Time was passing by, and darkness slowly crept into the city. I stood on the balcony at home, smoking a cigarette and watching one of the photo negatives I had found in Sandra’s hotel. The thing was part of the same sequence as Lara’s picture with her message to me on its back.

There were two figures in the shot, this time in the background of a violet lawn behind a big black two-story house. I could distinguish three patio chairs around a small table with a bottle of Champaign and two glasses on it, and beside them, Sonya and John Kurvallo. A dull, yellowish sky was also seen in the upper left corner.

The Chief of the DEA was bending over the table, clutching to it for support, and Lara’s sister stooped behind him with her hands holding to his hips. She wore a long sky-blue dress with the neckline unbuttoned and exposing her naked breasts, while its lower part was wrinkled around her waist, revealing her thighs. Kurvallo had a formal white suit and black shirt on with no tie. He was barefoot, with his trousers down to his knees. His face and ears were greenish with excitement—probably because of the orange dildo that served as a bridge between his ass and the woman’s private parts behind his back. The toy in his butthole obviously made him very, very happy.

I thoughtfully put the negative in its baggie and tucked it into my shirt pocket with the rest of the film. After that, I finished my cigarette and looked at my wristwatch. It was a little after nine, so it was time. I stepped inside, walked to the kitchen, and opened the fridge, taking a the ten-pound pack of pork chops with bones to examine them. The meat had already turned bad since the refrigerator didn’t work, but it didn’t matter. It was even better this way. I moved everything into a plastic bag, grabbed a few things from the closet in the entrance hall—a pair of pincers, a screwdriver, a rasp, a flashlight, and a few others—and arranged them into my kitbag. Then I carried the stuff to my car, threw them in the passenger seat, and walked around to sit behind the wheel, taking a long sip of Tennessee Whiskey from the flask in my glove box. After a minute, I started the engine and slowly drove down the block.

The streets were almost empty, and traffic was low. Soon, it got completely dark, and the moon appeared in the sky in its third quarter. The night breeze made the air breathable, and the heat wasn’t as oppressive anymore as in the daytime. I drove with one hand, barely touching the gearshift and the other hanging outside the glassless window. Between my lips, I had a dead cigarette. With the situation’s dramatic nature, I felt like the young Capone heading over to the North Side in the mid-twenties to finish his rivals and put the rest of Chicago under control. The only things I missed were the machine gun and the Fedora. The problem was I had no idea whether I would return alive from my mobster’s trip.

I kept driving like this for about an hour and twenty minutes until I reached the familiar sign that read Villa Nueva. Then, I stopped the car and backed it up under my tree, grabbing the stuff from the passenger’s seat, downing another gulp from the flask, and stepping out to look around.

The area was dark and quiet. The gate at the end of the alley was closed, and the yard beyond seemed empty of people. Unfortunately, inside, it was an open space without trees, and the moon cast enough light, making my raid nearly impossible. There was nothing suitable to hide behind all the way to the main house, and I would be an easy target. For a moment, I hesitated, wondering if it was the right thing to do. Probably, it wasn’t, and it would have been better to forget about everything and return home. “Why do someone else’s job?” I tried to convince myself, but then I thought, “Well, it’s because I have no fucking way to make the damn cops do their job!”

Still sour that my cases were always such a terrible mess, I soon concluded that my stupid name was probably to blame. I had heard fate didn’t like Murphys, considering them miserable sons of bitches, and she usually punished them by dropping their toast butter-side down. Nevertheless, I had to admit that under these circumstances, I would be immensely grateful if it was the only bad thing she held for me. I really hoped to get away with just a wasted slice of bread, although I didn’t believe it.

I stayed there for a few minutes, uncertain and waiting for a sign that it was objectively impossible to get to the house because of insurmountable obstacles blocking my way, but after receiving no confirmation about it, I sighed heavily and quietly crept along the fence to find the secret opening in it. With the bag of pork chops in my hands, I probably looked like a down-and-out butcher who tried to sneak the loot out of the meat factory after his night shift. I couldn’t see Zachary Carpenter anywhere around, and although the previous evening I had talked to him over the phone and informed him about my intentions, the bastard clearly decided it wasn’t his war. Obviously, the compromising picture of Kurvallo I let him have was enough for him, and I couldn’t even blame him for that. Overall, the entire adventure here was nothing less than a suicide mission!

After having this brief pep talk, I sneaked through the bushes for about ten minutes, and when I finally approached the right place—having my entire face and hands scratched and grazed—I suddenly heard a suspicious noise, which made me stop, alarmed. At first, I thought my paparazzo friend had changed his mind, but since I couldn’t see well in the darkness, I quietly waited behind a tree, just in case.

A man was lying near the fence, breathing heavily and panting like a steam locomotive at a stop. He tried to squeeze himself through the hole, but his body was too big and was stuck there. I watched him for a while and decided it couldn’t be Zachary because he was as nimble as an eel and would have slipped inside in no time. This one here, however, was too clumsy and awkward, and at some point, he even started whimpering like an abandoned puppy trying to find its mother. Behind the tree, I nearly burst into laughter because the man was so funny, kicking in the dust and screaming like that. After a couple of minutes, he made it through, though, and when he stood up on the other side, I finally recognized him. It was Boris. I could tell by his gait and limp.

I wondered what to do. I kind of didn’t want to call the guy because he made it very clear that he wouldn’t work with me, and besides, I had no idea how he would react if he knew I was messing with his plans. Apart from that, I wanted to see how the bouncer would cope with the dogs, which would surely get a whiff of him very soon and pay him a visit. By the way, I was surprised Boris had recovered enough to come here tonight. He did limp a bit, but he had lost the crutch and walked relatively well. I also wondered what was on his mind, although it wasn’t so difficult to guess. He obviously wanted to save Marilyn because I doubted he had come for Sonya or me. It meant that my bait had actually worked. I didn’t get him to cooperate, but at least he would take some of the heat off me now.

A couple of minutes later, the action I anticipated really started. The intruder had only made it through a quarter of the distance to the house when I noticed two ghostly shadows flying swiftly through the yard toward him. They were the Rottweilers, and weirdly enough, they didn’t bark. They just growled meanly in the night as if they thought it was useless to strain their vocal cords since they only intended to eat the intruder alive and not chase him around the house or ask him to leave.

Surprisingly, Boris didn’t even bat an eyelid when he saw them coming. I thought he would panic and run back toward the fence, but no! He cold-bloodedly waited for them to approach and then shot them with a dart gun without thinking twice. The animals whined briefly in the darkness and sprawled on the ground, unconscious or dead, making me wonder what I was actually doing here with my laughable pork chops in the bag. I definitely should have thought of Boris’s idea first!

After neutralizing his enemies so goddamn efficiently, my blond-haired friend limped the rest of the distance to the house undisturbed and soon vanished behind it. Watching him, I realized I had been terribly wrong about this guy. He wasn’t that stupid after all, and maybe I should have tried harder to win him over to my side. Anyway, it was too late now, and I had nothing to do but wait and see what his next move would be. I expected a break-in attempt, so I strained my ears to hear suspicious noises, maybe even gunshots, but nothing like that happened. After fifteen minutes of waiting, I was already too nervous because it occurred to me that if they caught Boris inside, they would tighten security and make my break-in attempt nearly impossible. This thought soon obsessed me, and I decided it was now or never!

I nervously crawled from behind the tree and cautiously approached the fence, checking the meat in my bag. Then I kneeled down to feel the unpleasantly prickly wire, looking ahead, worried. There were three windows on the second floor of Villa Nueva with lights on and two on the first. The situation in the mansion seemed tranquil and uneventful for now, but its peacefulness was surely deceptive. I knew Boris’ presence could ignite the festive mood at any time and make it all look like a New Year’s Eve celebration on a military base. If it happened, I could only hope the fireworks that were to follow would be just fireworks and not actual ammo. Unfortunately, I knew this hope was unreal.

After ten more minutes of futile waiting for an event in the house to prevent me from starting my mission, I sighed like a prisoner on the morning of his execution, spit out my dead cigarette, and bobbed the bag up and down a couple of times to test if it was heavy enough. Then, I shoved it through the hole along with the kitbag.

I really, really hoped my desperate plan would work! I had seen this trick in the movies, and inspired by that, I soaked the meat in a deadly solution of sleeping pills and other sedatives for twelve hours, which had the potential to pacify the entire Tanzanian savanna and turn it into a civilized zoo. Eventually, the meat forgot entirely that it ever had been meat! The only problem was that I had no idea whether these substances would even work in my case. I had heard that tear gas didn’t affect dogs, and maybe medicines for humans wouldn’t do the job either. Quite naturally, the labels didn’t say anything about it, and I didn’t dare ask the pharmacist because I was afraid she would take me for a serial pet killer and call the animal police.

Praying that there would be no more dogs in the mansion, I sprawled on the ground facing the hole, took a deep enough breath to get me through diving into the Mariana Trench, and selflessly crawled forward like a true action hero from the Vietnam War. The fence, which I was sure Heinrich Himmler had personally designed for Kurvallo, towered above my head as an ominous proof of his torturing genius. It had two-strand barbed wire along the top to discourage anyone from getting over without accepting to leave a steak or two of his flesh behind. “And if these prongs are treated with neuroparalytic poison,” I thought dejectedly, “the fool might even stiffen and remain there forever—like a forsaken color bearer on the top of an abandoned barricade!”

I persistently crawled for a few more seconds but quickly realized something was terribly wrong with Operation Sonya. I didn’t seem to move, and I wondered what was happening. In fact, I was moving—I wriggled like crazy—but I couldn’t squeeze myself through. In my head, the propaganda about the righteousness of my cause, with which I had naively tried to raise my spirit before embarking on my rescue mission, hadn’t even faded yet when I grasped the reason for my inglorious failure. Obviously, I hadn’t planned very carefully because the possibility that my clothes might get caught on the wire and prevent me from going further hadn’t crossed my mind at all. As a result, I kept squirming agonizingly in the dust, and even though I did everything in my power to free myself, I only made things worse. I felt like a carp on a hook, and for nearly five minutes, I achieved nothing.

After assuring myself that my exhausting and unnerving battle with the unexpected enemy wouldn’t produce any results, I forced myself to pause and go through my options. The first thing I did successfully, but the second not so much, because right after I started thinking, the intrusive thought that on the following day, I would dry up here like a slug in the sun captured my mind, and it never let go. “Until noon, you’ll be like a replica of Tutankhamun’s mummy in tomb KV62!” I kept repeating myself, totally unable to focus. It was actually very ironic because I laughed at Boris for being in the same situation just a few minutes ago.

Suddenly losing my shit, I took my knife out of the kitbag, and while still in an apparent state of mental derangement driven by my adrenaline rush, I cut all my clothes into stripes until they looked exactly like a fringed Indian outfit. I felt like Geronimo when he challenged the American Army with a handful of men and a couple of old rifles during his famous raids across Arizona and New Mexico. And I was all but alone here with a single fucking gun! With such cripplingly negative thoughts, I knew something very terrible would happen to me soon, and I was right about it. After a few minutes, when I finally managed to release myself from the wire grip and was about to jump up ecstatically and cry victoriously in the night, the evil goddess of fate struck again and heartlessly deprived me of my small victory. Instead of it, she presented me with her next awful challenge. The Hound of the Baskervilles was already flying toward me at full speed!

When I recognized the danger, I feverishly jumped to my feet, throwing myself back at the fence, completely forgetting that getting over was practically impossible. Probably one of the Rottweilers had somehow recovered from Boris’ darts, and now it was coming for me—a bit dizzy but also irritated and angry. In the next quarter of a minute, the animal, which turned out to be a male, drastically shortened the distance between us with the clear intention to take it out on me for what the previous intruder had done to him. After coming close enough, he jumped for my throat like a Japanese kamikaze who had spotted an American ship in the Pacific Ocean right after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Realizing what would happen, I momentarily panicked, and since it was already too late to play fairies with the hound and fulfill his three wishes, I grabbed my bag of meat and instinctively landed him one in the muzzle. I did it while he was still in the air, and I didn’t even think for a moment to invite him to dinner.

Good grief, ten pounds of pork chops with bones turned out to be a serious weapon! Everything happened instantly, and the dog flew three yards back, performing a series of acrobatic tricks with which he could certainly make a glorious career at the Monte-Carlo Circus Festival or some other event of that rank. When I saw the result of my first strike, I felt mildly encouraged, and since I suspected the Rottweiler and I wouldn’t come to terms after such a hostile acquaintance, I swung my bag again to land three more uppercuts in his snout before he had the chance to pull himself together and get back to his feet. Thank god, he was still light-headed from the dart, so the task was easy enough. After that, I just stepped up and literally smashed the bastard, hitting him with pork chops.

The poor animal couldn’t even grasp what was happening; it was such an unfortunate situation for him! He was spinning to the left and right like a skydiver caught up in an erratic air current, sensing the pleasant smell and simultaneously suffering the unpleasant pain. When he finally decided he could no longer bear it, he disgracefully tucked his tail between his legs and broke away in the darkness with quiet whining. It happened right at the moment when the second Rottweiler appeared.

I immediately braced myself and prepared for an encore. While I waited for the right moment, the wind dramatically blew in my hair, ruffling it, and the moon came out from behind a cloud just in time to cast suspenseful light on my resolute face. Then my right hand raised the bag, and I froze in nervous anticipation with my eyes squinted, ready to detect the first signs of an attack.

The dog, which was a female now, came closer, but she was far more careful than her partner a few seconds ago. She had most probably seen how painful some of the pleasant things in life could be, so she hesitantly stopped at a two-yard distance. I found it necessary to bare my teeth and warn her against stepping further, but, at the same time, I was slightly worried because I felt something wasn’t right with my extravagant weapon. It made me look down. It didn’t actually take too long to know what the problem was because my bag hung torn and tattered in my right hand, and my ammunition lay scattered on the ground all around me. Unfortunately, I had no time to pick them up and reload, nor did I have a spare “gun” where I could put them.

Feeling very concerned, I nervously turned my head back to the bitch, trying to judge her determination to attack me. After I saw no sympathy in her unblinking eyes, I sighed desperately. It had all started so romantically and promisingly, but now, my plan was so fucked up that my only hope was for the security guys to discover my presence soon and shoot me before the Rottweiler had the chance to eat me alive! Since I had already lost the initiative and my “stick” was ruined, I had no other option but to return to the idea of trying again with the “carrot.” So I slowly moved my right foot forward, hesitantly pushing one of the pork chops with the tip of my shoe closer to the dog. The four-legged guard cautiously stepped toward the meat and sniffed it, but after taking it into her mouth for a moment, she spat it with disgust. Obviously, in my attempt to secure a positive outcome, I had over-salted my bullets, and as a result, now, I had useless duds instead of ammunition.

I sighed again. So far, things really, really weren’t going well with my stupid raid into Villa Nueva! I had expected my troubles to start inside the house, but the situation hit a terrible snag as early as outside the yard. In the following minutes, the female dog and I played an unnerving and exhausting game of examining each other. Meanwhile, her partner recovered from the shock and hesitantly joined us, but he wasn’t half as confident as before. He agreed to the revised rules we had established, and even though he occasionally cast malicious looks at me, he kept a reasonable distance without making stupid objections. I used the temporary truce between us to think about my options. My friends’ new tactics had turned my mission into a race against the clock, and someone from the villa could easily spot me here any minute now.

Not long after that, the entire standstill in the yard started getting severely on my nerves, and I tried to stir things up. I cautiously bent over to grab my kitbag—almost endlessly slowly, praying it wouldn’t raise suspicion among the dogs. When I had my tools, I rose and took a few small steps around the Rottweilers, moving behind their backs. The animals looked at me, surprised at first, but then they unexpectedly mirrored my maneuver, walking behind my back. Now, it was my turn to be surprised, and although I didn’t like their reaction, I had no choice but to slip behind them again because I needed to stay on top of the situation. Unfortunately, my hairy pals repeated what I did, and casually, as if wandering aimlessly around, they stepped behind me. Very soon, dancing like this, we waltzed through the yard like a bunch of Papuans performing a weird fertility ritual, and a couple of minutes later, namely in this ridiculous fashion, we tightened the final loop of our spiral, approaching the house.

It all happened right on time. Only a second more, and my desperate mission was going to end prematurely because when I was just taking the last few steps, my head spinning from all the turning around, a quiet whistling echoed in the darkness, making the skin on my back crawl. The dogs promptly reacted to the signal and looked around impatiently, wagging their tails. On my part, I just threw myself toward the first door that sprang before my eyes, and it was such a miracle it appeared there in the last possible second before it was too late.

I recklessly sank into the space behind it with my heart beating like a war drum, and only a few yards from me—on the other side of the door—someone started feeding the Rottweilers real, juicy, not impregnated with unhealthy ingredients, chops. Naturally, I had to wait quietly until the guy finished his job, finished the tune he whistled with his mouth, took his empty buckets, and finally moved away from my hiding place. The only problem was that just a moment before he did all this, he casually reached out to slam the door closed in front of my nose, latching it tightly from the outside.

“Oh, god, no! Please don’t fuck with me right now!” I whispered anxiously, barely stopping myself from banging on the metal surface in a desperate attempt to attract the guy’s attention and save my life, even at the cost of losing it only a couple of minutes later.

An icy shiver crawled up my spine for the zillionth time that night—now because of the impenetrable darkness around me. Everything had gone terribly wrong again! I defensively spread my arms in the air, attempting to grasp at something, but there was only an empty space. I was also unsure how to take this situation—as a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, it was nice that I was still alive, but on the other, maybe it was just a cruel delay to make my agony here longer and more painful. I was locked in a basement, and although I clearly escaped the prospect of drying up in the sun and turning into a mummy, I had a pretty good chance now to die starving to death.

As there was no point in hanging by the door or scratching on it like a puppy—if not for else, simply because there was no one outside to hear my screaming anymore—I turned around and tried to explore my new surroundings. I could hear a quiet humming in the darkness and considered it a wise idea to discover what caused it. Unfortunately, my adventurous impulse almost cost me my life in the next second. It turned out I was standing on a small landing, and from there, a steep staircase led down to a lower level. If I hadn’t checked myself in time, I would have tripped, and then who knows how long I would have rolled down and where I might have crushed my skull? Promising I would be more careful from now on, I opened my kitbag and feverishly rummaged through the stuff inside, but half of the things were missing. I had probably lost my tools in my battle with the dogs, and it was only natural that Murphy’s Law wouldn’t allow a Murphy to have a break. The flashlight was one of the missing items!

Desperate, I cautiously felt the ground with my left foot before taking the first step downward and then switched legs like that a couple more times. It was dark as a mole’s asshole in the basement, and I had no idea where I was going. It was also hot. At some point, I reached the end of the stairs, and while following the noise, I found massive machinery not far from there. It was about twenty feet away, but it was enough distance to literally cripple myself in the darkness, bumping into sharp objects. I blindly felt the thing while walking around it and soon concluded it was a power generator or something. It was vibrating and hissing threateningly, and when I realized what I was dealing with, I stepped back, frightened because I thought I might accidentally suffer an electric shock.

Since I couldn’t see how this machine could help my case, I continued my search in the rest of the basement. I pretty much followed the established routine, hurting myself terribly to make the life of the thugs easier when they found me later. I smashed my head really hard into something big and heavy, grazed my elbows against the walls, nearly broke my right knee, bruised the ankle of my other leg, and generally injured myself like a dog. I was paid back for how I treated the poor Rottweilers in the yard!

Eventually, after wandering aimlessly for about ten minutes, I finally saw something that gave me hope. It was a faint glow in the darkness above my head, a couple of yards away from me. Just like a naïve and stupid insect, I opened my wings and flew toward it without considering even for a moment that it might be dangerous. In the next second, I tripped over something and fell. I hit my nose on the ground so hard that the entire basement exploded before my eyes, brighter than a newly opened trade center, and it was only now that I realized the premises were half a level underground. The light was coming from a tiny window—probably the size of a handkerchief—almost at the ceiling.

I immediately jumped to my feet and excitedly approached it, but since the thing was too high, I had to break a couple of Olympic records before I finally managed to grab the sill and pull myself up to the opening, where a very solid grating cooled my enthusiasm right away. Its bars were nearly an inch thick, and although I still had my rasp in the kitbag, I was going to need more time to break the bars’ resistance with it than natural corrosion would.

I dejectedly let go of the windowsill and hopped down, turned around, and leaned against the wall, tired. It all seemed to be over now; I had failed completely. I had no other “bright” ideas in my head, and the others—not so bright—included kicking up an enormously huge racket here and waiting until someone came down to help me meet my death or just quietly and stoically hanging around until I got the same result without anyone’s help. After a short hesitation about which way to go, I chose the first option, and I was just about to scream into something that looked like a metal pipe, which I hoped would amplify my voice and raise it to the skies, when all of a sudden, I had to reconsider my tactics. Shivering, I sharply turned to the left with my eyes trying to pierce through the darkness because I sensed someone’s maddening presence disturbingly close to me!

My cowardly brain frantically started hitting itself against the walls of my skull in panic and feverishly wondered what on earth the strange thing was. It was probably a ghost! What else could it be? That was my first and most natural assumption. Somewhere between the second and the eleventh, all the other dangers people would typically encounter in such horrible places lined up: a bloodthirsty shark, a hungry leopard, a man-eating grizzly bear, alien agents from a hostile planet, the High Priest of the Illuminati, and so on and so forth. Taking the humble twelfth position on my exotic rank list, the ordinary and unremarkable urban rat waited quietly. Eventually, it turned out to be the exact reason for my troubles.

As soon as I identified the enemy, I started plotting ways to scare the nuisance as far away from me as possible. I threateningly waved my arms in the air and loudly clapped my hands a couple of times, but my gestures failed to impress the little punk even a bit. It remained there, balancing on a water pipe, its little red eyes flashing at me in the darkness. The roaring and hissing I did later didn’t work either, and the rodent clearly wanted to test my limits. It unambiguously proved it after a few seconds when it suddenly decided to shorten the distance between us even more, replacing the passive and relatively comfortable alienation we had with open hostility.

I winced, shocked after seeing the animal’s nasty eyes getting closer. I just couldn’t believe my eyes and the fact that the little bastard had such a distorted idea about itself and its own significance. When the creature approached enough, I raised my hand, infuriated, and gave it such a harsh blow that I probably sent it as far as Mars! I heard it screaming on its way to the stars, breaking the sound barrier and some glassware before that. The latter made such a terrible fuss that I jumped up, horrified.

I worriedly stepped back and curled in the corner, my body shivering in anticipation that someone would come around soon and ask me why I was taking the liberty to make so much noise during the quiet hours. Since no one tried to do that for more than five minutes, I eventually had to scold myself instead of them. Then I anxiously looked around, wondering what caused the damn noise of broken glass.

After a while, with great difficulty, I discerned something that looked like a window on the wall dividing this room from the next, and my unexpected discovery made my heart skip a beat. “There’s no food in here. The stupid rat must have come from there,” I thought, excited. “If it did that, maybe I would be able, too!”

Suddenly feeling optimistic about my escape, I quickly walked there, and this time, I didn’t even register when I banged my head into something so hard that a lump as big as the Rocky Mountains popped right in the middle of my forehead. Utterly oblivious to the pain, I spread my longing arms in the darkness as if I wanted to embrace Jesus and absorb his blessings, but unfortunately, I absorbed or embraced nothing. Instead, I realized Murphy’s Law still worked flawlessly, and the so-called “window” was nothing more than a wall segment painted glowing white for some weird reason.

Fully aware of my bitter delusion, I cursed angrily and sharply turned around, accidentally kicking an empty bucket, which scared the shit out of me again. “Of course, it would only be paint!” I hissed, irritated. “What architect in their right mind would design an inner window between two premises instead of a door? And what idiot would think such a ridiculous element would make any sense? Only Mellrow would do that!”

Feeling down and out of options, I groped my way back to the power generator and desperately embraced it. Since I didn’t know what else to do, I searched for buttons, levers, or plugs on its metallic body, even though I knew my idea was dumb. First of all, it was unclear what implications stopping the machine might have, and secondly, the thugs in the house would instantly know there was someone down here messing with them, and then my mission would be compromised. Nevertheless, I recklessly clicked, pushed, and pulled everything my fingers touched, expecting the machine to explode with a spectacular bang and end my stupid life when all of a sudden, it coughed nervously, vibrated erratically, and simply seized working.

Extremely delighted with my small victory, I quickly turned around and ran up the stairs as fast as I could, hurting a few more of my body parts in the process. In fact, if I had drawn any lessons from the events so far, I should have known I didn’t need to hurry because my name was Murphy. There was just no chance my plan would work out so smoothly! Anyway, I lurked behind the door at the top of the stairs, waiting nervously, but then time started slowly passing by without anything happening at all. Apparently, the machine wasn’t a power generator but a heat generator because, nearly half an hour later, no one still cared about it. With my luck and everything, I could expect someone to notice the breakdown in the middle of the following winter.

I thought about the situation I was in. I was such an idiot. Really! I should have called Boris and negotiated some deal with him. Our chances were stronger together, plus the bastard seemed better prepared for this raid than I was. Maybe he knew things I was unaware of—like where they kept the girls, for example. Now it was too late, though. Now, I could only pray he would create a big enough fuss in the house, which would attract the attention of the police, and the cops would eventually find me here before I kicked the bucket again—metaphorically, this time!

I kept blaming myself like this for probably twenty more minutes, during which time I grew really desperate, and just when I started believing no one would ever come and I would die alone in the basement, I caught some noises in the yard. I heard people talking, but they weren’t close. Interestingly enough, the prospect that I might be saved suddenly didn’t seem so appealing, and I felt the urge to run down the stairs and hide behind the machinery. Nevertheless, I resisted the impulse because there was simply no point. The guys would surely turn on the lights and find me, which actually raised the question of why I didn’t search for the light switch myself. I had no answer to that.

I waited nervously for a few minutes, but soon, I stopped hearing the voices, and the oppressive silence once again reigned over the dark basement, causing my next sharp and unnerving mood change. I swiftly reconsidered my priorities and decided I wanted to be found after all. However, I didn’t have much time to dwell on my regrets or dreams about the future because when I pressed my ear against the door to pick up something, I heard scratching on the other side, which startled me. At first, I thought it was the dogs, but then the scratching turned into the shrill sound of metal scraping against metal, making me feverishly press my back against the wall, trying to merge myself into it. It seemed that the door was opening at last.

In the following couple of seconds, nothing really happened, and at some point, I wondered, very puzzled, if the man outside had actually come with the sole purpose of setting me free and going back. Fortunately, before I embraced this foolish idea and recklessly tried my luck, the door moved a little, which prevented me from making a terrible mistake. I stopped breathing and waited until it swung all the way in with a creak, and just before it smashed my hurting nose, a trembling flashlight beam pierced the darkness, nervously dancing on the basement steps. Then I heard someone’s feet thumping down the stairs and his quiet, muttering voice.

I acted lightning fast. It was my only chance! I sneaked from behind my hiding place, and before the guy even reached the basement floor, I rushed outside, taking the risk of running into some of his colleagues in the yard. Fortunately, my luck worked this time, and no one was there. The man inside didn’t even realize what had happened behind his back until I slammed the door and latched it.

“Hey, what the fuck?” I heard his alarmed voice, but I wasn’t in the mood to start a conversation with him.

“Take it easy!” I only murmured, giving him a little know-how. “Keep the generator off, and someone else will come to set you free!”

Then, I anxiously looked around myself. The cool night air gently caressed my face and allowed me to breathe again. I filled my lungs with it and stealthily sneaked along the wall without worrying about the jerk anymore because, from my experience, I knew no one would hear his wails for help any time soon. On my way to the other side of the house, I passed another door, but now I didn’t even think about trying it, instead going to the next corner to peek cautiously from behind its edge.

The yard stretched before my eyes open and empty, but unfortunately, a few thugs stood on the porch not far from me, chatting. I definitely couldn’t sneak past them unnoticed, and since they didn’t seem in a hurry, I hesitated for a second, returning to the door I had ignored. Then I looked at it grumpily. I certainly didn’t like the idea, but I had no other option, and besides, the door was latched from the outside, which meant there was no one inside. It also meant I could return safely if it didn’t work. However, the main reason in favor of doing it was time. The clock was wildly ticking, and if someone went to look for the pal I locked in the electrical room, I would be screwed up. Eventually, I forced myself to give it a try. I worked the latch as quietly as possible, opening the door, stepping inside, and closing it quickly to reduce the chance of being caught.

More frustrating darkness waited for me in the room when the light from the yard disappeared behind my back. I sighed angrily and stretched my arms to search for the light switch, but unfortunately, I couldn’t find any. “Well, it’s just perfect!” I grunted and reluctantly stepped forward. “My odyssey in the kingdom of Hades continues!” I was already very close to believing Villa Nueva was really the Illuminati’s secret headquarters, as the yellow press journalists suggested. If it were true, this was probably their larder because the unpleasant smell of something sour hit me in the face right after I took my steps down the stairs. I couldn’t say what the source was—maybe bad cheese, maybe pickles—but in any case, it was strong enough to be a chemical weapon! After two minutes, I felt dizzy, with my eyes burning, and my only hope being that if the place was really a larder, there was a chance it was connected to the kitchen, and I could use that to invade the house.

I wandered around the basement for a while, trying to navigate like a bat in an underground cave—using my hearing—but since such an endeavor was clearly beyond me, I brought many new injuries upon myself and soon exhausted my entire repertoire of swear words. Regardless, I eventually found what I was looking for: another flight of stairs at the room’s far end. I got very excited, and after doing so many stupid things that night, one could think I had learned my lesson, but I hadn’t. I recklessly rushed ahead like a total jerk, and the unfortunate result was that I kicked the next bucket, which, frustrated by my unexpected assault, expressed its understandable discontent at least twice as loud as the previous one—back in the electrical room. Panicking, I hardly stopped myself from pulling my gun out and shooting myself in the head, simply to get ahead of the events and deprive the thugs of the pleasure of butchering me, chopping my body into small pieces, and putting them in a freezer.

To my surprise, no one came to see what was going on here again. It was getting too weird already because either everybody in this house was deaf as a post, or they simply had an extraordinarily high tolerance for noise. After waiting for something to happen nearly as long as a Cayman turtle’s lifespan and nothing changed, I stirred awkwardly and sneaked up the concrete stairs toward the cherished door that presumably waited for me at the top. Something in my heart told me not to hold my breath, though. It just didn’t feel right I would be able to leave this awful basement yet. And I was totally right to be skeptical! There was a door, indeed, but it was locked, which was only natural given my luck so far. I desperately tried the thing for over two minutes, hoping that Harry Houdini’s spirit secretly lived in me, but alas! Despite my efforts, it remained tightly shut and refused to let me through.

Feeling humiliated and in great emotional pain, I raised my arms in the air, desperate, and opened my mouth to curse the hostile and unjust world I was living in, asking all the major gods, “Why?” Why, on earth, would anyone do such a thing? Why would they keep the door to the yard open but the other one, which was supposed to supply the house with provisions, locked? Why would stupid things like this happen to me every goddamn time? And while I was swearing quietly and bitching about it, in order to prove how big an idiot I was, I accidentally pulled the door instead of pushing it, and… it worked! It was just meant to swing inward, as it turned out. The accident made me realize that the biggest enemy to Mellrow in this “hostile” and “unjust” world wasn’t actually fate or anyone else, but Murphy Mellrow himself.

Feverish and impatient to escape the trap, I sharply jumped forward without thinking even for a moment about what might be waiting for me on the other side. I just wanted to leave as soon as possible, and besides, no matter what was out there, it surely would be preferable to injuring myself here out of sheer stupidity. For one thing, I was right, though. The larder was really connected to the kitchen, and when I rushed into it, thank god, it was empty of people.

I nervously glanced at my watch. It was close to midnight, and it wasn’t such a bad result, considering how complicated my “brilliant” plan turned out to be. At least I was alive—beaten and bruised, yes—but still capable of moving. I briefly looked around the kitchen to get a sense of the situation, but the only exciting thing that grabbed my attention was a baking dish on the kitchen counter full of sausages and mashed potatoes. They looked very tempting. I wasn’t actually hungry because I had a few bites before leaving my place, but I still felt a strong impulse to taste them. It was probably the stress talking—it was catching up with me already—and since I had no idea how long my so-called rescue mission in Villa Nueva would take, I stuffed my mouth with food and grabbed two sausages in my left hand. Equipped with ammunition like that, I squeezed the gun in my other hand and walked out of the kitchen, only to throw myself on the floor in a panic the very next second.

I was in a large hall, and there were people in it! In fact, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was, and in my anxiety, I accidentally dropped my snacks, letting them roll around the yellowish tile floor. Meanwhile, I nearly broke my teeth when I tried to hide behind the pot of a gigantic plant and hit my head in it. Freaked out by the scene my eyes delivered, my brain made my heart boom so powerfully that pieces of potato flew out of my mouth with every thud. At the far end of the hall, there was an opened door, and right behind it, in what looked like a large dining room, a whole army of thugs as huge as gorillas were hanging around. Most of them carried powerful automatic weapons more suitable for guarding Area 51 in Nevada than a private residence.

Completely terrified now, I closed my mouth and tried to swallow everything in it as quickly as possible, also being careful not to choke or cough because the moment was really, really inappropriate. When I was done, I wiped my righthand shirt’s sleeve across my lips, and since my left hand was hideously greasy, I wiped it on the sleeve, too. Then I glanced at the latter and quickly wiped it across my hip, but after that, I just had to stop. I had nothing else on hand to continue cleaning myself, so instead of taking care of my jeans, I cautiously poked my head out from behind the plant to see what was happening in the dining room.

The situation in there wasn’t good at all. I had limited options, and one of them was returning to the terrible basement with rats, sour cheese, and empty buckets. The alternative was to move forward to the red-carpeted staircase that led to the second floor but to do that, I had to cross the hall. The distance wasn’t too big—just a couple of yards—but I would be exposed the entire time, and the bastards in the dining room would surely see me. At the moment, they were busy playing a game—probably craps or something—and they made so much noise while scurrying around like ants that it rendered my task nearly impossible.

I stooped behind the plant again to think. Were I an action movie character, I would probably jump out of the hiding spot behind my ceramic barricade, aim my bad-tempered Colt at the vile entourage of the DEA’s chief, and shoot them all to the last bastard. And if, by any chance, my loyal and devoted iron friend misfired, which was absolutely and totally impossible, I would do a side roll to deceive my first enemy, then break his neck with a lightning-fast combat technique and hide behind his body. Then, I would start a gunfight with the rest of the scum using the weapon in my victim’s hand. After finishing on the first floor, I would storm the second to do the same, and after that, I would light up a cigarette, waiting for the cops and journalists to come over and start asking me questions and taking pictures of me. Unfortunately, since I wasn’t a movie character but a Murphy—the guy next door who couldn’t pay his utility bills—I restrained myself from doing it and only prayed that no thug would get hungry any time soon and come to the kitchen for a midnight breakfast.

I continued waiting. Nevertheless, I knew this entire standstill couldn’t last for too long, and it didn’t. It was maybe six or seven minutes tops, but it was enough to shorten my life by seven years, wrecking my nerves so badly that, at some point, I started having tics. On top of it, one of the leaves kept brushing my face very annoyingly, no matter how persistently I pushed it away, and as a result, the plant shook hideously. Seen from the dining room, it probably looked like a pair of horny squirrels having fun in its foliage, and it was only a matter of time before someone saw it and came around to ask me what I was doing.

Luckily, my patience eventually paid off, and soon, the chance smiled at me for the first time that night. One of the thugs suddenly jumped up, agitated, and while shouting like crazy, he grabbed his gun, waving it in the air, frustrated. It was so weird that, for a second, I thought he switched sides and wanted to shoot all my enemies for me. His colleagues got agitated as well, but instead of drawing out their weapons, they actually chased after him. After a while, they got him, and surprisingly, they started pulling his pants down.

Watching them, I quickly realized that now was the moment to escape my trap. I came out from my hiding place unnoticed, and since no one cared about me and I had a couple of minutes to kill, I took my time checking on the plant’s health and the quality of its soil, had some fun playing hopscotch on the tiles, learned how to walk on my hands, and did a few somersaults. Finally, I climbed the stairs without any interference or anyone noticing me. I even thought of dropping by the dining room and watching the weird game the boys were playing, but I decided not to get carried away too much.

When I reached the second floor, the next cynical and annoyingly red corridor in my life stretched out ahead—gloomy and depressing. I saw two lines of doors—six on each side—and in my frustration, I asked myself what kind of stupid omen was cast upon me. I had been to a dozen places like this so far, and I suspected that soon I would visit the last one in the city, and then I would have to put an end to my career.

I looked around, worried and unwilling to go, but since it was why I came here in the first place, I tried the nearest door. Of course, I listened tensely outside before pushing the handle, and when I did it, by old tradition, I found the room empty. Apart from being empty, it also struck me that the doorknob was installed inside—something counterintuitive and not fitting the standard logic. Anyway, I didn’t have time to think about it, so I just continued my search.

However, as soon as I tried the second door, which was precisely the same, the mystery of the doorknobs was immediately solved. I rushed inside the room on the premise that it would be empty, too, but as it turned out, I was wrong. Surprisingly, I ran across people there. Four girls in sexy outfits stared at me, confused. They stood by the window, frozen in various poses as if waiting for someone to paint them on his canvas, and they seemed a bit disappointed that I wasn’t the artist.

Since I was pretty shocked to find them here, almost naked, I remained in the doorway, staring at them, too. I was afraid they would start screaming any minute and alert the security guys downstairs, but it didn’t come out this way. A few moments later, I realized why. They clearly thought I was one of the thugs, which made sense. With so many guards here, it was reasonable to believe that the girls didn’t know them all—especially if the bastards had the habit of drugging their prisoners.

After stupidly hanging like this for nearly a minute and hesitating, I slowly turned around and quietly closed the door behind me. I felt so uneasy that it didn’t even occur to me to ask anyone about Sonya. I literally sneaked out as if I were a virgin boy who had seen a naked woman for the first time in his life, and he was too embarrassed to utter a word. Besides, there was really no chance I could talk to the girls without blowing my cover, and if I did that, who knows what might happen afterward?

Outside in the corridor, I cautiously moved forward and wondered whether to check the rooms in a checkerboard manner. Eventually, I decided to go for the linear approach—first ticking off the left side and then the other on the way back—but my decision turned out to be a grave mistake. If I had switched the lines of doors, I would have spared myself at least some of the troubles that soon followed my regrettable choice.

When I stepped into the next room, I immediately realized I shouldn’t have done that at this particular moment. In the middle of it, a huge fellow with a massive head and square jaws stood up, still unaware of my presence. His chest resembled an airship ready to fly, and his arms—pneumatic jackhammers. He was just trying to fix himself up with a cozy little nest for the night, attempting to put two cushioned armchairs together and cheat his employer into thinking he was alert all night. Unfortunately, his brilliant plan was kind of impractical because the improvised bed was too short and uncomfortable for him.

I silently watched the guy for a few seconds, figuring that his job here was guarding the whores in the next room, but then I tried noiselessly to close the door because I was sure that, unlike them, he knew his colleagues very well. Sadly, though, the bastard finished his work on time and raised his head, spotting me before I could sneak out and let him put on his pajamas and nightcap.

I nervously licked my lips and looked around the room. The man’s weapon was on the table, some six yards out of his reach and about four yards from me. He turned his head to look at it and jumped, making me jump, too. I caught up with him in the last second and walloped him on the head with the handle of my Colt so hard that I literally sensed his brain swirling inside his skull and his cerebellum banging on the inner side of his forehead. He immediately rolled his eyes and thudded on the floor like a log.

“So far, so good!” I sighed, relieved. “Clearly, there would be no sleeping in this house tonight. Not if Mellrow is wandering about, at least!” After that, I quickly walked back to the door to close it and returned to my captive to check his pulse and make sure he wouldn’t swallow his tongue and suffocate. Then, without thinking twice, I just raised my gun again and cold-bloodedly shot the fucking punk in the head.

Well, the last one was a joke, obviously! I couldn’t do that simply because I wasn’t a murderer and because it would attract too much attention. Besides, my iron friend wasn’t used to writing his poetry with blood but rather with threats. He probably wouldn’t forgive me if I did such a gruesome act without any qualms. That’s why, instead of wasting the jerk, I just bent over, tying his hands with the curtain holdbacks, gagging his mouth with one of the tassels, and fluffing a throw pillow beneath his neck so that he felt more comfortable. Then I let the man chat with Morpheus and looked around myself.

The room seemed very similar to the one I had seen in Lara’s picture with the message to me on its back. There were many library shelves along the walls, but instead of books, they were full of videotapes labeled with red and blue markers. Some titles were self-explaining regarding their contents, like “Lulu—front and back, with spanking” and “Jolie—having her leak in the backyard fixed hard.” As I read the titles, I realized I had come to the right place, and I looked for something named “Sonya,” but unfortunately, I didn’t find anything. I did find material about Michael Jackson, though. It was called “Cynthia—in the mouth, and dancing a la Jacko.” I looked through a couple more of these “works of art,” but very soon, I had to give up because the tapes were literally countless, and I could easily spend a whole month just reading the labels, eventually forgetting why I had even come to Villa Nueva in the first place.

And here, in fact, came my second regrettable mistake. In life, one never knows whether or when he will make a wrong step or hit the jackpot, and at that moment, I didn’t know either. Right after stepping out of the room, I knew it wouldn’t be the jackpot because I ran across a colleague of the sleepyhead that I left behind. The guy was clearly coming to keep his friend company or maybe to keep him warm during the night. I didn’t know what it was, and it didn’t matter!

Noticing him, I jumped, surprised, and then froze, unable to move further. The man had just put his foot on the last step of the staircase, and when he saw me coming out, he stopped, too. Sadly enough, I was already out in the corridor, and he had his iron ready, unlike his buddy back in the video library. He promptly drew it out and didn’t even worry for a moment that he might wake someone up this late at night. Instead, he kicked up such a terrible racket in literally no time that a Sepultura concert would have looked like “Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses” compared to it.

I quickly pointed my Colt at him and sent a bullet down the corridor because it was too late to turn around and take cover. If I had done that, my opponent would have had enough time to use a theodolite to determine the exact angle and distance between us and comfortably shoot me in the back. Despite everything, my decisive answer didn’t help much. It turned out I got myself into a fight with a fucking Charles Bronson, and as soon as we established relative parity in terms of firepower, the mean bastards downstairs sent reinforcements. Two more thugs sprang up behind their colleague’s back, and then the three of them together opened such a heavy fire on me that I suddenly wanted to meet a starving grizzly bear with only a ballpoint pen in my hands instead of participating in this.

In a panic, I threw myself back into the room and did it just a notch before I was seriously injured. I took a bullet to my thigh, though. I fell to the floor, breathing heavily, but there was no time to relax and perform rituals for well-being or prosperity. I reached my hand outside and fired randomly a couple more times, after which I slammed the door and frantically limped to the nearest bookcase, pushing it to block the doorway. Unfortunately, the thing wasn’t too solid, but for the moment, I hoped it would work. Just in case, I threw a few more pieces of furniture there and then moved away.

As it turned out, building this improvised barricade was a good and timely idea because my new friends came for a visit right after I finished it. It made me shoot the next warning barrage of bullets through the pile of wood, and it was only then that I got a minute to think about the situation and become really terrified of the prospects I had. I realized that my stupid plan and all the other shit I had in my foolish head not only hit a terrible snag here, as I thought back in the yard, but they literally hit the damn fan!

Precisely three minutes later, not three but three hundred and three angry gorillas, harboring extremely hostile and unfriendly feelings for me, were knocking on my door, and I had absolutely no fucking idea how I would get out of this horrible mess. I had obviously managed to involve myself in the most ill-considered battle in my shitty career and life, and I was probably going to die here. About that, I had no doubts anymore.

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