by Mike Knowles
“Huh?”
“Steve, it’s Wilson . . . I need . . . help here.”
The door buzzed, and I pulled it open. Steve was already coming down the stairs in a pair of boxers. His hard body, menacing in the stairway light, contrasted with his shaggy bed hair; he looked like a clown in a prison yard.
He helped me up the stairs to the kitchen. “You need to move my car and wipe it down, your door buzzer too. There’s a bag and a gun on the seat. I need them . . . please.”
Steve left wordlessly while Sandra, in a robe, pulled the windbreaker off me. It crinkled and cracked with caked dry blood. Sandra had seen cuts and bruises, but never bullet holes. She took a long look at me then stood and went to the phone.
“No doctors.”
“But you’re shot. I can’t help you. You need a doctor. You could die.”
“I know people who can take care of it, but not tonight,” I said.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What can I do?” Her voice sounded defeated but also a little angry.
“Just tape gauze around it and cover it in plastic wrap. Try to clean me up so I don’t look shot.”
“You look like hell,” she said. “You’re pale, white as a ghost.”
“Sandra, please, just help me. I’ll be okay. I have a job to finish, then I’ll get some help.”
Pissed, Sandra left the room and came back with two washcloths, gauze, medical tape, and alcohol. She cut the shirt off me with kitchen scissors and used the washcloths to clean the blood off my upper body. Steve came in and put the pillowcase down by the door as Sandra was trying to tape gauze to the wound. The gauze had fallen off twice, and she kept having to start again. Wordlessly Steve understood. He pushed the gauze down hard and helped Sandra tape. I grunted with the pain of Steve’s first aid, but he never let up.
When they had taped the gauze down I said, “Plastic wrap.”
Steve went to the counter as Sandra spoke. “Why do you need that?”
“If you put it on tight and tape it down it will hold everything together and make it less bulky under a shirt. It will hide what happened,” I said.
“Why would you want to hide it?”
“So no one else finds out it happened and tries to do the same thing again,” Steve said.
His answer summed up the issue and it was good enough for Sandra. She used one hand to tilt my neck so she and Steve could wrap over my shoulder. This time Sandra wasn’t as afraid, or tender. Nothing fell on the floor; she pushed hard with the plastic wrap, making sure the dressings would hold.
“Car hid?” I asked.
“Yep,” was all he said as the box of plastic wrap went around and around my bicep.
The bullet had hit me high in the back of the arm. I couldn’t see a hole in the front, so the slug still had to be in the meat of my arm. The nature of the wound meant that I could still lift my arm and move it in toward my body using my bicep, but any pushing movement was out of the question.
Steve spoke so quietly it was hard to hear him over the hum of the fridge. “The arm looks like shit. You can’t leave it like this.”
“It won’t be like this long,” I said. “Can I get a shirt off you?”
Sandra left the room without a word. Seconds later, I heard drawers opening and slamming. She came back with a high school sweatshirt.
“No good. People will know it’s not mine, and it could be traced back to you. I need something like a plain long-sleeve shirt, dark just in case blood leaks through.”
She left the room again without a word. “She’s pissed,” I said. Steve didn’t respond. “Where’s the car?”
“Around back. Beside the Dumpster. You can’t see it from the road.”
“It won’t be there long. In the morning I need some pants, new ones, yours are too small. After that I’m gone.”
Sandra came back in with a long-sleeve shirt. Its surface had a waffled pattern like long johns. The shirt was old and dark blue; it reminded me of the type of shirt a construction worker would wear under his flannel.
“Thanks,” I said. “For everything. I just need to rest for a while. In the morning I’ll be gone.”
“Eat whatever you want, I’ll get you pants in the morning.”
Steve and Sandra got up to go to bed. Steve slapped my back as he walked by and chuckled when I gasped. Sandra was only able to manage a weak smile as she passed me. The bedroom door closed quietly. I heard the wood rub against the jamb and then a loud slam completing the seal. I could hear the sound of quick discussion going on inside the room, but there was no yelling.
With my right hand I pulled the Glock from the holster at my back and put it on the table. Quietly I got up and moved to the fridge. There weren’t any leftovers, so I took an apple. I winced as I bent to get it from the crisper. I ate the apple silently as I looked through the cupboards. I pulled a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts down and took them to the table. I ate the rest of the apple and the entire box of high-calorie pastries without pause. The sugary crap went down slow, but I was suddenly too exhausted to get up for a drink. When I was done, I slept face down at the table.
At seven-thirty Steve slapped my head lightly, waking me up. I put the Glock behind my back right away and looked at Steve.
“Pants,” was all he said.
“Thirty-two in the waist and thirty-four in the leg. Some kind of work pants, khakis, the kind that won’t rip easy.”
I stood up, shakily, and gave Steve three twenties. “Grab some of those caffeine drinks too.”
Steve left without another word, and I had three more apples. I sat with my legs crossed, waiting for Sandra to finish in the bathroom. She must have gone in while I was face down at the table. Twenty agonizing minutes later she walked past the kitchen, hair up in a towel, dressed in a faded pink robe. I moved slow into the foggy, cramped bathroom and sat, because, shaky as I was, it would be neater. When I finished, I looked in the mirror at the shirt Sandra had given me. It was clean; no blood had leaked through overnight. The pattern in the shirt even made the bulge of the bandage less noticeable.
Steve came back half an hour later as I was stretching in the kitchen, using one arm on the counter to stabilize me. The car crash, gunshot, and nap at the table had left me aching in every possible way. He threw the pants at me, and I managed to catch the bag with my right hand. I put it on the counter and pulled free the pants and two four packs of Red Bull. I put the holster and Glock on the counter and dropped my pants on the spot. If Steve cared he didn’t show it. The work pants were olive green and they fit fine. Steve left the room as I transferred my belt to the new pants, and came back with a blue button-up oxford-cloth shirt.
“To cover up the gun,” was all he said.
The shirt fit a little snug, but left unbuttoned it was a good fit, and it concealed the Glock better than the tight blue shirt.
I chugged three Red Bulls without pausing and smiled as the liquid caffeine hit me. “Steve,” I said. “Thanks for everything.”
“What are friends for? Car keys are in your pillowcase.”
I yelled, “Thanks, Sandra.”
She screamed something back about a doctor. As I picked up the pillowcase heavy with lockbox, laptops, and shotgun, I caught Steve’s eye.
“You need me, you call,” he said.
“I won’t.”
“You need me, you call,” he said again, and then he turned around and walked back into the bedroom to see Sandra.
I went down the stairs riding an artificial buzz. I didn’t slip and I didn’t fall. My car was out back where Steve had said he left it. When I opened the door a heavy smell of cleaning products wafted off the interior. Steve must have given the car a once-over. I thought to myself, a friend who will clean up dried blood for you is a friend for life.
I drove back to the office without any swerving or accidents, parked the car, and slowly walked up the stairs to the office. I moved cautiously, but there was no one waiting for me in the stairs or the hall
way.
In the office, I made a strong cup of tea and sat by the window, letting it work its magic. Outside the city had woken. People scurried out of their holes and went frantically to their posts. They all wore the same uniform at this hour. The men were in pleated pants, pressed shirts, ties, but no jackets. The women all had skirts of sensible lengths accessorized with sensible heels. These were the middle-class urban go-getters. They were into the office first, coffee in hand, and out last, migraine in head. They would all be promoted by thirty, and dead by fifty.
The minutes clicked by, and each second was marked by a throb in my arm. I went to the bathroom and brought back the bottle of Advil, using one arm and my teeth to force open the child-proof top. Eight of the pills went into my mouth, and I winced at the bitter taste underneath the sweet coating. I couldn’t risk trying to get anything stronger from the contacts I had in the city. It would be a dead giveaway to anyone looking for a person who was shot last night. The hard stuff wouldn’t help me now anyway. I had to keep my head clear for everything that was to come.
I winced as I got up and went to the closet. I clumsily moved the invisible panel out of the back of the closet with my one good arm. I put the shotgun in, knowing that I needed to get rid of it as soon as possible, and pulled out the cell phone I took off Igor. Getting the panel back in place was a challenge, but I managed — dampening my forehead with exertion in the process. I powered up the cell phone, dialled the number I had watched Mikhail enter not long ago. After two rings, I was greeted in Russian.
“Get me Sergei.”
“I am very sorry,” said a voice that suddenly contained no trace of an accent. “There is no one here by that name at this number.”
“Tell him it’s Wilson and it’s done.”
“I believe you are confused, sir. I think . . .”
“Do you have call display?”
“Sir, you are . . .”
“Do you have call display?”
“Yes sir, we do, but I don’t . . .”
“Listen, you tell Sergei I’ll be waiting for his call at this number.”
I hung up the phone without another word and waited. It was one minute before Igor’s cell phone chirped. I let it ring three times before I answered.
“Da?” I said.
There was a long pause before I heard a response. “You have what we spoke of?” It was the same calm, cool, heavily accented voice I’d heard before. The pause before he spoke let me know I had cracked the facade he was putting on.
“Da,” I said.
“Cut the shit. You are on thin ice as it is. You have done things no one would dare, and now you speak to me with a smart mouth?” The crack in his facade had burst wide open.
I thought of the death squad who attacked the computer geeks and decided to can the humour. “I have all of it.”
“You are sure?”
“The disks and everything that touched them are here.”
“You will bring it to the place you visited yesterday.”
He didn’t want to mention specifics, and that suited me fine, but in the shape I was in there was no way I could walk away from a meet with the Russians again. “No deal, Sergei. You will come pick it up at the same spot you sent those two shitheads to the other day.”
“I told you to watch your mouth. You are testing my patience, boy.”
“There’s no way I’m walking into your house holding a bag that protects me right until I hand it over. You meet me. Come and claim your property, and I mean it like I said it. You claim it.”
His voice got louder in the earpiece, and some of the w’s started to slip to v’s. “I will not come, I will send some associates of mine to collect my property. One of them remembers you, and demands to meet you again.”
“When?”
“Soon. Stay put.”
There wasn’t much else I could do in the position I was in. I was hurt and outnumbered. I didn’t have the time or the energy to scout out a spot for an exchange with Sergei’s men. The office was the best spot I had. Sergei knew that I made it through an ambush here, and now I had the advantage of being here first — it was the only advantage I would have. He would have to be careful, and whoever he sent would have to be better than Igor and Gregor — much better. I couldn’t fight it out with Sergei’s men in the condition I was in. I needed insurance, so I got up and went to the pillowcase. I reached inside past the laptops, and thumbed open the latch on the lockbox. Inside was a stack of disks. The CDs were unlabelled and encrypted, so I had no idea which ones contained the most incriminating data. I pulled a disk from the middle of the stack and walked to my desk.
I was already fucked with the Italians. The poor Russian accent I used with the Voice would put Paolo off my scent, but he would suspect me eventually. I had time with Paolo. He wouldn’t let on his suspicions to his crew because it would be an admission that he didn’t trust them to run the job on the Russians. That kind of admission of doubt would hurt him. He would have to take me quietly with someone he trusted. Maybe Julian, once he healed. Whatever was coming from Paolo would take time, and time was something I didn’t have with the Russians. Once I gave up what they wanted, I would be on the wrong side of a bullet. I stole from them and killed men from their ranks. I had to rely on the idea that whatever was on those disks was important enough to keep me breathing. A kill squad hit the blackmailing accountants with no mercy; that kind of brazen effort meant whatever was taken was worth more than the cost of the heat the police would bring. Even more telling was the urgency from the both sides. Everyone wanted me to finish the job quick. Paolo gave me a day before they would handle me themselves, and the Russians did the same. The short time frame from both sides meant one thing — war was coming. Taking the disks was an all-out declaration of war. But Paolo knew that the risk could be minimized if he could put the Russians off his scent and on to mine for a few days. That was all the time Paolo needed to decode the disks and turn them over to the cops or the media. The disks would decimate the Russian war party before it was mobilized. The Russians weren’t going to let a coup like that go unchallenged, but they were without focus. They were working fast to get their property back, but the trail went cold with me. I didn’t die as easy as the computer nerds. They couldn’t force me to give up who I worked for so they had to settle for getting their property back; once they had it, they would find a way to make me talk. The disks were trouble from all sides, but holding on to one was the only way to keep me breathing.
I put the disk in an envelope and went searching, one-handed, for duct tape. The tape was with a number of other tools in the closet. I used the thick grey tape, tearing it with my teeth, to tape the envelope outside the window on the underside of the sill. The envelope matched the white concrete enough that it would be invisible from the street, and if the room was turned over fast it wouldn’t be noticed unless someone held their head out the window. My life was taped outside the window, hanging in the breeze.
Once the disk was hidden, I got ready to meet the Russians. I didn’t think they would be long. The information I had was important, and twice stolen; they would want to get their hands on it fast. I put the Glock on the desk, then got the SIG from the closet. I took the spare gun out of the oily rag it was wrapped in, and put it in the holster at my back. It took three tries to get the gun behind my back, but I could pull it free from the holster without a lot of trouble. I was slow in my condition, so the idea of pulling a spare gun was better than trying to reload. I stopped worrying about the gun and went to the washroom to relieve the urge from the Red Bulls and the tea. On the way back from the bathroom I put the kettle on again. The tea would take my mind off how tired, sore, and battered I was.
I waited in my chair, Glock in hand, drinking tea, for forty-seven minutes. It was then that the frosted glass of my door darkened as though an eclipse had occurred in the hall. The eclipse was the man I had shot at 22 Hess.
Ivan came in with another man who was much shorter than his t
owering height. They both had on dark jackets, pants, and shoes. The dark jackets were open, and their hands were empty. I had shot Ivan hoping to put him in his place. Shooting him had done nothing but terrify me. His lizard brain was operating as soon as he was hit.
I stared at Ivan, watching the abyss behind his eyes stare back at me. The crocodile eyes looked and me with a carnivorous interest, but the rest of him stayed impassive. I moved my gaze slowly to the smaller of the two men and saw that he was taking in the room systematically, left to right, floor to ceiling. Once he finished, his eyes rested on me.
I had my useless left arm resting on the desk. Underneath I held the Glock, safety off, in my lap. My palm was sweating against the grip, but there was no way I was going to wipe it off. I just gripped harder.
“Morning,” I said. I got no response at all. “The stuff is behind you in the pillowcase.”
The little one looked behind him at the pillowcase, and I understood the situation. The little one was the help; he looked at the bag because he was the one who was going to carry it. Ivan never looked. The stuff didn’t interest him — I did. Ivan was here to kill me.
I made my play right away. “The bag has most of the data your boss wanted back.”
The short one looked at me, blinked, looked again at the bag, and then to me once more. I brought the pistol up easy. The little one took a step back and moved his arm to his jacket.
“Put your hand down,” I said with no menace in my voice. “I gave your boss back most of the stuff. Some I kept as insurance, a gesture of good faith. I gave some of the disks to . . . a friend, a friend I see every day. The disks I took are in an envelope addressed to a cop I know not to be dirty. If any of this deal comes back to bite me in the ass the disks will be passed on, and that clean cop will earn a huge medal taking down your whole organization.”
“That wasn’t what you were told to do!” The smaller Russian sounded petulant.
“I don’t take direction well. I went as far as I was prepared to. Now I’m done. We’re done.”
“You were told what it would take to be done. This is not it.” The little one was still petulant.
