Love You Dead

27 Thursday 26 February

Tooth didn’t much like reading. He’d named Yossarian after a character in one of the few books he’d ever read all the way through. Catch-22. It held him because it captured pretty much what life in a war zone in the military had been like, in his personal experience. A lot of assholes, fighting an unwinnable war. Mostly he watched television.

Recently, back home, he had been curiously fascinated by an English TV series, Downton Abbey, and the place he entered now was pretty much what he imagined a stately home in England would be like. Except, as he stepped out of the elevator, walking between two suits of armour into an oak-panelled hall, the walls hung with stern, gloomy old masters, he was on the ninth floor of a New York Park Avenue East apartment block.

As the short, creepy-looking uniformed butler bowed unctuously, he could smell cigar smoke and fresh coffee.

Two large goons materialized, all in black, with earpieces on coiled cables, and frisked him, removing the hunting knife strapped to his left ankle and the Heckler & Koch from his shoulder holster. Tooth stood, silent and sullen, until they had finished. He kept the weapons in a locker he rented in a storage depot in Brooklyn. He had weapons in storage lockers in several cities around the world.

‘This way, please,’ the butler said.

Tooth did not move. ‘I want a receipt,’ he said.

‘You get them back when you leave,’ one goon said.

‘I’m leaving now.’

‘I don’t think so,’ the other goon said, producing a large Sig Sauer with a silencer attached.

Tooth brought his left leg up hard between the goon’s legs. As the man doubled up in pain, he grabbed the Sig, headbutted the second guard, then with his right foot delivered a roundhouse kick, swinging the instep through the man’s knee, sending him crashing to the ground. As both guards lay on the floor in pain, Tooth covered them with the gun and said, ‘Maybe you didn’t hear me right. I said I’m leaving.’

He recovered his own gun and the knife, reholstering them.

‘Please, Mr Tooth,’ the butler said. ‘Mr Egorov would really like to talk to you.’

‘Yeah? Well I’m here.’

The two men stared at each other for some moments. Then the butler said, ‘Mr Egorov is unable to walk.’

Tooth remembered. His client had been shot by someone he’d upset, paralysing him from the waist down. He tossed the Sig on the floor contemptuously, towards the two goons, then followed the butler.

Tooth didn’t do art. But the long corridor he walked down was hung with oil paintings of landscapes, piles of dead game and portraits of stiff-looking men and women, all in ornate gold frames, that he figured hadn’t come from a garage sale.

He was ushered through double doors into a grand room with curtains held back with tasselled ties, antique furniture and more paintings adorning the walls.

Four men sat at a long dining table which was laden with silver baskets full of croissants, decanters of orange juice, silver coffee pots, plates and tiny pots of jam. Three of them, who all looked faintly Neanderthal, though dressed in business suits, stared at him warily. The fourth, Sergey Egorov, was in a wheelchair. He had cropped fair hair, a massive gold medallion visible inside his white shirt which was unbuttoned to his navel, and a large cigar, with a white band, in his hand.

‘Ah, Mr Tooth. Good to see you,’ he said.

Unsmiling, and without acknowledging the greeting, Tooth strode across the floor towards him.

He sat down at one of the empty spaces at the table, looked at each of the three Neanderthals in turn, as if they were small piles of dog shit that he needed to step over, then turned to the man who had hired him, Sergey Egorov, staring him in the eyes as he reached for a coffee pot.

Instantly the butler was at his side, pouring it.

‘What would you like to report to us?’ Egorov said.

‘It’s fucking cold here.’

Egorov laughed loudly. He waved his arms expansively and each of his goons laughed, too. Then all around the table fell silent.

‘Anything else?’

‘Walt Klein’s funeral is tomorrow. A service at Riverside Memorial Chapel, on 76th and Amsterdam, followed by a committal at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn.’

‘And you will be there? You haven’t found this woman yet?’ Egorov asked. ‘Why not?’

‘I’ve been to every hotel in this city where she might be staying,’ Tooth replied. ‘So far no.’

‘Why not?’

‘Like I told you before, she’s not here any more.’

‘It’s her fiancé’s funeral. You don’t think she’ll be there for appearances?’

‘That’s what I thought at first. But now I don’t think so. Why would she be?’ Tooth replied. ‘Klein’s family despise her. She’s not going to inherit a cent. I think she’s back in England, as I’ve already told you.’ Tooth pulled his cigarettes from his pocket and tapped one out. He put it in his mouth and lit it.

‘It’s a week now,’ Egorov said. ‘Are you trying hard enough?’

Tooth sipped the coffee the butler had poured. Then he looked back at his paymaster. ‘Give me your bank account details.’

‘My bank account details? Why?’

‘I don’t like you.’ Tooth looked at the other three. ‘You can always judge a man by the friends he keeps. You keep shit company.’

All three bodyguards stirred and it took a sharp hand in the air by Egorov to calm them.

‘I’ll repay you the million, no charge for expenses. You don’t want to listen to me? Fine, I’m gone.’

‘OK, OK,’ Egorov said. ‘I’m listening to you.’

Tooth eyed him for some moments. He was also weighing up just what this job meant to him. He needed the money, so he held his temper, as much as he could. ‘What part of she’s not here any more don’t you understand?’

‘Mr Tooth, we need back what this woman has. We need that memory stick. Don’t bother about the cash, it’s counterfeit. And we’d like you to teach that woman a lesson. You understand? One of your lessons. We’d like to see it, too.’ He raised one hand in front of his eyes and with the other made a cranking motion, miming filming.

‘If it’s so important to you, who the hell entrusted that Romanian moron with it?’

‘It is really important,’ Egorov said, ignoring the question and puffing on his cigar. ‘I want you to go to the funeral. If she’s not there, fine, that’s my bad call. Then you go to England. Get the memory stick. And kill the bitch. I’m told you are good at filming the death of your targets. We’d really enjoy seeing that film. Understand what I’m saying?’

Tooth hesitated. He didn’t like dealing with assholes who didn’t listen to him. They were the people who got you caught.

But.

He needed the money. These assholes were good paymasters. If he upset them maybe they’d badmouth him. Maybe business would dry up totally.

He stared back at Egorov as if watching a poker opponent, then said, ‘Your dollar, your call.’