The Price You Pay

by Aidan Truhen

  Bullshit, that was Basque separatists.

  On contract. We got fifty per cent.

  I did not know that.

  Nor I. But they show me GoPro. Fucking smooth operation even after the cave-in. Great improvisation.

  That is very fucking cool.

  A week ago I get call, confidential interview, consultancy they say. They make like they’re the Basque like you say. How could they improve? I tell them if they done right preparation then no cave-in. Get a big laugh. Then they game the whole thing, I do live commentary on first viewing of media. I say was brilliant live performance but fucking shitshow in terms of logistics. Best would be to arrange white noise in emergency systems, fog of war. Also is necessary a basic understanding of—well all that shit that I know. They say exactly which is why they want me.

  That is very very cool.

  Is cool if it works. We got option period. I worry they are too much Vegas too many Hong Kong movies not enough spreadsheet. They think I am too old until I run ten K faster than their ranger. Now is all about can I do lounges.

  Lounges, what the fuck lounges?

  Is for schmooze. They say can I also make rain, use cake fork, recognise good wine.

  Wine tasting? Seriously?

  No. I kid. But like that.

  You’re fucking European of course you can do all that shit.

  Nyeh. Apparently I must learn to swim.

  The fuck why?

  Is requirement. I can see logic. So now I go every day to classes with Marco from Surf Sharks. Is me and four children under eight. I am worst. You want I see about the hire?

  Yeah, go ahead it’s massive overkill but maybe they’ve got a gap in the schedule and we can cut a deal.

  I ask. Call back.

  Disconnected.

  Seven Demons. That’s hilarious. That would be ideal, utterly gratuitous. It’s like you see a mouse in your kitchen so you napalm your entire house and then you release a thousand hungry pythons into the ash. Probably it’s too expensive to be worthwhile but then again it addresses the perceptual issue quite nicely and it’s always good to make new relationships. Here’s a softball and some easy money and we all walk away smiling so next time if it’s more serious well hell we all know each other. We’ve got a track record of mutual satisfaction.

  Binglebingle bonglebongle. I don’t change ringtones. Factory default is fine. No one can draw conclusions about ownership from factory default.

  Karenina?

  Hi Jack. You’re our next contract.

  Well we’ll need to discuss terms.

  Nyeh. I don’t say possible employer. You are subject. Subject of contract for Seven Demons. Full rate, unlimited term, Jack.

  I see.

  Da.

  You’re saying I’m the target.

  Sorry Jack. I was not aware.

  You should go Karenina. Thanks for telling me. I don’t want you to get in trouble with your new crew.

  Is legitimate response to service availability inquiry. Contract starts at midnight. Until then we are friends. After, more professional standard applies.

  Sure.

  Maybe best to resolve matter before then or leave town.

  Yeah, well. I’ve got an offer on the table.

  Jack, if we are hired is safe to assume your offer is declined.

  THE FIRST RULE IS YOU GO and I mean go like you’re gone. Get your coat and walk out the door. It’s a particular coat: the one you keep for this moment, not too long so you can run, nondescript so there’s no place you can’t be seen. Not a bag because bags slow you down. You pick it up and everything you need is in it. Passports and cards. Phone still in the plastic you bought from somewhere you never bought any other phone. You put it on and then you go.

  And you are gone.

  Leave by the back way, over the wall into the alley behind what used to be a warehouse, now it’s expensive accommodation for artists who already have galleries. Easy mode: you drill this every month. Hop the crosstown, get seen at the bus station. Duck down and away, get on camera at the airport. Buy a ticket to Martinhal on credit, another from Martinhal to Frankfurt with cash, high-speed rail tickets to Paris and suck it because from Paris I could go anywhere. Go airside with the crowd then come back through arrivals. Junk one passport, open another and disappear in the crowd. They won’t look for that because they’ll assume I want as far away as possible because that much is obvious, and they won’t want me to get away because that’s the contract.

  Uptown hotel, the Glasnost Park: Welcome Mr. Cazarel, it’s been some time but we’re delighted to have you back.

  Paolo Cazarel has only ever done two things. He has opened a couple bank accounts in Belize and he has stayed for a fortnight at the Glasnost Park. He is a private person and the hotel is pleased to comply with his request that they not store his photograph. Many guests feel this way. Paolo likes hot stone massages, Sam Adams and artisanal cheese steaks. Today he’s only interested in items two and three but towards the end of the week he’s booked into the spa and Sonja from Oslo has evidently been told to warm up the pumice and get in extra vetiver.

  Beer and cheese steak on the balcony because why not? Jack Price is on his way to Martinhal. Contract starts at midnight. He’ll still be in the air.

  Fucking Seven Demons. Who even does that? I considered it because it was handed to me on a plate and I thought I might get a deal, but these guys went looking for it and paid the market rate. That is one massive motherfucking escalation right there. Like: Hi, you want to play ping-pong? NO MOTHERFUCKER AND NOW YOUR WHOLE WORLD MUST DIE!

  Yeah okay dude whatever it’s just ping-pong.

  Just no fucking reason for this behaviour. At. All.

  They want me dead and gone and they want it now and in the worst way. It’s totally unnecessary is what it is and you have to respect that. Gotta say it’s also a big step up for me in terms of criminal social cachet getting the Seven Demons sent after me. You really only do that with an end-of-level boss. Downside…well that is obvious. I’m being personally nuked from orbit. The nation of Jack Price is being rendered unto glass and lava.

  Beer and cheese steak. Use the rooftop pool. Look out at the city in a white robe.

  Midnight oh five. My apartment block has just caught fire.

  Midnight thirty and Linden’s probably dead now. Hope Oliver doesn’t work nights.

  Charlie, tell me you really got out of town. Get the fuck gone girl.

  Midnight fifty one my top-layer online presence has burned down, my disposable email accounts for dealing and the websites for my food business: Karenina’s gone through it for signs of life. Some of my outsource kids are no doubt having a fucking terrible night and by dawn I figure at least a few of them will have tragically overdosed or been killed in a drive-by. Some others will have rolled over on me and made some shit up because they don’t have anything to give up. Figure the Demons to know that, figure them to chase down the leads anyway and use that as an excuse to leave the kids alive. Point made already and no one wants to overcook it plus if you kill everyone in a city who’s taking those jobs then who’s going to do those jobs for you when you want them done? You going in-house with everything? Fuck no you’re not. Not with Karenina running logistics because who do you think showed me how to set up? She’s fucking allergic to long-term hire at the street level.

  It’s dawn and I have ceased to exist. Three deaths at a motel in Martinhal. Figure someone on the flight looked enough like me. Figure they’ll know he wasn’t and now they’re stuck because they didn’t find out about Frankfurt until after the connecting flight had left. In a while they’ll find out about Paris but they’ll know that could mean anything. No one checks you in on a train. Lots of places there’s no CCTV. Maybe the guard remembers you were there, maybe not. Maybe that memory is accurate, maybe not. Maybe you sa
t in the bar. Maybe you got out at the border, maybe you caught a connecting train to Dijon, London, Trieste. Analogue, baby. Fucking analogue. They have to accept I’m in the wind, get ready for a longer game of seek and find. If I was running, that’s how I’d do it and it would have worked.

  Their trouble is that Karenina showed me her A game. I paid for it and she gave it to me and then I had my guy Tucker go over it and then I fucked it all around myself because when you have traded coffee for a decade you learn things about how to fuck with systems to your benefit. You know how to disappear a warehouse, how to hollow out a container, how to hide a single lot on a street so that it all but vanishes from the city and the world even when you’re staring right at it. You learn those things if you’re sharp and I am. Here’s how sharp I am: there are almost no pictures of me on the internet. Why should there be? There are actor headshots for my mom-and-pop food operation, maybe a grainy team photo from the 90s but most likely that fucker was on actual film. But since then I’ve been all about invisible. Recently the border guys maybe have some shots of me with my old nose and old teeth, but now my biometrics are all fucked up. So likely if you’ve never met me you got no idea what I look like. Karenina’s met me of course—but try right now picturing someone you know and love. Try and hold their face still in your mind and watch how it slips away. You know them. But unless you’re a particular sort of person, you don’t really know what they look like.

  You don’t know what I look like.

  Two more dead at Frankfurt station. Emotional intensity, you got to give them that. Serious people these Seven Demons. I mean dedicated and completely without limits.

  The Seven Demons are coming for me and they will never stop. They’ve taken the contract and that’s it. They will never, ever stop. I’m a hunted man now, the walking dead. Can’t have friends can’t have a business and eventually they’ll find something and then they’ll find me. One day in a fucking bar in Lima or whatever: splat. Night night Jack.

  I’m a dead man.

  You know what this is? I got to sit down. You know what this is? This is.

  The best.

  Day.

  Of my life.

  Oh fuck yes it is.

  I have sat and waited for the time when I would know exactly who I was and what I had to do and now it has arrived and it’s almost too much. In this moment I am completely perfect. This moment is completely perfect around me.

  You know what I cannot stand? Shades of grey and fine distinctions and issues of legitimate confusion. I hate the restraint we put on ourselves because we have to be polite and sensible and above all proportionate. I am good at those things but they turn the heart to coal. I read in a medical study where every time we say something we don’t mean we actually damage the coronary muscle. Note that it does not say lie. You can lie and still mean it. You can say that you’re a good person and all you want is to be happy and you can mean that and it’s a lie because you’re a professional leg-breaker. You’re not a good person, but you mean it when you say you are. When that same person stands in court and says they’re sorry for what they did they’re killing themselves on the stand in front of the judge, taking years off their own lives with that lie. They can feel the bitter twist of cortisol and they don’t even realise how much that is hurting them.

  I’m under the eye of the Seven Demons. If I call Sarah right now she’ll hang up and then I won’t get through next time. She’ll feel bad about that but she will do it because she’s not insane. If I call Billy he will offer me a drink and if I go and meet him he will cold cock me and claim a finder’s fee. I’m alone in the world. It’s open season on Jack.

  Best day of my life.

  Because now I can try all the things I’ve always wanted to try and it’s not disproportionate it’s just fucking inspired. First thing I need is a little online time at the Glasnost Park’s business suite.

  SEVEN-THIRTY A.M. I CALL LEO. Leo’s job is to arrest fuckers like the Seven Demons though in practice that is never going to happen. That does not mean it’s not worth throwing some chaff their way. And then there’s another thing. A lot depends on Leo’s disposition here.

  Leo I need to SWAT some fuckers.

  Jack—

  No Leo I’m not kidding I need to—

  Jack—

  I need to SWAT them but hard. I need those boys hopped up on some serious patriotic fervour and believing they are dealing with a live threat. Massive casualties. And afterwards there will need to be evidence that it was so, and I will provide that, okay, but—

  Jack I am calling clause four.

  The fuck?

  Clause four Jack, the hammer is coming down. It’s federal okay it’s the fucking end of the world so meet me and bring my exit and I’ll give you all the details and then I’m gone. I’m burned Jack. They don’t know it yet but they’re going to find me and then I am burned.

  You sure?

  Yeah Jack I’m sure.

  Leo—

  It’s over Jack I am done.

  Okay Leo I understand.

  Yeah?

  Yeah. As promised. I’m good for it.

  Okay Jack. Thank you. Means a lot.

  My word is my bond Leo. A man stands by his word. Otherwise the whole world just burns.

  Okay.

  You got to appreciate the craftsmanship here. They know I’ve left the country but they set everything in motion all at the same time so that my exits would be burning before I smelled the fire. If I hadn’t gotten out when I did—if I’d had some idea of mustering the troops, fighting an organised retreat or whatever—this would fuck me up. Nice. But Leo is sad again.

  I’m sorry I can’t do more Jack but—

  It’s okay Leo, I get it, clause four. I’m good for it and I’ll take care of Leena and the kids like college whatever until you can work out your shit. That’s a courtesy because we’re friends not just business associates. Escrow man totally permanent and isolated so don’t think about it just go. You got your coat?

  Yeah.

  Okay good.

  Where do you want to meet? I’m free now.

  Go for a walk.

  Where?

  Doesn’t matter I’ll find you.

  How the fuck you gonna do that?

  I hacked your phone.

  The fuck?

  I don’t listen in Leo I just like to know where you are.

  Oh fuck you Jack you are the most—

  I’m an asshole Leo that is my jam.

  (Bullshit. I’m watching him from an empty office. No one thinks of that any more, it’s always about the NSA but actually it’s just easier in a big city to find an empty space and get someone to let you in. Realtor cost me five hundred dollars down, fifteen hundred to follow at end of day. Told her I was a management type taking a confidential client meeting over a celebrity sex tape case. But now I’m looking at Leo and Leo’s looking at his phone like it just tried to put its tongue in his ear.)

  Leo please just tell me out loud that you’re not dumb enough—

  No Jack—

  Tell me you did not try to sell this both ways—

  No Jack you’re my out and these fuckers are crazy there is no way.

  Okay.

  Okay.

  Okay man I have pushed the button it’s done. Your money is on the move now you got to follow it because it is not coming home. There is no going back Leo none at all. Now get out of there man don’t be a hero it’s not the time.

  See you soon Jack.

  And he does man, he just puts on his coat. Good boy Leo. Good boy.

  CLAUSE FOUR IS GOOD NIGHT. It’s to say that Leo is burned and it’s agreed that in that case I will take care of him, my preemptive counter to the moment someone offers him a plea. Run to me and I’ll take care of it, get you to Ecuador, set you up in a house
. We’ve joked about it but it’s a solemn covenant between us. Leo is my keystone. If he goes the arch goes like the delicate balance of my criminal ecosystem whatever. Clause four keeps him strong. And here he is and the sky is falling. He walks like a guy waiting to get arrested like someone’s gonna put their hand on him right now here by this fountain.

  Hey man.

  I’m sorry Jack they’re on me. They’re in my taxes for Christ’s sake.

  Jesus Leo don’t tell me you pay taxes?

  I—

  Kidding, Leo. I gave you Tucker, remember?

  Tucker does money. In and out of the world, and all around the mulberry bush. Tucker can make money dress up and dance or lie quiet like a dead thing. Tucker is Houdini is Svengali is Dom Pérignon.

  Yeah, that’s right, you gave me Tucker.

  And Tucker’s on this already, okay? Your problems are in the past you are leaving on a jet plane. Sing it man put a bounce in your step and a smile on your face you’re financially independent as a fucking Rockerfeller and in a few hours this will all be a great cocktail story that you obviously will never fucking tell a living soul. So maybe just get your daiquiri and smirk at the waitress. I don’t know man whatever opens your little paper umbrella.

  Jack did you take on the Seven Demons?

  Well yeah but no but yeah but there’s actually only six of them right now plus the Russian, she’s a try-out.

  Jack it’s the Seven Demons.

  I am aware of that Leo.

  It’s the fucking Seven Demons, Jack.

  Yes Leo. The Seven Demons are on me and that is their problem not yours. You’re out now it’s okay you are clear. But you know what’s happening right now in their house? One of the demons, I’m gonna say Dong Ha Li, is calling home and his mama is saying like what’s this I hear Dong Ha Li, that I hear you are doing? And Dong Ha Li is all like awww Maaa! But she’s pissed, Leo! She’s righteously pissed. And do you know what Ma Dong is saying to her son?

  Well Jack I got to object to something there, I think you’re going to find that in Korea he’s Li Dong-ha, right. So she’s not Mrs. Dong, she’d be Mrs. Li but Korean women don’t take their husbands’ names and you don’t marry someone with the same name that’s like incest there so in fact Li Dong-ha’s mama would have to be like Mrs. Park or whatever. That’s a really common name in Korea.