Seven Demons

by Aidan Truhen

  Doc is beautiful when she smokes a cigar. It is a thing do not judge me.

  I do not fuck with Eiger and the cigar shop because he does not buy anything here and that makes me pay attention but also because I like the little guy and his shop and there is no need to break beautiful things just to upset bad people who like them.

  I fuck with everything else though because I am petty that way.

  * * *

  —

  First it turns out there has been a fire at Karlsbad House in Doha. This is a thing that happens very occasionally there in the new buildings. They are building very fast and they bring in labor from overseas and it is not always the case that those workers are well treated some of them die on the job and in this case indeed someone evidently died and was lost in the superstructure and his corpse caused a short circuit between two phases and la la. Only one floor was affected and the building suppression systems were excellent and performed above spec.

  But now it seems Hans Eiger’s apartment will not be available for his use in the near future. Insurance will cover it of course there will be no—

  But well. There you are that is inconvenient.

  I do not know who the dead guy was. Rex does not tell me when he gets back. He looks a little haunted. A little more like a Demon than he did. Saul asks me if he is okay.

  “Yeah he’s fine.”

  “He doesn’t look fine Jack.”

  “What are you his mother?”

  “Just getting the lie of the land Jack.”

  “Rex was just some guy. Lost his brother to criminals. Wanted to do right by his country.”

  “Look where that gets you.”

  “Right?”

  “There’s an issue around group cohesion when a given component of the group is allowed to feel disconnected and—”

  “What are you like the most heavily armed shrink north and west of the Atlas mountains here?”

  “I am a commando it is the skill set—”

  “I really do not feature Marine Force Recon talking group dynamics in the Humvee—”

  “That is because you are an effete criminal snob with no working knowledge of the complexity of—”

  “And you’re a hairless ape with a cannon fixation—”

  “I have seen you looking at my guns you want guns as big as—”

  “Compensating for—”

  (Zzzzzipp.)

  “Good Lord Saul what am I supposed to do with that?”

  “I am married I am just making a—”

  “Why am I seeing all of the team junk this week—”

  “WOW Saul that is your actual—”

  “Charlie why are you here—”

  “Should I also—”

  “LUCILLE?”

  ZZZZii-

  “O GOOD GOD NO—”

  “No seriously boss should I show everyone my crime vagina now is that a thing we are—”

  “Price why is there dick everywhere NO CHARLIE that will not be necessary also those words I HAVE SAID—”

  “Doc can we go away somewhere please to an island and never meet any of these people again?”

  “After that I will be seeing all of them every time I close my eyes what is WRONG with—”

  “Hi what’d I miss?”

  “…”

  “…”

  “…”

  “Hi Rex.”

  “Hi Rex.”

  “Hi Rex.”

  “Nuffim Rex hi Rex.”

  “Uh. Okay. Well gosh Saul has a very impressive penis.”

  “…”

  “…”

  (ZZZiiip.)

  “That is very kind of you Rex and in no way connected with what I am going to say now which is that we are going to go and get wurst as men do there is a Schnellimbiß that I know. There we shall sit and take the air and drink beer.”

  “O okay Saul that is nice I guess.”

  Saul takes Rex to get wurst he says it is good for broken hearts. Doc gives me the face that says I am basically landfill with biohazards please get my shit together.

  I tell her I have a name and I see her smile.

  * * *

  —

  I put on my Banjo and give an interview to a Spanish newspaper about Ambiguitionism. I claim not to know anything about it. I claim to be a wanted terrorist and murderer. I say that I am here to rob Eiger’s bank.

  The interviewer thinks this is excellent content but it wants some visuals so I take him into the pig barn and show him the X8 and he photographs it exploding a pigskin in the shape of a pig full of what he assumes is not actually a pig.

  It is a pig.

  Doc is not happy about this because now she has only seven pigs but you can buy pigs on the Internet and anyway it’s not like we need more than one pig. I am an evolutionary pressure is all, we will end up with the smartest pig for our job and that is the pig that we want.

  * * *

  —

  I watch Hans Eiger go to his garage but his car will not start. There was a strange noise in the engine in his drive home yesterday. Now the key turns and nothing happens.

  I watch him call Magnus Lindemann and find out that Magnus is not at home.

  Hans Eiger takes a taxi to pick up his suit, which is not ready. He is very sensible about it. It is the sort of thing happens and he understands commerce.

  He is standing in the street when someone from the Karlsbad calls to let him know about the fire. Hans Eiger is not happy now and he is almost terse. Then he takes a deep breath and I can see him master himself. He finishes the call and sighs and decides to go for coffee.

  He sits and drinks a coffee. It is not his practice to drink coffee at this hour but he does it anyway and he has a little schnapps in it to make it fertig.

  He calls his daughter to tell her about his day. Erna tells him she is thinking of moving to Australia.

  Hans Eiger does not respond well to Erna and she hangs up on him.

  He goes to lunch.

  In East Germany it was called Zersetzung: biodegradation. Those assholes would destroy your whole life in little tiny ways before you realized you were under attack. Some people never realized at all. They just died in the gutter thinking the universe was a horror.

  That would actually be fun. I could take years over this. Make it a project.

  But it wouldn’t rob the bank and you have to have certain standards.

  “Boss I have him.”

  “Eiger?”

  “No not him: Mr. Client. Your man Leclerc.”

  “…Tell me all Charlie.”

  * * *

  —

  I am doing the thing where you steeple your hands with your fingertips on your forehead like they are containing your intellect and your rage. I am just trying it out because it’s a villain thing. I quite like it although I have this urge to futz around with the corners of my eyes because they feel like they have grit in them and I could just poke it out and get rid of it and then go back to my steepling. That is not like sticking a fucking paper clip in your ear it is perfectly safe although if you do it after a commercial flight you will catch something because Doc tells me the primary route of infection on aircraft is surface to hand to eye. Anyway the steepling maybe doesn’t work for me but I am trying it.

  It’s going to freak the shit out of Charlie so there’s that.

  “Tell me all, Charlie. Tell me all.”

  “Ooooh show-and-tell!”

  Sometimes the villain thing is harder than you’d think.

  * * *

  —

  Here is Hans Eiger as a strapping young soldier and here is his brother in arms François something or other we do not know because this was in the fucking stone age before the Internet. The guy is Belgian and
he went and joined the Legion with an eye to sidestepping some past mistakes and when he was discharged he took a French passport in the name of François Leclerc, which is somewhat like being a French John Smith. While he was in the Legion, though, Frankie made friends with (picture) a bunch of nice guys including (picture) Hans Eiger and they were you know soldiers together and then after they were soldiers of fortune maybe a little bit and it is unkindly suggested (picture) they were running heroin from Iran through Kosovo and up into Europe with the assistance of assorted fuckwads (picture picture short clip) and these fuckwads were of a Nazi persuasion (arrest photos) that is to say new Fascists with an ethnic beef (riot burning cars men shouting at tiny brown kids on a bus) and old Nazi blood looking to capitalize on the fanboys (New York Times profile seriously motherfuckers you’re WHAT now) in order to rise again, and the criminal element among these guys just love to deal heroin from Mesopotamia into their own countries because they are so motherfucking patriotic. They do this with maximal violence because it is not about money with them although they like money it is about power and specifically the power to fuckwad as much as possible like this toxic masculinity we hear so much about these days that is entirely their jam.

  * * *

  —

  “Boss I am right there with you but their failure to model a more positive manhood to the youth is not our primary concern here—”

  “I know Charlie but completeness and detail are important in a holistic criminal environment—”

  “I haz much details here it are: they are dicks. With tattoos.”

  Charlie is full of true facts.

  (Slideshow. Some of the dicks with tattoos have tattoos on their dicks and this cannot possibly be pleasing to the old guys like: what is Fascism coming to, millennial Nazis have no standards they probably eat avocados like the Socialists and then where are we and la la la.)

  All the same here is Frankie Leclerc being a fuckwad at a demo in Greece and here is Frankie palling it up with those NATO guys who went to jail for drugs and here is Frankie with the Brothers of the White—I don’t know I’m saying maybe Roosters?—the art is awful—anyway they are a motorcycle gang. And here is Frankie with the Count von Badfuckyourself and the Count is known to be the new man in respectable far-right politics in Mitteleuropa and here he is with Bishop Hatlikepeniskirchen who totally reaches out to the poors and understands why they do not like the Africa coming to these green shores of the northern Med that is just good economic sense and entirely compatible with the Christianism and pretty soon I would like to vomit in a bucket please.

  And here is Frankie with a bunch of metal suitcases flying out of Bogotá on a Moldovan emergency medical courier passport and here is our dear friend Hans Eiger hugging him at Basel airport and welcoming the great man to Switzerland and Hans Eiger is a good Swiss and this is after all a medical emergency so it would be rude to overcook the security discussion that would just be inappropriate.

  One billion in emeralds from a conflict zone moved through Colombia into the Kircheisen Festung.

  Mr. Client lied to me.

  He also told me the truth.

  Moohoohaha.

  Here is my truth: Frankie Leclerc is a very bad drug dealer. That is to say that he is a bad man which I do not care about but also very bad at dealing drugs. You can tell because there are so many arrest records and outstanding warrants and such for his people. You can tell because in this dog-eat-dog world of Internets and dark websites and that Frankie is using conventional analog methods and guess what his overheads must suck bigly. Bribes and lawyers and hits and such yes. Frankie is not clearing anything like the kind of money in those cases so Frankie…Frankie has backers and backers are a thing they are an issue they are like investors shareholders they expect results and a guy like Frankie…he does not like someone jogging his arm. So now we begin to see what Hans Eiger and Frankie might have in common now they are all growed up and serious men. Hans needs to advertise and Frankie needs to get out from under and what might they achieve together?

  But Hans Eiger cannot be hanging around with men like Frankie Leclerc surely because Frankie is a bad guy there is paper there is a trail and somewhere there is a file and a dozen of those alarmingly competent Eurocops like—

  Oh.

  Ohhhh yeah.

  So now that I know all about his friend I get my Banjo on again and I go and have lunch with Hans Eiger.

  * * *

  —

  There is only one place in the city where Hans Eiger will eat lunch it is called the Hirschen. He eats there every day at the same table. He never books. He just comes at exactly the same time and he eats the same thing.

  I do not sit at Hans Eiger’s table.

  I sit at the table opposite.

  I order the salmon.

  Hans Eiger absolutely hates salmon. He cannot stand the smell of it.

  The steam blows from my table over his because that is why I chose this table.

  I can see him hating it but it would be remarkably inappropriate in almost every way for him to object so he can’t.

  I eat my salmon. It is excellent. I make little noises.

  Omnomnom.

  Hans Eiger sits under the stuffed badger and the crossed wooden skis and he eats schnitzel. It is reputedly the second best schnitzel in the world but only because the Kronenhalle in Zürich always and forever holds the top slot and you cannot go to the Kronenhalle every day from Bern and still get anything done with your morning.

  Hans Eiger eats his schnitzel and smells my salmon and I look at him and I say:

  “O hai! It is me Banjo! You are Hans Eiger I claim my five dollars!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It is a joke a very old one hi! We met at the art thing with Herr Doktor Doktor Paul how are you?”

  “To be honest Herr—”

  “Banjo Telemark—”

  “Yes of course Herr Telemark I am having a difficult day and I wish to repose—is that how it is said?—to repose myself and consider and so forth—”

  “O I totally understand I am right now making art—hey listen—hey actually can we talk I want to rob your bank—”

  “What?”

  “Obviously not for real! I would not tell you that. That would be insane.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I want to rob your bank—like conceptually—like I want to bring in bulldozers and so on—real actual physical bulldozers that you would never ever allow like American monster machines that Chinese thing they use that lays like a half-mile bridge in a day that kind of—and have fireworks for demolitions and music like ‘The Imperial March’—and maybe performance artists in swimsuits eating fire and someone dressed as a bear because you know Bern—”

  “I do not think it is appropriate to the reputation of my bank—”

  “BULLDOZERS how cool would that be and also maybe actors in commando outfits and we could have pink paintball and—”

  “Inappropriate—”

  “BULLDOZERS—”

  “NO—”

  People are noticing our little chat now and Hans Eiger does not want that because Banjo Telemark is not someone he wants to be seen talking to. Banjo is harshing his Swissness buzz.

  “I get that but I think you’re wrong like how cool is a bank that is so fucking confident that it allows an artwork about—like we would have a giant inflatable Dillinger—”

  “Please speak in a more measured—anyway no—”

  “You could kill it! Shoot it with a cannon! You have just seen off a robbery it is like the gossip of the whole town—”

  “…What gossip?”

  “I am Banjo Telemark Herr Eiger I am connected up the wazoo I know you just shot some motherfucker with a cannon from your battlements and that is exactly what I am talking about—”

  “No Herr
Telemark—”

  “No?”

  “No absolutely not where would you hear such a—”

  “I hear all things Herr Eiger I am special that way—”

  “That is slanderous in the extreme you would do well not to repeat it to a third party it is a disgrace actually—”

  “But it would not be un-Swiss sir not at all—”

  “To discharge a firearm in a public place—”

  “Completely safely you are a crack shot—”

  “Against an unsuspecting adversary—”

  “A wanted murderer—”

  “You sound quite enthusiastic Herr Telemark perhaps you should do this—”

  “O do you think so they do say art is violence and mine possesses a unique—”

  Something is bugging me and I cannot think what it is like a familiar something like a flavor in the air like a coffee I have drunk like perfume and I am almost there I almost get it before the thing happens but I don’t and—

  And that is when a voice says:

  “JACK?!”

  Hans Eiger’s face goes cold and flat as his mountain.

  Back in the day when all I wanted was to put my foot on the face of the whole wide world of coffee—before I was called the Cardinal but after I cut tight around the Sandberg Benin Cartel and dry-gulched those fuckers so that we got rich and they got the other thing and people were starting to pay attention—back then, I was stabled with a guy called Ronald Platt because every straight razor needs a strop.

  There is a whole subclass of execs in the world who are there so that they can get fucked when the house burns down and you know what they say: if you do not know who that person is in your company then that person is you. But I never had time to fuck Ronnie up for my transgressions because of the Hamburg Flamingo Incident.

  There was this bar like a rooftop bar in Hamburg. This was in the ’90s so no one thought it was weird that it was themed tastefully on The Perfumed Garden, which is a fifteenth-century book on fucking written by a guy named Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi. These days it is tolerably unlikely that a bar in a European nation would theme itself on an Arabic sex manual because you know there’s just a whiff of something a little culturally insensitive there plus also the world’s relationship with the, you know, Mysteries of Exotic Islam have shifted since Mike and the Mechanics had a hit with “Seeing Is Believing.” But back then even a decade later it was absolutely supercool to have German university students dressed as genies and houris and cheeky mujahideen and what all the fuck else prancing around bringing hookah pipes and affogato to the finance community. Do not ask me how the fuck that was okay I am not a hospitality person I do not even like people.