Her face turned into what I called a super pout. It was the same expression I remember from girls in elementary school, especially the rich ones, when they didn’t get their way.
“It’s not. I mean… I don’t know. I’m really buzzed right now from the pain meds. I meant just pick out something you like, we’ll sell the rest.”
I was perfectly sober, but I wanted to ask her to marry me in a less idiotic way now. I hadn’t really mentioned marriage many times in our nineteen years together, and she’d never really shown anything more than a passing interest either. She’d surprised me with her reaction, and that told me it was important to her. Since she was the most important thing in my life, if it was important to her, it was important to me.
“What do you have to do for him?” she asked, her face finally cracking, the super pout dissolving into a beautiful face plastered with too much makeup that had smeared where it hadn’t been swept completely away by tears. “Kill people?”
“No, I doubt that,” I said, knowing I was lying. Petrovski thought I was some kind of ace hitman or real life action movie hero. “Probably shit like driving someone around, maybe delivering stuff. I have no idea, but I’m sure it won’t be killing.”
“Did… did you kill someone when you got shot?” Her fingers brushed against the wound in my hip.
“We don’t need to talk about it,” I said. I’d done my best to protect her from most of my business over the years.
“Yes, we do. Did you kill someone?”
“Yeah.”
I hoped if I said nothing, she’d accept it and move on. Out of all the times I wished she wasn’t so ditzy, wasn’t so easily distracted, acted as if she lived in different universe than the rest of us, now was not one of those times. I almost gave myself a nose bleed trying to will the phone to ring, the doctor to come in, hell, even Donat to show up and punch me a few times to pay back some interest to Petrovski.
“Who?”
“Tanya…”
“Tell me.”
“Konovalov.”
“The guy who’s always on TV?”
“Yeah. But, you know, try to keep quiet about that. Unless you want to trade sexual favors for chocolate and cigarettes in prison. Or end up in a hole in the ground out in the desert.”
“Jesus, Billy.” She looked pissed for a few seconds, then surprised me with a question. “Did he deserve it?”
“Look, baby, some people do deserve to die. Child molesters, rapists, people who get kids hooked on hard dope, shitty people like that. It’s just the way it is.”
“But did he deserve to die?”
I shrugged. “Petrovski seemed to think so. Even if he didn’t, it was either him or me. If I didn’t kill him, Petrovski would have come after you, your family, everyone we know, then would have killed you and me in as slow, as horrible a manner as you can imagine. Probably worse than you can imagine. These bastards are sick.”
She gave me a tight squeeze. “You did it for us.”
“I’d do it again, a hundred times if I had to,” I said.
Even if I had to relive the part where an Ivan’s face exploded into a bloody, slimy mess less than a foot from mine all one hundred times. But I didn’t need to tell her that part. She’d find out soon enough when I started having nightmares for the next few years because of it.
*****
I parked the Crown Victoria at the curb and looked across the seat at Donat. He gave me his signature smile before we both exited the car. I unconsciously patted the pistol hanging under my arm. I hadn’t had to kill anyone yet, but a couple of times I’d been forced to put it in someone’s mouth or against their head.
My Russian partner looked back at me before opening the glass door to the little repair shop. The man we were coming to see was deep in debt to his partners, who unfortunately happened to be part of Petrovski’s network. Since he was an American, I’d do the talking while Donat did the intimidating. Whenever we dealt with one of the Russian immigrants that had foolishly found themselves within Petrovski’s world, I was the muscle, Donat was the negotiator.
Not that we really negotiated. It was always us telling someone exactly what they were goi
ng to do from the minute we walked back out the door. Once in a while, we’d punctuate the instructions with a light beating, sometimes a severe beating. I didn’t really feel all that bad about cracking open a stupid American’s head. Anyone getting involved with a Russian mobster deserved to get their stupid American heads cracked open.
The Russian immigrants though… I felt bad for them. I knew they’d probably come to America looking for a piece of the dream we were all supposed to be guaranteed, only to end up having to pay off some real or imagined debt to Petrovski. Maybe Petrovski was a Russian coyote, sneaking his fellow Russians into the country then forcing them to work for him to pay off the debt. Enough of the Russians we visited were the kind that deserved to be paid a visit by us, which made the unpleasant task of dealing with the helpless, mostly innocent ones a little easier to swallow.
I was keeping score. For every single wrong, every insult, every person that Petrovski hurt, I would do whatever it took to pay him back one day. It might take twenty years or more, but even if the fucker was on his death bed, I’d be the one to step on his oxygen hose if I could arrange it, just so he knew Billy Jensen, an American, was the one that put his commie ass into the afterlife. Until then, Tanya and I were more than comfortable, and I had steady work that paid in the high six figures per year.
All I had to do was stay alive long enough to come up with a plan that had more than a zero percent chance of me succeeding without ending up on the coroner’s table next to Petrovski.
Author’s Notes
Special thanks to Heather Senter (http://www.bookcoverartistry.com/) for the great cover art!
A huge thanks to Diana Arbiser for helping me edit this, and a huge future thanks to her for when she begins translating all of my books into Spanish. Then I can get yelled at for being awful in another language besides English. As always, thanks to my wife, who is forced to read whatever I write (it’s in our marriage contract even though she claims otherwise).
Thanks, more than anything, to you, since you just plunked down a buck or so for whatever you just read. If it was terrible, let me know. If it was good, give/loan/force to read at gunpoint the book to someone else. Hell, put it up at a torrent site for all I care. It isn’t that I don’t like this story (I very much like this story). It’s more that I am not a money-grubbing asshole, and while there’s a lot of authors and musicians and actors that are very much against file sharing, I’m not one of them.
Sure, I believe in protecting my rights as an intellectual property owner, but I don’t have time (nor do I wish to make time) to chase every pirate down and hit him (or her) with a DMCA takedown notice (which isn’t worth diddly-squat outside of America’s borders, to be honest). More than that, if someone is crazy enough to download my books, they might be crazy enough to read them. If they’re that crazy, then it’s a 50-50 bet that they’ll be crazy enough to actually like the story.
I enjoy making a living as an author, to be sure. I enjoy readers contacting me and telling me they enjoyed my story more than I enjoy making money. It’s pretty close, I’ll be honest, but I have a roof over my head, a wife who hasn’t murdered/divorced/slowly poisoned me yet, and I’ve got five cats that have a comfortable life, so… what else is there? I’m pretty sure I don’t need a 48,000 square foot mansion in Sun Valley or Aspen. Oh, I have electricity, heat and A/C, food, water… I’m pretty much set.
(By the way, if you wish to help me buy a 48,000 square foot mansion anywhere in the world, I certainly wouldn’t refuse, but unfortunately, it would mean having to put up with me as your new BFF. You do NOT want this, trust me.)
(Also, if you did get this book for free and wish to help a brother out, you can find a PayPal button on my website, http://www.angrygames.com, and give me $.99. Or $.01. Or $999.99 (!!!). Yeah, I know, it’s too bad you can’t PayPal me a punch to the face, haha. I would totally go broke PayPal’ing myself.)
Right. Anyway, I hope to get some more Billy & Tanya out soon (probably Xmas season 2014 if all goes well). Not sure if it will be another novella, a short story, or what. I could probably write a novel about Billy’s (mis)adventures, but I kind of like keeping his stories short and focused. He seems like he’s a pretty good guy for being a pretty bad guy. Then again, I’m biased.
I guess I should stop babbling and just get this thing published. Turn the page if you want to find out what other drivel I’ve written.
I wouldn’t, but that’s just me.
Travis Hill
July 6, 2014 (slight revision, forgot to include the backend bits like this stuff you’re reading)
(and I like parentheses)
(a lot)
(!)
Stuff
Hey! Did you know that all conversations in the history of humanity always start with “hey!”? They totally do.
But hey! Did you know that I also wrote some other stuff? It’s not very good (it’s downright awful, but I can’t say that as my wife is behind me tapping her foot and burning a hole in the back of my skull with her death-stare… she doesn’t like me being self-deprecating, but I don’t like her trying to fool me into taking a bath when she’s got a toaster, hair dryer, curling iron, radio, hand blender, and portable air conditioner perched on the edge of the tub).
If you like crime-y stuff like what you’ve just read, you might like a book called “Enforcer.” It’s about a kid who was supposed to be a pro hockey superstar, but instead ended up working for a Romanian mobster. It’s kind of dark, not too pleasant, and fairly long at about 410 pages.
If you like dark, gritty, emotional romance that involves two teenagers trying to escape the small town they grew up in (as well as escaping terrible parents), you might like “Alive, or Just Breathing.” I’ll warn you right off the bat that it’s not a happy story. There are no unicorns with rainbows coming from their posteriors.
Speaking of unicorns with rainbows coming from their asses… I don’t have any stories like that. But I should, right?
If science fiction + romance is your thing, there’s this little (free) novella called “Departure” that is growing into something more in my lab (brain). It’s a bit sad too (there seems to be a pattern here).
How about straight science fiction? I’m down with science fiction. I write a lot of science fiction. I also say “science fiction” any chance I get. I like the way it rolls off my tongue and enters my hear-holes. Right. Where was I? Ah, science fiction. If you like Time Travel type of stuff, there’s “Chasing Time,” a story about a very angry (and somewhat vulgar) operative that has to go back to 5th century France and assassinate some asshole who built a time machine and went back to 5th century France. Don’t worry, there’s not a lot of science fiction in it. It’s supposed to be a humorous yet philosophical type of story. But yeah, the main character curses a bit.
Another Time Travel (I like to capitalize it for some reason) story I’ve published is called “Search Terms: Alpha.” Originally, it was supposed to be a single book. Then I let a couple of unsuspecting readers check it out before I published it, and they sort of talked me into stretching it into three or four books at about 50,000 words each (200-ish pages). Kind of a like a serial thing. Anyway, it’s about a college kid who orders some top-end computer parts to play video games. When the parts show up, they aren’t what he ordered. He puts it together, thinking he’s somehow the butt of a practical joke (we nerds LOVE doing this kind of shit to other nerds), but kind of freaks out when he discovers that it can pull web pages from the near future. Let’s just say the future doesn’t look all that bright.
By the way, if you purchase the ebook version of “Chasing Time,” it includes “Search Terms: Alpha” and another short story for free. Pretty good bargain for $3.99, right? Or free, if you’re reading this after downloading it from The Pirate Bay.
How about some non-preachy Christian science fiction? And I mean “non-preachy” in the way that Dan Brown’s “The DaVinci Code” was about Catholicism and Christianity but wasn’t preachy.
My latest book is “Diabolus,” and I like to think of it as a mash-up of “The Exorcist” and “The Matrix” and “Skynet” (the evil computer from the “Terminator” movies). At the beginning of the 22nd century, a military AI that controls nuclear forces claims to be Satan incarnate, come back to the physical realm to bring about Armageddon. A disgraced ex-bishop and one of the new breed of tech-priests, fresh out of seminary, are tasked by the Vatican to bring the AI back under control. The bishop must confront the holographic persona of Satan, playing a deadly game with the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, while the young priest must jack-in to the AI’s core and purge the “demon” before it’s too late.
I know, right? Weird! There’s no bad language, no sex, and only digital violence. I know, right? Weird x2!
Let’s see, what else can I bore you with?
Oh, if you’re into a bit of science fiction with dash of urban fantasy, there’s this book called “Ability.” A college chemistry major that manufactures illegal drugs on the side (kind of “Breaking Bad-ish”) tries to create the perfect drug. His roommate, a computer engineering major, tries to create the perfect learning system (think “The Matrix” when Trinity gets the helicopter flight training instantly uploaded into her brain). One night, while under the influence of a test batch of drugs, one of tries a test run of the learning program. It works, but with the unintended side effect of being able to manipulate physical objects with his mind (think “Heroes” kind of powers). It’s a book that starts out pretty light, but gets pretty dark at the end.
