Everything burns in black and Vlad doesn’t know if this Buddhist void is blindness or his eyes clenched. His arms are pulled around two giants, bigger than him, those Greek Titans. They’re finally dragging him to hell. It must be a freezing day outside. Fade.
I would rather not remand him to that place, seeing the state of this man drug into my lift. Heard through a tunnel. French African, older, northern, Med side, Algerian? Ephram, a generic grumble, voice sounds strained from heavy lifting, aren’t you supposed to be the man who operates this damn, grunt breaking, elevator, for guests, residents, and others.
This man is neither resident, nor does he sound like any guest I’ve ferried, is Charon a Nigerian that operates a fucking elevator? And I am reluctant to lift him where you ask. One of the titans grunts, the other one, says Ephram’s job is just to operate an antique elevator, shut up and do his job. The French Nigerian’s voice bristles with an insult that he’s taken existentially when he says it is not JUST, my job to operate an antique elevator in a once majestic hotel for petty thugs and their bounty, a rapping hard double tap on the floor of the elevator Styxx by a cane maybe, to put a point on it; it is my JOB, and one I take seriously, to take people where they need to go. A titan sighs. Ephram, what if this is where he needs to go right now. Eternity happens before someone, this Nigerian Charon might be, bends down in front of Vladimir’s face. Soft breath whispers on clammy skin burning fevered just below, and then the blind feeling of presence recedes. He may need to go where you ask, Ephram says, but I take no joy in this ride. A cranking cranks, a dinging dings, brass bell polite. Dying, it may not be so bad. Fade.
There is a feeling to returning feeling after kill you trauma. Not fun, not happy, not fast, not something you can explain to someone who’s never been in a rollover crash, shot, survived a fall on concrete that should have left them an organic vegetable. It can start slow or be shock fast. In the void it comes to Vlad as voices closer down the tunnel he was hearing through saying, this Russian is too heavy. The slow numb lifting from his arms and legs, a return of proprioception, being of the bodied variety, as he’s rough pulled out of coat, body armor, complex rigging, wool sweater, undershirt. Jesus, how the fuck is he still alive? The voices. Realizes he’s not dead, just the last place he ever wants to be, his breath, it comes back hot and humid stifling in his own face is a thing besides his existence and completeness of body slow going from numb that he notices. Oh yeah, but then there’s going to be the fucking pain. Someone says Jesus, he was kitted out for two wars. Another voice comes after, an icy presence with the lilting cadence of a sociopath in on their own DX and leaning into it hard. “So being not blind, like Ephram, I can see that. Find me his tall silver fox bitch. For now set him up before he’s out of the dreamtime.” Fade.
The void wasn’t his eyes clenched or Vlad being blind. He was black bagged, all the way back to the elevator. Tugging at his fallen forward chin to chest neck from behind, the messy sound of duct tape coming off, pulling, hands on his head pulling his head up, pulling two rounds of duct tape off of his neck. Raise the curtains, that sociopath charm again.
The curtain rises on the scene. He wasn’t blind. Vladimir lets his head fall back. Knows he’s hurt, doesn’t know how bad, could take two guesses and both would be right. Last visual before the dusty paint chipping tin ceiling of the room with missing tiles and seeping water damage, the trying-to-be-fancy ceiling fan he’s sitting under with flower-shaped glass around cheap yellow incandescent bulbs, filled with a shadowy pasting of dead bugs, coming into focus from blur, is those little cunts in ski masks. Baby. Short barrel spread choked Mossbergs, super shorties. Them rounding on him from feet away, and him pulling the trigger one two as they came into view, chest shots, center mass, but they had armor. The twins each taking their hits and reflexively jerking the triggers. Close enough to for the shot to punch a hole through god. Vlad knows he’s only alive because of reflex and the most expensive composite steel plate and ceramic body armor on the market. He hit the floor with a fading view of his spirit wafting across the lobby giving him the finger. He didn’t see and barely heard the twins land. From blur, the warped tin ceiling’s stamped and intricate design comes out, ancient, missing pieces, chipped bits of layers of paint painted over ten times then scraped off until it resembled something fancy again. everything in this hotel is impossible to define by conventional markers of provenance, so he just accepts what he’s bent head back and looking at, because he knows himself so large, has made himself enough a threat, shed blood, brought a soldier’s kit into a place like the 9, where he was always happy to be the tourist, knows that whatever this is he’s sat up in, comfortable at least on the unnumbed ass, Vlad’s secured to it so thoroughly a sawzall would be maybe the only thing to cut him out of it, if that lucky. It’s a wingback, white, with blue chevrons across it. They have to buy this shit in bulk.
Mr, Krovopskovic, I do imagine that the ceiling is quite lovely to look at while you collect your most recent blur of thoughts into a coherent throughline of what has led you to be in front of me, the point of the act of me having said “raise the curtains” was for you to see me, and not the stately details of my modestly appointed suite’s ceiling, though tarnished, I am told it is original. There’s always something off about how a motherfucker is just used to being treated like the man who sold the world combined with the silken affect of a sociopath with a vocabulary and syntax like a TV show host with tenure as a professor of advertising bullshit at an Ivy League school, probably an economist. Owns a car lot. The combination grates like running your hand along velvet backward and finding a huge flattened scorch mark where it has been singed.
Vladimir stares at the ceiling, wanting to piss this disembodied voice off. “It is a very nice ceiling,” He’s been in nicer holding cells waiting for extraction in West African warzones. His voice comes out rasping and hoarse, after speaking he inhales needles into his lungs. He’s felt an encyclopedia of injuries. Never wince. Grits his teeth though.
If you would be so kind as to look at me while you address me Mr. Krovopskovic, I would be very appreciative. Dramatic pause. I, have been told, the voice lilts in a sing-song cadence over the words, that you are in fact unfailingly polite. Then the flat and dark hits. Unless your wife is beating one of my confidants and business partners face in with the bottom of an empty bottle of cheap vodka.
“Has,” sharp inhale. “Has anyone ever told you?” Vlad’s pause isn’t for drama, it’s because ribs are broken, his sternum is cracked but not shattered, bone is tickling but not impaling a lung. “Ever told you, that you sound like you sell used cars?” low electric tingles his skin is coming back to life. The body is figuring out how hurt it is from the skin in and the internal organs and skeletal armature out. Couldn’t move a thing but his neck if he tried, Vlad is near glad for the mercy.
I don’t sound like a fucking used car salesman. Do I sound like a fucking used car salesman? The act disappears in a flurry of curses. A woman says he sounds elegant. And he takes it as an insult, hates that word, slaps her, the clap and her yelp coming out \simulcast. Elegant, woman, you are elegant, I am refined, I’m fucking stately.
probably about to be tortured to death, he’s grinning when he lowers his gaze from the ceiling to stare at the drama he’s started.
“You don’t look shit like refined or stately,” Vlad says and coughs a stab in his side. “I said you sound like you sell used cars.” Bosch interrupts that, of course, he doesn’t sound like he sells used cars because he is a gentleman, he expresses decorum and prides himself on his poise and appearance, and indeed he, of all people, is cultured and learned beyond reason, to the point of it being impossible for Bosch to ever sound like a fucking used car salesman, and who do you think you are to insult how I look from where you are, you oversized half dead Gopnick. Vlad nods. Bosch is wearing a crisp blinding white dress shirt and red tie with gold fleur de lis printed on it with a Windsor knot. A Grey fronted vest, no doubt red past the side seams, cuffs rolled up to his elbows, round wire frame glasses and a a haircut short and clean, the kind you need cut every week or two or else it looks wrong. Vlad smells his cologne, expensive, overpowering, a cloud in the room, and it triggers the association of a memory. “But have we met?”
James, Cornelius, Ambrose, Bosch! If commas could talk the pauses in his name would scream. BUT THE WISER PART OF HUMANITY JUST HAS THE DECENCY TO CALL ME BOSCH, MR BOSCH, OR SIR. This sort of antisocial personality disordered annoyance is the only thing Vlad finds himself living for, tied to the chair.
“OK Heironymous,” Vlad says. Don’t make yourself laugh, after he says it his body tries to chuckle but he stops it by unholy will when he can feel bone tickle lung. Has to be a real bent broke to fuck rib.
Bosch, leaning hands braced against a wishes to be antique thrifted desk, complete with the same lamp that was in room 303, ratty but moved from the night stand, The whole room, a two bed queen, has been rearranged in an attempt to make it orbit around Bosch, who straightens himself on his feet. He takes a deep breath. He straightens his tie. He grabs the arms of the frames of his glasses between two fingers on each side and repositions them by two dog hairs, squares his shoulders, and licks his lips. Vlads looking and even this man’s beard and stubble is manicured to the point that if he doesn’t see a barber like clockwork he’s going to look like he’s homeless in a week, and that sort of upkeep always means money and power. Vlad only thinks about trimming his beard is Xenia says he’s giving her pussy rugburn when he eats her- You think you’re clever - Bosch kills the thought, and yes, we have met. I am by trade an arms dealer. Would you like to see some of my wares?
Without a pause for Vlad to answer Bosch leans down, he doesn’t hunch, he hinges at the waist, even his posture is posturing, opens the loose drawer under his “stately” desk, and pulls out a Sig Sauer P229 10mm. He holds it up side on to Vlad by the handle, between thumb and forefinger, and gestures under and across it with his opposite hand. His movements are faline smooth. The vibe Vladimir gets is infomercial, until Bosch drops the pistol into his grip, finger on the trigger, turns the arm holding it behind him, and, pop, pop, pop, kills a cute woman on a blue and white chevron striped loveseat size couch behind him, bulk bought, showroom furniture, discount pickups, ratty and worn, they have to be. Pop, another shot. Pop, and another. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Every time he shoots the woman, presuming the one Vlad heard earlier, it rips more of her dress up in the chest. POP. she was wearing blue and it’s dying purple, shining and wet. Smoke hangs in the air. Earplugs still in place, a small favor from an indifferent universe. Bosch continues, The Sig Sauer P229R, available in .9mm luger with a spacious fifteen round magazine, .40 caliber, or Sig .357 both with twelve round magazines each, two included with the pistol itself upon purchase, is as fine a weapon as ever has been produced by the Sig Sauer company, and a personal favorite of mine. I always keep one within arm’s reach. They retail for between twelve hundred if bought direct up to seventeen hundred and even two thousand dollars if bought from a reputable dealer. I sell them completely off books with an extra barrel, firing pin, and stamped blank from the factory floor for five thousand dollars a piece, including two boxes of rounds, which for a gun that the police will never identify unless you are truly among the dull witted, this is the best bargain you’ll find. He talks too much. This one in particular being a Sig Sauer P229 Legion SAO RXP chambered in .357 Sig. Mr Vladimir that gives it a magazine that holds 12 rounds. I just put 11 into the bitch. If you make another fucking joke because you think you’re witty, the next one goes through your chest. He puts the pistol back down on the desk, places his arms more than shoulder width apart, leans forward, and asks, do you understand?
Yeah, this self-important dick has rearranged all the furniture in the room, there’s a door to an adjoining room, probably his too. Is he trying to make a fucking apartment out of a dilapidated falling to pieces, still bearing a crust of regal place like the 9
“I bought a gun from you before,” Vlad says. Bosch blinks, long, counting 1, 2, 4, in his head. The beautiful corpse is a stage prop the cast is scared to move until told to. Vlad is taped to a chair, but he decides, looking at the dead woman, maybe all 23 years of her recently baby fat shed and gym-sculpted corpse looking like she could have walked out of a movie she was starring in, the waste of that sort of beauty, a life cut short with no sense, for dramatics, without even having the decency to look at what you’re doing, and not an enemy, yeah, Vlad decides the jokes for the evening are over. Unless saying that he bought a gun from Bosch was taken like one when it was just true, and he’s about to get a round put through his chest from that Sig.
I’m going to find your cunt wife, and I’m going to hang her upside down from a hook in the middle of my lounge, and personally skin her alive from the bottoms of her feet to the top of her head, right in front of you, Bosch says. At least that answers whether he had just made a joke, or stated a fact.
The way Vlad's fleshed out here is beautiful.