Tatiana had nothing else to say; she just nodded, turned around, her head hung low, and walked towards the door. She looked over her shoulder at Igor and caught sight of the nurse on the floor.
“What are you looking at?”
The nurse started to stammer out a response, but Tatiana's shoe cut her off. The nurse back crawled into the corner of the room as she tried to avoid the kicks. Isolated, with no where else to go, she covered her head and cried. Tatiana kicked the nurse until Igor pulled her away and shoved her towards the door.
“I told you to get the fuck out of here.”
Tatiana took one last look at the nurse's body â the woman was still sitting up but no longer conscious â and went out into the darkened hallway.
“You two have a real future, Igor.”
“Shut up.”
“Hard to call me a liar when I know about the bullet hole I put in your left shoulder.”
“Shut up, you motherfucker! No more talk.”
“If you kill me, Igor, my deal with Sergei is done.”
He paused and squinted at me, over the barrel of the gun, confused by my words.
“Deal?”
“Sergei and I are square. You not knowing that means you aren't high enough on the totem pole to be pulling any triggers. You know that though, don't you? Makes me wonder why you're ready to shoot me in the middle of a hospital without permission from your boss.”
“Revenge. You cost me everything.”
“Sounds to me like I gave you everything. I let you live and I killed your boss. If you took over for Mikhail, you run a neighbourhood now. You're something of a player because of me.”
“All that means nothing without closure. Everything I earned, and I earned it, means nothing without getting the closure I need. I can't do my job right, I can't earn, I can't even fuck! What you did to me ruined me, and I can't get past it. I need other people to do everything for me. Do you know how hard it is to come up with reasons why you can't work? It's exhausting. I'm always . . .” he motioned his hands up and down until he found the word, “juggling reasons and excuses. I need to get out of the cycle, but I won't be able to get my head right until I get back what you took from me.”
Igor took a breath and wiped tears from his face. He dried his hand on his pants, then took a two-handed grip on the butt of the gun. He closed one eye and levelled the barrel with my forehead. The gun trembled a little at first, then more and more. He was working up his nerve, and he would get there unless I pushed him off course. Igor used the term “closure”; the word sounded strange coming from the gangster's mouth. He said the word slowly as though it were a serious matter. I focused on the term and used it to try to pull Igor off track.
“Killing me like this is not going to give you closure. What are you proving by just pulling the trigger while I'm chained down? You did none of the heavy lifting. Someone else did everything for you again, and you're just going to take the credit. No wonder you can't get it up; you can't even hold a gun straight.”
“Shut up.”
“You think Tatiana is downstairs checking out the real men?”
“Shut up.”
“Men who can do their jobs. Men who fuck their women instead of beat them. Men who don't cry themselves to sleep at night.”
“Shut up!”
“You don't like what I'm saying? Then prove you're better. Prove it, you limp dick.” Under the covers my hands slid out from the cuffs. “Don't just pull some trigger and let the bullet do the work like everyone else does. Do something for yourself.”
The trembling hands got worse, and the barrel shook away from its path to my forehead. Instead of a bullet exploding towards me, the squat revolver accelerated towards my face. Igor swung his arm up, as he advanced on me, preparing to pistol whip me.
“Shut up! Shut up!”
My hand met the Russian's wrist as it came down at my skull. My other hand grabbed the barrel of the gun and forced it up to the ceiling. I kept pushing the gun forward towards his wrist until it broke free of his grip. Igor, wild with rage, drove his head forward into my nose. I turned my head enough to take the blow on the side of my forehead. The head butt caused me to lose my grip on the gun, and it fell to the sheets. Igor's hands found my throat, and he bore down on me.
“Shut up! Shut up!”
His eyes were wild, and he was foaming at the corners of his mouth. I had coaxed him to move on me, and I was paying the price. The choke was strong, but I had been in worse scrapes with better men. I didn't waste time searching for the gun or working on the fingers of the hands on my windpipe. My left hand took a handful of hair, and my right formed an index finger fishhook. I gouged into Igor's mouth, hooking the soft flesh surrounding his bared teeth, and ripped away. His cheek tore, and Igor wailed. The sudden pain cut through the temporary insanity and broke the chokehold. Igor recoiled in pain, grabbing at his face as he lost his balance on the bed. He rolled to the floor while I sat up and grabbed the gun. The fat black revolver was ugly-beautiful, and it fit my hand like a glove on a cold winter day. I put my feet on the ground for the first time in days and felt the cold touch of the floor tiles. Air flowed up into the gown, and I felt my skin tighten. Igor still pawed at his cheek, trying to hold the newly separated flesh together while he screamed. His screams were dampened by his hands over his mouth, and the sounds came out as muffled grunts. Blood was streaming down Igor's wrists and dripping through his cupped hands onto the floor. I took a fistful of Igor's hair and pulled his head forward so that the blood stayed off his clothes. He yelped a little louder in pain for a second, then the butt of the revolver put him to sleep.
W
hen the adrenaline receded I became suddenly aware of the pull from under my gown. The catheter line was taut, and the pain radiated into my core. I had no idea how the plastic line was forced into me, and I learned the hard way, after one painful pull, that there was some sort of anchor inside my bladder holding the tube inside me. However the tube was locked in place, the bag couldn't come with me. I pawed Igor's pockets looking for a knife but found only car keys. I used the sharpest key to saw at the tube just above the bag. It took thirty seconds for the dull key to wear down the medical plastic. I threw the bag in a medical waste disposal box and gave removing the tube one last try. The catheter retracted with my pull, and I grunted as each centimetre of the tube came free. When the catheter was all of the way out, I saw that the anchor that once held it in place was now a flaccid balloon tinted pink with a sheen of blood and urine.
Free from the catheter, I wasted no time stripping Igor. Within minutes, I was wearing his fashionable jeans and leather jacket. I also felt the bulge of his wad of cash in the pants and the weight of his revolver under my new belt.
Igor was unconscious in my gown. I bent at the waist and picked him up. It wasn't pretty; I kept the Russian face down, using his waist and a handful of hair to lift him, to avoid any more blood on the clothes. I flopped his slackened body on the bed and roughly turned him over. I closed the cuffs around his wrists until I felt bone stop the mechanism. Killing Igor would bring too much heat down from both the cops and the Russians. Hurting him would have to do. The beating wasn't severe enough to do him any serious harm; the further damage to his psyche was another story altogether.
I checked the nurse's pulse and found her to still be soundly out. I left her where she was and creaked the door open. The halls were dark and empty save the sound of two women talking somewhere down the corridor. I tilted my head out, but I couldn't see the owners of the two voices. I looked back at the nurse on the floor behind me and watched her stillness. It wouldn't last forever. If she made enough noise coming to, or anyone peeked in and saw her â the hospital would be in lockdown fast.
“Fuck,” I said under my breath. I pulled the gun from under the coat and gripped the barrel. I walked over to the nurse and looked at her closely. She was beaten up, but she would live. I dragged her body behind the other side of the bed so that no one would prematurely rouse her from her concussed dreams either.
I turned off the lights in the room, eased the door open again, and saw that the hall was still clear. I walked down the corridor, away from the voices, and took the first stairwell I saw. I took the stairs down to the main floor and found another set of stairs leading to the parking garage. All at once the steps were concrete and coated in chewed gum and grime. The light fixtures followed suit and became suddenly more sparse and cheap, offering light only on each landing. I took the first exit into the parking garage. The lot reeked of urine and mildew, and I breathed deep, enjoying the scent of the city. Even in someone else's clothes and wanted by both sides of the law, I couldn't shake the nostalgic smell of the city. Fuck freshly baked bread, it had nothing on the city air.
I walked through the rows of cars, down the ramps, to the exit. There were no security guards, only an electric arm to guard against anyone trying to sneak out without paying for parking. I didn't even break pace, just ducked under the arm and strode to the crosswalk. St. Joseph's was just outside downtown and close to everything. It was a short walk down St. Joseph's Drive to James Street. The road was busy with young people making their way into the downtown core for fun on Hess Street or in the dozens of pubs located on every other block.
The streetlights were on, and I was sure that the stars were out above the layer of constant pollution in the sky. I put a kilometre of distance between the hospital and myself before stopping on the curb. I waited two minutes for a cab to come down the mountain access, past the hospital, on its way to drunken downtown fares. I stepped out in front of the cab and got in the back while the cabby got over his shock.
“You can't jump in front of cars like that! You'll get hit!”
“Take me to the north end of Wentworth.”
“Seriously, what the fuck were you thinking?”
“Drive to Wentworth, or I step out in front of another cab.”
“Fine, asshole. Whatever.”
As we drove, the cab driver ran through the list of pedestrian-initiated accidents he had seen. I didn't participate in the conversation. Once I saw that his dashboard clock read
11
:
38
, I just kept my eyes peeled for an open store and for Ave Maria. As we clocked down Wentworth, I saw empty storefront after storefront. I almost missed Ave Maria; its old dark brick camouflage blended into the city too well. I let two streets go by before telling the cabby to turn off the road onto a quiet side street. We made two right turns before making our way behind Ave Maria. I watched the alleys and side streets as the cab got closer to the Volvo. One hundred metres away from the car, backed into an alley, I saw it. There was a dark sedan parked in the shadows. A small orange glow pierced through the dark and gave away someone sitting inside. I knew someone would be watching the alley. Before my hospital stay, I had killed two people there and maimed another. Someone would have noticed my work, and they would have eventually picked up on the Volvo collecting dust just down the street. I was sure it had been searched, but that didn't bother me; the money was well hidden. No one doing a fast street search would find it unless they knew exactly where to look. There was a chance the car would be conveniently “stolen,” but if that happened, no one would be able to get a look at the owner. Whoever was watching the car was looking for some face time â probably the bloody kind. The watcher in the car was a low-level grunt, either cop or robber. Whoever they were, they would need to be dealt with if I was going to get back what was mine. And I was going to get what was mine.
“I need to get to a Shoppers Drug Mart. One of those huge twenty-four-hour stores. You know where one is?”
“As long as you promise not to get hit by a car in the parking lot.”
“I promise, Mom.”
“Mom! Listen. I'm just trying to do my civic duty. I see too much stupid crap night after night to stay quiet. But you, you don't care. So do what you want. Lay in the street if you feel like it. I don't care anymore.”
“The street would be quieter.”
“All right, pal. I get it. You don't want an earful from me on your dollar. Just make sure you don't end up getting a bumperful, okay?”
“You wouldn't have hit me,” I said.
“What makes you so sure?”
“I've already gotten my surprises for the day. Three in a row, God ain't that funny.”
The cab driver made a confused grunt, then shut up and drove in silence. The Shoppers was on Main. It was one of the old-school stores that used to be a Big V before it was bought out. I paid the cab driver to wait out front while I went inside. The
$400
I took off Igor would pay for everything I would need.
The store was a ghost town. The cashier, a fat woman with short blond hair and several moles, said, “Hello,” without looking up from her magazine, and I grunted a matching response in the direction of the greeting. I walked through the aisles, skimming through all of the logically assorted items until I found what I was looking for in the small home improvement section. I picked up a roll of duct tape and an exacto-knife. A gas can also caught my eye, and I put it under my arm. A few aisles away, I found a thin baby blanket, a duffel bag, and a black baseball cap.
I paid in cash for everything I picked up and added a Nestea from the refrigerator beside the register, a package of mixed nuts, and a Three Musketeers to my purchase.
Back in the cab, I put on the hat and loaded the duffel bag while we drove back to James Street. When we pulled to a stop across the street from where I was first picked up, I paid the cab driver.
“Now you watch out for pedestrians.”
“Me? Me? It is you who should be watching out. You walked in front of me right over there. Remember? I almost . . .”
I shut the door and walked back to the hospital. Instead of going to the parking garage I came out of, I walked to the front of the hospital. The lot was half full of cars despite the late hour. The cars were empty, and I saw no sign of anyone leaving the building as I approached. The half-empty lot meant that no one had found Igor or the nurse yet. There was an attendant in a booth collecting tickets, but no other security backed the lone worker up. The lot had no outdoor cameras mounted to protect the cars either. The hospital must have thought that the presence of a human being would cancel out the temptation of a new
BMW
alone out in the open. Whoever was in the booth was old hat at the job. I could see him leaning back in a chair with a newspaper spread in front of his face. The attendant never noticed me walking across the lot into the decorative foliage on the other side of the concrete. I took a spot between two large evergreen trees and ate the mixed nuts and candy bar. I didn't take a sip of the iced tea; I left the glass bottle of Nestea at my feet.
I waited and ate until sirens began approaching from all directions. The parking lot attendant saw the rapid approach and raised the wooden bar for the cops. Five squad cars raced into the lot and took the handicap spaces. I picked around for cashews while the five cars shed their uniformed occupants. Eight cops in all ran into the hospital. The door was held open for them by an out-of-shape security guard who knew that the police presence meant it was time for him to get off his ass. He held the door and looked official until the men passed, then he just looked put out. I had finished the cashews and moved on to Brazil nuts when another car showed up. The car was not a squad car, it was a police sedan. It had no markings to establish its credentials, only the generic Ford features that let everyone know what kind of car it really was. As the car passed me, I saw the safety barrier for transporting suspects. I also noticed that Detective Sergeant Huata Morrison was driving. He paused in front of the entrance and put the car in park, but a security guard opened the door, pointed at the no stopping signs, and waved him away. Morrison put the Ford into gear and drove into the lot to find a spot.
I left my spot among the trees and walked onto the lot. From his booth the attendant couldn't see me moving out of my spot in the shadows. His back was to me, and his eyes were on something in his hands. He was probably on a cell phone â texting someone about the action.
Morrison found a spot in the middle of the lot and pulled in headfirst so that the car faced the hospital entrance. I was ten metres away when he opened the door. I sped up my pace and closed the gap as he put one foot on the pavement. Morrison put down his other foot and got out of the car dragging his suit jacket along with him. His back was to me as he put the jacket on. His broad shoulders made it difficult, and he had to raise one arm high in the air to slide the jacket over his shoulders. His stance was wide, and just as his suit jacket slid on, my foot connected with his groin. Morrison had no time to scream because my arm was around his windpipe before he hit the ground. My right hand found my biceps, and my left hand went behind the big man's head. The rear naked choke was textbook; the kick to the balls left the cop defenceless, and it let me get in tight. His powerful frame surged against the choke for a few seconds, but the hold won quickly. Some people can fight a sloppy choke for as long as they can hold their breath, but a good choke doesn't attack the airway. The flesh and bone vise around Morrison's neck cut off circulation, not oxygen, and no one can hold out against a loss of blood to the brain for more than a few seconds. I kept the choke on for another fifteen seconds before letting it go in favour of a grip under the sagged shoulders of the big cop. I backed into the car first and pulled Morrison into the driver's seat.
It took under two minutes to tape Morrison into the car. He was straight up in the seat, duct taped to the headrest. The tape covered his forehead and eyebrows; another section of tape secured his throat to the seat as well. Both of the cop's hands were attached to the steering wheel at ten and two. I turned out all of Morrison's pockets and put his phone, wallet, and gun on the dashboard in front of me; then I drank the Nestea and checked the lot. No one else had shown up, and no one had left the hospital. The lot was quiet; the only interruption came from the cell phone. Morrison's phone was on vibrate, and it marched across the dashboard like an angry bee buzzing in an out-of-control fit. The phone call was expected; I figured the first response cops were waiting for Morrison to show up and take control of the situation. He was late to the party, and someone wanted to know why. I took one last swig of iced tea and dumped the rest into Morrison's lap. He came to slowly at first, then all at once. His eyes went wild, and he strained against the tape. I let him pull and yell for a minute, then I let him feel his gun against his neck.
“You! What the fuck are you doing? I'll get you for this. I'm gonna lock you up and fucking eat the key. Hey, what are you doing?”
I put two pieces of tape over his mouth and nose and watched him struggle. He pulled so hard at his bonds that the steering wheel started to creak.
I pulled the tape off with one quick motion and heard a huge gasp of air.
“That Maori medicine is no fun, eh, Detective Sergeant?”
“I'm a cop,” was all he could get out.
“And here I thought you were a fisherman looking for the big catch. Or was that all bullshit? You just let me think I was supposed to be working for you while you tipped off your boss. Way I figure it, you were the only one who knew who I was. You don't even really know that, but you got ideas about me that aren't far off. So you tip off the Russians, and you earn yourself a bonus giving me up.”