Josh Roseman - The Clockwork Russian and Other Stories

Ivanov smiles as I swing my arm up again. I only catch the pocket of his pants, but there’s something in there. Something metal. He grunts in surprise and lets up for just an instant, enough for me to get a tiny fraction of breath, and I jam my hand into his pocket and pull out one of my single-shot electric guns.

Ivanov lets go of my right arm, but he’s at the wrong angle to stop me. I bring the gun to his ear and hit the switch.

And I can breathe, and I’m about to push Ivanov off me when he collapses, his forehead hitting my chin, the back of my head cracking on the wood floor, and I pass out.

“You look like shit, Bach,” Courtland says when he comes back in.

I don’t even have it in me to insult him back. I’m sitting in the room’s only chair, and Officer Waters is bandaging my arm, though I know I’ll have to see a doctor when this is all over. Tom O’Leary is in the hallway, questioning the man who shot at me. Waters and Thompson — who told me they were partners when we talked yesterday, and was it really only yesterday when I was standing in Pyotr Leonovich’s shop, standing over his dead body? — are here to investigate. To see if I’m telling the truth about how it all happened. Normally I’d stick my nose in, try to help, but it’s hard when I’m the one being investigated.

Tom comes back. “You okay now, John?”

“I’ll live.” Waters ties off the bandage and steps away, joining Thompson next to Ivanov’s body. His dead body. The electricity was too much for him, especially when the slender probe in the gun punched through his ear and into his brain. An ugly, painful way to die, but better him than me.

Courtland comes up behind O’Leary, trying to look menacing, but he’s never been able to pull that off on me. “What’d he say?”

“I shouldn’t tell you—”

“Then don’t, Tom!” Courtland interrupts. “What right does he have to know?”

Tom rounds on Courtland. “John Bach was a better officer than you’ll ever be, so back the hell off before I throw you out of here!”

“You can’t talk to me like that, Tom! I was a sergeant, I deserve…” But he stops when he sees the look on Tom’s face, and I wonder what it feels like when he turns ugly like that. Courtland turns on his heel and stomps away, and Tom’s composed when he looks back at me.

“Felt good?”

Tom lets out a long breath. “You have no idea, John.” He leans against the old wooden wardrobe. “Russell Barrett — the hired gun — says he knows nothing about no one, that Ivanov hired him to be muscle, that he does this sort of thing all the time.” He sighs. “He said he shot at you, and that’s the last thing he remembers, but the burn on his head says you got him, which is what you said. So he’ll be locked up.”

“What about the other guy? The one I said wouldn’t shoot at me.”

His face goes still. “He’s dead, John.”

“Dead? How?” I look at the place where he’d lain. There’s still blood on the floor. “All Ivanov did was punch him in the face. I didn’t see him drown in blood or anything like that, so how’d he die?”

Tom shakes his head. “Waters thinks when Ivanov hit his nose, it pushed the bone into his brain.”

“Ugh.”

“Yeah.” He blinks a couple of times, as if to clear his head. “Look, John, what was this all about? Tell me the truth this time.”

“The truth.” No way Tom’s getting that out of me. No way I’m telling him about Mr. Frieze, about the deed, about how Vasily figured into Mr. Frieze’s plans for the lakefront properties and how Mr. Frieze had Pyotr Leonovich killed. The last thing Tom needs is to be in the middle of this. “The truth is what I told you,” I say after a pause. “I found out Ivanov lived here, and I was looking around to see what he might have stolen from Mr. Frieze. I thought he’d been killed. But then he showed up with those guys, and… well, you know the rest.”

“You’re lying,” Tom says, but without rancor. “I can’t prove it, but I know you’re lying.”

I meet his eyes. “It’s all the truth I can give you, Tom.”

He stands straight, offers me his hand. I take it and he pulls me to my feet. “I’ll just have to live with that, then.” We walk toward the door. “Glad you’re still alive, John.”

“So am I.”

Ishmael knows a doctor, and I end up with a neat row of stitches and a bottle of pills. Morphine. I’ve had that before, and it seems a bit like using a sledgehammer to kill an ant, but I guess it’s all he had. Afterward, I go up the back steps to the little office above Ishmael’s restaurant, where Alan is waiting for me. Ishmael closes the door and Alan’s pulling me into his arms. “You just can’t leave well enough alone,” he says, though not angrily. “You never can.”

I hug him back. “I know.”

We hold each other for a minute or two. Then Alan says, “I have to get back to work. We can’t get caught out like this just because you went and almost got yourself killed.”

I smile, then kiss him. He leaves first, and I go back the way I came in. It takes me a couple of minutes to walk around the block, and when I get to the front of Pyotr Leonovich’s shop, Tom’s already waiting at the door. “Larssen’s inside. He’s almost got the safe open.” I follow Tom as we go through to the back. Eric Larssen is a locksmith, and a good one; he also built the fake file cabinets in my office. “Well?”

“Had to cut through,” he says. That explains the smell of heat and chemicals: Larssen’s acetylene torch. “Left the window open.”

“Thanks, Eric,” Tom says. “Send us the bill, right?”

“Definitely will.”

Tom goes up the narrow staircase to the bathroom. We crowd into the small room and Tom starts putting things into the sink. There’s a few stacks of cash, a ledger book, some documents, and a little metal box of photos that I’d love to go through, see what Vasily looked like, get to know him and his brother. But Tom whispers “aha!” and takes out a yellowish envelope sealed with wax. “This should be the will. You can come back to the station with me, and we’ll open it in the presence of a lawyer. Just in case.”

“I’m fine. I’d rather just get home, if it’s all the same to you.” I slide the envelope with the property deed in it out of my pocket and, as Tom’s eyes go wide, drop it in the sink. “What’s that?”

He gives me a dirty look as he puts the white envelope into his own pocket. “One of these days, John, you’re not going to get so lucky.”

“But that day wasn’t today.”

Tom doesn’t dignify that with an answer. He goes down the steps and out of the shop. I take a couple of minutes to appreciate the quality of the late Pyotr Leonovich’s tools, and am sorely tempted to take his spring-winder. But I’m not a thief. Not unless I’m being paid, anyway. I leave the shop and hail a cab while Tom locks the door behind me. Whatever’s in the will, it’ll all sort itself out.

The cab takes me home, and to my surprise, Alexandra’s sitting on the steps. She jumps to her feet and hugs me hard; I go stiff until she whispers, “remember who I’m supposed to be, John.”

Then I hug her back and we go into the house. She starts a fire; I drop my coat on the floor, set my holster on the occasional table, then collapse on the couch. She stands over me, hands on her hips. “You didn’t even ask how I knew, John.”

I close my eyes. “You work for Mr. Frieze, Alex. I don’t have to ask.”

She makes a sound low in her throat. I feel the cushions shift as she kneels and leans her elbow on the cushions, her chin in her hand. “I should leave you here,” she says, “but I owe you too much not to look after you for a while.”