Doubled or Nothing

by Warren Esby

  “And it didn’t bother you?”

  “Not really. It was just like shooting those pigs. Most men are pigs anyway, and this one actually looked like a pig. I just put a real pig’s face on him in my mind, so to speak, and pulled the trigger making believe I was back at the pig farm.”

  “So you kill by thinking of your victim as a pig and you think of men as pigs. Do you think of me as a pig?”

  “Oh, no. You’re too cute to be a pig. Well maybe a cute little piggy.” She smiled when she said that. “But you haven’t acted like a pig yet. That’s when I think of men as being pigs and put pig faces on them in my mind, when they act like pigs to me. So far I like you, although I’m not sure how to classify your friend Astrid. I haven’t thought of women as being pigs yet.”

  I thanked her for not thinking of me as being a pig, yet, and made a note to myself not to do anything that would make her think of me as the typical male pig.

  “So you were smooching with Ivor on the bench. Do you think he was a creep because he forced himself on you?”

  “We weren’t really smooching, only pretending. I would never let him touch me for real. And he never would have forced himself on me. He didn’t really like girls, just little boys.”

  “You mean he was a pedophile.”

  “Not exactly. He used to like to show off in front of little boys and boss them around and make them afraid of him. He became a camp counselor, and he used to make the boys in his cabin march in formation and dig foxholes and go to the bathroom in the forest and use leaves for toilet paper and stuff like that to toughen them up. And if they complained he would lock them in the bathroom and make them eat up all of their broccoli as punishment. And, to toughen them up, he would make them throw away all the goodies their mothers sent. They were only allowed to eat trail mix and granola bars and Ramen noodles. He said the Ramen noodles were to prepare them for college. They had come to camp for fun, and he wouldn’t let anyone have fun, so they complained to their mommies and they fired him. He said that was okay with him since seeing all those scrapes and bruises on their knees made him queasy so it wasn’t fun for him either. He preferred working at the YMCA.

  “So how did you end up with Igor and Vladimir? Did they make you part of the cell after Ivor died?”

  “Oh no. The cell was only supposed to have three people and no replacements were allowed. Since Ivor was the hit man but couldn’t do it, I had to. But it wasn’t official. I only did it out of loyalty to the Federovs. The others knew they would get in trouble if their Russian contacts knew about me, so they didn’t tell them anything. Their contacts think that only Igor and Valdimir are left in the cell.”

  “But you have a black Buick Regal to drive.”

  “That was Ivor’s. They don’t care about it. It’s in Ivor’s name and they think his parents are using it.”

  “So if you’re not really officially working for the Russians, why not just stop?”

  “Because like I told you, the Federovs want me to finish the mission so they won’t feel like Ivor’s life was wasted. Then I’ll quit.”

  “Will they let you?”

  “It is only Igor and Vladimir who know about me and they’re afraid of me. Whenever they do something I don’t like I make pig noises at them and tell them they are beginning to look like pigs to me and they back off. They tell me I’m a cold blooded killer with ice water in my veins. Now isn’t that a stupid thing to say. I mean, it’s redundant isn’t it? Of course I would be cold blooded if I had ice water in my veins.” I just nodded in agreement.

  “What will happen to them when the mission is over?”

  “They’ll go back to Russia to live. And so will the Federovs.”

  “And what will you do then?”

  “Who knows? Get a job, I guess. Right now Vladimir gives me money. Before him, Ivor did. But that will end when they go back. Maybe I can become a butcher then. It’s the only thing I know how to do, besides killing people. I have a college degree, but it’s in a pretty worthless field as far as I can tell. I’d rather get a job killing people since that’s what I’m good at doing, but I don’t know where to go to apply for that kind of a job. Do you think I could work for the CIA maybe? I’m a good red blooded American citizen, even if my red blood is cold red blood.”

  I lied and said, “I wouldn’t know where you would apply.”

  “Are you sure? Vladimir thinks that you might also be a double agent or something.”

  I didn’t exactly deny working for the CIA, I just said, “If I were with the CIA, wouldn’t I have had him and Igor arrested by now? There’s nothing to be gained letting them roam around since they don’t have any secrets, but are just looking for some. Their value to the government has been realized already. They bought GM cars.”

  “That makes sense,” she agreed but I wasn’t sure she believed me.

  Chapter 27

  When dinner time came around, I suggested we leave Laundromat Town and go someplace else to eat since she didn’t want any more Mexican food although she did admit that she liked tortilla soup and Jarritos Tamarindo. I asked her what she felt like eating. She said something along the lines of food that most Americans ate, not what Mexicans like.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Like a good lasagna or maybe ravioli or linguini.”

  “In other words, you feel like Italian food.”

  “Yes. Do you know any good Italian restaurants?”

  I remembered there was an Italian restaurant in the Del Mar Plaza up on that balcony area that I had gone up onto when I first came to San Diego, the one that had all those well-dressed people and the restaurants that I couldn’t afford. Well I now could afford to eat at a nice restaurant, so I offered to take Anya there. She went into the bathroom to get ready and I went to my stash and took out five hundred dollar bills. We went to the restaurant called Il Fornaio and ate outside at a table facing the Pacific and watched the sun set as we ate. It was very romantic and Anya seemed very happy and relaxed. I wondered, as we sat there, if Ben and Jerry had seen me with Anya and what they must be thinking. I also wondered, kind of too late, if they had my placed bugged and had been listening to Anya and me while enjoying a gelato or a Flavor of the Month. They hadn’t felt the need to, as I later found out, which had both its good points and bad points. Nevertheless, as these thoughts crossed my mind, I didn’t think I could enjoy the rest of the evening’s scheduled activities back in my apartment, so I suggested to Anya that we go across the street to the L’Auberge Inn and rent a room for the night. She agreed, especially since I told her I didn’t think either of us was in any condition to drive after cocktails and a whole bottle of chianti.

  We left the Expedition in the parking garage underneath the restaurant and walked across the street to the inn. I figured that if Ben and Jerry had followed me, they could sit there all night. I hoped for their sake they knew there was an ice cream place upstairs near the restaurants. I didn’t have to worry because they hadn’t followed me.

  Anya and I checked in to the inn and were delighted to have a king sized bed to romp around on. I only had a queen sized bed in my apartment. A king gives you a lot more room in which to be kinky, and we both took advantage of the extra space. During the course of that night I got an answer to another question that was bothering me. How did Ivor die?

  “It was an accident,” she said and she laughed.

  “You killed him by accident?”

  “Oh, I didn’t kill him. Igor did.” And then she explained, “We had all come down into the shooting range that morning. It wasn’t supposed to be opened until the afternoon, but Ivor would let us come down and practice with our guns when it wasn’t open. He had all the keys. And you know how he was very safety conscious about guns. He never let anyone load them except at the firing line and only let people point them down range and never fire until he gave the word. Well Igor and Vladimir used to tease him about that. They said he was just too overboard about gun safety, too fanatical. No o
ne would get hurt as long as they didn’t actually pull the trigger. Anyway, we were shooting at the range, and Ivor was shooting his target pistol between Igor and Vladimir, and Vladimir turned around with his gun in his hand instead of laying it down on the shelf in front of him. Ivor got mad and started yelling at him and cursing, and Vladimir just laughed at him and then he pointed the gun at him and said, ‘bang, bang, you’re dead,’ just like he was a kid playing cowboys and Indians on a playground. Ivor reached over towards him, but Vladimir stepped back out of the way. And then Igor joined in the fun and pointed his gun at Ivor and said, ‘bang, bang,’ and then Ivor turned on him. Then Vladimir said, ‘bang, bang,’ again and Ivor turned back towards him and then turned quickly back again to catch Igor since he knew Igor would do it again and he would be ready to grab him. However, Igor was so surprised that, as Ivor started to turn back unexpectedly, he inadvertently squeezed the trigger by mistake as he was saying ‘bang, bang,’ and he shot Ivor in the head.”

  “Oh no. What did you do next? What happened next?”

  She laughed again as she remembered. “Well they both panicked and ran towards Ivor, but he fell and they banged into each other and they both dropped their little Berettas and both the little guns skittered away. They didn’t know what to do, and so I told them they should make it look like a suicide by placing the gun next to Ivor’s hand, and they agreed. They tried to figure out which gun had been used and ended up having to guess because both of the guns they dropped had landed next to each other. They picked one up, wiped it free of fingerprints, put it next to Ivor’s hand, and then we left. We found out later it was the wrong gun. But it was so funny watching those two panic.”

  “And it didn’t bother you to see Ivor lying there dead?”

  “Not really. The only thing that bothered me was that I knew that I would have to tell his parents that he had died. But they took it better than I thought they would. I told them that we had found him dead and we didn’t know who did it. They said they were proud he had died in the service of Mother Russia and that no one had found out that he was a coward and couldn’t do his job and had to have a girl do it for him. They also said they were proud of me and wanted me to finish the job that Ivor was supposed to do, and I agreed to continue. So here I am.” And as she said that, she threw the covers off and exposed her beautiful body and said those four or five little words I also like to hear. She said, “Let’s have sex again.” She didn’t need to use the six or eight words I like to hear because neither of us was horny any longer. She only needed four or five. It was more succinct, but it had the same results.

  The next morning after breakfast in bed and more sex, we did get to the beach, but it was across the street from the inn in Del Mar. We didn’t swim because we didn’t have bathing suits. We just sat and talked for a while and realized we had a lot in common from our attitude toward killing animals and people to our attitudes about the world and life in general. We headed back to Laundromat Town and, as we drove back, I asked her when I could expect to see her again. She said she didn’t know her schedule yet. Igor and Vladimir were not due back from Mexico until the afternoon. She asked if I would be working as usual, and when I said I would be, she said that would make their job easy and she would try to arrange it so she was on duty the next weekend, but that if I made one of those stops on the way home during the week, the kind that made her feel queasy, then I could forget about expecting her to be on weekend duty. She told me that if and when we decided to have an exclusive relationship, if she ever caught me cheating on her she would kill me. For most people that would be an idle threat, one that is said quite often as a matter of course. You know how some people say, “If you see so and so again, I’ll kill you,” or “I’ll kill you if you do that to me again.” Most people don’t take those words literally. In her case, I did.

  I also asked her something else that had been bothering me since she told me about killing that Russian agent. What had happened to the gun she had used? She had said it had been Ivor’s, and I was wondering if it was the one in my pocket because if they found the body at the bottom of Walden Pond, and the ballistics matched the one in my pocket, then they would have a real murder charge to pin on me. Fortunately she said, unlike stupid Igor and Vladimir, she had the foresight to throw the correct gun into Walden Pond, wiped free of fingerprints, and they could not pin it on either her or Ivor. She had worn gloves any way since it was cold out. They had chosen a raw early winter day since they knew there wouldn’t be anyone out there.

  I asked if she had been given her own gun and what kind was it. She told me it was a .25 ACP caliber Beretta automatic and they all had to carry them.

  I then asked her, “Where did you get it? Is it the other one that they had at the gun range when Ivor was killed? Since you left Ivor’s in the pond and another one at the range, then if each member of the cell had one, you should have the only one remaining.” I was hopeful that this was the case since it would mean that Ivor and Vladimir were no longer armed and couldn’t ‘accidently’ kill anyone else, like me.

  “Oh no. We had six to begin with. Apparently they’re cheaper by the half dozen. We each have one in addition to the two you mentioned.”

  “Who has the sixth? Do you have two since you’re responsible for the killing?”

  “No, I only have one. That’s all I need. Ivor had the sixth, but he didn’t have it with him when he died and we don’t know where it is. No matter. We each have one. That’s all we need.”

  When we got back, I drove to the apartment and opened it to let Anya get the wig so she could resume being Olga and then took her back to where she had parked the Buick Regal. I kissed her goodbye and told her I would be faithful. No overnight stops on my way home. She told me that I had to ‘cross my heart and hope to die’ if I lied. I did because I knew it was the truth. I mean I knew I would die if I lied. She smiled and said, “Ta Ta,” just like she did in Santa Fe. She drove off. She was wearing the black wig again when she did.

  I drove back to Baskin Robbins where I had seen a brand new Escalade parked. I went inside and told Ben and Jerry how much I admired their dedication for working on Sunday. I also asked Ben how much he liked the new Escalade Hybrid. He said it was really nice. He said that it got an additional half mile per gallon compared to the one he had before and only cost an additional seven thousand dollars. What a bargain, I thought.

  They asked about my weekend, and I said it was fine. I told them about buying a used Ford Expedition. Ben was ecstatic but tried not to show it. He said,

  “You know we can’t send you down there next time in a Ford. It just won’t do. You’ll have to take my Escalade for the last run we owe them.”

  If I had known that, I would have tried to get a Ford with fewer door dings and scratches than the one I had bought. I don’t like door dings and scratches even though the Corolla had been covered with them. There are so many people who are just inconsiderate and just bang their doors open not caring what they hit. They’re the ones that complain the most when it happens to them. And when I hear them complain, I just make sure I key their car when I come back to get mine. Oh well. Such is life. I wondered what I would be driving back from Mexico the next time.

  They didn’t mention Olga/Anya. I thought it must have been because she worked for them, although she had said she only was doing what she was doing as a favor to the Federovs and didn’t have another job. If she did work for them, she would never have admitted it to me anyway so there would have been no reason for me to ask. I figured that she may have asked me about trying to get a job with the CIA as a ruse to throw me off.

  Jerry then reminded me again that my reprieve would only last until after the next run down to Mexico and then I would be expected to turn over the goods after that. By that time I would have approximately two and a half million in a bank in the Cayman Islands, and they would benefit from it if I didn’t cooperate. Well, that gave me a few more weeks anyway. By that time I might yet be able to come
up with some strategy to make me valuable enough to them to let me live and work for them without them feeling they had to kill me. But it was worrisome. I mean knowing the girl you are sleeping with may be given the order to kill you and the guys you eat breakfast with may be given a similar order. I began having nightmares about it. I dreamt that Olga shot me after taking off her wig under the pretense that we were going to have sex and then Anya shot me and then put the wig back on and told me she did it for the bunnies. I also dreamt that neither Ben nor Jerry would shoot at me with their new guns because I had dressed up as a giant Baskin Robbins ice cream container.

  I decided to try and prove I had value to Ben and Jerry alive by telling them about the body that was in Walden Pond.

  “Oh, we know about that. It’s not there anymore. We had a homing device on that guy’s car. When it didn’t move for twelve hours, we went out there and found the guy’s car and had the pond dredged the next day. We found him and the gun. That’s old news. You’re not telling us anything we didn’t know except it does confirm to us that you’re working for them and we don’t have to worry about making you a double agent. You’ve essentially admitted to being a ‘single’ agent as you like to call it and that information establishes your bona fides. It also qualifies you for an Alpha-Rho-Alpha 50-3 account when you retire, if you retire alive, that is.