The Best American Mystery Stories 2019

Duane Swierczynski Lush

from Blood Work

Shots

I was doing shots of cold Żołądkowa Gorzka and snacking on herring in a small zakaskas when the torture squad came for me.

The scout was a familiar face, which tipped me off straightaway. Petite, dark-haired, top-heavy. Same lipstick, same dark hair brushed over the ears, same straining buttons on her eggshell-blue blouse. Had a first name that sounded like it should have been a last, but damned if I could remember it at that moment. We’d used her on various missions over the past sixteen months. Her appearance was no doubt meant to lull me into a false sense of security, or lull me directly into her bosom. But I knew better. There were four vodka shots lined up in front of me, and if I was going to be killed, I wanted to go out completely blotto.

I had been ordering the shots in fours just to be safe. The place was by no means crowded, as it was just after ten A.M., a good hour before most Poles ventured in for their first fix of the day. But the bartender could get to talking, or decide he had to visit the facilities for an extended period of time and forget to refill my glasses as often as I’d like. It was important to have reinforcements at hand.

Polish zakaskas are perfect if you didn’t want to bother with the rigors of a cocktail menu. That’s because there is only one cocktail on the menu: a cold shot of Żołądkowa Gorzka. Perfect Grizzly efficiency: You will drink this, and you will get drunk. After endless months of tiki joints and dark oak saloons and steak houses and cocktail lounges and dives and airport bars, it was strangely nice to be deprived of choice. Żołądkowa Gorzka, which means “bitter vodka for the stomach,” was a rather new brand that followed traditional Polish methods of blending herbs and dried fruit. Despite the name, it was more sweet than bitter. There was some wormwood, gentian root, and galangal tossed in as well. Not that I cared about the taste. The spirit did the fifty-meter-dash across my tongue on its way to my bloodstream. It was amber in color, which could fool people into thinking you were shooting some good old-fashioned Kentucky bourbon in the middle of Warsaw. I liked it more with every shot.

The menu in a zakaska is just as simple. Aside from the ubiquitous herring (which provided all the protein I required), you had your choice of six inches of smoked kielbasa, some pierogi, or maybe even some steak tartare, if the zakaska was fancy enough. This wasn’t one of those zakaskas. I went with the herring, which was difficult to ruin. I needed the protein.

As I raised the next shot glass to my lips the scout raised her own glass and said, “Na zdrowie.”

I held the glass in place, muttered a quick “Na zdrowie” in return, then downed the shot. Some part of my brain knew that I was reaching my limit, the redline, but other parts of my brain told that annoying part to shut up. We’d paid good zlotys for those three remaining shots, and goddamnit we were going to do them, death squad or not.

Oh, if only the pretty little scout hadn’t offered the Polish cheer. That meant the gunmen and butchers were nearby, closing in fast. I needed to down these shots now. They might be my last for a while. I just wanted to linger here and watch the street scene, let my brain go pleasantly fuzzy for a while.

I was in Warsaw for a simple snatch, dupe, replace, and grab of a potentially incriminating and embarrassing set of cables. This was my job: cleaning up mistakes or documents or communiqués. Sometimes I was tasked with producing a pseudo doc, for misinformation purposes. Sometimes not. Almost always they had me destroy the real doc, but this time they wanted it back for some reason. So I hid it in a place only I knew about, then came here to the Pijalnia Wodki for extraction.

The presence of the ample-chested scout, however, meant there would be no extraction. My transport man had no doubt been captured or killed, this petite girl sent in his place, and the Grizzlies would soon force their way into this dingy place, and they wouldn’t care how many shots of vodka I had lined up in front of me. They would simply take me. And then—

I didn’t want to think about then.

I’d spent all night working on the dupe and switch and had been sipping steadily at an oversized steel flask of Canadian Club, as well as some bottles of port wine I’d found in a wooden cabinet. Sitting here, our pre-arranged meeting point, I decided to go with the local tipple. Someone had named this joint Pijalnia Wodki — “Drinking Room for Vodka.” You had to admire the straightforwardness. The walls were badly chipped, and the fixtures and furniture were scavenged from at least four different ruined hotels. Why bother repainting the walls if they’re chipped? The people weren’t here for the walls. They’re here for the vodka and ennui. Maybe a plate of herring on the side.

“We have a car outside,” the scout said in Polish, though it took a few moments to translate the words in my mind. “Are you ready to leave?”

“That’s nice,” I replied, in English. “But, uh, who are you?”

She slid off her chair and moved close to me, pushing her breasts into my upper arm, smiling at me a little.

“You know me.” Again in Polish. Translation approximate.

“You’re pretty. Let’s have some vodka together.”

Eyes narrowed. Suspicious, but willing to play along. In English she said, “Sure.”

I signaled the bartender. As he retrieved the bottle from under the bar I downed my second, barely feeling the cold-warm burn, and then the third shot, turning the glasses upside down and slamming them on the bar top after each. By the time bowtie was pouring four more shots into fresh glasses, I knocked back the final vodka. The scout watched me with vague disbelief in her eyes. Which is exactly what I wanted her to do, because she didn’t notice me dose one of the new shots as I slid it toward her across the scratched wooden bar top.

So much of this came down to simple sleight-of-hand. The human mind can only focus on one thing at a time. While the scout was watching my hand raise the fourth shot of vodka to my lips, she was physically incapable of seeing my thumb and middle finger pinch open a hush puppy directly above the shot glass I was sliding in her direction.

She drank the vodka. I downed another and smiled. Goodnight, honey. In under a minute you’re going to be facedown on the bar top. Which at home might get us ejected from the premises, but not here. Passing out is part of the whole experience.

Double

Sixty seconds later she was not asleep. She was bright-eyed, amused. Showing me her perfect teeth, which were on the lupine side. Maybe she was an Eastern European werewolf and totally immune to the Agency’s finest knockout drops. She certainly looked feral.

I thought to myself, damnit, what if she’d switched shot glasses on me, and I was the one digesting the knockout serum?

I’m not proud of it, but I had no choice. In the desperation of a given moment, you do things you may regret later. And what I did was this: I took a leisurely mouthful and hooked my shoes under the rungs of her stool. Then I spat the vodka into her eyes, point-blank range, and simultaneously jerked my feet back, sending her tumbling from her seat at the same time. Then I ran.

Poor kid. The sting would be in her eyes most of the morning, and her tush might be sore. But it was nothing compared to what they would do to her later when her new employees decided to punish her. The alcohol in her eyes would be a memory of heaven. Hell, she might not even have realized she was working for the Grizzlies. She might have thought it was us all along.

But I had my own problems to sort out. I knew my chances of escape were nil. If the Grizzlies were smart enough to switch out my transport man for one of our own scouts then they would have all possible exits covered. Didn’t mean I shouldn’t try.

My legs were wobblier than I thought, which made for an interesting and somewhat amusing exit from the zakaska. My internal compass was a little off. I had been here in Warsaw less than fifteen hours and still had the afterimages of the last city I’d visited (Krakow) burned into my brain.

There was an amusing chase interlude on the relatively quiet streets. The Grizzlies had sent multiple agents to intercept me. There were dodges, fakeouts, some backwards walking. All the usual. It might have worked on one of them, but not the baseball team they’d sent after me. At this desperate juncture I made a heroic attempt at a subterranean escape, diving into an open sewer, but thick hands grabbed me by my HST suit and yanked me back into the daylight. I suggested we all get a drink together, discuss this like men. While my Polish was good, I don’t think my words carried the amount of bonhomie I’d been attempting. A rank-smelling hood was slipped over my head and something sharp pinched the crook of my arm.

Belt

Chained naked to a metal bed frame in a stark white room, I couldn’t help but think about the various Soviet torture techniques I’d heard about over the years.

There would certainly be sleep deprivation. Pained cries from fellow prisoners. Real or otherwise. Beatings with leather gloves. Noise assault — there are even stories about the Grizzlies using a subcontrabass tuba at point-blank range to blow out an eardrum.

But it appeared that I was in for something special. My clothes had been completely removed, which indicated they were going to maul sensitive parts of my body. Maybe even remove some parts of my body that I was never meant to see. Hold it up to the light, insult it, as if I were made of defective parts, then place it inside a steel tray and go in for more exploration. Sorry gentlemen, you’re not going to find it hidden up there.

For now, though, they were content to let me freeze in quiet contemplation. I’d heard the Soviets were fond of using the cold room as a kind of torture icebreaker, as it were. For all I knew, we did the same thing. The removal of clothing was an especially nice touch. You never feel quite as vulnerable and weak and inadequate as you do when your legs are spread and your testicles have retreated to a hiding spot somewhere below your liver.

I didn’t want to wait. Better they torture me with the vodka still running through my veins. It wouldn’t make it hurt less, but perhaps I wouldn’t mind as much.

“I’d like a vodka martini, please,” I said. “One toothpick skewering the following garnishes: one anchovy-stuffed olive, one cherry tomato, one pickled pearl onion. Served as cold as this room.”

Predictably, there was no reply.

Some men in my situation would revert to name, rank, and serial number. I preferred to order a cocktail. In the case of a torture room, I believe a martini is entirely appropriate. Mencken said the martini was “the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet” and I’m inclined to agree. The shape of the glass. The crisp bite and warm afterglow. There is nothing more pure. The very thought of a martini comforted me, even though I knew it would most likely be a long time before my next. If there was to be a next.

I had been tempted to request a vodka Gibson. Typically Gibsons require gin, but I had so much vodka running through my system I thought it ill-advised to change horses now. There are many origin stories of the Gibson, but my favorite is of the alleged American diplomat (no such man has ever been identified) who frequently traveled to Europe during the dark days of Prohibition. While his colleagues indulged, this diplomat named “Gibson” (in this version) felt it was important to stick to the spirit of homeland law. So he would order a martini glass filled with cold water and garnished with a single pickled pearl onion, so that he would be able to distinguish it from the sea of other cocktail glasses at various dinners and receptions. Admirable. Going without, while those around you sipped and gulped and grew increasingly blotto.

I was feeling Gibson’s exquisite pain now. The blood in my alcohol system was waging civil war, attempting to reclaim its native territories. Dreadful clarity began to return. The colors around me seemed suddenly faded and dull. There had been a song playing in my head for the past few years, a song I had barely noticed, but now the record was over and the needle scratched into blank vinyl. As the hours passed, and even more hours passed, I began to understand my captors’ strategy. They knew they had apprehended a souse. Torture would hurt me, but nowhere near as badly as if I were stone sober. They were drying me out.

This was a very, very bad idea.

Fix

If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume you have the proper clearance. So it doesn’t matter if I reveal classified secrets, does it? That, or you are one extremely bewildered barkeep and about to enjoy the story of your life.

Which is to say, the story of my life.

Some years ago I was a student at Stanford University who needed book money. Textbooks for my classes, but also novels for my own entertainment. At that time in my life I didn’t have much of anything else. No women, no booze, no life of intrigue, no expense account. I was a bookworm. A classified advertisement in the campus newspaper brought me to a basement office a few blocks away from campus, and within a few days I was beginning my slow transformation into an unstoppable living weapon.

They didn’t advertise that, of course. They billed the program as “answering psychological quizzes.” Research for graduate studies. Military war games, strategy scenarios, codebreaking, that sort of thing. Once you answer the first multiple-choice question, however, you’re already in way too deep. Months blurred by before I realized that I was being transformed into... well, something other than a mild-mannered college student.

Along with the quizzes and strategy games they enrolled me in martial arts classes and weapons training. They told me it went along with the experiment; one fueled the other. I have to admit, it was fun. I was never particularly athletic, nor had I ever held a gun in my life. But within a few months I knew how to break a man’s wrist and could field-strip a rifle blindfolded. They clapped me on the back, told me I showed great aptitude for this sort of thing. They brought me on as a full-time trainee.

Not long after that they began hypnosis sessions, just to clear my head they told me. It was around this time that I began to suffer from memory loss and the sensation of missing time.

The deeper I tumbled into the experiments, the more lost I felt. I also had the unshakable feeling that the experiment was not turning out the way they were expecting, and sadly, my project was only one of 129 under the same secretive umbrella. I wasn’t abandoned so much as ignored as they followed other more promising ventures — poisons, telekinesis, astral projection, and the like. I was tumbling out of control and there were few people to notice.

Until the rampage.

Now this I truly shouldn’t discuss, even here. God knows I don’t want to discuss it. Suffice to say that my project handlers realized their efforts to turn me into a living weapon had worked all too well. Only the weapon inside me was not activated with a code phrase, as intended. It had bubbled up out of my mind spontaneously, and at an extremely inopportune moment.

Instead of prosecution they gave me a new identity, and someone else went to the electric chair. From what I understand, the poor bastard deserved it anyway. After months of experimentation there were no easy solutions. I was more or less a violent psychopath twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No solutions, that is, until I broke the collarbone of a PhD then sneaked off for a cocktail. Which was the only thing, it turned out, that would keep the weapon inside me in check.

Tight

Sometime later I regained my senses. I was still naked, but now with a busted left wing and blood all over me, much of it not my own, and with a crippling hangover. Heart racing. Internal organs like jelly. Skull five sizes too large for the skin and scalp that tried to contain it. Extremities cold and trembling. Iron crab firmly locked in place inside my chest.

I was still in the torture dungeon but I couldn’t remember what I had done; the memories were like movie clips minus a coherent narrative. The snapping of an arm bone (my own). The gouging of eyes, the crushing of throats (not my own). The Grizzlies truly had no chance, no matter their number. If only they’d taken my drink order.

I found my clothes neatly folded in a cardboard box, along with my wallet, fake passport, watch, even my flask. Which was empty. Bastards either drank it or dumped it and that was a filthy crime either way. I could feel my adrenaline reserves building back up and that was bad. I twisted open the flask and breathed in some faint Canadian Club fumes but that only made it worse. I was Tantalus, alternately stopping down and reaching up.

I had no choice but to quickly shower the blood off my body in a stall most likely reserved for interrogation sessions. The tiles were chipped and scummed over with what seemed like decades of mildew and splattered blood. The cold water was like razors against my flesh and I somehow felt dirtier after the shower than before it. But at least I had the appearance of a regular citizen again. It hurt to button my shirt and I found myself incoherently angry at the buttons themselves, who I decided in that moment had no right to exist. It took a superhuman effort not to pluck them from my shirt and snap them in half.

On the way out I had a glimpse of what I had done.

Boy did I need a drink.

Bent

As it turned out, I ended up at the same zakaska where they’d fingered me. If their colleagues were looking for me, this would be the last place they’d look. Plus, it was only a few blocks away from the site of my would-be torture. When in doubt, go with what you know.

My plan was to have just one. One cold nourishing shot of that sweet amber fluid, just to keep the living weapon quiet. The bowtied bartender looked at me with faint surprise when I held up a trembling index finger. That finger, half a second later, was joined by a middle, ring, and pinkie.

“Your sweetheart was badly injured,” he said in Polish as he tilted the bottle of Żołądkowa Gorzka four times in rapid succession. “Her tailbone. She had to go to the hospital.”

“She was not my sweetheart,” I said. “If she said so, then she was telling filthy whore lies.”

The bartender’s reaction was one of astonishment. Had I not translated “filthy whore lies” correctly? Either way he left me to my shots, which I downed with Soviet efficiency.

I thought that four shots would be enough. There were things to do, a border to cross, and a handler to reach. I could find more drinks along the way. Mom and Dad would be wondering about me. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been gone in that torture room. Not too long, apparently, if the bartender was talking about my sweetheart’s tailbone as though the memory was still fresh. Maybe a day, or two? I wondered how long ago I’d killed my captors. I should have checked their bodies. Sometimes in the aftermath, when my adrenaline was depleted, I would just sit there in a fugue state for hours. Again, another downside to the whole living weapon idea.

I should be going, but something compelled me to order another four shots. And then four to join that. Pretty soon I was feeling like myself again and feeling optimistic about the future. I even ordered some herring.

But as day turned to night, and I pushed the needle up past the redzone, my mood darkened considerably. I wanted out. Out of all of this filth and blood and pain and violence and tears and lies and headaches and rage. To think: at some point, this had just been about book money.

Hatch

I was sitting in the Vienna International Airport cocktail lounge having a Manhattan rocks, idly munching on peanuts, waiting for the phone call. The girl had promised she’d fetch me when it came. I tipped her well and ordered another Manhattan, as well as a beer chaser. I wanted to be all sorted out for the plane. Of course, I wasn’t going anywhere until the call came.

You may be wondering why the Agency would employ a full-time lush who was just a few short hours away from a crazy murder jag at any given moment. I’ve wondered the same thing myself.

From an operational standpoint it makes a certain amount of sense. Plenty of Agency men drink, but none of them go at it with quite the same can-do spirit. To the outside observer I drank way too much to be a professional anything, let alone an Agency professional. Nor did I look the part. Later I had learned that I’d been selected for the big top-secret 129 flavors project because of my physical appearance. Tweedy, featherweight, four-eyed. If you’re going to have anyone be a living weapon, might as well be someone who looks as if he’d have a hard time lifting the swatter, let alone working up the courage to swing it. And looks as though he might even shed a few tears for the fly.

There’s an expression I’ve heard. High-functioning alcoholics. Well I was a higher-functioning alcoholic.

What else was I going to do with my life? Certainly couldn’t go home. The folks, friends, whoever... they wouldn’t recognize me. I’d burned away most of my former self in those lab trials. And good riddance. You wouldn’t have liked him much anyway.

By the time I had four cherries lined up on the paper napkin at my elbow, the girl came for me. The receiver in the phone booth across the way was on top of the box. I picked up my drink and ordered another two. This time, I told her, forget the cherries. I stepped into the phone booth, nudged the door closed with my knee, and sat down. Some of my drink sloshed out over the edge of the glass, baptizing my knuckles.

“Hello, Mom,” I said.

“What in the blue blazes happened?”

Oh. This was Dad, which was a surprise. I thought I’d be receiving instructions from Mom. Dad was more to the point, but Mom was more fun.

“Oh, nothing,” I said. “I just barely escaped a torture room with my life and managed to scramble out from under the Iron Curtain. I’ve been sitting here waiting for your call. I’m very bored. The lounge here doesn’t have real maraschinos. Just those nuclear-neon things you find in a supermarket. What’s the point of that?”

“You slaughtered your extraction team,” Dad said.

I waited a beat before replying: “You know, I’m fairly sure I didn’t.”

“Only the girl lived. She told us you went crazy.”

“If that was the extraction team, why did they decide it was a good idea to give me an orchiectomy?”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“They were a torture squad, Dad. They took out my transport man, put the girl in his place. You need to find her. She’ll be able to tell you everything.”

Dad was quiet for a few moments. “Dannemora says you assaulted her then fled the pickup.”

“She has her version, I have mine.”

That left Dad utterly exasperated. He had no idea how to respond, and I had no idea how to follow up. I drained the rest of my Manhattan then rattled the ice in the highball glass.

“Did you make the drop?”

“Of course.”

“Tell me where.”

“I can only tell Mom. You know that.”

“Mom is unavailable.”

“Then it can wait.”

Another long, awkward pause.

“Go somewhere,” he finally said. “I want you to be out of sight for a while until I sort this out. Can you do that?”

“I can do that. I’ll send word the usual way. Oh, and when you speak to the girl, send her my apologies, and I do hope her tailbone is feeling better.”

Dad clicked off somewhere during that last sentence. I hung up and walked back to my table where two fresh Manhattans, no cherries, were waiting for me, along with a full glass of beer. Nat King Cole’s “Those Lazy, Hazy Crazy Days of Summer” was playing through the hall.

Dad had ordered them for me. Like I said: to the point.

So I’ve been sitting here, sipping my drinks and recording these memories on a series of napkins, which are really too small for this kind of undertaking. But, you make do with what you’ve got. Like these Manhattans, for instance. Something about the rye is off to my palate; leave it to Dad to ask for a rail brand. However, it is getting the job done all the sam

[End of a manuscript discovered on a series of napkins at Vienna International Airport]