Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘It’s okay, Sayed,’ I said. ‘I have no idea what’s going on, either.’

‘Oh,’ Sayed said, relieved. ‘I’ll get the beer and fries, right away.’

He trotted away, wagging his hands and his head.

‘It’s okay,’ he said in Hindi. ‘Nobody knows what’s going on.’

The waiters relaxed, watching the last seconds of Didier’s cigarette.

‘I hope your friend wins, by the way,’ Oleg said. ‘Although I doubt it, unfortunately.’

Didier stubbed his cigarette out.

‘You hope my guy wins?’

‘ Chert, da ,’ Oleg said.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means Hell, yeah , in Russian.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘ Chert, da . I’d have paid three thousand bucks to have this idiot’s bigoted ass beaten senseless, if I was that kind of guy.’

‘But you’re not that kind of guy.’

‘Look, you just met him. I’ve been working with this asshole for weeks. But I can’t bring myself to have someone beaten. Not even him. I’ve been on the other end a few times, and I didn’t like it.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘This way, if your guy wins, it’s like I paid for it, but I’m free of the karmic debt.’

Didier stood slowly, and stepped away from his table.

‘After you pay up,’ I said, ‘we should talk, Oleg.’

Didier brushed flakes of ash from his rumpled black velvet jacket, and turned up the collar. With his hands pressed deep in the pockets of his jacket, he walked toward the big Russian.

The big Russian was waving his fists in front of him, fists as big as the skulls they frequently hit, and he was weaving back and forth, slowly.

My hand was on my knife. If Oleg got involved, I was sure I could tag him before he left the table. But Oleg put his hands behind his head, leaned back in his chair, and watched the show.

Didier walked to one and a half steps from the big man, and then leapt into a high, balletic pirouette, his arms tucked into his pockets. He flung his arms wide at the peak of the leap, and descended in an arc that put his knees on the Russian’s chest, and his pistol on the top of the big man’s head.

Didier danced free, his hands back in his jacket pockets, standing away from the big man. The Russian fell from the knees first, as the brain temporarily disengaged, but his arms still flailed until he hit the floor with his face, nose first.

‘Pay up, Oleg,’ I said, as Didier went to the main counter to make things right with the management.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘That big guy’s a bare-knuckle, no-rules fighter in Russia.’

‘Your bare-knuckle fighter just got his ass kicked by ballet and a well-made gun. Pay up.’

‘No problem,’ he said, grinning in wonder. ‘I’m Russian. We invented the well-made gun.’

Oleg pulled a roll from his pocket, peeled a few outer layers from the lettuce, and shoved the head back into his pocket.

‘You’re a man of mystery, Oleg.’

‘Actually, I’m a man unemployed.’

The fact that Scorpio George had hired Russian security guards, and Leopold’s was invaded by Russians, couldn’t be coincidence.

‘Lemme guess,’ I said. ‘You were working security for the penthouse floor at the Mahesh?’

‘That’s right. He fired us today, motherfucker.’

‘He happens to be a friend of mine, even if he is a motherfucker.’

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘If you know him, you know how tight he is with a dollar. He counted every minute we’d worked for him, and gave us a two-hundred-dollar kiss goodbye, after guarding his life. Funny, isn’t it?’

‘That’s a bigger roll than two hundred bucks.’

‘There was a poker game, at the hotel, run by this guy called Gemini.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Yeah, I had a run of luck, and broke the bank.’

Oleg, a golden-child gambler, broke the bank. Of all the poker games, in all the world, he’d walked into mine.

Sayed brought drinks and food, smiling happily.

‘Mr Didier was terrific,’ Sayed muttered to me. ‘We have not seen such good dancing from him in years! He knocked out that big fellow with just one smack.’

‘Where are you dancing the big fellow to now, Sayed?’ I asked.

‘To the street,’ he said, wiping moisture from the table, and offering condiments to Oleg.

Oleg gestured at me with a potato chip dipped in tomato sauce.

‘Can I dig in?’ he asked politely. ‘I love homemade fries.’

‘Your friend is being dragged out into the street, Oleg.’

‘Is that a Yes , or a No ?’

‘I’ll be right back,’ I sighed, as he dug in.

I knew how it worked. The big Russian’s body would be dragged outside Leopold’s, twelve inches from the legal obligation line. That would place him in the pavement commercial zone.

The pavement shopkeepers would eventually shove him from their zone to the gutter, twelve inches from their footpath shops.

That would place him in the taxi driver commercial zone, and eventually his body would be dragged to the open road, where an ambulance would collect him, if a bus didn’t take him out first.

I’d been that man, that unconscious meat at the mercy of the world. I called a street trader I knew, and paid him to put the big Russian into a taxi, bound for the hospital.

Didier was still accepting praise, and paying handsomely for the interruption to Leopold’s business. I walked back to the table, looking for a third Russian. I know it sounds kind of paranoid that I was looking for a third Russian, but they were crazy years, and in my experience, it’s always prudent to consider a third Russian.

‘Is there a third Russian?’ I asked, as I sat down beside Oleg.

He brushed his mouth with a napkin and turned to face me, his pale green eyes looking into mine honestly.

‘If there was a third Russian,’ he said, ‘I’d be gone. Everyone’s scared of the Russians. Even Russians are scared of the Russians. I’m Russian. You can trust me on that.’

‘Why did Scorpio fire you?’

‘Look, he’s your friend… ’

‘He’s also crazy. Tell me.’

‘Well, he’s gone kind of nuts, about a curse that was put on him by some holy man. Me, I’d kill the man who put a curse on me, or force him to take it back. But I’m Russian, and we see things differently.’

‘So what happened?’

‘My ex-boss, your friend, employed food tasters.’

‘Food tasters?’

‘Have you ever actually met a food taster?’

‘No, Oleg, but you did, right?’

‘Indian kids. Nice kids. Eating his food, first, to be sure that it wasn’t poisoned.’

I knew things weren’t good at Scorpio’s eagle nest. Gemini had reached out to me. But I hadn’t taken Scorpio’s obsession with the curse seriously. If what Oleg told me was true, Scorpio was in trouble. He was a good man in a bad situation, which is when friends intervene.

But I had Concannon’s address in my pocket, and I was just killing time at Leopold’s, waiting for midnight, and I let my friend’s distress go.

‘Did you quit, or were you fired?’

‘I told him I wouldn’t let the kids test his food,’ he said. ‘I offered to do it myself. I’m always hungry. But he didn’t take the criticism well. He fired both of us.’

‘Who paid you guys to come in here and start trouble tonight?’

‘Not me, him ,’ he said. ‘He asked me to have one last drink with him. I said okay, hoping it would be the last time I’d ever see him. Then, on the way here, he tells me he’s got this private job, roughing up some gay Frenchman, in a bar.’

‘And you thought you’d tag along?’

‘I thought, if I don’t watch this crazy guy he’ll kill someone, and that will fuck with my visa.’