“Take it easy Smith, you’re going to wear the point off your pencil.”
The Half Guinea, his large, brown, weather-beaten hand extended from the spacious sleeve of a three-quarter-length black leather jacket, has rested that hand on a tense bent shoulder of Kyiv-based detective John Smith, who’s scribbling away on a large white napkin recently provided to him by a dark and busty waitress who smiled at Smith as she obligingly provided the napkin – not that he’d noticed.
The Guinea’s other hand holds a Coffee Americano, basic black, meaning no milk or sugar, and thus no need for the stupid little wooden stirring sticks that Smith often hands back to Ukrainian service staff without explanation.
It’s just before lunch hour and Smith and The Guinea have stopped into the Bruter sandwich shop recently installed near the entrance of the Furshet supermarket in Podil. They sit on barstools at the window.
“Just put the coffee on the table. I’ll get to it,” says Smith, who’s hurrying to finish his latest piece for The Checkout section of Kyiv Unedited. The Guinea smiles and takes his time before relieving Smith’s shoulder of the large brown hand.
“Just wait ‘til I publish this,” Smith continues, scribbling on.
The place begins to fill with underpaid office girls, in non-office dress, their eyes on their smartphones, their ears plugged with earphones, the boys with bushy beards, everyone with a tattoo, some stressed, probably over money, which they still pay out for overpriced sandwiches.
“Where do they get off killing my wife,” says Smith. “We were going to get our own place… after my promotion…”
The Guinea remains standing over Smith from where he has an excellent view of the street, a real cluster fuck of Ukrainian urban life: people rushing past or poking along; running their mouths into phones or billowing smoke from e-cigarettes; cars on the road, cars on the curb, cars on your ass if you don’t watch out and even if you do.
“I mean – look at this shit that they’re writing now!”
Smith turns his attention to his detective’s notebook, rifles through the thick leaves of paper, pauses to lick his middle finger and then stops to stick his index finger from the same hand into a section of dark notes in the center of a page:
‘Then she recognizes The Half Guinea – the swarthy Mediterranean features, a crazed look, his thick lips broken by an insinuating jagged-toothed leer.’
“Yeah?” Smith looks over his shoulder at The Guinea, then continues reading from his notes, carefully copied from the most recent materials of Kyiv Commix:
‘He’s dragging enough grease behind him that Commix Girl worries others will slip and fall as they walk in.’
The Guinea, still looking out the window, abruptly but with restrained force, pokes Smith in the small of the back and makes his way toward the door.
Smith looks back, then forward just in time to catch sight of The Hunched Cornish, who’s stopped to buy some posies off an old woman with her make-shift flower shop along the curb in front of the sandwich shop.
Grabbing his hat from the lunch counter and stuffing his notebook into the front jacket pocket of his light-gray suit on his way out, Smith soon emerges onto the cluster fuck just in time to witness The Guinea applying the fireman’s carry on The Hunched Cornish, who’s slumped heavily in The Guinea’s arms.
Standing on his toes, Smith can just make out the top of The Guinea’s large dark head as he drops into the back of a maroon-colored four-door sedan double parked behind the flower woman.
The Guinea’s hands and feet stick out of the car as they struggle to tug The Hunched Cornish inside. The Cornish’s hideous face, exposed to the light of day, now asleep, unconscious, or worse, has disappeared into the sedan’s dark interior, followed by his hulking, folded frame, short knotty legs, striped socks and pointy red shoes.
The door slams shut, and as the car speeds off. As it stops at the first intersection, Smith can just make out a shaggy pooch in dark sunglasses extend its paw out the driver’s side window to signal a turn.
Signed Dirk Dickerson, filling in for John Smith, March 30, 2017