9 Story WIP6

WIP/Project/Frag/Contd

Rufus stands in front of the sink, the bathroom in his own, up on the 7th, bare chested, one half dollar round black bruise on his left pectoral, his ambidexterity being useful since he’s digging shallow in his right shoulder for an errant shot that slid or glanced off his body armor. Ruined a shirt, wrecked a vest. Hemostats held between thumb and forefinger, dug deep and probing for a ball he can feel at the end of the hole it made. When blood starts to seep from the digging he dabs at it with gauze pads held between his other three fingers, a pile of them like bloody reject origami sitting in the sink already. Pedialyte, water, coffee, and 90% isopropyl along with stitching supplies round the sink. Graze on his cheek stopped bleeding and he put a butterfly bandage on it. Yeah, ain’t havin’ friends fuckin’ great.

“Friend, I do not know what you aim to achieve here,” Vlad, still taped to a cheap wingback.

Stop calling me friend, Bosch says. He’s leaned back in his chair away from the desk and light, his elbows resting on the chair arms and his fingers steepled, tapping in a rhythmic cadence, or to a song in his head, or just for show. “Torture is the worst way to get information of any use, but the quickest way to get the answer you want,” Vlad says. “My friend, you’re wasting your time.” With his face in the shadows, Vladimir knows Bosch is gritting his teeth.

Maybe you’re just a chip, Bosch lets his head fall to one side over his shoulder, a different angle on the Russian. An extra Vlad marks for a quick shuffle off the mortal coil is dragging the dead woman from the couch to the bathroom, into the tub, leaving that blood streak on the carpet all the way. Maybe this is just to see something.

You’re friends with Rufus Balthazar. Vlad shrugs as much as he can. It’s hard to breathe without puncturing his lung, a lot harder conversing with this windbag. Bosch never stops, I have a certain mutual animosity towards Mr. Balthazar, and since you’re his friend, maybe I’m seeing if you’re really his friend? And a penchant for turning half his statements into questions.

“And you said you wanted to skin my wife,” Vlad closes his eyes.

I do, but a thing can be two things at the same time, Bosch says. A thing, a thing can be many things at the same time, Mr. Krovopuskovic, and Vlad cuts him off. “My friend my surname is pronounced Kro-vo-pu-sko-vitsye.” Vlad sniffs the air, blood, the acrid powder smell of fading gunfire, and over it all a cloud of that expensive scent that Bosh must bathe in. “And my friend,” his voice turns into a black wall of clouds rolling in “you talk too fucking much, stop wasting my time and do your work.”

Balthazar splashes water on his face, grabs the kit for sewing himself up from anything worth less than a trip to the Barber. Considering the pro-con variable weight of going to parlay with the personally loathed villain he watched big meat dragging away Vlad, taking him direction-wise to Bosch. Rufus and Balthazar hate each other enough to keep most of the hotel between them. Bosch’s room, three floors up on the north tip of the north wing. The Prospector preferring his southern wing southern corner seven story up street view. As he stitches the hole in his shoulder he idles a thought out loud. The best mirror is an old friend. Mended in body if not mind, Balthazar takes note of how fast he feels sobering, taking a stare at himself in the mirror. A rare day, he notices the crack running down from one corner splitting the mirror, and his face, a quartered diagonal. The crack's been there since he first rented the room.

“My friend,” Bosch bristles in his chair, “I will promise you this. For killing that woman, I will hurt you.” The words don’t have time to hang before Bosch cackles. Your sense, still in a dramatic chortle, your sense Vladimir, of personal morals. My god. That shit won’t get you very far around here. And Bosch gets up from his chair, walks around the desk, and leans down eye to eye with Vlad. That bitch will leave this hotel in a box, and she won’t be missed. But your concern for what looks to you like the innocent is fuckin’ cute. He pokes two fingers into the side with that broken fence post rib. Vlad breathes slowly. Gritting your teeth? Bosh is enjoying this. Bet that rib hurts bad?

“I promise,” through teeth clenched near cracking, in no situation he’s not been through before. “You, will, be, hurt.” Bosch pushes harder, he wants the Russian to yell. Vlad just breathes harder but shallower. I can see, Bosch’s smile is perfect white veneers, TV ready, and unsettling like finding the cup of coffee you just finished filled with bloody human teeth at the bottom. It’s going to be a long night for us. But who knew if it was night, day, morning, dusk, or some eternal hotel-made twilight? Didn’t matter.

Balthazar has on a new outfit and he’s rolling one of his twisted backwoods cheroots with his favorite tobacco mix when he walks sidestep into the elevator and greets Ephraim with a nod, leaning against his spot. His spot is where the camera in the elevator is blind.

I can smell your tobacco coming from halfway down the hall Mr. Balthazar, Ephraim says. Balthazar nods. There’s an art to rolling tobacco as ugly as he does, and he treats it as such.

Yeah, but why were you waiting with the door open Ephraim. Seems quaint. Ephraim’s smile knows things only he will ever know, and nothing he will ever explain in full. But he taps his umbrella on the floor of the lift twice and says that his passengers just past an hour ago made it clear that Balthazar would be a man that night he alone can take where he needs to be.

Rufus nods and pockets the gnarled length of tree branch he’s rolled to smoke later. You know, he says, not looking up. Unattributed quote I just remembered in my room. Ephraim is nodding in rhythm, a thing he does sometimes when listening. The best mirror, is an old friend.

And so it is, Ephraim says. I will take you where you need to go Mr. Balthazar.

Thank you Ephraim. A cranking cranks, a dinging dings, brass bell polite, and the lift shudders and lowers an inch before finding its footing to ascend. Old friend, Balthazar says, and lets it hang a beat for Ephraim to restart his nodding, is a pain in the ass too.