by Mike Knowles
If the car was still there, the spare key would be with it. I would have money and transportation. With that, I could get everything else.
The artificial light in the room gave me no sense of what time it was. The fluorescent bulbs hummed constantly, letting anyone who opened the door see me without getting too close. It could have easily been seven in the morning or seven at night. I would have to wait for visiting hours to end and the night shift to begin before I could move. The only distinction between day and night came from the interruptions caused by shift change. I always had a sense that the night shift started when there was a long lull between suspicious nurses looking in on me. The night shift was run at its own pace. Nurses came more infrequently and did their best to let the patients sleep; they tried even harder to ignore me. It would be the best time for me to slip out.
I didn’t think my guard would be with me in the room anymore. He was waiting for me to wake up so that I could be interrogated. Now that I was conscious, and my interrogation had been completed by the big cop Morrison, I figured the plan would be to leave me to heal before I was fed to the system.
I closed my eyes and relaxed. I was sore everywhere, but I could still move. Some of the bumps I took before the accident seemed not to hurt as much as I remembered. I checked every body part with a movement starting from the top. My scan halted when I moved my hips and felt discomfort from the catheter. The tube hurt, and I knew it would have to come out. I slid my right hand free under the sheet and felt around my dick. There was nothing permanent holding the tube in place; that meant there was something anchoring it inside my bladder. I would have to dismantle the urinary device, but that would have to wait until I was ready to check out.
My mind raced. I had let Paolo Donati control me, and it had cost me. I was in the city because he forced me, to come home, and I spent every moment of my return playing keep up. I had to juggle Paolo, his threats, his job, and his timetable in order to survive. I had managed to hand Paolo over to Julian to end the juggling, but I had still wound up behind the eight ball. A drunk driver was an 80 km/h monkey wrench. Everything I worked for, the life under the radar and off the grid, compromised because of some asshole overdoing it during happy hour. I let myself give in and feel all the rage inside. My fists clenched, and I felt my nails pierce the skin of my palms. After ten long seconds, I let everything go and started planning.
When the day shift ended, I would move. I didn’t know my way around, but I had no time to reconnoitre. I had to play everything by ear. I went over everything I knew about hospitals in my head. There were both elevators and stairs on each floor. Each ward was usually broken down into patient rooms, offices, supply cupboards, and a central desk for admitting patients and keeping track of the streams of information passing from machines, to doctors, to nurses, and finally back to machines again. To get out to the elevators or stairs, I would at least have to pass the nurses at the front desk. Any movement would be trouble; the staff had been informed that I was a suspect in a murder, and that fat cop had camped out in the room with me for days. The staff would be on edge about my presence, more so now that it was common knowledge that I was conscious. Hospital security would not be far away from my door; I was probably a stop on some guard’s nightly rounds. I lay in the bed and thought about my options until my eyes caught sight of something on the ceiling — a smoke detector burrowed into the faded ceiling panels above me. Smoke detectors were in every room, and they connected to a loud alarm. I imagined that hospital protocol would demand an evacuation if a fire threatened the patients. Alarms brought chaos, chaos brought confusion, and confusion brought a smile to my face.
With a plan formed in my mind, I relaxed a little more. I spent the rest of the day in and out of sleep. When I was out of dream land, I occupied myself by bopping my head to the beat of the heart monitor or holding my breath to see how fast I could make it go.
My games were interrupted by a doctor and nurse who entered together.
“What time is it?” I asked.
The doctor looked put out. “A little after five, almost dinner. Now that you’re awake, you can eat tonight. Er, well,” he stuttered, looking at my chains, “someone from security can aid you in your eating.”
“Any chance you can get these off?”
Zero hesitation came with the answer. “No.”
“Fine. What hospital am I in?”
“St. Joseph’s, Mr. . . . ah, I don’t have a name for you. It would seem that you were brought in without any identification. What is your name?”
“James. James Moriarty.” The name wasn’t mine. But it served the man who evaded Sherlock Holmes well. Some-one would find humour in the name eventually. It wouldn’t be funny at first, but once I got loose and disappeared someone would chuckle under their breath about it.
“Well, Mr. Moriarty, is there any chance that you know your health card number?”
“Not off the top of my head.”
“Social Insurance number then?”
“Starts with a five. Second number is a four. Does that help?”
“No. Well, you look fit, I’ll see about food being sent round. Need to keep your strength up for the trial.”
The nurse let the doctor out of the room first. As he passed, she paused to sneak a look in my direction. I winked, and she jumped as though she had been Tasered in the ass.
The door closed, and I was left alone with the beeps. Hours passed, and food never arrived. I wasn’t surprised. Labelled as a cop killer, I was sure to be on everyone’s shit list. If food did show up, I wouldn’t eat it. I would fake stomach troubles to avoid the real ones that would surely come later from eating a tampered dinner. The noise in the hall got quieter and quieter as visiting hours waned. Eventually, it took minutes for me to hear any sound at all. A nurse poked her head in and looked me over from the door while I pretended to sleep. She left the room without turning off the lights. It was like that every night. I was constantly on display under the never-ending fluorescent glare of the lights so that none of the nurses would have to step into the room to get a look at me pretending to sleep.
I used the catheter, gritting my teeth the whole time at the plastic handcuff that locked my dick to the bed. I had to wait a bit longer.
My wait was interrupted by a nurse tumbling into the room ass first. She hit the ground and shuffled backwards across the floor to the wall as the man who pushed her entered. Behind the man was a young woman.
“Fuck your visiting hours. We are not here to visit. We are here to make things even.”
I knew the face. The Russian accent spun the Rolodex in my mind to the name that matched the mug — Igor. I had shot Igor in the shoulder a few years back when he had tried to kill me in my office. Igor and another henchman had shown up to find out what I knew about the robbery of some Russian property, and he ended up on the wrong side of a bullet. Igor failed his boss and named names to me. I let him and his partner live to save me the trouble of disposing of their bodies. For betraying his boss, I figured he’d have to hide out for the rest of what should have been his short life.
“What? You don’t remember me, mystery man?”
“I remember you, Igor. I thought you’d have been smart enough to hitch a ride out of town on the Siberian Express.”
“Leave? Why would I be leaving? You killed Mikhail. That was a big favour. No one knew who he sent out to see you, so I was in the clear. And because you killed Gregor too, I was the only one who knew what had happened.”
“So it was me who killed your partner?” Igor was lying — running some kind of game. I killed Mikhail, but Gregor walked out of my office with Igor.
He turned to the dirty-blond-haired woman behind him. He laughed in her direction, and she replied in kind.
“You see, baby? He is a worthless liar, a dog. He kills Gregor, and he can’t even man up to it. Not even at the end.”
The dirty-blond was five-ten and dressed in the finest clothes the girls’ department could of
fer. Everything was too tight. Underneath her open jacket I could see her breasts spilling over the bra cups. The jeans had a big “I” belt buckle above the zipper. The buckle was studded with glittering crystals and was ornamental only. The jeans cut into her flesh and made the flab on her stomach spill over the material. The belt buckle was Igor’s way of branding the girl. He showed the world she was his with his very own tacky mark.
“Introduce us, Igor.”
He chuckled. “This is Tatiana. Tatiana, this is a dead man.”
Tatiana smiled at me, then winked at Igor.
“How’d you find me, Igor? You’re a low-level fish, and I’m not even sure you know my name.”
The fish comment pissed him off. “I am no fish, and your name is not important. One of my own little fish told me about some murders outside of a club we know. I came to see who was involved, because perhaps the people I work for could benefit from such information. Information pays highly, but it turns out that it is me who will be benefiting and you who will be paying. Your name is not important to me because you will be dead and forgotten in a few moments.”
“See, you are low level fresh off the dock fish. The scared nurse on the ground has more intel than you.”
Igor reached into his right jacket pocket and freed a snub-nosed revolver. The draw was fast because the front sight on the gun had been filed down. Igor had never graduated to a holster. He was still carrying guns in his pockets like a fourteen-year-old on his first stick-up. Despite the fact that he had found me, Igor was still unprofessional.
“What is his name?” he said, pointing the gun at the nurse on the floor.
“James . . . James Moriarty.”
“See? A gun is like information ATM. It gets me everything I need. We are all friends now. Da?” He smiled a crooked smile at me. The smile was the work of shitty Russian dentistry. When he laughed, I caught a glimpse of shiny stainless steel teeth glinting from the back of his mouth.
“How’d you find me, Igor?”
“When you left, you killed important men in our organization. Positions had to be filled. Sergei Vidal recognized my useful skills, and I was promoted. I now do what Mikhail did.”
I was amazed at how different mobs from different cultures managed to operate synchronously. The Italians under Paolo Donati made similar promotions when the Russians had decimated their ranks. It was the premature elevation of the new generation that led to his nephews being kidnapped and eventually his death. It looked like the Russians promoted the same breed of youngster when they faced similar losses. Mikhail had run a neighbourhood until we crossed paths. Sergei Vidal, the highest ranking Russian crime boss in the city, cut me a deal after I killed Mikhail. He promised me that we would be square if I got him back some disks I stole. I got most of the disks back, keeping only one for personal insurance. Sergei and I were in a stalemate last I checked. Igor’s visit said different.
“So you came here thinking you could sell some information to Sergei? Some promotion you got — you’re nothing like Mikhail; he was management, you’re just an errand boy. Do you think Sergei would still let you be his bitch if he knew how badly you screwed up the first time you came after me?”
“There you go lying again.” Igor aimed the pistol at my head from five feet away from the bed. If I slipped out of the loosened cuffs, I’d still be too far away to stop him from killing me. “You see, Tatiana? He lies right until the very end.”
“Just pull the trigger, baby. I want to see you kill him.”
“Tatiana, you ever see him with his shirt off?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. She instead looked to Igor with confusion on her face. I could tell she wanted to know what I meant, but Igor was running the show, so she looked to him.
“Go wait in the car!”
“But you said I could watch. You promised, baby.”
Igor slapped her with the back of his empty left hand. She grunted with the impact, but she didn’t cry out.
“I knew you would chicken out. You always chicken out. You are like a little . . .”
Igor punched Tatiana in the stomach and she crumpled to the floor. She was allowed less than a second to rest before he pulled her up by her hair. “You shut up and get out! I don’t explain myself to you, whore. Do as I say and get in the car. Do not let anyone see you, understand?”
Tatiana had nothing else to say; she just nodded, turned around, her head hung low, and walked towards the door. She looked over her shoulder at Igor and caught sight of the nurse on the floor.
“What are you looking at?”
The nurse started to stammer out a response, but Tatiana’s shoe cut her off. The nurse back crawled into the corner of the room as she tried to avoid the kicks. Isolated, with no where else to go, she covered her head and cried. Tatiana kicked the nurse until Igor pulled her away and shoved her towards the door.
“I told you to get the fuck out of here.”
Tatiana took one last look at the nurse’s body — the woman was still sitting up but no longer conscious — and went out into the darkened hallway.
“You two have a real future, Igor.”
“Shut up.”
“Hard to call me a liar when I know about the bullet hole I put in your left shoulder.”
“Shut up, you motherfucker! No more talk.”
“If you kill me, Igor, my deal with Sergei is done.”
He paused and squinted at me, over the barrel of the gun, confused by my words.
“Deal?”
“Sergei and I are square. You not knowing that means you aren’t high enough on the totem pole to be pulling any triggers. You know that though, don’t you? Makes me wonder why you’re ready to shoot me in the middle of a hospital without permission from your boss.”
“Revenge. You cost me everything.”
“Sounds to me like I gave you everything. I let you live and I killed your boss. If you took over for Mikhail, you run a neighbourhood now. You’re something of a player because of me.”
“All that means nothing without closure. Everything I earned, and I earned it, means nothing without getting the closure I need. I can’t do my job right, I can’t earn, I can’t even fuck! What you did to me ruined me, and I can’t get past it. I need other people to do everything for me. Do you know how hard it is to come up with reasons why you can’t work? It’s exhausting. I’m always . . .” he motioned his hands up and down until he found the word, “juggling reasons and excuses. I need to get out of the cycle, but I won’t be able to get my head right until I get back what you took from me.”
Igor took a breath and wiped tears from his face. He dried his hand on his pants, then took a two-handed grip on the butt of the gun. He closed one eye and levelled the barrel with my forehead. The gun trembled a little at first, then more and more. He was working up his nerve, and he would get there unless I pushed him off course. Igor used the term “closure”; the word sounded strange coming from the gangster’s mouth. He said the word slowly as though it were a serious matter. I focused on the term and used it to try to pull Igor off track.
“Killing me like this is not going to give you closure. What are you proving by just pulling the trigger while I’m chained down? You did none of the heavy lifting. Someone else did everything for you again, and you’re just going to take the credit. No wonder you can’t get it up; you can’t even hold a gun straight.”
“Shut up.”
“You think Tatiana is downstairs checking out the real men?”
“Shut up.”
“Men who can do their jobs. Men who fuck their women instead of beat them. Men who don’t cry themselves to sleep at night.”
“Shut up!”
“You don’t like what I’m saying? Then prove you’re better. Prove it, you limp dick.” Under the covers my hands slid out from the cuffs. “Don’t just pull some trigger and let the bullet do the work like everyone else does. Do something for yourself.”
The trembling hands got worse, and the barrel
shook away from its path to my forehead. Instead of a bullet exploding towards me, the squat revolver accelerated towards my face. Igor swung his arm up, as he advanced on me, preparing to pistol whip me.
“Shut up! Shut up!”
My hand met the Russian’s wrist as it came down at my skull. My other hand grabbed the barrel of the gun and forced it up to the ceiling. I kept pushing the gun forward towards his wrist until it broke free of his grip. Igor, wild with rage, drove his head forward into my nose. I turned my head enough to take the blow on the side of my forehead. The head butt caused me to lose my grip on the gun, and it fell to the sheets. Igor’s hands found my throat, and he bore down on me.
“Shut up! Shut up!”
His eyes were wild, and he was foaming at the corners of his mouth. I had coaxed him to move on me, and I was paying the price. The choke was strong, but I had been in worse scrapes with better men. I didn’t waste time searching for the gun or working on the fingers of the hands on my windpipe. My left hand took a handful of hair, and my right formed an index finger fishhook. I gouged into Igor’s mouth, hooking the soft flesh surrounding his bared teeth, and ripped away. His cheek tore, and Igor wailed. The sudden pain cut through the temporary insanity and broke the chokehold. Igor recoiled in pain, grabbing at his face as he lost his balance on the bed. He rolled to the floor while I sat up and grabbed the gun. The fat black revolver was ugly-beautiful, and it fit my hand like a glove on a cold winter day. I put my feet on the ground for the first time in days and felt the cold touch of the floor tiles. Air flowed up into the gown, and I felt my skin tighten. Igor still pawed at his cheek, trying to hold the newly separated flesh together while he screamed. His screams were dampened by his hands over his mouth, and the sounds came out as muffled grunts. Blood was streaming down Igor’s wrists and dripping through his cupped hands onto the floor. I took a fistful of Igor’s hair and pulled his head forward so that the blood stayed off his clothes. He yelped a little louder in pain for a second, then the butt of the revolver put him to sleep.
