“Don’t fuck with me, Step!”
Jack Step, dressed in a light gray suit, his hat pulled down over one eye, is sitting leant over on a plain wooden chair, one foot raised and resting over the other knee, to tie the thin black laces of his deep-hued mahogany wing-tipped shoe.
Dirk Dickerson, the veins of his temple in open convulsion, has planted his foot, in a jet-black cap toe, on a paint-chipped shoeshine box, whose use he’s denied to Step.
Dickerson is angry with Step, pissed off and contemptuous as to how the latter has conducted their ongoing investigation into The Ferret, a character who needs no introduction except to say – solely by way of a friendly reminder – that he now stands accused of gutting John Smith’s wife, in addition to his recent assault and battery of American English teacher Steve Kowalski, and, of course, his still-to-be-determined role in the supposed murder of Saint Stephan, plus countless other acts of mischief and mayhem, in addition to all manner of thoroughly low and despicable, albeit not strictly illegal, behavior, at least not within the jurisdiction of Expatriate Kyiv.
“Just don’t fuck with me… that’s all I’m saying.”
Dickerson would like to punch Step, something easily enough done, as he’s standing right over him and to the side, and Step is busy tying his shoe.
But Step has considered the very real possibility of being viciously cold-cocked by his emotionally unstable partner, particularly in the light of just such an occurrence not long ago befalling him at the hands of John Smith, whose tragic loss of spouse was heartlessly – some might say sadistically – mocked by Step in the very offices that Step and Dickerson now occupy.
“That’s all I’m saying,” whines Dickerson, slobbering out every hint of a threat in the manner of an offended five-year-old.
But he’s a big five-year-old; at least tall and hard fisted.
And those fists have done their work on many an unsuspecting face – the most recent example being one Podil-area proprietor of a wanna-be Irish pub who is so fond of wearing flamingo-red trousers even as he gapes dismissively at the very customers who fill the pockets of those same flaming rouge pants, much out of place for the condition of their wearer, yet utterly expressive of the pure idiocy that this Andrew (for that’s presumably the name of the proprietor and for sure the name of his pub), shamelessly propagates under the guise of housing big-screen sports under kitsch Gaelic décor to the tune of a wildly expensive menu, which no doubt played some role in the motivation for Dickerson kicking his ass.
Step, however, consoles himself in the supreme confidence that whatever happens is meant to happen and ultimately in the interests of him to whom it happens.
Or, to put it another way, it’s just beyond his dignity, outside of his character, and simply too much fucking trouble to take action, any action, but particularly action in anticipation of another’s action, when things seem to work out in his, Jack Step’s, favor, anyway.
Or, at the very least, there’s an even chance that he will come out on top, although maybe not right away, so why tip the balance in the other direction, make useless if not counterproductive efforts that would only yield him the same fifty-fifty odds that he expects to receive as a minimum anyway?
But Dickerson’s not stupid either… notwithstanding every indication to the contrary and the obvious conclusions drawn therefrom.
Wasn’t he the one who whacked his shrink, blamed it on a bird, and didn’t even have the common sense to hide the body… from plain sight… or at least not let anyone come in to his flat, the scene of the crime, to see the cold corpse of Doctor Woo just lying there on the floor?
But somehow we were supposed to ascribe this highly erratic, abjectly stupid and patently compulsive behavior to the warped mechanical workings of a madman’s mind.
In point of fact, however, it may not have gone unnoticed that Dickerson was never arrested, much less tried, convicted and punished for the murder of Woo or for any other of his anti-social actions so amply reported by this publication.
By comparison, The Ferret has been hunted, persecuted and defamed to no end, for a crime that he may well never have committed.
Is it not entirely possible that Zippy Zamazda, the recklessly arrogant but hopelessly unsuccessful and intolerably fat-assed journalist-cum-writer, cum-political analyst, cum-whatever he thinks up next to tack onto his resume, could have plotted the firing and backstabbing of Saint Stephan on his own, without the help of The Ferret?
Then, under cover of a shamelessly one-sided smear campaign, reeking of anti-Semitism of the kind only possible in a place like Ukraine, Zippy is made to look like an unwitting accomplice, a mere foil for the supposedly far more manipulative, cunning and underhanded Ferret, who was forced to take it on the lam, flee for his life, comforted only by the dubious “older man friendship” of Welsh Losser, whose own untimely end (if that’s what it really was) is still a matter of much unfortunately negative speculation.
The Ferret even suffered “street justice” (coincidentally right across the street from Andrew’s Irish Pub) doled out by a teenage girl! Only to be stitched up by Step as a modern-day version of Jack the Ripper… while Jack the Drinker, Jack the Peruser of South Asian porn, Jack the Concocter of half-baked criminal theory toward the destruction of fellow detective John Smith’s promising career and, what’s more revealing, the promotion of his own (!!!), is now sitting pretty, cool as a cucumber, a picture-perfect investigator having solved the case of the century, put himself back in good stead, his drunken incompetence fully forgotten and now in need only of a good shoe shine, a thorough spit and polish of those deep-hued mahogany wingtips, a makeover for a new man, unmistakably the heir apparent to head the agency, sit in the corner office with those half-filled bottles of Red and Black just a desk drawer away…
But no so fast: The thud of the punch and its dull but power-filled impact are simultaneous. The flight over the side of the chair seems a release, despite the full expectation of a somewhat humiliating crash to the floor. His last conscious thought: the clear glass bottle, its warmly familiar label, the faded brown liquid… spilt, warm-wet on his face…
NOT TO BE CONTINUED…
Unauthored, Undated