“And don’t let the door hit you in the ass!”
Step and Dickerson don their hats, almost in unison, and start making a beeline for the nearest Kyiv Metro station.
“To hell with him,” begins Dickerson. “I wasn’t about to be steamrolled by rhino rump at a forum for losers.”
Step picks up his pace, as if declining the opportunity to respond.
“Yeah, I whacked him with the black jack. Would’ve hit him harder if the place hadn’t been so crowded. Couldn’t get a good swing in.”
Step’s got his hands in his pockets as if it were cold outside, and keeps looking straight ahead at nothing in front of him as he walks on.
“Did you see the way he nosedived… with his ass pointed up when he hit the floor? He didn’t even go flat but kind of formed an arch with that fat arrogant face bunched up in a pool of blood at one end.”
There’s no change in the expression on Step’s steely face, but a keener eye might notice an inner if fleeting smirk behind the narrow gaze.
“Anyway, good riddance is what I say. Move on. Hit the road – just like Mac told us to do.”
“What about your kids?” asks Step, still moving headlong toward that yet to be seen Metro station.
Dickerson goes dumb.
“The devil knows I’ve been canned more than a school of tuna, but it’s come with the territory since I came to this town. I’m a loner by circumstance, with Johnny, Jack and Jim no longer among my acquaintances.”
Dickerson gulps hard and then starts swinging his arms harder in stride.
“You know I’ve been offered a job in The Checkout, don’t you, Dirk?”
Dickerson, now pale, grinds his teeth nervously like he wants to say something but just can’t.
“How about a coffee… on the Left Bank… for old time’s sake?”
The platform at the Taras Shevchenko Metro Station, which only has an exit at one end, is almost empty of other folks – no pensioners with pin-on medals or burly bitches with dirty kids, or even trim romantic youths carrying flowers to or for their just grand gals in puffy party dresses.
It’s dark, like a garage, and the train emerges from the shadowy tunnel screeching like a beast out of hell – a long twisting metal beast steered by some shitkicker in a grimy blue uniform and bored out of his skull if not socially drunk.
Inside the wagon, the former detectives stand tall and reserved. But Step’s checking out a leggy dame in a low-cut dress via her reflection in the dark glass of the wagon door. And from that milky white cleavage, subtle and pouting yet firm breasts with a wiggle, something begins to grow: It’s skin, wrinkly skin, with hair, that’s gray, now a head, saucer eyes and the eerily accommodating smile of none other than Josh Davies.
Step winces like a boy, regains composure and then coolly checks to see if anyone else in the wagon has noticed the old man’s face, which is now plastered across the full area of the door’s glass, blocking out everything else that should be reflected in it.
The mouth widens in a smile of thin bright red lips around perfectly square teeth. The black hole in that face grows at the expense of the other grotesque features, save the eyes, which appear to be struggling to peak over the top of the now overstretched orifice.
Moments later, the partners are seated at a small table on the second floor of a left-bank pool hall run by two low-key Arabs but serviced by languid Ukrainian girls. It’s called Boomerang for some reason.
“It’s Losser, Jack, I’m telling ya. I should have finished off that ice cream peddler-cum-pedophile back in 2004, when I had him in my sights on Mikhailovsky Square. Just look at this!”
Dickerson pulls out a fresh copy of Kyiv’s leading English-language weekly, knowingly flipping through the glossy A3 sheets to a regular feature of the business section called Moving Up. There Welsh Losser, specifically his latest air-brush rendition, is featured with a sturdy, clearly younger man’s body arched interrogatively with a raised index finger, while the head, sticking out of a business suit minus the jacket but plus the suspenders, is covered in fresh flesh with sparkling eyes and a supremely confident yet wholesome smile of the kind one might imagine on a box of cornflakes. In the background sits a clearly diminished Boss Lard, whose cherub-like countenance is half-concealed by a potted plant.
But Step is having none of it. What he is having, following that earlier mentioned cup of coffee that served as the pretext to this sitting, and then a frothy-headed beer, “just to take the edge off of things,” is his third 100 grams of vodka, which with amazing speed and dexterity has transformed the steely-eyed sleuth into his former stalactified self before Dickerson’s very eyes, if they had been paying attention.
“I’m going to the toilet,” announces Step as he gets to his feet, as if to forestall any further conversation by the now fully wired Dickerson.
While relieving himself in the stinking toilet stall, Step is careful to avoid looking in the mirror. Why did he lie to Dickerson about getting a job offer in The Checkout section of the Kyiv Unedited website, he asks himself.
Upon returning to his table, weighed down by an oppressive feeling of ennui mixed with impotency, Step is greeted by a middle-aged man with Mediterranean looks and a dog in a trench coat and fedora, occupying his and Dickerson’s seats.
“Howdy Step. We were just leaving,” starts The Half Guinea. “This really isn’t our kind of place, although I’m familiarized with the patrons.”
“Where’s Dickerson.”
“Where are you,” cuts in the cur, who’s smoking a Tiparillo cigar and finishing off Step’s vodka.
“He’s with Losser… or at least he will be when the drug he was slipped wears off. You spend a lot of time in the toilet, Jack.”
“Almost closing time,” pipes in the pooch. “Can we give you a lift?”
“Where to?”
“To The Checkout, of course, Jack.”
“Yeah, to The Checkout.”
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, August 18, 2013