Orest Stelmach - The Boy Who Stole from the Dead

Two years ago he wouldn’t have cared about the money. But everything had changed. In Victor’s mind, every penny belonged to Tara and his grandson. Every penny spent had to be justified. It had to pay for a necessary expense or produce a reasonable rate of return. The twins argued the locket offered the prospect of an exceedingly reasonable return. Victor agreed.

The Gun wore a black suit and tie and aviator sunglasses that made it less obvious his twin was in the back seat. He drove. The Ammunition had bought a new blue suit. He wore a white shirt open at the collar underneath it. Flashed a knock-off gold Rolex around his wrist. He sat in the back beside Victor, adjusting his collar.

“Hugo Boss,” he said with a grin.

Victor grimaced. “Don’t do that. Don’t ever do that.”

“Do what?”

“Refer to yourself as the boss.”

“I wasn’t. That’s the designer’s name. The one who made the suit.”

“And why do you think he chose that name?”

“Because his mother gave it to him?”

“I sincerely doubt it. Even if she did he could have changed it.”

“Then why did he choose it?”

“So the word ‘boss’ rolls off your tongue and you buy more of his suits.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“You keep saying it, next thing you know people will believe it. Only two things can happen to a boss. He can be fired or he can be assassinated.”

“That’s a bit extreme, Victor. Isn’t it?”

“No one ever plotted to kill the peasant.”

“What about Stalin?”

Victor tried to find flaw in the remark. “Have I told you I don’t like to be in the car with anyone smarter than me?”

“Besides, I don’t think there’s a designer named Hugo Peasant.”

Victor grunted. “Insolent child.” He could see the Gun smiling in the rear view mirror. He turned back to the Ammunition. “I can see the modest improvements in your chess game are going to your head. I’m going to have to start trying now.”

The twins laughed, hurled polite insults, and challenged him to matches as soon as they took care of business. They were good kids, Victor thought. Supremely talented with the computer, physically capable, and more clever than he originally thought. He hoped circumstances didn’t arise where they both had to meet a boss’s inevitable fate.

They drove to the Bronx to pick up the part-time security guard, part-time actor. When they exited off the highway onto a street called Fordham Road, the name struck a chord. Victor noticed the campus of buildings. He realized how he knew the name. It was the boy. Adam Tesla. He went to a private school called Fordham. In the Bronx, no less. Victor saw the sign for Fordham University. The boy’s prep school had to be nearby. Then he thought of his grandson, and wondered if Tara’s boy would turn out to be a good student. Remembering his grandson made him think of Adam as a human being. For the first time ever Victor actually felt bad for the boy. He was not used to sentiment and the sensation unnerved him. Yet at the same time, it energized him. Yes, he wanted the locket, but murder? Someone was framing the boy. A good Ukrainian boy. That was just plain wrong.

They picked up the actor in front of a small, red-brick house on a street filled with similar homes. All the buildings looked the same in the Bronx. Like the former Soviet Union only the houses were pretty. The Ammunition stepped out of the car and left the rear door open. The actor was in his fifties. Beer, steak, and potato chips, Victor thought. He watched and listened as the Ammunition smiled and stuck out his hand.

“Peter Slava,” the Ammunition said. “CEO, Carpathian Film Productions.”

The actor said his name but a passing bus drowned it out. He made a big sweep with his right hand and then drove it into the Ammunition’s. “Good to meet you, Pete.”

They shook hands and got in the car. The Ammunition sat next to his brother. The actor climbed in the back beside Victor. His head grazed the car’s ceiling and his body filled the seat.

The Ammunition turned. He glanced at the actor and opened his palm toward Victor. “I’d like you to meet the legendary Ukrainian film director, Andriy Shevchenko.”

Shevchenko was the best Ukrainian soccer player in the world. The twins idolized him because he’d married a Milanese model and was best friends with Giorgio Armani. They’d begged Victor to use the name. Given Americans didn’t know anything about soccer, and the actor didn’t know the name ahead of time, he didn’t see the harm.

Victor flashed his decaying yellow teeth, thinking they’d add gravitas to his vintage tweed suit. He stuck his hand out and nodded as though he didn’t speak English.

The actor’s eyes shone with desperation. He wanted the supposed role so badly, Victor thought. He had to hand it to the twins. They’d understood the man’s ambition from his website. The twins had been able to become intimate with the man without meeting him.

The actor shook his hand. “It’s a privilege, sir. A real privilege.”

Victor spoke to the Ammunition in Ukrainian. He vowed to beat him in four moves this afternoon. Not five. Four.

The Ammunition kept a straight face. Nodded with understanding. “The director says you look familiar. He would like to know if maybe you met at Cannes last year? He was there with his old friend, Terrence Malick.”

The actor’s eyes widened, then he lowered his head and chuckled. “No. Only in my dreams. He must have mistook me for someone else. Please tell him I appreciate the audition. And for picking me up like this.”

The Ammunition told Victor the actor was bigger than he appeared on the website. He reminded Victor he’d been a cop for a few years and that they’d have to be careful. Victor agreed, and randomly mentioned Law and Order SVU and Blue Bloods in English during their brief discussion.

The Ammunition turned back to the actor. “The Director says to tell you he’s seen your work on Law and Order SVU and Blue Bloods . Even though you only had a few lines of dialogue, he says you had presence. He has discovered several Ukrainian film stars in the prime of their careers this way. And no problem on the ride. He likes to get to know the stars of his films in a casual way. Like this. Off the set, you know?”

The Ammunition had called the actor two hours ago and e-mailed him pages from a make-believe script. Given him no time to check on anyone’s background, not that it would have mattered. There was nothing on the computer about the Ukrainian film industry. The only thing he’d done to whet the actor’s appetite was to plant a fictitious newspaper article online about Carpathian Film Productions’s plans to produce a Ukrainian-American gangster film. The article mentioned co-producing partner Peter Slava had arrived in New York last week to begin casting. The Ukrainian actress Mila Kunis was rumored to be auditioning for the role of the loving daughter.

They drove to the Ukrainian butcher’s shop on Second Avenue in the East Village.

When they got out of the car, the actor saw the store, smiled, and nodded.

“The director prefers to audition on the real set,” the Ammunition said. “It leaves nothing to chance.”

“Authenticity,” the actor said. “I love it.”

A butcher in a blood-stained apron came out and unlocked a pair of steel doors in the sidewalk. He opened them to reveal a narrow staircase leading to the basement. Victor led the way. The actor followed. After the twins descended, they guided the actor to the meat locker. Victor waited to make sure the butcher locked them in before joining the others.

Slabs of beef hung from hooks. Kielbasa dangled from the ceiling. The chill cleared Victor’s sinuses. Puffs of steam formed at mouths and noses. The biggest one hovered near the actor. Of course it did, Victor thought. He was the most nervous.