Tod Goldberg - The Bad Beat

It was unlikely that someone would come in and shoot her in the face considering she was still in the tearoom, so she sat back down, took a sip of water, pressed the ice pack to her head and waited patiently for whatever was to come.

She didn’t have to wait long. The door opened and a man of about fifty walked in, followed by Sylvia Plath. The man sat down across from Fiona while Sylvia set out two cups, a plate of cookies and two small metal kettles along with an assortment of teas.

“Thank you, Gina,” the man said.

“Shall I stay?” she asked.

“No, if there is a problem, I think I can take care of it,” he said.

“Very well,” she said. She looked at Fiona and shook her head slightly. “I’m sorry I had to hit you. You left me no choice.”

Gina. Her name was Gina! She didn’t look like a Gina to Fiona. She looked more like someone who, at some point later in life, would have her throat in Fiona’s hands. That thought made Fiona very happy, so much so that when the girl left Fiona and the man alone, Fiona actually felt rather giddy.

“You smile,” the man said. “This is a fun day?” His accent was off-the-boat thick, but everything else about him looked Western. He wore a white dress shirt opened at the collar, a tan sport coat, expensive jeans, black leather loafers, a Rolex.

“I’m having a lovely day,” Fiona said. “No reason not to smile.”

“Do you know me?” the man asked.

“Yuri Drubich, I presume,” she said.

“You are correct,” he said. “We have some business together?”

“Not yet,” Fiona said.

Yuri picked through the teas, found one he liked and then dropped it into his kettle to steep. “Please,” he said, “I bring in very fine tea.”

Fiona found a bag of Adam’s Peak White Tea in the box, which was really quite a find, placed the tea in her cup and poured the hot water over it. It wasn’t the best way to make a cup of expensive tea, but it was a decent enough weapon in a pinch.

“Your employee hit me,” Fiona said. “Is that how you treat all of your customers?”

“Only those who come in asking about me,” Yuri said. “Do you know how many people know that I own this shop?”

“Why don’t you just tell me? That way we can get to drinking our tea in peace.”

Yuri reached across the table for a cookie and then handed the plate to Fiona. It held an assortment of butter cookies, some covered in chocolate, others in fruit compote, others plain. Fiona opted for the chocolate and then watched while Yuri thoughtfully nibbled on his cookie. He didn’t seem terribly happy or terribly upset at the moment. It was a studied ambivalence.

“Yes, well,” Yuri said, “let me say this-they are all either dead or FBI. Which are you?”

“I’m from Ireland,” Fiona said, “so I can’t be FBI. And here I sit, drinking tea, so I must be alive.”

“Before, you spoke with an American accent. Yes?”

“That was before.”

“And who were you then?”

“I don’t quite know,” Fiona said. “Being hit in the head has left a blank space. Do you hit all FBI agents in the back of the head?”

“If you’d been FBI,” he said, “you’d not be sitting here with me. Plus your car, that Hyundai? No FBI drives Japanese.”

“Maybe it’s my car from home. I really can’t remember now. Amnesia from being struck.”

“Hmm, yes, that can happen. But you do remember that whoever you were, you carried a Sig Sauer, yes?”

“I do remember that, yes.”

“And you carry no identification?”

“I like to keep it simple,” Fiona said. “Just a gun and a hairbrush. Maybe a touch of lipstick and some powder, but otherwise I’m a very simple girl, Yuri.” She didn’t just say his name. She purred it. Fiona found that men of all stripes responded to hearing their names purred. It opened up some atavistic response that turned them into fourteen-year-olds.

“I’m sorry,” Yuri said. “You must think I am an idiot. I find you, how do you say, alluring, but I don’t like my women bloody. And I don’t like them spying on me.” He paused. Fiona presumed he wanted to let that sink in, which it did, and then he said, “How is your tea?”

“Lovely,” Fiona said. Because it was.

“You have a choice now,” he said. “You tell me who you are and why you’re here and we finish our tea pleasantly or I bring Gina back in to remove your fingernails.”

“You think she’d be able to do that?” Thinking, Yeah, please send her in. I’d like another shot at her.

“She’d have someone hold you down, so, yes,” he said. “I’ve seen her do it before. She is very meticulous. Never moves too quickly.”

“And if I tell you who I am and you don’t like it, then what?”

“Then we just kill you,” he said. “No torture. You look like you have good, healthy organs. Fetch a good price on the market. Your hair, too.”

He reached across the table as if to touch her hair, but Fiona grabbed his wrist and bent it backward. Hard. Not hard enough to break it, but that was just a matter of degree. When he tried to grab at her other hand, she grabbed that one, too. “You don’t want to touch me,” she said. No purring. Just a simple declarative sentence.

“You think you can hurt me?”

“I can break your wrists to start with,” she said.

“Compound fractures tend to cause shock. If I sever an artery, well, that will be messy. But you wouldn’t really feel it.”

“You wouldn’t get out of the building alive,” he said.

“And neither would you,” she said. She applied a bit more pressure and Yuri began to sweat, feeling the pain.

“We are at an impasse,” he said, his voice strained now.

“Then let me explain my position,” Fiona said. She had to think fast, since the truth was that she had not expected to be in this position. Michael would understand. “Yesterday, you blew up a building we use as a front for our corporation, InterMacron. You are familiar with it?”

“There is no such thing,” he said. “It is a scam. Some dumb boy. I want my money and he will bring it to me.”

“Really?” she said. “Some dumb boy? Then what am I, a figment of your imagination?”

Yuri was in obvious pain, but Fiona noticed that his expression had changed slightly. Clearly, she was not some dumb boy. “I am listening,” he said.

“We use several people to ferret out serious investors.” Fiona thought for a moment about her situation and decided to go forward with what she figured were both knowns and unknowns, just to see how Yuri might respond. “The Graysons are one level. Our associate Big Lumpy is another,” she said. He knew well enough who the players were in Miami, certainly, and that hearing Big Lumpy’s name didn’t cause him to giggle at its stupidity was a sign itself. “What we are doing with the wind technology and bandwidth, it is not, strictly speaking, legal yet.”

Yuri’s expression changed again. Now he seemed actually invested. Well, invested and in terrible pain. “Go on,” he said.

“The technology, we have acquired it before the government,” she said. “They call it a national security threat. So if you invest in it, if you agree to sell it for us outside our borders, we must know it will not fall into hands that might have problems with the United States.”

“That is everyone,” Yuri said. “And what do you care? You are Irish?”

“I love America,” Fiona said. “Much better weather here.”

“Where is my money? Where did that go?”

“The boy’s father,” she said, searching now, opting for truth over more fantasy. “He’s a gambler. He ran off with the money. So the boy and his father, they are under our, you could say, watch now.”