by Mike Knowles
I took the case out of Miles’ hands and set it on the floor. I gave the case a shove with the ball of my foot and sent the leather box sliding across the floor. The neck of the case made it into the doorway; the rest of the violin was still on the kitchen floor.
“Kick it into the living room,” Carl called.
“No,” I said. “The case stays where it is until we’re out the back door and still alive. If anyone moves on it, or us, I’ll put a bullet in the middle of that case. You understand me?”
Carl spoke to someone in the living room for a few seconds. Then he said, “I got it.”
I backed for the door and motioned for Miles to do the same. The con man was staring at the violin case. How he felt about the choice I had made was irrelevant. The case stopped being loot and became insurance the second it slid into the doorway. Now it was the only thing keeping Carl out of the kitchen and the Albanians out of the yard.
I stepped out back and checked the backyard — it was empty. The evening air was cool, and it felt good on my fever-damp head. In the distance, a lone siren called out; dogs answered from backyards. The sound was steadily gaining strength as the patrol car wound its way towards what used to be the safe house.
Behind the house was an old wooden fence that had been painted with a single coat of white. Even in the dim light, the more dominant blue underneath was still visible. I shuffled across the yard as fast as I could towards the barrier between properties. Up close, the fence looked in need of repairs; boards were cracked where they weren’t missing and a wide section of the structure bowed inwards in the middle. There was no gate, and no way I would be able to climb it. I turned my back, lifted my right leg, and sent my heel back like a mule. Weakened boards broke under the stress and a small space was now visible in the fence. The space wasn’t big enough for me to slide through, but two more kicks changed that.
I had started through the fence when another shot rang out from inside the house. The noise echoed in the neighbourhood and silenced the barking dogs for a second. More shots sounded as Miles ran, gun in hand, out the back door. He was careening around the side of the house when he noticed me, halfway between yards, looking at him. Miles stopped so quickly that his feet slid on the dead grass and he had to put a hand down on the ground to steady himself.
Miles sped across the lawn and followed me through the fence. We crossed through the yard and kept going across the street through two more yards to another street. We went right and saw a police car speed by the cross street ahead of us on its way to where we had come from.
“What happened in there?” I asked.
“I waited for one of them to reach for the case, then I shot him in the hand.”
Miles thought it was pretty funny.
“Was it Carl?”
Miles shook his head. “I only saw the hand, but it didn’t sound much like Carl.
“He say anything?”
Miles laughed. “Mostly fuck and shit.”
I managed a smile. “We need a car.”
“Why? We aren’t getting over the border in a stolen car. We’re all kinds of screwed. You shot a cop. A cop shot you. Your bullet holes smell terrible. We lost the violin. We almost got killed by another gang of Albanians. Who, by the way, before last week knew there was even one gang of Albanians?”
“Carl did,” I said.
“Right,” Miles said. “And if we manage to make it over the border, I’m guessing the first gang of Albanians we met will not be happy to see us. Not after you killed the boss’s nephew and gave away the violin he needed to use as leverage in his trans-Atlantic Albanian gang war.”
We met an intersection and turned away from the direction the police car had driven in. I scanned the road for something to drive. Another siren was approaching from somewhere. I was getting dizzy and it was hard to focus on abstract concepts. “I didn’t give him the violin.”
“Not technically, maybe. They had guns and more guys, but I don’t think Pyrros is going to see it our way. Mob bosses are stereotypically unreasonable, and there’s a reason for that. They usually have a habit of murdering people who underperform in the workplace.”
I shook my head as I started across the street towards a Hyundai that was way too broken-down-looking to have a car alarm. Miles followed behind me. “I gave him a violin,” I said. “I didn’t give him the violin.”
Miles hustled up beside me. “What are you saying?”
I tried the door and found it locked. I looked around the neighbourhood — it was all quiet. I wound up and sent my elbow into the passenger window. It bounced off.
I bent at the waist and breathed as deep as I could. Sweat dripped from my brow to the pavement. “Tell me you know how to steal a car.”
Miles broke the window without a word, got in, and leaned across the seat to open the other door. By the time I got in the car, Miles had it started. We drove out of the neighbourhood and onto a busier street that ran towards the city.
“What the hell do you mean it wasn’t the violin? It was a Stradivarius. I saw the inscription inside the little hole.”
I wiped my forehead. “Me too. I also saw the markings on the back. Something Carl said about a leopard not changing its spots made me think about the violin. The marks on the back looked like spots. Except the violin we had been paid to steal didn’t have markings like that on the back. The Stradivarius we were after had longer waves like a zebra hide.”
Miles clucked his tongue. “That’s what you are basing this on? I’m sorry, Wilson, but you obviously have a fever and you’re down a few pints of blood. You’re not thinking clearly.”
“You’re right about that, but I can still subtract. Carl said the violin was two hundred years old. He asked us if we wanted to die for a two-hundred-year-old piece of wood.”
“I remember,” Miles said.
“You remember the date on the inside of the violin?”
Miles shook his head.
“1837. That is 176 years, not 288.”
“So Pyrros was wrong about the violin’s date?”
I shook my head. “No, someone beat us to it.”
“What the hell are you talking about? We took that violin off the security guards. I was there when we did it, remember?”
I nodded as I rolled down the window. I stuck my head out like a Labrador and let the moving air dry my head. “You were right,” I said over the rushing air.
“About?”
“The fever, the blood loss, probably the smell. I can’t think straight. Keep the car moving for an hour while I get some sleep.”
“Are you serious? You want me to drive around in a stolen car taken three streets from a shooting?”
I think I nodded, but I couldn’t be sure. I felt my chin touch my chest and then I was out.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
I woke to the sound of an invasion. The invasion was British and led by four men — John, Paul, George, and Ringo. I was on a couch in a dark room. Somewhere nearby a stereo was playing. I tried to sit up and ended up grunting before I fell back down against the cushions. Everything was stiff and all of my clothes were damp with sweat. I looked around the room and came up with nothing. I had no idea where I was, or how I got there. There weren’t any windows, just old built-in shelves and an ancient RCA television on an equally old stand. Across my lap was a rainbow-coloured afghan blanket. I reached into some of the worn wide spaces in the weave and pulled the blanket off my legs. My second attempt to get off the couch was a roll instead of a sit. I fell onto hands and knees with another grunt, but this time I managed to stand using the arm of the sofa. I felt around for the gun I had been carrying and came up with nothing but the two phones that I had in my pockets. I checked the screen on my phone and saw that it was four in the morning.
Using the wall for balance, I walked to the door and pulled it open. The room was at the end
of a hallway. I walked down the hall, as quietly as I could, towards the source of the music. I had heard the Beatles and I still sort of did, but it was background music to some kind of rap playing over the instrumentals.
At the end of the hallway was a cramped living room that contained a couch, a flat-screen TV, a coffee table, and two men. One of the men was Miles. The other was someone I had not met before. I stepped into the living room just as the man beside Miles bent to the table. I heard a loud snort just before his head jerked back up. Miles dove in next. When Miles came up for air, I was next to the couch.
“Look who’s up,” the stranger said. He was younger than Miles, which meant younger than me. His brown hair was shoulder-length and dreadlocked. The wispy moustache under his nose was all pushed to one side from being pressed hard against the plate in the centre of the coffee table. On the glossy black surface of the dinner plate were symmetrical lines of what looked to be coke.
“Hey, man,” Miles said. “This is Tony.”
“This your place?”
“Yeah, man. Mi casa. Bert didn’t tell me your name.”
“Ernie,” I said.
Tony laughed. “Like the gay puppets.”
“Sure,” I said.
“You feel better? Bert said you were really sick.”
“I need more than sleep for what I got,” I said. I turned to Miles. “Why are we here?”
“Only place I knew that was off the street. Figured it was better to turn up on Tony’s doorstep unannounced than to drive around while you slept.”
Tony took a deep inhale of a line and then pinched his nostrils closed. “Like I said, mi casa.”
“How do you feel?” Miles asked.
“Like hell, Bert.”
“You want something to eat? We got pizza,” Tony said.
“No. No food.”
“Ernie,” Miles said. “You look like hell. Maybe food isn’t such a bad idea.”
I shook my head. “It won’t stay down.”
“Then at least take a seat,” Tony said. “Get in on this if you want. Bert is buying.”
“Who?”
“Me,” Miles said.
“Jesus Christ,” Tony said. “Your man, Ernie, is way out of it, Bert.”
“I know,” Miles said. “I need him in it.”
“Take him to a doctor. They open in a couple of hours.”
“I need him in it sooner than that.”
“You thinkin’ a prescription?”
Miles nodded. Both men looked at each other as they came to some kind of silent understanding. I looked from face to face completely in the dark about what was going on. For a second, I had forgotten where I was and who was sitting next to Miles.
“What do you have?”
“A lot of things. What do you want him to do?”
“I need him thinking clearly and able to move around.”
Tony took a deep breath and let it out slow. “How bad is Ernie? I know you said he was sick, but there is blood on his shirt.”
I looked down at my shirt and saw that Tony was telling the truth. Blood had seeped through the gauze over the wound in my shoulder.
“He’s bad,” Miles said. “But he’ll be worse if he doesn’t start using his noggin again.”
“Doctor Tony says laughter is the best medicine, but there is nothing funny about Ernie right now. So we move to the second best medicine and that, my friend Bert, is coke. Two lines stat.”
“Sit down, Ernie.”
Both men were looking at me.
“He means you,” Miles said.
I shuffled to an armchair and fell into it.
“There’s no way he’s going to snort. Besides, he’s too far gone for that. I say we mainline it.”
“Inject it?”
“You got a better way to wake this dude up, Bert?”
There were no jokes this time. No smart-ass remark. Miles was uncharacteristically speechless. He just nodded — all the formal paperwork Doctor Tony needed.
“Give me a sec,” Tony said.
The armchair was comfortable and I felt tired. I watched the stoner walk out of the room through slow blinks. First he was by the couch. Blink. He was on the other side of the room. Blink. He was gone. I blinked a few more times and then someone turned out the light.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The lights came on all at once. My eyes fluttered and suddenly I was awake. Kneeling beside me were two men. Miles and someone else. They were holding my arm down and the new guy, some hippie, was injecting me with something. I put my foot against his head and pushed him away.
“Whoa,” Miles said as I pushed at him with my arm. The needle dangled from a vein in my forearm and I wriggled my wrist until it fell out. Miles took a few steps back and raised his hands, palms out. “Calm down, Ernie. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s me, Bert.”
The new guy was getting off the floor and rubbing at his face.
“I’d say it worked, Bert. Our patient is back in the land of the living.”
“What the hell is he talking about?”
Miles patted the air again. “You were out of it. Delirious and not getting any better. You wouldn’t eat and you kept passing out. I had to find a way to wake you up.”
“What did you do to me?”
“Easy, Ernie, we just injected a bit of coke into you. No big deal.”
I could hear my heart beating in my ears. Too bad for the kid with dreads that it wasn’t loud enough to drown out what he had just said. I glanced around the room and my eye caught a beer bottle sitting next to the television. I picked the bottle up with my good arm and threw it across the four feet separating me from the guy with the dreads. The bottle hit the guy in the forehead and shattered. The dreads shook a little like vines in the wind as their owner’s body caught up to the fact that the brain was no longer switched on. The guy fell back onto the coffee table, cleaving the surface in two on impact.
“Jesus Christ, Wilson. What the hell did you do that for? Tony was just trying to help.”
“Help you, or help me?”
“Both of us. You were fading and there was no chance of getting you to a doctor at this hour, not one that would treat you without calling the cops about your shoulder. I brought you here so we could figure out where the hell our violin is.”
I looked around at the shitty apartment. “To your dealer’s place.”
“I guess you could call Tony my dealer, sure.”
I remembered the message from the Englishman about the cell phone. Miles had made plenty of local calls. I had thought the calls had been to Arben Malota’s men, but the calls were not to any Albanians; they went instead to a white Rastafarian.
“So getting me loaded is your way of helping get the violin back?”
“I can’t figure the angle out, Wilson. I tried. I tried again and again to figure out where we went wrong, but I kept coming up with nothing. I thought if you got some sleep you would wake up a little better, but you didn’t. You were worse.”
“So the next obvious choice is a boost from your fucking dealer?”
“You were shot by a cop, Wilson. If I try to get you to a hospital, or a doctor, you are definitely not going to get any better. We’re going to need help from Pyrros to get you a doctor we can trust. That help will come with a price, and the only currency the Albanian accepts is old violin. We need to get it back. As for the coke, it was Tony’s idea, but it wasn’t a bad one. Sherlock Holmes used cocaine. It helped him think. At least that’s what I heard.”
“A seven-percent solution,” I said. “Is that what your guy used?”
“What?”
“If you and Tony were following the Holmes example. That’s what he used when he needed to keep his brain occupied.”
Miles smiled. His handsome face was made even more han
dsome by the expression. I wanted another bottle. “A few minutes ago, you couldn’t keep track of calling me Bert and yourself Ernie. Now, you’re remembering minute details from books you read as a kid. I’d say it worked.”
My heart was still racing. I swore I could feel the ball of muscle in the centre of my chest bumping against my rib cage. I touched my forehead and found it still wet. I forgot about Miles and did a quick inventory. My left arm hung limp at my side and any kind of movement was bad news. I probed at my side and winced at the response I got from the scorched nerve endings. As bad as the pain was, the fever had me worried most. The fever meant infection and that meant there was a ticking clock. Miles was right, Holmes had used cocaine, but it was to keep his depression at bay between cases. He never used it to help him solve cases. I had no choice but to go where Conan Doyle never did, because whatever time had been on the clock had to have been reduced by the addition of a chemical that was forcing my heart to run at a pace that would make a rabbit jealous.
“What time is it?”
Miles craned his neck so that he could see into the kitchen. “Four fifteen in the morning. What do you remember?”
“Carl crossed us and took the violin, but it wasn’t the violin.”
Miles nodded. “Anything else?”
“You brought me here and shot me up.”
“Alright, so we’re up to speed.”
“Up on speed,” I said.
“I do the jokes. You do the thinking,” Miles said.
“Find me some clean clothes.”
“And while I do, you find us that violin.”
Miles walked out of the living room, down the hall, and into one of the adjoining rooms. He came back a couple minutes later with a pair of jeans, a black T-shirt, and a zip-up nylon jacket. “Good?”
I nodded and stripped.
“Any idea about the violin?”
“Some.”
“Care to share with the group?”
“The violin in the case is the most curious thing.”
“Why?”
“The guards lost possession of the case for a minute when they caught Ilir and Carl in action. What did we pack it with?”
