Shift: A Novel

New York, NY

November 19, 1963

The men flanked him, the smaller one ahead, the bigger one behind, as they descended the staircase and made their way toward the front door. They spoke to each other in Russian, more or less confirming BC’s earlier suspicion. This was a bad sign. It was one thing for Melchior to go rogue. It was quite another for him to cross to the other side. Or had word of Orpheus simply crossed international channels? Still, for some reason he wasn’t afraid. He was already bucking the FBI and CIA, after all. What was one more acronymed agency?

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the first man turned back to him. “We know you are traveling with Orpheus. You will take us to him, or Nazanin Haverman will die.”

“Of course,” BC said. “If you’ll go get me a pen and, uh”—a glance over his shoulder—“your partner tracks down some paper, I’d be glad to write down the address.”

The lead agent smiled at BC’s attempt at a joke. “We are strangers in the city. We would be very appreciative if you took us to him yourself.”

BC shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat.”

The second man pressed so close as they made their way through the thronged front hall that BC could feel the man’s belly pressed against the small of his back. He couldn’t resist.

“Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?”

“Why can’t it be both?” the man said.

The crowd seemed to have thickened. The parlors oozed smoke and music and body heat, and people eddied back and forth between them, making the hall a swirling mass. The three men inched their way forward, the lead Russian unwilling to shove through. Probably didn’t want to attract attention, BC thought. The agent’s hesitation bought him a few seconds, but to do what?

A fresh surge of people pushed the three men against a sleek modern console. An expressionist portrait hung over it—a woman looking like she’d been dismembered and reassembled by a blind surgeon. More helpfully, there was a medium-sized brass vase on the console beneath the painting.

Another press from the crowd. BC slipped his left hand into the vase as though it were a big brass glove. A puff of ash floated into the air as his hand sank into the metal canister. Great, he thought, I’ve stuck my hand in an ashtray. He hugged it quickly to his stomach, thankful he wasn’t wearing one of his new suits.

“So, uh …” He squinted at the signature on the painting. The man’s handwriting was the most recognizable thing on the canvas. “What’s your opinion of de Kooning?”

Even as the front man was turning around, BC whirled, leading with his metal-capped hand. The big Russian behind him was fast, he had to give him that. His gun was already out and leveling off. The vase struck it with a loud clang. The gun bounced off the console and went flying across the room.

“Whoa, bad trip!” someone yelled as BC whirled back to the front. He wasn’t so lucky this time. He heard the sound of a shot as he turned, saw the smoking barrel of the gun in the lead Russian’s hand even as a ripple traveled up and down his skeleton, shaking his bones one from the other. He wobbled on his feet, only his skin holding him together.

The Russian smiled. He seemed about to say something, then stopped. His brow furrowed, his smile leveled out. Blood leaked from his mouth and a second stain was flowering on his chest.

“Blyat,” he said, and fell backward.

BC held up the vase and saw the dent on the base. He’d gotten lucky after all.

Not that he had time to enjoy it. Something hard struck him in the small of the back and he was thrown forward. He landed on the fallen Russian and grabbed for his gun, trying to shake the bullet-dented vase off his left hand the whole time, but all he got was a cloud of ash. Still, he had the gun in his right hand, and he rolled onto his back and waved it at the second Russian.

“Back off,” he said, inching backward across the marble floor, the brass vase clanking with every step.

“This shit is the best!” someone said. “You would not believe what I’m seeing right now!”

Other partygoers were less sanguine, or less stoned.

“Call the cops!”

“Take it outta here, man. You’re bringing down the vibe!”

Just then Peggy Hitchcock came into the hall.

“Oh my God,” she yelled, looking not at the gun in BC’s right hand but the vase on his left. “Grandma!”

“Call Billy,” BC told her. “Tell him you’ve got a dead KGB agent in your foyer. He’ll know what to do.”

To her credit, Hitchcock just nodded and ran from the room.

The Russian seized the moment, diving behind the console beneath the painting. From his position on the ground, BC tried to aim underneath it, but before he knew it the console had flipped up in the air and was coming down top-first on his body, looking for all the world like a coffin falling from the sky. His right hand slammed into the marble floor and his fingers lost their grip on the gun.

Before he could move a second weight crashed into him. The console exploded in pieces, and he found himself staring at a pair of quivering jowls.

“If you think de Kooning is bad,” the grinning Russian said, “wait till you see what I do with your face.” He grabbed BC’s throat with both hands and banged his head against the marble floor.

BC slammed the urn into the side of the Russian’s head. It wasn’t a strong blow, and all the Russian did was blink as a cloud of Peggy Hitchcock’s grandmother’s ashes burst into the air, but at least he stopped banging BC’s head against the floor. BC hit him again, angling for the man’s bulbous nose this time, which showered his own face with blood. A third blow. A fourth. It was the Russian’s face that resembled the de Kooning painting, but still he refused to let go of BC’s throat. Spots dancing in front of BC’s eyes obscured the Russian even more.

He was about to go for one last blow when the Russian’s head fell on his chest and his hands finally slackened their grip. BC looked up to see Peggy Hitchcock standing over him with an African-looking totem in her hands. She was holding it by a penis the size of its abdomen.

“Just go,” she said before BC could speak.

BC lifted his left hand, still stuck in the dented urn. Peggy Hitchcock waved it away.

“Grandma’s seen worse.”

BC retrieved the unconscious agent’s gun and stumbled into the hall, pressed the button for the elevator. He’d just managed to extricate his hand from the urn when the doors opened. A shower of ash shot into the air like a desiccated thundercloud. The elevator operator pretended not to notice the ash or the blood or the skewed wig.

“Find what you were looking for, sir?”

BC straightened his vest and walked onto the elevator. “More like it found me.”

The operator was nice enough to hail a cab for BC when they reached the street level, and he raced back to the Village. The cab got stuck in a traffic jam at the end of Fifth, and BC had to run the last five blocks to the hotel. Sweat mixed with the ash and blood on his face to form an acrid gruel that kept dripping into his mouth, but as soon as he pushed the door to the hotel room open, he realized he needn’t have bothered.

Chandler was gone.