Chapter ALEXEI #2
I cross the space with a didactic slowness. I stop three meters from the target, hands in my suit pockets. I give the victim the right to see me clearly.
“Leave,” I order, without taking my eyes off the tied-up man.
The two guards hesitate. A fraction of a second, nothing more—enough to register that they don’t want to leave me alone, not even with a harmless human rag. But they don’t question it. “Yes, sir.”
The metal door reverberates through the warehouse space, followed by the muffled sound of their boots moving away. And then, silence.
A dense, saturated silence, broken only by Arthur Penhaligon’s gasping breath and the metronomic beat of an old, failing air compressor somewhere in the building.
I use the pause to examine the man: his head hanging at an odd angle, blood running in abstract lines from his eyebrow to his chin, his dress shirt stained dark red and ocher-yellow.
His eyes, deep-set and unfocused, only find me after a few seconds.
I pull up a metal chair and sit in front of him, close enough for him to see the color of my eyes.
“Arthur Penhaligon,” I begin, dragging out each syllable, making his name a death sentence delivered with the cordiality of a toast. “Forty-six years old. Convenience store clerk.”
His eyes widen, and the fear shifts from abstract—pain, humiliation, confusion—to a specific fear: the raw terror of being known, of being deciphered. There is nothing more unsettling for an ordinary man than to realize his life has been reduced to a dossier.
“You’ve been a model employee. Not a single tardy in three years. No complaints. A man of routine, of rules, of predictability. I like that about you, Arthur.”
His chin trembles. He wants to speak, to protest, but the pain and the recently removed gag prevent him from emitting more than a hoarse groan.
“On Tuesday night,” I continue, “a man with a metal prosthetic on his right arm came in during your shift. He bought cigarettes... and the change seemed high. A lot of bills. How much did he pay, Arthur? Fifty?”
Arthur’s chin trembles. He looks at me, not understanding where this is going, what this is about.
He shakes his head.
“Do your customers do that often, Arthur? Pay with large bills for the change?”
A trickle of blood drips from his chin onto his pants.
“Sometimes,” he says quietly. He’s terrified. Good.
I nod. “But that night... he didn’t take the change, did he?”
Arthur tenses. He doesn’t answer.
“He left over forty dollars for you. He turned around... and went to the back door. You know where this is going, don’t you?”
“I... I-I don’t know anything...”
“Was it the man in the back who asked you to flip the sign, Arthur?”
A twitch in his eyelid. A hit.
But he says nothing.
I sigh.
“Sofia is eight, isn’t she?”
The whole theater of stoicism collapses, his breathing rate doubles, tears cut through the dried blood on his cheeks. He tries to compose himself, but he can’t.
“Her medical records are impressive,” I say. “The chemotherapy, the experimental treatments. The bills must have been... astronomical.”
I take a long pause. The man before me is now in another world, lost between the past of his daughter’s illness and the present of his own physical pain.
“I noticed the larger payments stopped a few months ago. The debt is being paid in smaller installments now. I suppose that’s good news. Is she in remission?”
Arthur sobs. It takes him a moment to answer, but still, he finds a thread of a voice, “She is...”
“I’m happy for her,” I say. “A man would do anything for his daughter. But you understand that if you don’t cooperate, this progress... can be undone in a matter of days, don’t you?”
He looks at me, for the first time, with hatred. A pure, clean hatred, as beautiful as a father’s love.
“Arthur. Who is Seraphim?”
He shakes his head violently. “I... I can’t. I can’t...”
“You can’t or you won’t?”
He hesitates. The muscle in his jaw twitches. “I can’t,” he repeats.
I watch him, dissecting that hesitation. Is it the hesitation of a loyal man or a terrified man? The line between the two is thin.
“Why, Arthur? Because your loyalty to him is greater than your love for your daughter? Or because you’re more afraid of what he can do than what I’m about to do?”
He doesn’t answer. He just trembles.
“Let me clarify your options so there’s no doubt,” I say, leaning forward, closing the space between us.
“There is a future where you cooperate. Think about it. Sofia not only continues her treatment but goes to the best college. She gets married in a beautiful ceremony. She gives you grandchildren and lives a long, happy life, completely free of worry. I guarantee her an entire life, Arthur. A life you could never afford. I put her on a golden path, far from men like me and, especially, from men like him.”
I let the image of that perfect future settle in his mind. I let him taste the hope.
“That’s door number one,” I whisper. “But there are others.”
The glimmer of hope in his eyes dies.
“Do you know what else I can do?” The question is rhetorical; he doesn’t dare dream of rock bottom until I offer it to him.
“I can turn your life into a hell so absolute that your daughter’s cancer will seem like a common cold compared to what you will feel.
I can ruin you in every sense. I can make every hospital, every school, every store in this city refuse any request made in your name.
I can ensure that you watch from afar as your daughter’s health withers because her father could no longer pay the bills. ”
I pull back, taking a deep breath, and in this gesture he tries, ridiculously, to regain some control—as if straightening his debilitated spine could reverse everything that has been said.
I realize how hope is a more resilient disease than any cancer.
“That’s door number two,” I finish, and my right hand unbuttons my jacket, letting the light reveal the steel of the pistol.
His eyes don’t look away, don’t blink. There is a morbid relief in the idea of a single, quick shot.
“And, of course, there’s door number three.
.. where all of this is resolved in seconds.
Sofia becomes an orphan, you an anonymous corpse, and Seraphim remains an unreachable shadow. ”
I cross my hands in my lap, leaning back in the chair, and I wait. Arthur breathes unevenly—he’s calculating: how much his life is worth, how much her life is worth, how much they both weigh against the void. How much it’s worth to protect a ghost.
“Which door will you choose, Arthur?”
His eyes shift to an invisible point behind me, to a safe place in his thoughts where he can negotiate with God, or with the void, or with his own insignificance.
He cries, softly, like a child.
I don’t interrupt him. I watch as Arthur’s face transforms: the blood darkening, the sweat and tears forming a grotesque mask, his mouth twisted in a grimace of pain and resignation.
“I don’t know his name,” he says, finally. “No one does. I swear. He... he doesn’t have a name.”
“Try again.”
“It’s the truth! We don’t call him. He... he finds us. When you need it. When there’s no one else... he appears.”
The description fits the methods of a messiah, not a crime boss. But it’s not enough.
“Where?” I press.
Arthur shakes his head. “It’s not just one place... he doesn’t have an office, a... a headquarters. It’s...” He hesitates, searching for the right words.
“Be specific.”
“The... old Schmidt’s tailor shop, on Eighth Avenue.
.. the one that gives free clothes to people going to a job interview,” he says.
“Or... the St. Jude church soup kitchen... Mrs. Elma’s charity thrift store.
.. those are his places. It’s where his people are. It’s where... it’s where you feel him.”
A tailor shop. A church. A charity thrift store.
What the fuck is this?
I was looking for an empire built on warehouses and docks, on money and drugs. And all this time, he was building a kingdom on top of our scraps?
I stand up, the chair scraping loudly on the floor. The movement breaks the spell. Arthur stares at me, devastated, awaiting the final verdict. The bullet or the ruin.
I turn and walk toward the door, without looking back. I leave him alone.
“You,” I call to one of my men, who was waiting at the door.
He approaches with one hand on his holster, anticipating the order for elimination.
“Take him home,” I command.
“Sir?”
“You heard me,” I say, adjusting my jacket. “No new marks, no witnesses, and no trace. Drop him two blocks from his apartment. He’ll find his way.”
I walk past them and start down the dark corridor toward the exit.
“And have flowers sent to his daughter tomorrow morning. A large bouquet. Signed anonymously.”
I don’t wait for a reply. I keep walking.
Arthur Penhaligon’s life no longer belongs to me. He gave me what I needed.
I expected to find Seraphim’s name in the obvious place: in the underworld, in the muck of sordid transactions, in the digital trails of offshore accounts and arms shipments, in the dead files of a brothel’s bookkeeper, perhaps even in a blood contract executed in the dim light of a port-side nightclub.
What I didn’t expect was to come face to face with the holy trinity of social assistance: Schmidt’s Tailor Shop, the St. Jude soup kitchen, and Mrs. Elma’s Thrift Store.
I feel a mixture of fascination and contempt at what I discover.