Shrike had been watching television on the couch. He knew he needed to stay awake to avoid jet lag, so he made the best of it by finding Simpson’s episodes dubbed in Italian. In this particular episode, Sideshow Bob, now named Telespalla Bob, continued to seek revenge against Bart Simpson. The doorbell rang, and Shrike pressed the mute button on the remote control. He checked the screen of the baby monitor on the end table. The black and white negative from the camera he’d placed above the front door showed two men. Shrike scooped up the monitor, silently rose from the couch, and took the Beretta APX from his waistband.
“Yeah?” Shrike said when he got to the door. He glanced at the monitor again. Neither man was armed. The smaller one leaned in closer to the door and spoke.
“Esteban Gonzalez.”
Shrike holstered his weapon, opened the door, and invited them inside.
The larger one wore a burgundy turtleneck and pork pie hat. He was about six foot six and nearly as wide. He looked to be in his mid-thirties. A toothpick rolled around in his teeth. He didn’t look like he employed much finesse, but Shrike got the sense the guy was quicker than he appeared, and the people he was able to get his hands on would later regret misjudging his speed. Gonzalez was skeletal; a navy blue suit clung to his bones. He had white hair and a pencil-thin mustache. He didn’t need a cane to walk, but those days were slowly running out. The behemoth helped Gonzalez into a chair to the left of the couch and coffee table. Once the old man had settled, the giant backed away until he was almost leaning against the wall. Shrike sat on the couch and turned off the television set.
Rome had managed to book Shrike on a flight with a few hours layover in Naples. Gonzalez had contacted her for a job in the same city after the reservation had already been confirmed. Rome was not one to believe in a higher power, but she also didn’t necessarily subscribe to events happening strictly by coincidence. She had debated calling the airline, but in the end just decided it would be easier to gain access to their server; so, she put Shrike on a flight which would depart Naples in a few days as opposed to a few hours and thus give him plenty of time to handle business for Gonzalez.
“So, what can I do for you?” Shrike said. He already knew the details, but he wanted to hear it from the man himself. Gonzalez produced a cigarette and a weatherproof lighter.
“Do you mind?”
According to Rome, Gonzalez had lived in Italy for over a decade, but he still spoke with a pronounced accent of his Argentine upbringing. Shrike nodded his head signalling it was fine. Gonzalez lit the end and took a drag. Shrike gestured to a half empty glass of water on the coffee table.
“You can ash in that,” Shrike said.
He didn’t know whether the villa which Rome had secured for him was non-smoking, but she could handle it if there was any blowback. Shrike had put the weapon in his waistband and shifted to get more comfortable. He could often tell ahead of time which clients would choose brevity when discussing business; somehow, Gonzalez did not seem like the person. Gonzalez took a deep breath, dropped his cigarette in the water, and spoke.
***
Hours later, Shrike sat in Fabio’s garage. Fabio was a welder by trade, though he had formerly been an armorer for the Carabinieri. He still maintained a good relationship with his former colleagues. A large Bull Mastiff lay in the corner and was busy dismantling what appeared to be a femur bone; whether it was human remained to be seen. It seemed Rome had a neverending list of contacts around the world. Shrike never asked how Rome found these people, but they were always reliable. Fabio finished soldering some wires together, put his tools down, sat back in his chair, and took a sip of soda. While the scene wasn’t reminiscent of his previous assignment, Shrike couldn’t help but think about his dealings with Yumi only a few days ago.
***
Shrike had waited outside of the housing unit and made sure he had the correct address from the information he’d gotten from Rome. He was somewhere deep in the New Territories near the Shenzhen border. When he was certain he had the correct address, he went into the first apartment of four which made up the complex. Inside, the lobby was barren except for a wall display with notices tacked to a board. Some potted plants had been placed in every corner to make it seem more sophisticated than it truly was. At the far wall were two elevators; one for the even floors, and one for the odd. A middle-aged woman stood in front of the elevator bank. She had three cardboard boxes on the floor by her feet. They came up to her waist. When Shrike walked toward the elevator bank, her face lit up, and she immediately asked him for help getting the boxes onto the elevator. She spoke heavily accented Pidgin English.
“Of course,” he had said.
The boxes were heavier than he expected, so when the elevator door opened, he put his weight into it and pushed two of them inside. The woman was able to slide the third using her legs. She thanked Shrike and pressed the button for the nineteenth floor. They rode together in silence, and she inspected the contents of her box. When she opened the flaps, Shrike saw and smelled flowers. They were uncut; a multitude of different colors, though he didn’t know the kinds. The bell sounded, and the elevator door opened. Together they pushed the boxes in front of apartment number two. She took the keys from her pocket and unlocked the door. They slid the three boxes into the living room, and she shut the door behind them.
“Water?” She asked.
“Thank you,” Shrike replied.
She disappeared into the kitchen, and Shrike heard the faucet run. He stood in the living room and analyzed the apartment. It was spartan with nothing hanging on the walls. The room gave off the implication the owner favored utility over beauty. The woman returned with two glasses of water. Shrike drank from his and thanked her again.
“My pleasure, Mr. Shrike,” The woman said in flawless English with no trace of an accent.
“Thank you for your help.”
Yumi was from Japan. She had been practicing Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, for her entire life. She cobbled together another bouquet and paused, for a moment, to look at her hands. They did not look like the hands of a middle-aged woman. In fact, in the right circumstances, she could still pass for someone in her twenties. She hadn’t been tested on that, but she was pretty certain she could pull it off. She wore bangs, which were in fashion, and kept her hair just above her neckline. Though she had attained the status of a master, she was not getting the reception commensurate with her status in her hometown. However, she could set up shop in Hong Kong, where she would be lionized. She didn’t think twice about the move. Aside from her arrangements, Yumi also had a stockpile of herbs and roots at her disposal.
“Hemlock,” Shrike said.
A member of the Apiaceae family, Hemlock, Socrates’ poison of choice when he committed suicide, was part of a group that included cumin, cilantro, and dill. It was fatal to humans even in small doses.
“Of course,” Yumi said and removed a jar, a manilla envelope, and a set of plastic gloves.
***
The song on Fabio’s playlist changed, and it brought Shrike back from his memory of Yumi. Fabio had gone back to soldering an intricate web of wires. Shrike stepped back and took in his surroundings. The room had been decorated with posters of heavy metal bands, with a few photographs of Fabio graduating from the academy. In all of them, he stood arm in arm with a group of four others; each wore uniforms, were clean shaven, and had crew cuts. It was drastically different from the look he had cultivated now. Fabio’s beard bordered on Hasidic, and his hair touched his shoulders. Gone now was the uniform, traded in for a worn t-shirt of a band called Sleep. He put down his tools and paused for a moment to do some air guitar. As the solo wound down, he stopped, and turned to Shrike.
“All good,” he said.
***
Even in the pitch blackness of the bedroom, Shrike could feel how immense it was. He hadn’t seen the decor yet, but he could imagine the opulence. The man who owned it, currently asleep in the king sized bed, was a member of the high two comma clientele; the type of person who owned multiple wine vineyards and knew how to tie a Windsor knot. Franco Delvecchio had worked his way up from an impoverished background, and it was always a bit of a chip on his shoulder he had never fully been embraced by the aristocracy. This, combined with some inherent traits, had made him a ruthless businessman, Some of these ventures had been legitimate, others not so much. One of these dealings saw him cross paths with Estaban Gonzalez, who had sworn a blood oath to see a perceived slight rectified.
Shrike was never one to let his emotions dictate his actions. Delvecchio could have been a member of Greenpeace. Shrike sat back in the chair and it creaked, the desired effect, which woke Delvecchio who sat up in the darkness. Shrike heard the man rise off of his pillow and in the dark could see the outline of his body.
“Chi e la?” Delvecchio said.
There was no trace of fear in his voice; instead it sounded like curiosity. Shrike imagined Delvecchio thinking to himself only a fool would attempt to break in here. Delvecchio turned on one of his bedside lamps, saw Shrike, and grabbed a giant remote control console on his end table.
The device had become lore.
Shrike had heard about it well before he had accepted the assignment. Some had suggested it was an instrument of torture designed by a former Nazi scientist. Others had compared it to the famed Lament Configuration from The Hellraiser film series; a mystical box which could summon demons. In Asia, Shrike had heard rumors the device was supposed to control booby traps set up throughout the house. Many had compared it to a house of fictional law enforcer Hanzo The Razor. Details surrounding the remote console had become exaggerated over time, however, since it was wireless, Shrike knew the frequency could be jammed; thankfully Fabio’s contraption had worked. Delvecchio pressed a button a few times. After the third try, his grin disappeared. Shrike let the man continue to mess with the device for a few more seconds before he spoke.
“Not this time,” Shrike said.
Delvecchio placed the device back on the table. He got out of bed and walked over to an intercom buzzer on the wall.
“I guess we’ll have to do this the old fashioned way,” Delvecchio said to Shrike in English and pressed the button.
“Ivano, puoi aiutarmi con un problema?”
A moment passed before a voice answered.
“assolutamente.”
Delvecchio returned to his bed and sat on the end. He looked at Shrike, though his eyes instinctively shifted to the door. Footsteps echoed from the sound of someone running. The door opened, but Ivano was too seasoned to simply barrel into the room. Shrike could tell the man had assessed the situation, and once confident it wasn’t a trap stepped into the room. Once Ivano saw Delvecchio wasn’t in any danger, he settled on Shrike. An expandable baton snapped open with a flick of his wrist. Shrike stood up from his chair. Ivano closed the distance. Shrike sidestepped the first swing and caught the second on the brass knuckle guard of the trench knife he’d also gotten from Fabio. Ivano took a step back, recalibrated, and engaged a second time. He was technically sound in his attacks, probably ex-military, and though he’d probably been asleep he was still conditioned to be able to execute at 100% on a moment’s notice. It was almost imperceptible at first, but slowly Ivano’s movements lacked the fluidity they once had. He paused mid-strike, took a few steps back, faltered, and fell to the ground. He furrowed his brow then lay his head on the floor. In another moment, he was dead. Whether he had figured out his femoral artery had been severed remained a mystery.
“Well,” Delvecchio began, but he didn’t say anything else. He was composed, though, as this wasn’t his first rodeo.
Shrike sat back down in the chair.
“The Comet,” Shrike said.
***
“1855, the year Napoleon the Third ordered the Bordeaux Classification,” Gonzalez said. He had already smoked half a pack of cigarettes and gone off on as many tangents. At that point, Shrike felt he could probably pass the written portion of a test for a master sommelier.
“I’m sorry. I tend to get carried away. What were we discussing?”
Gonzalez lit another cigarette. His muscle, Federico, had gone to the kitchen. Odds were he was familiar with this history and saw a chance to avoid another lecture.
“The Comet,” Shrike said.
Gonzalez nodded his head and lit another cigarette.
“Vintages bottled during years in which comets appeared are said to benefit in a myriad of ways.” He looked like he was going to go further in depth, but he checked his watch. Almost on cue, his muscle appeared from the kitchen.
“Delvecchio has a bottle from Kraljevich sellers, a small vineyard; from the year of the comet 1811.”
Gonzalez extinguished his cigarette, and Federico helped him stand from the couch.
“It had belonged to my brother.”
***
Delvecchio wasn’t outwardly hostile, but he displayed a look that suggested he didn’t like the position in which he’d found himself. He also gave off the impression he respected Shrike’s ability. He did not argue when he’d been given instructions. Also, he didn’t plead with Shrike or make any bribery attempts. Right from the beginning he acquiesced to Shrike’s commands, and now both men were in the wine cellar. It was temperature controlled and many of the bottles had been housed in refrigeration units. Delvecchio opened the door to one and removed a bottle. He handed it to Shrike who had produced a UV pen and shone it on the label. The markings matched those which had been submitted to Rome from Gonzalez.
“Anything else?” Delvecchio said. His tone was cordial rather than sarcastic.
“No.”
***
Delvecchio’s house was located on one side of undisturbed forest. He owned the property next to his, and the rest was part of a conservatorship with the government to preserve the woods. Shrike had found a run off near the property line, broke the trench knife into a few pieces, and threw them into the stream. The insulated thermal bag was where he had stashed it before going into the house, and he carefully placed the bottle of wine inside. It couldn’t be temperature controlled, but he was going to hand it off to Gonzalez soon enough. Shrike walked for about ten minutes, until he had cleared the property, and called for a taxi. He didn’t need the ruse of a lost traveller, as the dispatcher had barely spoken English. Shrike took a seat on the side of the road. In about twenty minutes, headlights appeared and the taxi pulled up. Shrike got into the backseat and gave the address to the cafe where he was to meet with Gonzalez. The cab driver made small talk with Shrike as best she could, mostly through the use of cliched colloquialisms. The driver’s name was Lia. They spoke for a few minutes about baseball and Billy Joel; Shrike was curious as to the choice of subject matter, but he didn’t ask. Shrike got the sense she was just getting started, and Shrike was trying to figure out ways to end the conversation when a phone rang and Lia answered. She spoke for a minute in rapid fire Italian and hung up.
“My mother,” she said. “My Aunt Nella and mother Valdevia invite me over for meal.”
Shrike couldn’t tell if this was the beginning of a new conversation or whether he would be invited to join them, so Shrike took out his burner and sent a coded message to Rome to let her know he had been successful and would be returning home soon. Lia had tried to make eye contact in the rear view mirror but stopped speaking and instead turned on the radio.
Shrike wanted to know if telespalla directly translated to sideshow, but he didn’t ask.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Davie received an MFA in creative writing from Adelphi University. He taught English in Macau on a Fulbright Grant. In June of 2018, he survived a ruptured brain aneurysm and subarachnoid haemorrhage. His crime fiction novella Pavement was released in by All Due Respect Books. The follow-up Ouroboros is scheduled for December 2020 and his novella Dig Two Graves is scheduled to be released by Close to the Bone in September 2020. His other work can be found in links on his website: asdavie.wordpress.com
Follow Andrew on Twitter: @adavieauthor
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