Snuff the Magic Dragon (and other Bombay Family Bedtime Stories) (Greatest Hits Mysteries) (12 page)
Authors: Leslie Langtry
Dmitry and Dr. Lazavert came flying down the stairs to see Rasputin lying on the floor. I wanted to strangle all of them—, Dmitry for giving Felix his weapon and Lazavert for screwing up the poison somehow. I also wanted to beat Felix for his stupid little monologue. We have a strict rule in the Bombay family—don’t give speeches, just kill them. You’d be surprised how many times the bad guy gets away because some moron decides to give a speech.
“The rug!” Felix howled. For a moment, I thought he’d regained his senses. Yes, we should roll him up in the rug and move him before a bloodstain forms.
“Get him off the rug!” Felix shrieked. “It’s polar bear!”
I stared at these idiots as they moved the body off the rug so that
it wouldn’t get stained.
Rasputin’s body began to twitch, convulsing on the carpet, before going completely still.
“That’ll do it then,” Dr. Lazavert confirmed—without checking the body. I watched in surprise as the men patted each other on the back and celebrated.
“Come on!” Felix roared with the first shadow of confidence I’d seen all night. “Let’s go upstairs and toast the death of the monster!”
The three men left the room, laughing as they mounted the stairs. I heard them call for Buzhinsky and champagne. I examined the body, trying not to look at the blood. Rasputin was stiff and cold. I couldn’t find a heartbeat. This was good news. While the men waited for it to get later and dark enough to dump the body, I took the trays of poisoned crumbs, the wine glasses and empty bottle upstairs to dispose of them.
It was finally done, I thought. I cleaned the platters thoroughly three times, the last time with bleach. I did the same with the wine glasses and bottle before taking it all out to the garbage.
The wind whistled through the bare branches outside, and I slid back into the shadows of the trees in the courtyard, letting out a huge sigh of relief. It had been a very long night. We still needed to get rid of the body, but that should be the easiest part of the plan. Rasputin was dead. I’d finally gotten the job done. And it wasn’t easy.
Maybe I needed to rethink this idea of getting others to do the work. We barely made it through this murder. Maybe the other Bombays were right to just do the job themselves. If anything, the screw-ups this evening were a good sign that it was time to go solo.
To my amazement, even though nearly every aspect of the plan had gone wrong, these guys actually did what Guseva couldn’t a few years ago. They had managed to kill Rasputin. The Mad Monk was dead. And he was running into the courtyard…wait, what?
Which brings us back to where I started…with Rasputin’s caved-in face and bullet in the head on the carpet in the hall, Felix holding cast iron dumbbells in each hand, splattered with blood.
I helped the men roll the carpet around the now
certainly
dead Rasputin. We secured it with rope. Dr. Lazavert assured us this time the man was dead. I watched as the men, with the servant Buzhinsky, carried the body to the trunk of Felix’s car and drove off into the night.
I was mopping the blood up from the foyer, pretending it was wine so as not to get lightheaded, when I heard Buzhinsky re-enter the room with Dmitry.
“Do you think the policeman believed the story of a backfiring automobile?” Dmitry said somewhat sarcastically.
Buzhinsky nodded. “Maybe.”
Dmitry said nothing for a moment as I wrung the last of the blood—er
, wine
—into the bucket and went into the kitchen to pour it out. When I returned with a cloth to dry the floor, I found the policeman Vlassiyev standing in the foyer with Dmitry. What was he doing here? Maybe he didn’t buy the story and had returned?
“Thank you for coming,” Dmitry said as he rose to his full height and puffed out his chest. “I appreciate it at such a late hour.”
Wait…what? Dmitry had called him? To come here??
The policeman nodded and waited.
I stared openly at Dmitry. What was he thinking? I had Vlassiyev convinced it was nothing! But Dummy Dmi summoned him back? Did he not notice the
huge pool of blood in the courtyard
!?
Dmitry introduced himself to the policeman and asked if Vlassiyev had heard of him. Of all the egotistical bullshit! This was not the time to throw your weight around as some sort of political celebrity, Dmi!
“I have heard of you,” Vlassiyev replied.
“Have you ever heard of Rasputin?” Dmitry waited for the policeman to nod—which he did. I broke out in a cold sweat. What was happening?
“Well,” Dmitry continued in a proud voice, “Rasputin is dead. And if you love our mother Russia, you’ll keep quiet about it.”
My mouth hung completely open. This idiot just told the police that we’d murdered the tsarina’s favorite Russian!
“Yes, sir.” Vlassiyev nodded and left.
Dmitry clapped his hands and laughed. “Well, that’s that! We won’t have to worry about him!” His tone was smug and self-congratulatory. I had just witnessed the stupidest thing I’d ever seen. If I moved quickly, I could kill Dmitry before the others got back. I didn’t care if anyone saw me do it. I could get out of Russia before they even looked for me. Maybe I should kill Felix, Dr. Lazavert and Buzhinsky too. My mind was whirling, and I was lightheaded, unable to think straight. Maybe I could make it look like they all committed suicide so they wouldn’t get caught? I took a step toward Dmitry just as Felix and the doctor burst through the door in a triumphant mood.
“We did it!” Felix said as he raised one of the bloody dumbbells into the air. “We threw him in the river!” He handed the bloody dumbbells to me for cleaning and smiled dopily.
I stared at the weights. The weights that were supposed to be tucked inside the carpet just before they tossed Rasputin into the water. The weights that were supposed to make the body sink so it wouldn’t be found. The weights I held in my hands.
I closed my eyes and used every ounce of will that I had to not attack Felix with them.
When I regained my senses, I heard Dmitry finishing his story about how he masterfully handled the policeman. Felix clapped his friends on the back, and they decided the deed was done, and they all went their separate ways.
I was sitting in the kitchen an hour later, still trying to wrap my head around the events. By now, Rasputin, if he wasn’t dead before, would have been dead almost an hour from hypothermia. I felt fairly confident about that.
Didn’t I?
The bottle of very expensive champagne was empty next to me; I’d just finished the last glass. Two empty tins of Felix’s best caviar sat beside me. I spared no expense. Fuck Felix if he was pissed. The man barely pulled it off.
He hadn’t come down to see me—choosing instead to take Buzhinsky with him to help clean himself up. I’d waited in the kitchen, so I could yell at him or kill him. But he never came down. I’d like to think that’s because he knew he’d screwed up and that I’d be mad. I was more certain that it was because he thought he’d done a great job and went to bed.
How had everything gone so wrong? And by everything, I mean
everything
! It was as if the prince and his merry band of misfits went out of their way to make every comic error they could think of.
I shook my head. Maybe the policeman really did decide not to tell anyone. Rasputin was vastly unpopular. And the policeman would have blackmail material enough to make himself a very rich man. Perhaps I was over-thinking it. I was definitely tired and starting to feel the results of the champagne.
I left everything out so Felix could see what I’d done, and, instead of the chilly west wing, found a nice, warm guest room and passed out.
I awoke a few hours later to find Felix shaking me. My head was spinning. What time was it? Why was he waking me up?
“Um…” he said slowly, as if that would help. “...we may have a problem.”
Somehow I pulled myself together. My mouth tasted like the Dead Sea, but I managed to show up dressed downstairs. Buzhinsky met me and led me into the courtyard, where I found the prince standing next to a dead dog. A gun gleamed in his hand. My gun. How did he get my gun?
The poor dog was clearly dead, shot once through the head. My heart ached for it.
“You shot a dog?” I said, my anger barely contained.
Felix handed the gun to Buzhinsky, who spirited it back into the house. I didn’t even want it back. I would never have shot a dog.
“I had to. We couldn’t get rid of all the blood.” Felix looked at me like I was an idiot.
“So,” I hissed through clenched teeth, “you shot a dog?” I was furious! I loved dogs! How could he do that? And with my gun?
Bombays weren’t supposed to kill anyone we weren’t assigned to kill, but I thought I might scrape by with an exception here.
Felix rolled his eyes. “Of course! I had to make it look like one of my guests from last night shot a dog! That would explain the blood.”
Oh sure. That made perfect sense. Of course.
I knelt down to touch the poor beast. It was one of Felix’s own Borzois. What a bastard.
“And what on earth made you think that one shot to a dog would cause this much blood?” I tried to control the rage that bubbled up inside of me. I was interrupted by the arrival of the police. Perfect.
Vlassiyev arrived with four other officers. Clearly he never meant to “not tell anyone.” I stepped behind Felix and kept my face down.
“We are investigating the murder of Rasputin, sir,” Vlassiyev said. “What do you have to say to that?”
Felix shrugged. “I have no idea what you mean.”
The five policemen looked at the enormous pool of blood and at the pitiful body of the dog lying in the middle of it.
“Would you care to explain this?” Vlassiyev pointed at the ground.
“I had a party last night. One of my guests thought it would be funny to shoot one of my dogs.” He didn’t say any more.
Vlassiyev knelt down and examined the dog. “Only one shot to the head.” He straightened up. “That would not account for this much blood.”
Felix shrugged again. I realized that this had been his defense most of his life.
“And we’ve had a call from Rasputin’s daughter,” Vlassiyev continued. “She said her father never came home last night. She said you picked him up and brought him to your house, and he hasn’t been seen since.”
Felix nodded smugly. “Rasputin was not one of my guests. I’ve never met the man.”
My fingers curled into fists. Was he kidding? The police just said Rasputin left with him last night. It wouldn’t take much to find out Felix had been one of his patients for the last two months. Was he insane?
Vlassiyev cleared his throat. “And one of your guests summoned me to the house last night to tell me Rasputin was murdered here and not to say a word about it.”
“I’m sure you misheard him,” Felix said simply. “Was Rasputin murdered?” His voice dripped with hope.
“Yes,” the officer said, “we found his body this morning. He is dead.”
I braced myself in case Felix did a little jig in front of the officers. At that moment, a Count Something-or-Other appeared in the courtyard and, completely ignoring the police, walked over and shook Felix’s hand.
“Just heard! Well done, my fellow! I always hated that damned monk!”
I went inside and gathered my things. Before anyone noticed, I’d packed up and fled Moika Palace through a side door. It took days to catch a train to Finland. I’d read a newspaper in Sweden that said the tsar hushed the whole thing up and sent Dmitry and Felix to the Western Front. Whatever.
The Rasputin Assignment became famous in the Bombay Family. For years, my relatives expressed sympathy for the job, and they all said they were grateful it wasn’t assigned to them, which made me feel a little bit better.
After all we went through with this greasy bastard—the poison, the shooting, and the bludgeoning—the autopsy showed that Rasputin had died of the one thing I hadn’t planned on…hadn’t even considered as a means of execution.
Rasputin was poisoned with potassium cyanide in his food and wine. He was shot in the back and shot in the head. His face was bashed in with weights. But that wasn’t what got him in the end.
Rasputin died…of drowning.
But at least this time, he really was, totally and completely, dead.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I hope you enjoyed these stories from the historical files of the Bombay Family of Assassins. As a history geek, I enjoyed writing them. Especially the John Billington story. I’m a direct descendant of this man who came over on the Mayflower and was also the first person hung for murder in the American Colonies—and it was fun killing off my 11
th
Great Grandpa (in a weird way).
If you haven’t read any of the Bombay books, I suggest you start with ‘SCUSE ME WHILE I KILL THIS GUY. You can find more information on my website: www.leslielangtry.com
If you have read them all, watch for a special Christmas short story coming out for the holidays of this year: FOUR KILLING BIRDS, which will be part of an anthology by the Killer Fiction Writers.
~ Leslie Langtry
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About the Author
L
eslie Langtry manages somehow to write from her home in the Midwest, where she lives with her two fabulous kids and terrific husband. She has never assassinated anyone – and wants to make that perfectly clear.
To learn more about Leslie Langtry, visit her online at
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OTHER BOOKS BY LESLIE LANGTRY
Greatest Hits Mysteries:
'Scuse Me While I Kill This Guy
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