Cigarettes & Mirrors - Chapter Three

I throw on my mirrored shades and slip a cigarette from the pack into my mouth. I feel my left hip pocket to make sure I have my wallet. As I light the cigarette and snap the Zippo closed, I hear a sudden, piercing scream behind me. Like the keening of a thousand banshees reaching delayed intense orgasm. I turn my head, eyebrow raised, drawing on my cigarette, when I see him. A young Asian man, no more than 18 or 19, running down the street in a green hospital gown. His wrists have brown leather straps attached to them, trailing behind him. He’s screaming at the top of his lungs, zig zagging down the middle of the street weaving between traffic, running like a meth fueled Kenyan marathon runner. Some nut on the loose from University Hospital I guess. I draw on my cigarette again, suppressing a grin. Just another day in the city. You’d be surprised to know that things like this aren’t terribly uncommon. As I start walking I can hear the whine of a police cruiser coming up the block, sirens screaming and engine roaring like a pissed off dragon. It slams on the brakes and curls into a turn in the intersection just in front of the Asian man, who collides with the side of the car and collapses. Before he can get to his feet, the body-armored behemoths jump out and hold him at gunpoint, shouting at the man to calm down and stop resisting. Before he can react, they open fire, pumping round after round into his gradually slumping body. They keep squeezing the triggers of their guns until they are only rewarded with clicks. Empty. One officer kicks the dying man in the face, and they step back into their vehicle peeling away down the street. Fucking pigs. But routine cold blooded murder by the city’s finest is just something to get used to here.

As I walk past, his screams wind down and eventually peter out into gurgles as he chokes on his own blood and eventually stops moving, succumbing to the blunt force trauma and rapid blood loss that multiple gunshot wounds tend to inflict. I turn my attention to the parking garage down the street, the now dead man forgotten. I’ve seen stranger things on these streets. But today I have business to attend to. I need to pick up some party favors for Antonio’s house. I enjoy setting things on fire, as many people do. Do I simply want to burn it down? Or do I want to blow it up? I take a drag on my cigarette as I ponder this.

The Russian Mafiya operates a few different business in this city. Your typical immigrant businesses, such as bakeries, bars, cabaret. But they keep stockpiles of equipment as well. Just in case. I am not thrilled about having to talk to them. They are as liable to shoot you as they are to shake your hand. Ruthless is the word that springs forward first when one thinks of them. But at least they always have the types of anti-social merchandise the East Coast black market needs. Guns, ammunition, explosives, various drugs, vehicles, manpower. Pretty much anything you need, the Russians have or can procure for you. As long as you can pay, of course.

I raise a hand in greeting to the teenaged parking attendant in the booth, who merely glances up and back down again, returning his attention to his ever present phone, wearing out his thumbs. That’s all you little cunts do anymore, wear out your thumbs and your eyes on phones. My black Dodge truck awaits me. As I approach, I unlock the doors with the electronic key, giving it a once over to make sure no one has fucked with it. I start it up, and pull the truck out of the garage slowly, watching the crowd gathering around the formerly deranged and now very dead corpse, then gunning the engine and screaming out onto the street with a squelch of tires and a puff of smoke. Time to go talk to the hammerheads.

As I drive through traffic, I take a final drag on my cigarette and cram it into the overflowing ashtray in the center console. I should really clean it out one day. I make a right turn onto Elm Street, laying on the horn as I narrowly miss one of a million fucking petulant homeless children running out in front of cars. A few minutes later I park down the street from the former Delaney Hall. The white building is just one of many warehouse facilities that fill the city. People rent the buildings and store anything and everything here. Collectibles, clothes, musical instruments, drugs, weapons, industrial tools, vehicles, bodies slowly dissolving in drums of lye. Anything. The stench of the heavily polluted river is almost unbearable here. Chemicals, sewage, and the lingering odor of one thing or another that has passed from this life. I resist the urge to gag as I turn the truck off, and think about what I am going to say to the Russians. I see a shadow out of the corner of my eye, and almost have a heart attack. But it’s nothing. God damn these drugs.

I step out of my truck, and light another cigarette. Chain smoking as always. I walk around the corner of the building, and I see a black BMW parked in front of what used to be the storefront, with two very large slabs of beef from the Motherland standing around, eyeing me back. I slowly approach the larger of the two men. “I’m in the market for a few things.” I say to the man, who takes a drag on his own cigarette and raises an eyebrow. “You police?” he says, in a deep voice filled with gravel. “No. Just another customer.” I say, taking a drag on my cigarette. He nods, and beckons me toward the front door. The other meathead watches us walk inside, unblinking.

Have I mentioned how much I hate dealing with Russians?

As the door closes behind us, my eyes adjust to the gloom inside. The warehouse is filthy, stacked with thousands of crates and boxes adorning shelves along the walls, and in rows on the floor. “You wait here. Yuri!” the hammerhead screams. After a few moments, I see a portly, greasy, balding man with a pedophile moustache emerge from a doorway. “What?” he says in heavily accented English, eyeing me. “I’m in the market for an incendiary device. Might you have such a thing?” I say to the ratty little man. He strokes his moustache for a few moments, and then laughs. “I think we might have thing or two my friend.” I grin as the man leads me into an aisle.

Fuck you Antonio.