Katja from the Punk Band (12 page)

“We have to go after him,” Katja says, and Nikolai has to grab her, pull her back toward him.

“No!”

“What do you mean,
no
? He could have the vial. What if some sort of deal has just gone down? He might have it.”

“But . . .” And he can’t think of a reason not to go after the man, at least not one that he can use. “But he might not.”

“Well there’s only one way to find out.”

And she’s getting up again, twisting in advance this time so that when Nikolai reaches for her he can’t get a decent grip and she slips away from him, and he almost shouts to her with Kohl still in earshot, grabs the neck of her guitar and holds on.

Whisper-shouts, “Wait!”

“What is your fucking problem?!” And she really does shout and they both turn, look, expecting to see Kohl, looking back into the alley, gun in hand.

The gun. If they still had it, they could just fucking shoot him.

Just fucking shoot him and . . .

“He’s gone,” Katja says, straightens up. “For fuck’s sake he’s fucking gone, you moron.”

She paces out to the very lip of the alley, but there’re three ways the man could have gone and no way to know which he chose, or what might lie awaiting them in the darkness.

“I’m sorry, I just . . .”

Katja kicks out at the building’s wall with a heavily booted foot, takes a chunk of brick out the size of her fist. Brings the guitar’s heavy body around for another frustrated swipe but stops in mid-arc.

“There’s still time, maybe we could . . .”

“He’s gone,” she says flatly.

Nikolai lingers, unsure of what to do or say next. He’s still waiting for Kohl to step out of a shadow somewhere, weapon pointed at them and harbouring a serious desire to make Nikolai suffer for a very long time.

If he knew. If he’d already found out the vial was full of nothing but a few dozen millilitres of Nikolai’s piss.

If.

“What are you doing?”

Katja, she’s crouched by the arcade’s shutter-door, examining the locking mechanism.

“This isn’t locked. He didn’t shut it properly.”

She reaches under the metal frame and lifts it slowly, gently, and it moves with a great metal creak.

She winces at the volume of the sound, hesitates.

“We’re going inside?” Nikolai whispers to her, crouching down.

“Of course we’re going inside. I want to know what’s going on with my fucking vial.”

And again there’s that sensation of wanting to run, to just get out of the whole situation and take his chances with whatever Kohl might have planned for him, but then there’s Katja and she’s like a strong current that doesn’t realize or care that she’s dragging him along with her.

She’s already opened the door enough to slide underneath, first checking inside to make sure it’s safe. Nikolai feels an urge to insist he goes first, but he doesn’t know where it comes from and anyway she’s already in, pulling the guitar in after her.

She doesn’t wait for him to follow, doesn’t ask him, she just goes and he is drawn in after her.

They both remain crouched on the other side of the doorway, and a short corridor stretches out before them. Nikolai remembers it vaguely from the few times he’s been and knows there’s an entrance farther up on the right that leads into the main games hall. It’s from this doorway that the place’s only light source emanates a gritty, dirty glow.

They listen; silence.

Katja stands, walks toward the light source, her hands on the body of the guitar as if it is a pistol in a holster. Peeks her head around the corner.

Nikolai only realizes he’s been holding his breath when he feels his chest tighten and the sudden need to exhale overcomes him. He breathes out hard but slowly just as Katja steps inside the games hall, and he’s ready for the gunshot or the shout or something, something to bring this all crashing down around them.

There is an electronic click and beep from one of the machines.

Nikolai steps inside a few paces behind her and there’s the smell of hot circuit boards, the dull glitter of a few machines still running, their reflections scattered across the ceiling.

The cabinets are great dark bulks, blocky shadows like skyscrapers during a blackout, like sentries on duty.

As he watches Katja walk amongst them, he feels certain one will pounce on her, push her to the ground and crush her.

He wants her to slow down, slow down, but she won’t, ducks around the final machine in the row and stops.

“Uh oh.”

Nikolai swallows.

Uh oh? What uh oh?

The initial discomfort he felt at carrying a gun is now gone and he finds himself wishing for it back. Somewhere a timer clicks, clicks, clicks and it’s counting down, counting down to when they are . . .

“Have a look,” she says.

And it’s around the corner, behind a large cabinet with a fake rifle resting on a pair of pegs.

A pair of pegs, then a pair of legs, sprawled out on the floor beneath them and from the legs a torso and from the torso a pool of blood.

Blood.

Blood.

Katja reaches out with the head of the guitar, thinks better of it, pokes the body with the toe of her boot instead.

Nothing.

There’s something akin to an asteroid impact in the body’s chest, a black, charred hole that exposes little pieces of his insides. They can see the pattern of the carpet he lies on through the hole.

“I think he’s pissed himself,” she announces as she carefully crouches beside the corpse. “Can you smell that?”

The eyes are cold and dead and they are Szerynski’s eyes in Szerynski’s body. Szerynski’s corpse.

“This is Szerynski?”

And Nikolai realizes that he has been talking out loud.

Nods.

“Was Szerynski,” Katja corrects herself.

She looks for a moment as if she is going to touch the wound but thinks better of it, and Nikolai finds himself going from that gaping hole to the hole in her neck.

“Oh no. No no no no no!” Katja says.

“What’s — ?”

“No!”

And she drops to her knees and leans down toward the shadow of blood that seeps toward her, and there is something glittering there. She grabs something and holds it up.

“No!”

A piece of glass. Thin. Rounded.

And Nikolai sees, as she turns it slightly toward the glow of one of the cabinets, a fragment of watermark.

“NO!” And she throws the piece across the room, a shooting star of light that vanishes into the darkness at the rear, shatters into something out of sight.

“Fucking hell!”

She jumps to her feet, swings the guitar around and smashes it into one of the cabinets’ screen again and again, frantically, desperately, and she doesn’t hear Nikolai tell her, “Wait” until he touches her on the hip and she swings for him instinctively and the instrument whistles past his forehead.

“Stop!”

In his hand, another piece of the shattered vial, this the curved bottom of the piece with a splinter of glass like a half-inch blade up one side. There’s a tiny amount of liquid left in the bottom. He offers it to her and she sniffs.

“Smells like piss,” she says. Her trach tube quivers in her throat at the exertion of smashing up the cabinet.

“I think it
is
piss.”

“I don’t . . .”

“A fake,” he says.

Katja stares at the pieces, sniffs again. “Just because it smells like piss, doesn’t mean it’s a fake.”

“I’ve heard that’s what they do,” Nikolai lies to her. “As a safeguard to people trying to steal chemicals. Use fakes filled with urine.”

For a moment he isn’t sure if she’s buying it or not, if she’s trying to figure out why he’s so certain it’s a fake — what else he might know. Then Nikolai says:

“Maybe that’s why he was shot.”

“He was trying to screw Kohl over?”

Nikolai shrugs. “Something like that.”

“But I saw Aleksakhina bring the vial in here.”

“So maybe Szerynski
did
have the real vial.”

“Then where did this one come from?”

Click.

Katja says, “Kohl brought it.”

“And if the fake is here . . .”

“Then Kohl has the real one.”

“An exchange?”

“Or a robbery,” she says, staring down at the gun lying against another cabinet. She stoops down beside it, hesitates, then picks it up.

It’s the gun Nikolai dropped outside.

Now here, next to Szerynski’s corpse.

Nikolai flinches as pain shoots through his hand he realizes that he’s down to the nail bed on his right forefinger. A little bead of blood works its way through the soft flesh and he begins on the next finger.

“Kohl must have the real vial,” she says. “Kohl has it.”

The voodoo lighting flickers as a rolling demo comes to life on one of the machines. Pixels dance on the previously blackened screen.

“You know this Kohl, then?”

Shrugs.

“Is he a dealer? Your dealer?”

Shrugs again. For some reason he feels ashamed to admit he uses at all. Wants to explain that it’s not his fault. His stomach . . .

“Then you’ll know where we can find him,” she says.

This fucking night is never-ending.

Feeding Kohl a fake vial and Szerynski ending up with it, Szerynski who now lies dead at their feet and they’ll think it’s him, they’ll think he’s behind all this.

It’s a vortex, a snake swallowing its own tail.

And then there’s Katja at the centre of it, spinning wildly, dragging in everything around her, dragging Nikolai in.

He knows what comes next.

“We’re going after Kohl, right?”

Got the stupid fucking thing in my hand now. Let’s get this shit over with.

Kohl walks into The Digital Drive-by. This time, it’s an air of superiority, of satisfaction, that surrounds him rather than his usual twitchy nervousness that follows him like a small swarm of sticky flies.

He nods to some of the regulars, hunched over cocktail machines, their faces emaciated from the glow beneath them. It’s good to have the regulars there often, providing a show for those who wish to be like them and a challenge to those who think they can beat them — either way the money rolls in.

And yet what is that compared to what he might now be in line for from Szerynski?

Beng, a six-and-a-half-foot Croat who had won local championships on the last three occasions, nods to Kohl as he walks past, his hands continuing to move deftly over the joystick and keys without his full attention. Kohl thinks perhaps he’ll organize a lock-down tournament, shutting out the small timers and amping it out to get some big money going. Why the hell not? Things were going well.

This is his kingdom, these are his people. He doesn’t need endless ego-stroking domains scattered across the island, as Szerynski and some others favour. This he knows, this he controls. He will consolidate his place, nothing more.

He pushes through a crowd and the electronic garble is broken by the sound of Fat Rita’s gritty shouts. The headset she wears, it looks like a piece of her gum that’s snapped around her head and over her ear. Her chubby hands defy reason as she sorts through piles of coins with the skill of a surgeon.

She stops talking when she sees Kohl approach.

Into the phone she says, “Oh . . . wait. Waitaminute. Here he comes.”

Clamps one chubby hand over the bud-like mouthpiece.

“Phone call for you. You wanna take this?”

Her mouth opens unnecessarily wide when she speaks, enough that Kohl can clearly see the pink wetness of her tongue and the ridges of the roof of her mouth.

“Who?”

She looks down at a scrap of paper on the desk before her.

“Shariski . . .”

And the room fades away, melts like wax from a candle.

“Szerynski,” Kohl says.

Fat Rita pops her bubble through the protestation. “Yah. That’s what I said.”

He makes a mental note to get rid of the woman if he ever finds a way to crowbar her from the booth. Motions for her to hand him the headset, and he is certain that beneath the white noise of the arcade there is a definite sucking sound like that of a leech being wrenched from its feeding place.

The device glistens, and Kohl takes it only after sliding his sleeve over one hand and wiping the metal and plastic parts clean with his other sleeved hand. The jacket will have to go now, of course. He’ll burn it later.

He pulls the headset on.

“Mr. Szerynski.”

Trying to sound calm, in control. No problem.

The voice on the other end says, “Vladimir.”

“I’m glad you called,” Kohl tells him, reaches into his pocket and takes out the vial. Still there, still there.

“Oh, yes?” Szerynski replies. “Why’s that?”

“Because I have your vial. Right here in my hands.”

There’s a pause, a beat. “Really.”

“No problems, Mr. Szerynski. No problems at all.”

The electronic music, the game themes, the cheers of the crowd and smell of hot circuit boards, reflected pixels rolling across his goggles. Life is good.

“Then why don’t you come right over, Vladimir. I’m eager to see you.”

“Yes, sir,” he says into the headset, nodding enthusiastically. “Yes, sir.”

He pulls the headset off and gives it back to Rita, not even noticing that for a brief moment her fingers touch his and possibly transfer a small amount of streptococcus.

Kohl gets the cab to drop him off a few blocks from Czechmate just to be safe, even though the sky is beginning to open. The driver, an African woman with a bulbous afro and dazzling white eyes and teeth, watches him in the rearview mirror as he leaves.

Twelve steps, then a pause, two back. Another twelve steps.

He’s counting in his head, making sure not to hit thirteen. Never know what that thirteenth step might hold. Broke his ankle once on the thirteenth step — though he wasn’t counting that time and didn’t know for a fact that it was his thirteenth step, but chances are good that it was. It had just felt like a thirteenth step.