Devil With a Gun

by M. C. Grant

  The waiter moves in to pat me down. He’s not shy about it either, but neither does he linger in the spots where I wouldn’t mind some male attention.

  “I usually get a man’s name before I let him do this,” I quip.

  “And I usually get a woman drunk first,” he says.

  “That’s disturbing,” I say.

  “It’s meant to be.”

  Suddenly feeling more violated than aroused, I follow the no-

  longer-charming waiter through the deserted dining area to a private room in the rear, separated from the main restaurant by a pair of frosted glass doors.

  The waiter knocks once before opening the door. He stands to the side as I enter, and I’m relieved when he closes the door behind me to return to his duties at the reception desk.

  Inside, the room is half private-dining area and half office. Directly in front of me is a rectangular table sporting white linen, fine silver, and china place settings, but behind it is an elongated wood desk with two computers back-to-back that are being operated by what appear to be identical redheaded twins.

  The twins are dressed smartly in black dress pants and white shirts with the sleeves rolled up to just below the elbow. Each has an identical pair of tortoise shell glasses. One is wearing a blue tie, the other green.

  Neither of them flash me the top-secret Ginger Wink of Solidarity. Maybe they didn’t get the memo.

  I look to my left and see a mountain of a man with shoulders as wide as my legs are long. He’s wearing a suit that must have been custom made in a tent shop, but it fits him well. The only flaw is a slight bulge beneath his left arm that tells me he’s carrying a larger gun than the tailor intended. Then again, that could be on purpose, to give trouble pause before it starts.

  The bodyguard is standing perfectly still, and even though he doesn’t appear to be looking at me, I can feel his eyes probing every square inch of my intentions.

  When I glance to my right, his shaved-head doppelganger is occupying a similar position. This mountain is darker and swarthier than his companion, but just as silent.

  No one is paying any attention to me at all, which only makes me more nervous. I’m not a big fan of silence. I’m happy that Prince Marmalade the Purr Machine is in my life. Bubbles, the world’s oldest goldfish, was never much for chatter, but then again I wasn’t around for his final words. I can only guess they were cursing my name for leaving him alone with Prince when I went to work. Who knew kittens could jump so high?

  A door connecting the private room to the kitchen opens and a razor-thin man enters in a tailored suit that matches the gray pallor of his skin. He smiles at me with teeth that have lost their luster, but none of their bite. His nose reminds me of a shark fin with a small bite taken out of one nostril. If he floated on his back in a pool, small children would scream.

  “You are Dixie Flynn the reporter,” he says with a Russian accent that has been refined and polished to remove the grit. “I am Krasnyi Lebed.” He gestures toward the table. “Please, sit. I have ordered tea.”

  “Lovely,” I say with a smile, and take a chair.

  Lebed rests his elbows on the table and tucks his chin into his hands as he studies me. His wrists are so thin that half the links have been removed from the band of his platinum Rolex watch.

  “I am surprised that our paths have not crossed before,” he says, “but then, you do tend to spend more time in the gutter than the palace.”

  “I wouldn’t necessarily say the gutter—”

  “I would,” he interrupts. “You may call it social conscience—I hear that is the buzz word people like to use these days—but really when you are writing about dumpster divers and injection clinics and former street walkers trying to go straight, the gutter is not below them, it is still all around.”

  “And what would you have me report on?” I ask, refusing to rise to the bait.

  “What about political corruption?”

  I blink. “Well, sure, if—”

  “I could point you in the right directions.”

  My inner radar begins to beep with its Lost in Space mantra: Danger, Dixie Flynn! Danger!

  “That’s generous of you,” I say cautiously. “I’m always open to reliable tips.”

  “Good.” He unclasps his hands and stares at me through dull eyes that suck in light and make the whole room gloomier. “The tea is here.”

  Lebed sits up straight as the kitchen door swings open and a white-aproned server delivers a silver teapot along with a three-tiered tray of crackers, black caviar on ice, smoked fish, pickles, and sweet pastries. I begin to regret going for ice cream with Pinch, but then again I did only have time for one mini burger at the Pink Bicycle.

  After the server departs, Lebed pours tea into two china cups and passes one over. He appears to take caution that our fingers don’t accidentally touch.

  “This is good Russian tea,” he says. “Strong and hearty, like it should be.”

  I take a sip, control my shudder at the distinct smoky density of it, and smile. “Nice.”

  Lebed shakes his head. “Not nice. Russia does not have such a word. It is khorosho.”

  “Khorosho,” I say, attempting to duplicate his intonation.

  Lebed smiles for the first time and looks over at his two guards. “Nyeplokho.”

  The guards nod ever so slightly in agreement with whatever their boss has just said.

  “Would you care for jam in your tea?” Lebed asks.

  I shake my head while pretending that isn’t one of the oddest things I’ve ever heard. “Black is fine.”

  He smiles again and wags a finger at me. “You may have some Russian in you. A Cold War infidelity, perhaps?”

  I don’t know how to answer, so I keep silent.

  “Have you ever tried real caviar?” he asks.

  “I’m not sure, but I do enjoy Greek taramosalata, which is—”

  “Bah,” he snarls. “Peasant food. That is cod roe, not caviar.” He loads a small cracker with a spoonful of black fish eggs, places it on a china plate and slides it over to me. “Place the caviar on your tongue and savor it before swallowing.”

  I do as he says. The sturgeon roe is light and salty on my tongue, and as it warms within my mouth, each egg pops open like a champagne bubble. The taste is unusual and exquisite and thanks to the expansion of my palate at the hands of Dmitri, delicious. I scoop the remainder off the cracker with my tongue.

  “This is amazing,” I say.

  “Pryekrasno! I’m pleased.”

  We eat and drink a bit more until I feel comfortable enough to say, “I want to ask you some questions about a missing person.”

  Lebed dabs his mouth with a cloth napkin and takes another sip of tea.

  “A Russian?” he asks.

  “No, but I think he worked for you.”

  “I am not missing anyone.”

  “This was twenty years ago.”

  “A lifetime.”

  “Maybe, but I have a feeling you possess a very good memory.”

  “Flattery,” he says. “Only a woman can wield such a simple tool.”

  “I doubt that,” I say with a smile, struggling to make it appear genuine. “I’m sure you charm the birds out of the trees.”

  “A man’s skill. More complex.”

  I feel I’ve wandered onto thin ice, but nothing ventured … “His name is Joseph Brown.”

  Lebed glances over his left shoulder at the two redheaded twins, who haven’t stopped pointing and clicking on their computers since I entered.

  “That name is not familiar to me.”

  “Twenty years ago, you went to Joe Brown’s apartment in the middle of the night and recruited him for a job. His family hasn’t seen him since.”

  A shadow crosses Lebed’s face to reveal the thug beneath the gentleman
’s veneer. “How do you come upon this information?”

  “Does it matter? I’m not interested in whatever the job was. I only want to find out what happened to Mr. Brown.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “So you do remember him?”

  “No.”

  “Then why do you care why I care?”

  Lebed flashes his teeth, but he’s not smiling. “Because you are in my restaurant and I asked you a direct question.”

  “His family wants answers,” I say. “So do I.”

  “The wife is dead and the daughter is a whore,” he snaps angrily. “The past is the past.”

  I shudder and feel my own anger rise. “I’ll take that as an admission then. So what happened to Joe?”

  Lebed pushes away from the table and stands up. I notice his hands are clenching into fists and releasing, clenching and releasing. I’m suddenly, frighteningly aware that the only person who knows where I am at this moment is a small-time bookie with no reason to care what happens to me.

  Lebed’s voice becomes a hiss. “Do you know why Russian women get so fat?” Before I can answer, he continues. “Because they need to be able to absorb the blows of their husbands’ fists. My mother was very fat, but my wife is fatter still. You are skinny; you would not survive.”

  I take this as my cue to stand up, too, and control the quiver in my voice. “I might surprise you.”

  “You would not.”

  “So I take it you’re not going to help me find Joe Brown?”

  “I told you before, I do not know who that is.”

  I swallow and look around the room. Neither of the guards has moved.

  “Thanks for the caviar,” I say.

  Nobody attempts to stop me as I push through the door to the main dining room. It’s still deserted of customers and I hold my breath all the way to the street.

  Nine

  Outside the tea house, I turn right and walk at a quick pace to put some distance between Lebed and myself.

  Sweat trickles down my neck and an emotional tremor vibrates through my shoulders, but I’m determined not to cry. I tell myself the vicious little prick wouldn’t be so frightening if he didn’t have a muscle-bound golem standing in each corner, but I know I’m lying.

  It’s apparent, from reputation and demeanor, that Lebed has the granite heart of a killer and the itchy hands of a butcher who still needs to sink his fingers into bloody offal on occasion in order to feel alive.

  I shake off the disturbing thoughts and look up from my feet too late to avoid running head first into an immobile iceberg wrapped in a beige trench coat and woolen cap.

  “Sorry,” I blurt as the man’s hands grab me by the shoulders to steady my rebound.

  “Kto vas poslal?” asks the man.

  Confused, I look up to see a cruel visage with twisted lips. Before I can react, his grip tightens painfully and I’m jerked off my feet. My body is twisted in mid-air as though I weigh little more than an empty potato sack and I’m shoved hard against the red brick wall of a closed storefront.

  Upon contact, the back of my head cracks the bricks, sending an explosion of pain to the front of my eyes, where stars are already dancing. I open my mouth to scream for help, but the man’s a step ahead. He slaps one callused palm across my mouth, his fingernails black and smelling of rot, while his other hand pushes up on my breastbone to deflate my lungs and keep me glued to the wall. My feet dangle inches off the ground, making me feel as helpless as a child.

  “Kto vas poslal?” he repeats.

  Even if I understood Russian, which I don’t, I can barely breathe behind his rough hand, never mind talk. Beneath the nail rot, his skin smells of shoe polish, leather, and engine oil, while his face has all the charm of a circuit gambler’s pitbull. Livid burn scars crisscross his face; the worst is the left half of his upper lip, which is completely melted away. If he was a dog, he would be a shortsighted one who’s had to survive by stealing steaks and chicken off lit neighborhood barbecues.

  Instinctively, I plant one foot against the wall as an anchor and propel my other knee into his groin. It’s a good plan, but I can’t get enough force behind the strike to be taken seriously. The Russian grins through his ruined mouth, exposing the cigarette stubs of four teeth, laughing at my pathetic effort to break free.

  Good, I tell myself in forced bravado, I have him just where I need him.

  Pushing a vision of Alien into my head, I stab my teeth forward to latch onto the weathered flesh of his palm, scraping for purchase. At the same time, I swing my knee up again—but this time it has a passenger. The Russian releases a surprised grunt when my hitchhiking fingers grab hold of one withered testicle and clamp around it.

  I don’t waste time as my thumb seals the vise, and I use my remaining strength to viciously twist and squeeze. Blood squirts across my lips as he jerks his nipped hand away from my mouth.

  A shriek of pain escapes his lips as his other hand slips from my chest and dives down to grab my wrist. In his panic to break my grip, he’s forgotten about my other hand. Now that my feet are back on the ground, my free hand dives down, too, finds his testicular companion and applies eighty-plus pounds of pissed-off-female pressure.

  The man roars and his face turns the color of borscht. As his knees start to tremble, I stab my face forward to make sure he’s paying attention.

  “If you understand English, tell your boss that I don’t appreciate threats and I have friends who will appreciate it even less.”

  “Sooka!” he groans. “Tebe pizd’ets.”

  “That doesn’t sound nice,” I say and twist my wrists to emphasize the point.

  The man bellows and spits in my face. His own face is contorted by pain, but suddenly his hands release themselves from my wrists and find their way to my throat. I gasp as he finds the strength to squeeze my windpipe, his dirty nails digging into tender flesh.

  Choking, I dig my own chewed-up nails into his balls and squeeze even harder, but it’s as if I’ve taken him over the brink of pain so that he no longer feels it.

  When my vision begins to blur from lack of oxygen, I make the decision to release my grip on his manhood and throw my hands skyward into the pressure points of his elbows. As I do, I also allow my body to become dead weight. The maneuver catches him off guard, and I break free of his chokehold to land on my ass.

  He reaches for me again as I scramble on all fours to break away, but just as I’m getting to my feet, his fingers lock onto my suddenly-I-give-a-damn hair. Before he can slam my face into the wall and take all the fight out of me, I spin to face him and launch a palm strike to the base of his nose.

  My hand connects instead with empty air as the large Russian unexpectedly tumbles sideways to collapse face first onto the sidewalk with a nasty crack of bone and squelch of flesh that makes me wince.

  Gasping for air, my sight blurry from pain and exhaustion, I stare at the new arrival who has taken the Russian’s place. This man is shorter than the Russian and skinnier, too. He’s bald and unshaven and in his black-gloved hands is a short length of wood that still holds a splatter of blood and patch of hair from where it connected with my attacker’s head.

  I’m about to reach down for my boot knife when the man says, “You should get the hell out of here. It’s not safe.”

  “You have a cellphone?” My voice is raspy from the bruised swelling on my throat where the Russian’s thumbs had been trying to perform a tracheotomy on my windpipe.

  When he shakes his head, his ears flap as if they have no cartilage.

  “Where’s the nearest pay phone then?” I ask.

  The man jabs a bandaged thumb over his shoulder. “Two blocks. Same corner as Trusty’s Pawn.”

  He says it as though everyone should know the local pawnshop.

  “Do you know this guy?” I ask.

  His e
ars flap again in the negative. “He was asking who sent you.”

  I touch my aching neck. “He could have asked nicer—and in English.”

  “Would it have made a difference?”

  I snort. “No. None of his damn business.”

  I glance back down at the unmoving Russian. Inert, he resembles an old bear-skin rug that’s molted and been tossed out with the trash.

  “Thanks for the help,” I say without looking up. “But you should make yourself scarce. This guy might have friends who are even uglier than he is.”

  When I don’t receive a response, I lift my head to discover that I’m talking to myself. My Good Samaritan has vanished.

  I reach the pay phone without further assault and call for a taxi. I tell Mo that I’m outside Trusty’s Pawn.

  “You short of cash?” Mo asks. “I’ve heard that Russian Tea House can be expensive.”

  I’m always a little surprised that Mo likes to keep an eye on my movements, and I suppose if I had any kind of a private life it might bother me. But as it stands, I’m grateful for his concern.

  “I brought in a cow,” I say, “but all Trusty could give me was a handful of magic beans.”

  Mo laughs and hacks up half a lung. “If you plant ’em, let me know. We’ll go up the beanstalk together. You can distract the giant and I’ll grab the golden goose.”

  “Why do I always get the crappy jobs?”

  “You’ve got more elastic in you. Last time I tried to bounce, I threw my back out.”

  I chuckle through my sore throat. “Yeah, and what was her name?”

  “Cab’s on its way, Dix. Talk soon.”

  Mo hangs up before I can press him further. Obviously, I struck a nerve.

  When the cab arrives, I gratefully slide into the back seat. An overwhelming desire washes over me to curl into the fetal position and pull a blanket over my head. Heck, I may even suck my thumb.

  My neck and throat are throbbing to emphasize each pressure point of the Russian’s indelicate fingers; my shoulders and breastbone ache; my scalp stings from where he yanked my hair; and my wrists feel like they’ve been crushed between two boulders.