James Baldwin - Stained Glass

I shouldered, elbowed, and slid through to the bar, only to be pushed up against it by a girl on rollerskates who collided with my hip and then bounced off, shrieking with laughter. The bar and bartender were exactly what I expected out of a place like this. The bar itself was old, scratched up and stained by the ghosts of beer long past. A sea of old bras hung from the ceiling above. The bartender was paunchy and balding, with stringy sideburns and a heavily patched leather vest that identified him as ‘Big Ron’. Vietnam vet, ex-Marine, proudly from Tennessee, and blooded. I didn’t recognize his Club patch: a roaring tiger’s head with the letters ‘T.T.C’ staggered around the frayed border, or his rank patch, which read ‘B.C.C’.

“Wassut be, buddy?” He had to shout to be in any way audible.

“Business.” I yelled back, and extended him the card. “Talya sent me to speak with Zane.”

Big Ron frowned, brow creasing with deep lines. He took the card between stubby fingers. When he read the back, he made the ‘oh, right’ face, nodding. “Hold up fiddeen minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” I took it back, feeling less comfortable by the moment. “Is there a place I can wait?”

“Yeah, out back. Go outside, past the shitters. I’ll tell Zane I sent you there.”

The shitters. I forced a brief smile, and stepped back into the crowd before the effort broke my face.

I wound my way through the dancers and drunkards to the back of the club, and burst out into a comparatively quiet, narrow hallway. The walls crawled in my vision, green tracers pounding with the noise that followed me through the door. The music trailed off to a dull roar near the end of the corridor, quiet enough that heavy breathing, moans, and rhythmic thumping became clearly audible from behind one of the bathroom stalls. I scurried by, pulling my gloves up along my wrists while my stomach roiled and lurched with nausea.

The door burst out into blessed fresh air, an open space of relative quiet. I inhaled deeply as I stepped out and looked around, rolling the peppermint across my tongue. The dirt lot I’d seen out front wound around back here, separating Strange Kitty from another free-standing house on the same plot of land – a ramshackle two-story clapboard with boards nailed up over the windows. Ten more motorcycles were parked right outside of it. Two men were counseling a female friend through some kind of drug high, cupping her shoulders and crooning slurred reassurances as she rocked back and forth. Bored young people lounged on plastic chairs: a girl with heated black-rimmed eyes looked me up and down before toasting me with her beer. With nothing to return the gesture, I stared at her for a moment before stumping off to find a place to rest.

There were empty chairs undercover just outside the exit. I found a place to wait where I could sit down and huddle, arms wrapped around my chest against the cold. I never used to feel the cold, but I’d had access to good clothes back then… suits, overcoats, scarves. Camping in an overturned dumpster under a pair of coveralls and two sweaters, cut off from my savings and my dignity, had given me a yardstick by which to measure my former privilege. The sigil-seal had something to do with it as well, no question about it. When it got chilly, the skin around and over it buckled and stiffened.

Over the next fifteen minutes or so, people filtered in and out of Strange Kitty in dribs and drabs, but few were willing to stay out under the drizzle that peppered the dirt separating the club from the house behind it. Eventually, the door opened and the huge bouncer from the front entry ducked through, straightening to search the yard with narrowed eyes. Then he turned and looked down at me, a puzzled frown on his face.

I picked myself up from the chair, knees creaking. “You’re Zane, aren’t you?”

He was about as surprised as I was. “Yeah, that’s me. You’re Rex?”

“The ugliest dog you’ve ever met on two legs,” I said.

For a moment, a real smile lit his face. It passed quickly, even bashfully, before the stony resting biker face returned.

“Zane Salter.” Awkwardly, he offered a hand. With equal awkwardness, I accepted. His grip wasn’t as firm as mine, until he felt the power in my arm and cranked it accordingly. A good Russian shake. “I thought you were here to see Talya?”

“I am,” I replied. “But she told me to speak to you. I presume you’re the security screen.”

“Yeah. Tally’s not really the streetwise type.” He smiled a Mona Lisa smile, reserved and aloof and far more perceptive than muscle had any right to be. There was a threat there, but as threats went, it was fairly benign. “And speaking of that, give me your real name. You’re too Continental to be going by the name ‘Rex’.”

“How would you know?” I let go of his hand, but didn’t back away. “I might be an Ancient Roman king.”

He gave me another thin-lipped smile. “You got an accent. Call it a hunch.”

“Fine,” I said. “Alexi.”

“Alexi what?”

I paused for a moment. “Sokolsky.”

“Sokolsky?” Zane echoed. He thought for a moment. Abruptly, his eyes widened. “You’re shitting me. Alexi Sokolsky, as in, the Brighton Beach Mob spook?”

I tensed. The trap had been set by Talya, the honey-pot, and now I was stuck. There was a good chance I could beat Zane to the fence line. From there, it was iffy. “My reputation precedes me in only a few very select circles.”

“Yeah. It does.” He regarded me with an air of deep suspicion. “Circles I don’t want Talya having anything to do with.”

“Spare me from self-righteousness. If you know me by name, then you’ve had dealings with the Red Hook Bratva.” I crossed my arms, frowning up at him. “My name and profession isn’t common knowledge outside of the Organizatsiya .”

“The Club doesn’t run in that scene.” Zane shook his head. “But I know people who get talking sometimes.”

“Who?”

“You expect me to tell you that?” He narrowed his eyes.

“I was invited here to help with a problem, and I can walk straight back out,” I said. “Talya seems to think I can do something for you. If I decide to take the job, I have a right to know what your connection to my ex-Organization is.”

Zane could have exploded. Instead, he mulled my words for several moments, then shrugged. “I fight in the underground scene. Cage fights, pit fights. There’re four or five Russian guys who show up regularly. You know Petro Kravets?”

“Unfortunately,” I said, stiffly. He was the current Kommandant of Brighton Beach, and a juiced up, spoiled, lazy asshole.

“Petro comes in with his guys to work out. They were talking about you with me and a bunch of other big bruisers.” The corner of Zane’s mouth twitched into a rueful smile. “You know, just in case anyone happened to want to do business with you. They say you killed a lot of your friends recently.”

“I’m sure they say a lot of things. That doesn’t mean they’re true.” A flash of anger spiked through me, burying itself like a thorn. I glanced back, looking for eavesdroppers. The girl with the shakes was throwing up now, and one of her male friends was gone. The other was too busy holding her hair out of the way to care about us. “Petro is the last man who should be blaming others for betraying him.”

“Did you screw them over?”

“The Organizatsiya screwed me so badly that my family is dead.” I rolled my shoulders, trying to loosen them. Between the cold and the stress, my back felt like it was made of planks. “I was trying to get out of the life. Before I could, Mr. Yaroshenko decided I’d reached my expiration date and reneged on our contracts.”