Chapter GRIFFIN
GRIFFIN
I’M TELLING YOU IT WAS THE MALAKOVS
IT’S A FUCKING COINCIDENCE THAT THIS HAPPENS RIGHT AFTER YOU GET INVOLVED WITH THEM, DON’T YOU THINK
They’re saying at least ten guys saw a BIG MALAKOV and like five henchmen beating the guy up
in front of EVERYONE
which one was it
What do you mean
which malakov
What do you mean which one??? The fkinhg Malakov
the name.
what was the malakov’s name.
WHAT KUND OF QUIESTION IS THAT
THE BIG MALAKOV. THE ANIMAL
IVAN I THINK
His father ran everything with his brother before he died
ivan?
u sure?
i thought it was vania
Are there women in the Malakov family?
no
he’s a man
Vania????
Vania is a man’s name?
it’s a prostitute’s name
I’m gonna have a stroke. I’m serious
MEET ME TODAY
WE NEED TO TALK
This bar is our meeting spot because no one ever remembers having been here.
I hate this place, I hate the smell of cheap detergent mixed with sour beer and the resigned mold on the walls, but I keep coming back because, here, no one notices me.
The red neon sign outside only flickers occasionally, part lit, part out.
Seen from afar, the patrons exist only as shapeless blurs behind the fogged-up windows.
I wait for Marcus, sitting on one of the broken benches outside, my back against a post. My cigarette burns slowly.
The mechanical arm—my new toy—still throbs, as uncomfortable as a newly transplanted organ.
I like this feeling. The discomfort reminds me that I’m alive.
That there’s something in me that belongs to no one, not even Alexei (not even when the organ was a gift from him).
Alexei. He left his fingerprints on everything around me.
The black bracelet tightens on my wrist, and, under my coat sleeve, the weapon—the arm—is an extension of his will.
Alexei improves me, reprograms me, releases me into the world so I can devour it in his name. And I accept it more than I should.
Maybe no one ever knew what to do with me before him.
I watch the street’s movement. The neighborhood has no proper name, just a set of derogatory nicknames, each worse than the last. Every corner has its story of kidnapping, execution, or overdose; even the lampposts seem stained with old blood.
It’s hard to believe that, right there on the main avenue, there are mirrored buildings and cafes where normal people discuss movies and health insurance plans.
Here, the only thing under discussion is who will walk away and who will leave in an ambulance.
I try to imagine Alexei frequenting these dirty bars before becoming what he is, but I can’t.
He was born ready to be stuffed into an expensive suit.
It’s ironic. Marcus thinks the Malakovs are the pinnacle of threat, that their violence exists at the top of the food chain.
Little does he know: Alexei is just the brightest symptom of a disease that has been consuming this city since before we were conceived.
He has the gift of making any tragedy mundane.
He offers me a cigarette when he knows he’s offended me with some shit, kisses me as if he wants to devour me, and gives me access to the security cameras of his own home.
He teaches me to play the game while he already has me in checkmate ten moves ago.
And, while one Malakov breaks a promoter’s legs, the other Malakov was going down on me. Before he touched me like that, I don’t remember ever sleeping so deeply in my entire life.
The street is empty, except for a beggar wrapped in trash bags. He looks at me with recognition. We are the same. Two remnants of something nobody wanted to recycle.
My cigarette finishes and I light another, just to have something to do with my hands. The new arm is heavy, strange. Sometimes I feel like it moves on its own.
I look at my own fingers, testing the sensitivity.
Each metallic alloy phalanx responds with precision.
I squeeze the cigarette very slowly and hear the delicate creak of the joints, almost inaudible.
No one will ever take this from me, I think.
And, paradoxically, it was he who gave it to me.
My private kidnapper, my patron, my executioner.
I catch myself smiling. Marcus is going to freak out when he sees the arm. I want to see his reaction in real time.
When he finally appears at the corner, I recognize his hurried steps from afar, running, the collar of his overcoat turned up as if to hide half his face beneath it.
He looks like a penguin. He crosses the street without looking both ways, stumbles over two bottles, and is almost hit by a taxi.
The driver curses in Romanian, but Marcus doesn’t understand a thing.
“Holy shit, Griffin!” he hisses, stopping in front of me with his hands in his pockets and his face pale. “Do you have any idea what kind of shit you’ve gotten yourself into? Karpov! They broke Karpov in half!”
“I heard,” I say. “Ten guys saw it, that’s what you said.”
“Ten, twenty, it doesn’t matter! It was public!
It was a statement! And you’re right in the middle of it!
Those Malakov guys are crazy, stumpy, they say shit got real after that fuck-up in Istanbul and they’re even more fucking violent.
What were you doing? Where have you been?
” His gaze travels down my body, looking for injuries, and then it stops.
He freezes. His eyes widen, fixed on my right arm.
“What. The. Fuck. Is. That?” he whispers.
I don’t know shit about Istanbul, but I pull up my sleeve, slowly, exposing the arm up to the elbow. The red light from the bar reflects off the metal plates, creating an illusion of muscle and bone, but with no flesh at all. Marcus backs away, taking a half-step back.
“An upgrade,” I repeat Alexei’s words, flexing the metal fingers. The hum of the servos is almost inaudible.
“An upgrade? That looks like something out of a science fiction movie, stumpy! Where did you get that? Who gave it to you?” He takes another step back. “It was him, wasn’t it? The Malakov.”
“A gift from the firm.”
“What firm, Griffin? The firm of assassins that kidnapped you?” he’s shouting. “They break you and then rebuild you better? What kind of sick deal did you make?”
“I got promoted,” I reply, laughing. “I’m now officially an instrument of the Malakovs.”
He shakes his head, disbelievingly. “You’re kidding. You’re always kidding. But that thing,” he points to the arm, “that’s no joke.”
I rotate my wrist, flex my fingers; each movement is perfectly articulated, human. “Like it?”
Marcus runs his hands through his hair, on the verge of a breakdown. “No!”
I ignore him. “Nice. But Marcus,” I interrupt his panic. “That’s not what I want to talk to you about.”
“How can it not be?! What else is there—“
“You know everyone, right? I need a favor.”
He looks at me the way you’d look at someone on death row. He even says with pity, “Okay. Anything, kid, you know that.”
I roll my eyes and light another cigarette. “Forget the Malakovs for a second. I want you to tell me about saints.”
“About what?”
“Saints.”
“Like... John the Baptist?”
“No, fuck. You know what I’m talking about,” I say. “It’s just... look. I’m going to tell you something personal.”
Marcus braces himself, expecting the worst. “...What did you do, Griffin?”
“It’s not that. It’s just... a while ago, before I met you,” I start.
The feeling of telling something like this to Marcus, of all people, is horrible, “I was part of a... a group. It wasn’t really a gang, it was like.
.. the leader used to say that property was a joke as long as one man could own an entire building while others slept in the rain.
We just... corrected the joke. With a crowbar. ”
Marcus is frozen for a moment, with that look of someone who doesn’t understand a thing.
“...Okay...” he says.
“Think Robin Hood with brass knuckles.”
“I got the beatdown part.”
“Right. So. The leader was a... complicated guy. Charismatic. Disappeared years ago. I’m trying to find out if anyone from the old guard is still around.”
“And what does that have to do with John the Baptist?”
“A saint, Marcus. The people—the ones who didn’t get hit with the crowbar—they’d say it was the work of a saint. ‘Thank God.’ ‘You’re an angel.’” I stare at him. “...Nothing?”
“Griffin, I don’t know what fucking anarcho-commune phase you went through back then, but those people don’t last.”
I ignore him. “They had a way of doing things. They solved problems no one else could. Brought the bourgeoisie to their knees. You’ve never heard of a group like that?”
Marcus rubs his face, looking exhausted. “Every now and then, you hear some weird stories. Unexplained things. A loan shark who disappears off the map, a blackmailed politician who’s suddenly left in peace...”
“You don’t know any specific stories?”
Marcus thinks. It’s a rare event, so I let him have his moment.
“Ah... there was Karpov. He was always getting into trouble. One time it was bad with some Albanians. A debt he could never pay off. Everyone was betting he’d turn up floating in the river.”
“And?”
“And nothing. That was it. Overnight, the debt disappeared.”
I lean back against the post. This is too vague.
“He didn’t pay? There was no money trail, no favor, nothing?”
Marcus shrugs, and then stops, his brow furrowed.
“Ah, there was one weird thing. There was an old tailor, a German named Schmidt, who was about to lose his shop. The building owner wanted to kick him out, tripled the rent, wanted to sell the place to a construction company. Then Karpov, who has nothing to do with the fucking neighborhood, called the building owner. No one knows what he said. But Schmidt’s lease was renewed for a few years at the same old price. Nobody understood a fucking thing.”
A tailor shop. The kind of place Alexei mentioned.
I stand up, throwing the cigarette away. “I think that’ll do,” I say to myself.