The priest is in the hall still. I wave hello and he does some bowing bit with his hands shaped as though in benediction. Jesus Christ.
And all the saints, too.
How’s the mass, Padre?
He nods solemnly, waving his hand in the karate chop position to make a large cross over me in the air, chattering “Lorum ipsum dolor sit amet” for all I know. He then raises a glass of wine, blood of Christ, probably, and with a wink takes the whole glass down, licking his freshly purpled lips afterward.
I unlock the door and wave goodbye to the priest who’s back to chattering away, blessing me or the apartment or this or that or the other thing or whatever the fuck he’s doing. As I enter, I find Mario doing another rail. Man, you gotta get some sleep.
“Yeah, man, tell me about it,” thumb and index finger to the nose, wincing, “We’ve gotta work out some sort of schedule.”
How you doing on the speed?
“I’ve got enough for now.”
You doing alright, I mean, being on it?
Between a coarse grunt and a hoarse cough, “I’m awake.”
Not sleepy?
“Like I just won the lottery.”
Stay awake, then. I’ll sleep the rest of the morning, then you sleep through the afternoon. We’ll double team on the overnights.
Mario shrugs.
The speed’s going to get the better of him, eventually. He’s eventually going to snot out all the cartilage in his nose, he keeps that shit up. I’ve seen pictures of those guys with no septums - due to coke, mostly - and I try not to think of those as I lay back on the couch and stare at the ceiling, letting the whiskey do it’s job. Three cups of coffee are going to keep me spinning, though.
Instead, I try to focus on other things.
What else is there?
I close my eyes and think of the time I was sent to Istanbul, one of the rare times I was stationed overseas for anything. That’s when I worked with the Belgian and it was as close to the spy stuff as I ever got. I desperately wanted to see her naked but all I could do was imagine the sight of her.
For an extra twenty bucks, or at least twenty in U.S. dollars, she had us switched from a two-person room to two one-person rooms. She insisted. She insisted and I spent those two nights there jacking off alone.
Zdarlyi! That was the asshole’s name, yeah. Spent half a week there sitting on him. Well, I was there for half a week, spent two nights sitting on him with the Belgian. Older guy. Eye patch. Like I said, closest to a spy movie I ever was.
Zdarlyi, you have to understand, got everything that was coming to him. Or at least I was young and idealistic then, so that’s how I felt. Probably still feel about it. He was picking up rent boys, fucking ‘em and all that, which is all well and good if that’s your thing. Problem was that he was also cutting them up. Selling whatever hadn’t been damaged to Egyptian alley-hospitals.
One night, Zdarlyi picks up a rent boy and something starts echoing in the pipe. I’m not privy to how one goes about confirming things but somehow the echo turns into a word and the next thing you know, they’re fingering me to pull an assist on some autopsy in Istanbul. I’d never been to Istanbul, never thought to go, really, but, the next thing you know, I’m standing there in the examining room with a faked badge hanging off of well-fitted scrubs.
I stood back, mostly, my expertise being non-existent at the time, but it was going to be tough to verify the identity of the rent boy no matter how much experience was involved; depression fractures concentrated around the zygomatic and maxilla bones so he couldn’t be ID’d by sight, fingers and toes gone to get rid of prints, the teeth that couldn’t be yanked out were smashed to shit and back to negate the usefulness of the dental records, drained of blood, all the organs yanked out to get a profit.
What was his name?
Szanatos? Something like that? He lead the autopsy, laughed at me a few times. He knew what he was doing though. Had it all figured out. When he managed to finally ID the rent boy, he mumbled what sounded like ‘bok’ which turns out is ‘shit’ in Turkish. I remember approaching and he waved his hand back at me. He then excused himself from the table and went out to the phone in the hall, dialed a number, to whom I don’t know, put a word in the pipe, and within the hour, there were who I assumed were next of kin at the door to the examining room.
Behind them, I saw a man in a fedora. He would momentarily introduce himself to me as the Kanto Trumpeter as Szanatos or whatever his name was spoke with the next of kin out in the hallway.
His English came out in a smooth, sing-song lilt with hardly a trace of accent. “So, you are a contractor, then.”
Yes, sir.
“Quite inappropriate for an autopsy, don’t you think?”
I have some background.
“I see. ‘Some background’, then. Excellent use of the budget to transport a man with ‘some background’ to the other side of the globe. Though, I suppose I’m not in charge then, am I?” He smiled at me. Seeing my reaction, which there was none, he reached into his pocket. Finding nothing, he began patting at his pants then jacket again, a three-quarter-length wool trench coat. Dismay came over his face. “Do you happen to smoke, Contractor?”
Yes, sir. He waved his hand at the formality as I offered him one.
“I apologize for the inconvenience,” lighting the cigarette. Wincing while he exhaled, “I apologize again, for I often forget that the Yankee prefers to glass shards.”
We’re not really supposed to smoke in here.
He waved his hand dismissively. He leaned back on the counter behind him, blowing out blue smoke. “What do you normally do, Contractor?”
I do lots of things.
“‘Lots of things’, eh?” He looked me up and down then, turning his attention back to the cadaver, said, “You’ll stay in Istanbul tonight, Contractor. We may as well find a way to justify your expense while you’re here.”
Sir?
He looked me in the eyes and responded, “That man out there? You don’t know him. I don’t expect you to know him, no. But, you see, he is a very important man to our employers. His wife? Yeah? You see her too? She’s important to them as well. You’re following all of this, I trust, Contractor?
“Now you know what happens when a man and a woman get married and have a little baby, right? They protect their little baby, don’t they? Even when that baby is all grown up, yes?” Waved his hand over the corpse. “You see where I’m going?”
Yes, sir.
“Good.” He took a drag off the cigarette then came closer and lowered his voice. “You’ll pardon me, certainly, if I seem curt but this is a most personal offense that’s been made against them and because I work so closely with them, I feel it is a personal offense against myself.” He took another drag from the cigarette. “I am not angry with you but,” looking back at the cadaver, “with this.”
I watched him as he braced his weight on the autopsy table. He stood briefly to remove the fedora with one hand and run his other hand through his hair. I watched what looked to be his tongue running between his upper lip and teeth.
At length he said, “We will locate a partner for you before lunch time tomorrow. We will procure all necessary and available documents and materials and direct you to our local Warehouser. I will contact your Trumpeter - the United States… he is the Jass Trumpeter, is that correct?”
I nod.
“Yes?”
Yes, sir.
He raised his chin and kept his eyes on mine, “Better. I will contact your Jass Trumpeter and ensure that he will make other arrangements in your absence if you are needed in the States at all while you are temporarily assigned to this post.”
I nodded. I remember now, though, that that was the time Mario had to make a run with Stewart. Told me all about it the next time we got paired up. Fucking Stewart.
Marijke! That was the Belgian’s name, I remember now. When we were introduced briefly by the Kanto Trumpeter at the warehouse, she was wearing a plaid pencil skirt under her three-quarter-length trench coat (a popular look in Istanbul then) and scarf. We were mismatched as I was wearing a plain white t-shirt, though I still had the good sense to wear slacks as a matter of professional courtesy back then.
We were given Zdarlyi’s dossier, none of it I can remember anymore but I remember it being fairly useless. Thin. Hastily compiled by the research department once the investigation crews came back with the few solid answers they could find to whatever questions were posed to them. All of this had to be done in the time since the Kanto Trumpeter left me and when word came down the pipe to see the Warehouser.
What was known about Derinc Zdarlyi was his name, obviously (that’s if I even remember it correctly), age, height and weight, hair and eye color, address… Those things being a matter of public record. There were, of course, some other things. Family’s names and addresses and the like.
Marijke and I had very simple objectives. First, we would wait until he was alone, so things would be kept quiet. Not the easiest thing to do since Zdarlyi was a family man. Work all day, home with wife and kids all night. We’d have to wait around his haunt until Saturday when he got the urge for a rent boy. His MO was predictable but not exact and there was always the chance he either got a hard on for a boy or was hard up for cash. He always checked in alone. If he was seen with anybody, a word - or an echo, probably, but then she wasn’t in the pipe so far as I knew so… anyway, something would get back to his wife and that would be awkward to explain. Checks in alone, he’s just some guy. No story gets back to the wife, whatever alibi he used can hold up.
I wonder exactly what the story was that he used to explain his absence on Saturday nights. ‘Boys’ night out’? Cheeky pun, that.
He would check in and go up to the room. He usually ordered dinner first, picked out a few pay-per-view movies (according to the records we had, he liked spaghetti westerns and - wait for it - selections from the ‘adult cinema’ category), and looked through the catalogs of boys he had. We knew he had a few of those from an underground rent-boy supplier. Young Guns, Turbo, Escorts Plus, I think those were the names. The underground guys, you’d figure they’d catch on that their employees never came back from meeting with Zdarlyi. Maybe they couldn’t poke their heads out of their gopher-holes for fear of exposing themselves. Plenty of variables at play. Zdarlyi using aliases over the phone would be one scenario to explain his continued service. More likely, he was meeting the boys on the side. Have an above board date with them. Wait a few months, arrange something off the suppliers’ respective radars, promising to pay a bigger price tag, and boom! Suspicion avoided. The suppliers would have no records of sending Kiki out for a night because that would be his day off. That kind of thing.
While he would go through his early evening routine, Marijke would put him down and, since I was the one with ‘some background’, I would dispose of him.
Marijke was in charge of the execution. She took her time at the warehouse selecting her implements. She selected three knives: Switch blade, the shortest at four inches; a third-pattern Fairbairn-Sykes, the middle one at seven inches; and an M-1 bayonet, the longest at ten inches. After some consideration at the gun racks, which included her animatedly expressing interest in a vintage Bergmann-Bayard, a Belgian gun, Marijke wound up choosing an Akdal Ghost.
She would explain that the gun was for emergency purposes only, a last resort. The knives were to be the killing implements. Quiet, you see. I remember her turning to the Warehouser and telling him, in Turkish, to get us another Akdal. This was to be mine; we knew nothing about Zdarlyi and she was putting neither of us in danger.
Odd that she smiled at that.
Neither one of us wound up ever using the fucking things.
She then told the Warehouser to take us to the medical tools. It wasn’t something he got much call for, judging by the size of the room. Most of it was medicinal rather than surgical. I told him that I needed surgical tools. Specifically for amputation.
The Warehouser looked at me blankly, shaking his head.
“Cerrahi alet,” came from Marijke. God, how the words flowed out, the only reason I remember them. ‘Cerrahi alet.’ The Warehouser responded something to her and she turned to me and said, “He says they are rarely asked for such things but he can procure them immediately. What specifically do you need?”
Tell him that I need two saws, one Satterlee and one Gigli.
The only words I recognized out of her mouth next were ‘Satterlee’ and ‘Gigli’. I grabbed a box of latex gloves on our way out to the hardware section and the Warehouser stopped a Delivery Boy and I heard the words again: ‘Cerrahi alet’, ‘Satterlee’, and Gigli’. He clapped twice and the kid, probably eighteen or nineteen, tore off on foot to the exit, disappearing out the door and to the right.
When we got to the hardware, I picked out two Tyvek suits, one for each of us, nine square yards of plastic, and a box of two dozen fifty five gallon bags.
Marijke smirked. “No acid?”
Actually, that will take far too long and wind up making a bigger mess than what we’re interested in cleaning up so -
Without expression, she cut me off, “It was a joke. Your material selection just seems too much like television to me. It is a cliché.” I guess I made a face at that because she rolled her eyes and turned away while I perused the other tools.
We took rooms in the discount annex at the Mövenpick on either side of Zdarlyi’s usual one and by the afternoon, my Satterlee and Gigli saws arrived. I thanked the delivery boy and gave him a five lira note. He ran off, perhaps to another delivery or maybe just to get the hell out of there - delivery boys aren’t usually supposed to get caught up in the thick shit.
As I packed the saws away between the mattress and box spring, there was a knock at my door. I opened it to find Marijke, who began chastising me. “You’re a trusting sort, aren’t you?” as she brushed past me into the room. Turning back to me, “I could’ve been anyone, you know.”
I said nothing.
Swiftly back to the door she demanded groaning, “Come along now. It’s time for us to have a dinner.”
I just have to grab my jacket.
I can’t recall the place we ate at but I recall price was an issue. The Mövenpick is damnably expensive, even in the cut-rate annex. She had, I think, a Cornish game hen. No. It was fish. I think. At any rate, it was a quiet meal. She wasn’t much for exchanging pleasantries and I had nothing to say that interested her. I recall trying to initiate a conversation once or twice with bringing up music or movies; skipped television altogether figuring her for the bookish sort and going for that. She dismissed each topic equally with, “I like them all,” and staring out the window while she took birdlike bites from her fork.
When dinner was finished, she opened the window next to our table and lit a cigarette. Tapping the first ash out the window, she said authoritatively, “You’re new.”
Not that new. I tired of her tone at that point. I indicated that in my own.
She rested her chin in her hand, “I wonder why they brought you from the States. We have many more qualified contractors already positioned here.”
I took my own curt tone. It’s my understanding that they’re busy monitoring the Iraqi diaspora on the border. Others are positioned in Ankara monitoring the UNRHC. She cocked her eyebrow at that. And if it’s a matter of my qualifications, well… I stopped at that and her other eyebrow joined in curious anticipation. I continued with, I don’t come down to the bus station and smack the dick out of your mouth when you’re on the clock, so back off.
“Arschgefickter hurensohn.”
Lutsch’ es nicht in meine arschloch, dann. Astonishment washed over her face and I told her, Yeah. Try that one again. We exchanged cold glares at each other for a few minutes before I asked, Coffee?
She nodded and I waved the waiter over, ordered an Irish coffee which got me a blank look. I told him to put two shots of whiskey in a mug of black coffee. I forget what Marijke ordered.
The waiter walked away to prepare our coffee and while we waited, she said, “Drinking on the clock?” I didn’t respond. She continued, “Have you ever disposed of a body before?”
A body is a simple machine to dismantle. It shouldn’t be too hard.
“So you haven’t, then.” She pitched the butt out the window and went on, “Have you had to kill anyone?”
Not yet. Not really.
“Hmm.”
The waiter set our coffees in front of us and I thanked him. As he returned to other tables, I asked, What’s your problem? You know, we finish this up and you’ll never have to see me again. The least you can do is behave professionally.
“You’re still green,” she leaned back with her drink. Frothy cream-colored foam on top, I remember that. Perhaps it was a cappuccino. “Thankfully, this is a simple matter and it won’t be much of a challenge. I trust you can perform both professionally and proficiently.”
She looked down into her drink. “If I’m curt, I apologize. I was scheduled to return to Brussels today. One day is a minor setback, sure, but I’m tired of Istanbul.” She looked back up at me. “My skills were in demand here for a while. I tire of exercising those as well… ‘One last time,’ though. That’s what they say to me about this one. I do believe them. They’ve not lied to me before.”
I nodded into my coffee. We’ll wrap this up tomorrow night and I’ll go my way and you’ll go yours. I looked back to see her with a bored expression staring into her coffee again. I wanted to just put it out there. I wanted to ask her if she just wanted to fuck and get it over with. But I knew the answer without asking so I skipped it.
I still wonder what would have happened though if I had had the balls to just do it back then. Would she have laughed me off? Cursed me out? Or would we have wound up in bed having a big sweaty angry hate fuck? Her pert D-battery tits gliding along her ribs, her smacking me across the face, calling me every filthy name she could think of and calling to God in German, ‘Gott’, all the while leaving me with only the rudimentary the know-how to slap her on the ass and call her a bitch while cumming inside her.
I had to roll over to the side of the bed to shoot that night, keep my sheets clean and make a mental note of where to avoid putting my feet in the morning.
The following day, we barely saw each other. I went through Zdarlyi’s dossier once more over coffee and a few cigarettes, not that it mattered what was in there, and popped a quinine tablet - this was back when I still had the tablets - and washed it down with a bottle of tonic water to enhance the effects.
At one point, I got bored and told Marijke that I was going out to the music shops. She frowned at that but simply reminded me of what time I should return. I remember seeing a few imported Fenders that day. Strats and Teles mostly, a Jazzmaster in one shop. Used. I also hit a bar, a real divey place with cheap beer and decent eggs. I craved a Tiger. Wanted to pretend I was Nabby Adams for a while. Only thing was that they didn’t stock Tiger and that I could actually pay my bill before I left.
I returned to my room with plenty of time left before dinner. In that time I made use of the bathroom and a thick coating of soap on my palm to take the edge off. Marijke had me worked up.
Dinner that night was early and silent. The conversational mishap from the night before wasn’t repeated. Afterward, we retired to our separate rooms and after a while, Marijke came to my room and chided me again for not greeting the door with my gun drawn. “Christus, du bist eine blödian,” was a part of her short tirade. She walked over to the desk and laid out the knives. She was wearing another pencil skirt, a black one with white polka dots, and a black blouse with frills at the cuffs. These she took off as I put on the Tyvek suit over my clothes figuring now was the time to get ready. She pulled her hair into a tight ponytail. I watched her slide the Akdal into the back of her panties, plain white cotton, and the switch blade up along her back under the bra strap, the Fairbairn-Sykes went to her left hand and the bayonet went into the right. She kicked off her shoes and laughed at me as I pulled out the saws, “You look like a snowman.”
Blow me.
Please. I set the saws into the medical bag the delivery boy had brought them in and set them on the table by the door.
We found ourselves switching sides across the room. She said, “I’m going to keep an eye out into the hall. Once he opens his door, I’m going to follow before his door latches shut.” After quickly nodding at me for confirmation, she opened the door a crack and continued, “You’ll go to the bathroom and wait. You’ll hear a knock through the wall when he’s finished. OK?”
She looked back at me and I nodded and then admired her ass for the few moments I could after she turned her gaze back to the hall. Somehow, the Akdal made her ass look even sexier, I couldn’t tell you why. She stiffened, arching her back and standing on tip toes then suddenly, swiftly, she ducked out the door. I proceeded to the bathroom and sat on the toilet.
Wait.
Wait.
Come on, asshole.
Wait.
Wait.
Fuck.
Light a cigarette.
Three loud rapid knocks. Fuck. Just lit the goddamned thing. I lifted the seat and pitched the cigarette in the toilet. I grabbed my bag off of the table by the door and continued to Zdarlyi’s room. I knocked, quietly at first. Then a little louder a second time. Under my breath, I muttered looking over my shoulder, Come on! Marijke answered the door, quickly waving me in and smiling, licking her lips.
The kill was quick and clean, and what used to be Zdarlyi was laying on the bed. She had slit his throat with the dagger, impaled him with the bayonet. She asked me, “What now, herr doktor?”
Didn’t have time to drain him, that was for damned sure. I laid out the plastic and picked his dead ass up off of the bed. From the medical bag, I extracted the saws and threw them on Zdarlyi’s chest. I indicated the medical bag and told Marijke to get the trash bags out and start doubling them up. Meanwhile, I dragged the plastic with Zdarlyi’s body and the saws on it into the bathroom.
Hoisting him half over into the tub, I began removing the head as it’s where a good deal of the blood would spill out. Something smelled like shit. I looked around and saw nothing until I saw the wet stain on the ass of his pants. Great. Another fucking mess.
A few hacks with the Satterlee and the head came off.
Marijke came in holding the doubled-up bags, still in her underwear. I looked over and that’s when I saw the tattoo around her navel: a large circle and then an arrow pointed downward. An identifying mark. Stupid. Risky. But then I gauged that she’d allowed very few men to see it in the first place. She sounded impressed when she said, “You work quick,” and my cock twitched.
Had to keep it professional. And you talk too fucking much. I’ll be done in maybe twenty? thirty? minutes. Drop the bags there and see if there’s anything of value out there in the room. I’ll grab his wallet and then we’ll grab a late dinner or a snack after we dump this asshole’s parts wherever the hell it is we... I sensed her not moving, so I looked over to see her with an insulted look across her face. Look, I’m in charge of this part. Sorry if that puts me in charge longer than you were but get moving.
With that, she left to go back to the room and I called after her, And put that Tyvek on!
“The what?”
The snowman suit!
“Where is it?”
In my bag!
I threw the left arm over the edge of the tub and peeled the watch and ring off of Zdarlyi, then took the Gigli to the elbow, having to stand on both the forearm and the bicep, then the Satterlee - much easier - to the shoulder. Went on like that. Messy work. The Satterlee could handle bone very well, but the Gigli was employed at certain limb joints. The tub was thick with blood that didn’t rinse down easily.
I kept each body part at the foot of the tub, three at a time to allow some drainage, which was minimal at best with how hastily I was working. Another section went in the tub and another in the bag, rotated like that. The comforter from the bed went in with the head - I remember that much - and I think both forearms. I thought briefly about flushing Zdarlyi’s dick as a bit of poetic justice, gain some favor with Marijke and the Kanto Trumpeter, but that would’ve meant trouble following us if it clogged the fucker up. Sure we used pseudonyms to check in but that works only so well.
By the time I was done, the gloves were lubricated enough with blood that I had trouble maintaining a grip on the Gigli and I had to stop using it altogether as I would have acquired a good deal of blood on my shoes that would have left shoe prints everywhere (I’ve since made it a note to acquire the Tyvek suits with the little booties on the end). Resulted in many sloppy cuts.
When I was finished, we snuck the bags, two each, down the fire escape (quieter) down to Marijke’s car where I lined the trunk with the plastic sheeting before we threw the bags in, and drove to an hour outside of Istanbul. We drove, dumped a bag in a ditch. Drove, chucked a bag over a fence. Drove, kicked a bag into a river. Drove, shoved a bag off a bridge which landed between two sets of rail tracks. On and on like that until the circumference of an hour outside of Istanbul was littered with Zdarlyi.
It was that night that Marijke had the Cornish game hen.
We waited until after dinner, a lavish one indeed, with jokes and stories and coffees and cocktails and even a dessert (all courtesy of one Mr. Derinc Zdarlyi, my identity for the evening), to throw a word in the pipe. Waited at the warehouse until three in the morning before the Trumpeter showed up. He thanked us profusely on behalf of the family with only a slight reservation that Marijke didn’t make Zdarlyi suffer enough. He let that go, expressing an understanding for a need to expedite the assignment. He made some mention of being uncomfortable expressing a lie to the family but also expressed that the whole truth need not be known. He handed us each a plane ticket; mine, back home, hers was to Brussels. Both were for that night, though her plane left earlier than mine.
At her gate, in line, she said, “You were surprisingly proficient. I expect improvement will come easily to you.”
I just do my job.
She brushed her brown hair back from her brow to behind her ear, never turning to face me but only nodding her head in my direction as she faced forward, “I’m only saying, you evidently possess more skill than what most Yankees possess. You performed above expectations.”
What will you do in Brussels?
“What will you do in the States?”
I’ll keep working. This is your last assignment, though, you said.
“As a contractor. I tire of it, honestly. I seek to be a Trompeter.”
Really - It could have been a period to denote finality, a question mark to denote surprise, but I left it as a word.
“Really.”
I left it alone.
“Well,” she exclaimed as we were three people away from the gate, then turning to shake my hand, “Good luck to you. Perhaps we may work together again.”
Perhaps.
“Then I will come to the States, find you on the clock at a bus station, and smack the dick out of your mouth.” She winked at me with that.
“Miss,” the attendant said, “your ticket please.”
She’s asking for your ticket. You have to go now.
She nodded and handed her the ticket. I didn’t stick around to watch her pass through the gate.