[div class="spiral-wrapper"]
[div class="spiral-topper"][/div]
[div class="spiral-content"]
[div class="spiral-content-inner"]
[div class="spiral-headline"]II[/div]
[div class="spiral-subheadline"]THE SHADOW BELOW[/div]
[div class="spiral-quote"]What would an ocean be without a
monster lurking in the dark? It would
be like sleep without dreams.[/div]
[span class="spiral-quote-author"]— Werner Herzog[/span]
A HIGH-PITCHED SCREAM BREAKS ACROSS JACKSON SQUARE. It cuts through the music and revelry of the French Quarter to alert everyone within ear-shot of Ivan—blinded, disfigured, and wailing with his broken arm flinging around. He falls to the feet of the shrieking woman, mortified by the sight of him. She puts both hands over her mouth and turns away as a man comes hurrying to offer help. He shouts at the growing number of onlookers for an ambulance.
Not far away, I watch from my balcony. My Darkself has once again retreated to the depths and I have donned my human suit once more, along with a black Henley and jeans by Robert Graham. The rest of my belongings, what little I have, are packed in a suitcase waiting at the front door of my apartment, along with Ivan's kill bag. I do ache to hear what story he is weaving for these good Samaritans, but I simply am too far away, and so I turn my attention to the more pressing matter.
I take Ivan's phone from my pocket and hit redial. It picks up on the first ring.
An eager voice says in Russian, "About time. Is it done?"
I say, "Hello, Mr. Petrov. Your man failed."
Silence stretches for several seconds before he replies, now in English, "You should have stayed in that hospital Mr. Spiral. You were safe there, under lock and key, far away from the dangers that await you."
"I could live with the unnecessary medications that kept me in a constant fog, as well as the electro-shock therapy that reduced my memories into a sizzling knot—I could even accept the years of solitary confinement, locked away with just my thoughts to keep me company. But when they got rid of Taco Tuesday, that was it. I refuse to live in a dictatorship."
"Making jokes," he says. "I wonder, when you are suffering more than any man has ever suffered, when I am standing over you, watching the final moments of your life slip away, will you still be making jokes?"
"If I ever find myself in that regrettable situation, Mr. Petrov, then the joke's on me."
"You are a foolish man. Giving the politsiya my name is not a violation that will ever be forgiven. I made the mistake of sending one man to give you a much more pleasant end than you deserve. That is a gamble I will not take again."
Sirens cry in the distance, and quickly grow louder.
"Can you hear that, Mr. Petrov? That is the sound of angels coming to breathe new life into your hitman."
"You didn't kill him?"
"Oh, no," I say as the first emergency vehicles arrive, filling the square with flashing lights. "I promised to let him go if he spilled all his secrets. He did, and I am a man of my word. Now I wonder what secrets will he sing to the police? What happens when federal agents find out an undocumented assassin from Russia is cuffed to a bed in a New Orleans hospital?"
His voice goes quiet. It's hard to hear, but he's barking orders at someone in Russian. I can't quite make it out because of a fire engine screaming down the street to the square. I leave the balcony, stepping inside and closing the glass door behind me.
"Do yourself a favor," he says, now talking to me. "Turn yourself over to me tonight, and I will give you an honorable death. I won't cut out your tongue. I won't pull all your teeth and cut off your fingers and toes. I won't—"
"—I'm getting bored, darling. Let us skip to the part where I tell you to fuck off."
"Fine, Mr. Spiral. Run, but it is futile. No matter where you hide, I will find you. I will hunt you to the ends of this earth. I will have my satisfaction."
I let loose a haughty laugh in the kitchen, so raucous that I have to lean with a hand against the refrigerator. "Satisfaction, he says! What satisfaction do you expect, Mr. Petrov? Do you truly believe that this will end well for you? I've been lost in a black hole of manic confusion. Now I am free, free, free! And you have given me a great gift: purpose. I truly was not sure what to do with myself until your man gave me your name. Now, I have purpose. I have you. So fret not, precious. You will not have to search for me. I will find you. I will come for you in the dark of night, when you feel the safest."
He says, "You are a crazy man. You can't actually believe—"
The rest of his words drown under the current of my vast contempt. Crazy, that's what they all say. The word makes the skin crawl and ripple over my true self. Somewhere, in the depths, I can feel the Entity reach out. It shoves me forward, urges me to crack. I comply.
Louder and louder, I growl into the phone. "One-two-three, come a series of knocks, knocks, knocks... You aren't safe behind those locks, locks, locks... I will show my true face, it said, said, said... And when you see it, you'll be dead, dead, dead!"
I fling the phone through the air into a wall, shattering it into angular pieces that scatter about the floor. The stainless steel refrigerator reflects my face back at me. It is warped, elongated, and distorted by the metal surface. My lips are contorted and stretched beyond the usual limits of a human face, spreading ever so wildly until I am little more than grinning teeth. Somewhere deep, in the dark passages of my mind, a very Spiral-like voice whispers in my ear:
[span class="spiral-shadow-speech"]Men like him do not know how to be scared. We will have to show him what fear is.[/span]
I will show him, I whisper back.
I shift gears from Petrov to the apartment and the mountain of evidence within. See: the bullet holes in the wall and ceiling. See: the pool of blood where I split Ivan's head open. See: the smeared red trail leading to the chair where I tortured him.
Even if Ivan doesn't speak my name to the police, eventually someone will come calling and discover this horrid scene. Yet there is too much evidence and too little time to clean this mess. I must improvise, and fast. Thinking, frantically thinking, until a beautiful idea comes to me. A revelation.
That voices muses, [span class="spiral-shadow-speech"]You're a fucking artist, my love.[/span]
I hurry-hurry through the house, down the marble-tiled hallway and through the foyer. Both the bags are hoisted from the ground and I burst out the door, letting it slam shut behind me. I put a shoulder into the stairwell door and make my way down, the rapid clicks of my shoes echoing down the shaft. I get all the way to the ground floor and step out into the lobby. The nightwatchman is still gone, and no one else is in sight, but I slow my gait nonetheless, turning a run into a brisk walk.
Both bags are left outside a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. I push through it and head into the break room. It's small, with just a single table in the middle and a counter with various appliances, including a microwave and a stove. To the left, behind a steel security door is the camera room. Ivan said he disabled the cameras and erased the drive to cover his tracks. Even if he didn't, there won't be anything left to find.
I pull the stove out from the wall, far enough till I can reach a hand behind it. My fingers curl about the gas line and, with a yank, it comes free. The methane hisses from the hose and the rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulfide quickly begins to fill the room.
I pull Ivan's gun from the back of my jeans, wipe it off with the sleeve of my shirt, and then toss it into the microwave. I set the timer to thirty minutes and hit start. Uncertain how long it will take for the gas to build up, I run out of the break room, grabbing both my bags mid stride, and dart across the lobby.
I burst out the door and onto the street. A quick glance is thrown right, and then I head left, walking with purpose, up St. Peter towards Decatur. As I near Jackson Square, I count four squad cars, an ambulance, and a firetruck. A cacophony of red and blue lights paints the block and everything on it, including me as I near the intersection.
Cars slow to a crawl as the drivers gawk, trying for a glimpse of the man being wheeled by EMTs into the ambulance. I wait until the light changes, and then follow the white line across the street and onto the square. I avoid the cordoned off scene and continue northwest, toward the Cabildo museum.
Three blocks away, people are hurrying to get their phones out, to aim their lit-up screens behind me. One man says My, God under his breath. I look back to see the ground floor of the Jackson Brewery building spewing black smoke out the front door, intertwined with a pulsing light of red and orange that grows brighter and brighter, until boom! The explosion, loud as a canon and violent, rocks the French Quarter. The building erupts, blowing pieces of the brick exterior in every direction. Hellfire spits out from the gouged out hole and begins to eat away at the rest of the building.
Chaos overtakes the minds of the people around me, turning them savage. They begin running, every which way, tripping over one another. Most scurry for safety, but a few scramble toward the inferno, phones jutted out front to record every moment of the burning building.
A dozen people spill out of the Jackson Bistro on the corner of the engulfed building. Choking and crying, they stumble half-blind from the smoke out into the street into the waiting arms of police and firemen rushing over from the square. The fire engine wheels around to the front of the building and begins spraying the blaze with water, but it's too late. The fire has spread like cancer from the ground up, turning the entire building into one massive funeral pyre for all those trapped inside, roasting and suffocating.
With sirens fast approaching from all directions, I continue heading northwest on St. Peter. I stroll up to a twenty-something man hurrying into his black sedan parked on the street with keys in hand. "Young man, I wonder if I could trouble you for a ride," I say with a regretful smile. He shrugs me off, saying "Call an Uber," while climbing into the front seat.
I grab the door and keep it from shutting. "I only need to go ten blocks," I tell him, while flashing a hundred dollar bill from my wallet. "Ten blocks to the Ritz-Carlton. I'll give you a hundred now, and then another hundred when we get there if you don't dottle."
"Two hundred bucks to take you to the Ritz-Carlton. That's all you want?"
I let go of the door, one hand open, the other holding out the money. "That's all I want."
He snatches the bill from my hand and motions to the other seat. "Get in. I'll pop the trunk for your bags. Just hurry. I want to get out of here just as bad as you."
I throw both bags in the trunk, shut it, and climb into the passenger side. I say, "You're a lifesaver," as he starts the engine. A loud blast of hip hop music rocks the speakers. He quickly hits the knob, turning it down to just an annoying thump in the background, then lurches the sedan out of the line of parked cars and races down the street. In the mirror, I see police cruisers blocking off the street, and officers rounding up witnesses for questioning.
[div class="spiral-divider"][/div]
After arriving at the Ritz-Carlton, I register a room for the night under a false name, just to be safe, and have my bags sent up to the room while I head for the Davenport Lounge on the third floor. All the TVs at the bar are tuned to local news, with live video of the fire. I take a seat on a stool and raise a hand to get the bartender's attention. She says, "Can you believe this?" I shrug while taking my wallet out and say, "This day and age, I can believe anything." I look past her, to the bottles along the top shelf, tucked away and out of reach of most customers. "I see a Macallan up there. I'll have a double, neat."
She turns her head, then back at me. "You know that's fifty dollars a glass, right?"
"A double, neat," I repeat myself, adding, "and charge it to room 237." She gets the bottle down and pours me four-fingers of scotch in an Old Fashioned glass and collects the card. I swirling the brown liquid around the tumbler for a moment before taking a sip.
When I set the glass down, a gentleman has taken a seat directly next to me, at a bar full of empty stools. He is tall and in good shape, with long black hair and a beard. He is wearing a leather jacket, zipped half-way up, with a white t-shirt underneath. His hands are covered in faded tattoos of ravens swooping down from underneath his sleeves, and ornate rings and Cyrillic lettering that cover his fingers.
Another Russian. I must have been followed, but Ivan told me he was alone, and Petrov confirmed it. With a quick look around, I count fifteen others in the bar—too many eyewitnesses to kill me here. So why show himself?
"I'll have some of that fifty-dollar-a-glass shit," the man next to me says, thumbing at my drink. An accent laces his English, but he speaks it well, much better than Ivan. The woman looks from him to me. I give her a might-as-well motion of my hand and she gets the bottle down to pour another glass of the single malt scotch.
He doesn't savor it. Instead, he knocks the entire thing back, swallowing it in one long gulp, then wipes his bearded chin with the sleeve of his coat. He sets the glass down and says, "I never had scotch before."
"And you still haven't," I say before taking another sip. He gives a hoarse laugh, eases himself on the stool until he's looking at me, leaning his right elbow on the bar. He says, "Good liquor is wasted on Russians. We drink what is cheap. We prefer to have to bend over to fetch our bottles, not stand on step stools."
I take another sip, then set my glass down. "I am surprised that you found me so quickly."
"I found you three days ago," he says, "when they let you out of the hospital. I've been following you ever since. Keeping an eye on you, waiting to see what happens when Petrov's man catches up with you."
I look over at him. He's giving me a smart-ass smile. I say, "You aren't with Petrov?" He says, "No, I work for someone else—someone who has an offer for you." I take another drink of scotch and say, "No thanks. I have enough Russians in my life."
He says a single name, and it drops like a hammer.
"Viktor Ivanski."
The German, that's what most called him. He was rumored to be the financial backer for the Circuit, but I never had the pleasure of meeting the man. When I fought for the Circuit, Petrov was running the operation, and that's mostly who I dealt with. Most of the fighters didn't even know Ivanski existed. I do because INTERPOL told me.
"You know the name," he says. I nod yes. He says, "Good. That will make this much easier." He catches the bartender's attention and asks for a straight vodka with some ice. He waits for her to pour the liquor, then pays out of his own pocket.
He waits for her attention to turn back to the TVs. "I know that you were arrested by INTERPOL and the FSB in 2010. I know that they offered you a deal, and you took it. You gave them information that led to the capture of Tibor Petrov, and in return, you escaped a life sentence in a Siberian work camp. You were sent back to America and thrown back into that hospital."
He knocks back the vodka and says, "I know this, because Mr. Ivanski knows this."
A cold feeling coils around me. I say, "This is where you tell me what you want."
"Simple," he says. "Tibor Petrov was a liability. In a way, you did us a favor by knocking his chess piece off the board, but unfortunately for you, he was still a vor at that point. You committed a grave offense by talking to the police."
"I have already heard this from Petrov."
"Petrov is no longer a member of the v vory zakone. If he led you to believe otherwise, he is full of shit. That man he sent after you, the one who was stumbling around with his eyes torn out, was just a second-rate thug. If Ivanski wanted you dead, he would have sent someone with skill."
"Like you," I say.
He shrugs. "Me, sure. And five other guys, with another five guys waiting if we need backup. The point is, Ivanski doesn't want you dead, because he has a use for you. He wants you to come back to Russia, to fight for him like before."
My shadow that lurks below rises up from the depths from the faraway place with a very Spiral-like cackle. It resonates in my ear like an impish coo, whispering to me, [span class="spiral-shadow-speech"]We are going to have so much fun[/span]. The thought of breaking bones again, on a stage, under the lights, surrounded by people with blood-lust in their eyes makes me feel like a live wire. It runs through me like an electrical charge. I can feel the hair standing up on my arms, and the chill runs up and down my back. I can hardly contain the frenzy, so I take a moment to swallow the last mouthful of scotch.
I say, "The Circuit—it's back?"
"No," he says. "Not quite. This time, it's legal. Well, legal in Russia. Not that that means much, yes?" He reaches into his jacket to fetch a pen. On a bar napkin, he jots down a phone number, with the Russian dialing code at the beginning. A single finger then slides it over to me. He says, "Dial this number. A man name Wade Crewe will answer. He is expecting your call. Come fight, and Mr. Ivanski will forget about your transgression all those years ago."
I take the napkin and say, "There is one problem—"
"—Tibor Petrov," he says while motioning to the bartender for another vodka. "The man is a rabid dog that must be put down. He has been successfully hiding from us for years, but his obsession with you made him stupid. When word spread that you were getting released, he resurfaced, and began arranging your murder. You do not have to worry about him. We will take care of him."
My knuckles rap on the bar one-two-three, one-two-three. The thought of someone else stealing Petrov from me made my stomach turn in knots. My head shakes a quick no. "That will not do. Not at all. He belongs to me, understand? I will take care of him. Me, and no one else. You just point me in the right direction."
"Very well," he says with a wry smile, as if he expected that answer all along. "We will find him for you, and then you can clean up your mess." He throws back the vodka and then tosses a ten dollar bill on the bar. He stands up from the stool. "What is it the Americans say... See you on the flip side, yes? Thank you again for the drink. It was good, but I'll stick to cheap wodka."
"It was nothing," I say. My head follows him as he steps away from the bar, turning on the stool to watch him leave. I say, "I didn't get your name." He stops, looks back at me over a shoulder, and says, "I'm the Blackbird."
[/div]
[/div]
[div class="spiral-bottom"][/div]
[/div]