Life is a strange thing, you know. When I was driving back home from my suicidal mission in the motel, I was asking myself why I was still dragging this stupid table leg with me. It turned out to be for a reason.

I had just parked my car in front of my apartment building, and I was stepping out of the Beijing, dreaming of a shower and a strong drink, when a Chin materialized out of nowhere and assumed a threatening combat pose while shrieking weirdly like some fucking Bruce Lee. Then he mewed something in Chinese, and other men stuck their heads out the windows of my flat on the fifth floor. By this point, I had already toughened up enough from all the action that evening, so I simply reached into the car for my table leg and smashed it into the Chin’s leg while he was still recklessly swinging it around and screaming. As a result, he screamed the entire neighborhood awake. As a second result, I had to spend the night in a hotel.

I was sitting on the floor in my room now and wondered what to do for the zillionth time in my life. I wasn’t on the bed because the bed sheets were soiled and disgusting, just like the hotel itself, which was the only place I could find that late at night at an affordable price. And I wondered what to do for a pretty obvious reason—I had become the main target of the Chinese mob in Nuuk, and I had to come up with a solution to this problem very quickly.

Up until noon, I had come up with nothing. At noon sharp, my cell phone rang to announce that Bobby was looking for me. She wanted us to meet in the same cafe where we last met. I eagerly agreed because the atmosphere in the hotel was horribly oppressive.

I grabbed the camera from the bed and walked down the stairs and out to my car, where I threw it in the backseat. Back in the room’s bathroom, using my cell phone’s red light filter, I looked through the photo negatives, and it turned out to be Bobby’s camera. Despite that, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to give it to Bjornson because Sharon was actually right about one thing—the shots were totally useless.

I drove to the cafe, still thoughtful, and parked in the intersection where we had sex the previous time. I felt a bit nervous as I recalled the scene. I was afraid of the moment when Bobby would arrive—her car was still missing—and when she would want to remove the tension between us again. I didn’t know how to get away from all this. I still felt horrible for what I had done to Jill.

I waited in the Beijing for a while and then saw Bobby’s Sangi slowly turn the corner. She stopped right behind me but stayed in her vehicle. I also stayed in mine, and thus, another few minutes passed. During the whole time, Bobby gave me no sign; she was just watching me through the windshield. In the end, I sighed heavily and slowly opened my door.

I went toward her while rehearsing scenes in my mind in which I was pushing her away in a delicate manner. As I reached the car, I already had some good ideas in my head, but when I opened the passenger’s door, she quickly grabbed my hand and sharply pulled me inside. I tried to fight, but it rather looked like teasing to her. In a few seconds, she broke my resistance and sat in my lap. I nervously reached out to close the door, but she squirmed like an eel and pulled my hand back.

I really didn’t have much choice after that. Bobby grabbed me even harder, and she virtually raped me in this highly inconvenient pose on the front seat. She didn’t give me the slightest chance to protest, and this wasn’t even the worst part of the act, as it turned out.

We kept puffing and squirming for a few minutes, fighting elbows and knees that didn’t want to cooperate and clothes that refused to be taken off, and all the while, the guilt was taking a firmer and firmer grip on my soul. Then, when I was just thinking we were about to finish, I sensed something changed. Bobby buried her face in my right shoulder, and her breathing quickened. I thought she was close to her orgasm, but when she started wheezing like a choked lawn mower, I looked above her head, worried. There, on the sidewalk, I saw a guy who was watching us and grinning happily. He was a bum, and I had the intrusive feeling he thought we had a gangbang show here and his turn would come any minute now.

I grabbed Bobby’s butt and tried to move her onto the driver’s seat so I could smash the jerk’s fucking face, but my girlfriend went insane. She clawed her fingers into my back and desperately pulled me toward her. I knew she was insanely turned on, but I couldn’t finish my part like that! So I reached for my holster and drew out my gun, which I pointed at the jerk, furious. Bobby simply went nuts. She practically broke her head on the car ceiling, and the scumbag literally broke his legs while hurrying to get away. I heard him crash into the nearby garbage cans.

Exactly five minutes later, we were in the cafe, sitting at a table by one of the windows and watching each other silently. Bobby had ordered a cup of coffee, and every now and then, she pressed her hand to the top of her head, trying to soothe her pain. For me, I had ordered whiskey, mainly to soothe the feeling of guilt, which was devastating my mind again. I had just screwed it up for the second time.

“You know what? I believe the deal between us is still alive,” Bobby said after our drinks came and she sipped at the coffee. Her hand reached into her purse to take something out. It was a small box that resembled a sunglasses case.

I still wasn’t sure whether I wanted to give her camera back or tell her about the previous night’s events, so I remained silent, leaving the talking to her. She carefully opened the thing. There really was a pair of sunglasses in there.

“These are very high-tech gadgets,” she informed me, extracting a luxury ballpoint pen, which she put beside the shades. The lenses have a full FLHD camera implanted, and the pen is a remote control.”

“What about the memory card?” I asked dryly, without any interest at all. I was already pissed off with her bullshit. “Where is it?”

“It’s installed in the temples. The case is a docking station and also contains a backup hard drive. There is an encrypted radio connection between everything.”

I just shrugged and took a sip of my whiskey to help me digest the next portion of crap she would present to me. My stupid cases had turned into a dog-and-pony show, and this would be its culmination, perhaps.

“The main idea is,” Bobby went on, “that you keep hanging around the restaurant until you take pictures we could use. The gadget is digital now, so it should be considerably easier. You can even shoot while walking by, pretending you’re a tourist or something. The inbuilt stabilizer will do the rest.”

“What happened with the entire analog-pictures-can’t-be-compromised idea?” I asked bluntly.

Bobby pursed her lips.

“It’s still valid but kind of irrelevant in our situation anymore. With Chavez gone, I’ll have to do some photoshopping anyway. At least the pictures are going to be five-layered high definition now!”

“You’ll do the photoshopping? You mean, you, personally?”

She looked at me for a moment, confused. “No, of course not. I’ll get a colleague to do it for me. I’m not a specialist!”

I shook my head and looked through the window, suddenly tired and feeling very old. It had started drizzling outside, and the sky was heavy with fat, gray clouds. The weather closely correlated with my mood, which was oppressive, too.

After a while, I sharply turned my eyes back to Bobby and looked at her. “So that’s the new plan, then, huh?” I said. “Menelaus really won’t give up on the idea of setting the Chinese after Chavez!”

Bobby reacted weirdly when she heard my words. First, she blinked, surprised, and then her eyes darkened. Their blue became grayish, and their usual sparkle vanished as if someone turned off her emotions with a remote control. She was still beautiful but somehow sinfully beautiful—like a fallen angel who couldn’t stop lying. Then her lips slowly parted.

“Why do you suddenly throw Menelaus into this?” She asked.

“Oh, come on!” I snapped, annoyed. “I know about you two. Don’t even bother!”

“About us?”

“Yeah, about you two—fooling around, screwing, fucking! I know it!”

“And how exactly do you know it?”

“Listen, I’m getting tired of all this already, okay?” I looked through the window again. “Usually, when someone hires me for a job, I do it, get paid, and forget about it. That’s how it should work! This here is different, though. It’s not a job anymore but some kind of puppet show. You haven’t stopped lying to me ever since we met, and it’s very unnerving. However, you should know I can’t keep doing things for you if I can’t trust you. And the only trust I have for you now is the trust between a male praying mantis and his female partner after the act is over!”

“How did you know about us?” Bobby simply repeated her question.

I shrugged. “Your friends from Global Guards told me. We’ve met again. They’re desperate to connect Menelaus either with the Chins or Chavez or so I gather. I think Menelaus, in turn, wants to play Chavez and the Chins against each other. I just don’t know why you two are giving me the same environmental bullshit to make me help you, but I suspect one of you simply wants to counteract the play of the opponent.”

Bobby kept looking at me silently for a few seconds, biting her lower lip thoughtfully.

“You shouldn’t believe those bastards,” she said afterward, turning her eyes to me and slowly fiddling with the glasses case in her hands. “I’m quite sure they don’t wish you well.”

“And do you, Miss Bjornson?” I asked her coldly. “Do you wish me well?”

“I won’t bite your head off if that’s what you ask,” she answered. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have survived those three acts so far! Don’t you think so? And, of course, I can say I never meant to put you in any trouble other than the trouble you agreed to, but I guess you won’t believe me now. Anyway, I’m glad you have all the money I promised because it makes me entitled to at least a little bit of credit!”

“That’s actually the problem, Bobby,” I replied. “The money! Nobody gives this amount of cash for such a job unless they are desperate to achieve something the other party wouldn’t agree to if they knew the truth. I have the feeling there’s more to it here! And hiding things is never good for business relationships, you know. That’s, in fact, the delicate line between business and a setup!”

She slowly and disappointingly shook her head.

“You should’ve considered this in the beginning—before taking the case. It’s a little too late now when you have already taken the money.”

I said nothing. She was right, of course. I should have considered it before taking the case, but unfortunately, money was everything I had thought about back then. I was just an idiot!

Bobby remained silent for a while and started fiddling with the case again. Thirty seconds later, she suddenly reached into her purse and took out a bunch of digitally printed photocopies. These were pictures of Chavez sitting at different tables, and I reluctantly glanced at them. In most photos, the guy was having lunch, and the jewelry on his fingers was shiny with grease.

“Well, whoever you may think I work with, they still need the shots,” Bobby explained. “If you decide to finish your job after all, this is what we have so far. I’m giving you the materials to ensure that your photos’ angle and light match these. Photoshopping will do the rest. FYI: Li Jin Tao loves the table by the last window in the row—the one that is furthest from the main door. He always has lunch there around two p.m.”

Bobby decisively closed her purse and quickly finished her coffee, obviously keen to end our meeting. She pushed the pictures and gadgets closer to me and stood up. She didn’t leave right away, however.

“You know what? About these Global Guards guys,” she started hesitantly.

I stayed silent and just watched her, expressionless.

“Were they, by any chance, a man and a woman around thirty? Say, a beautiful dark-haired chick with gorgeous legs and a sturdy guy roughly one point eighty?”

“They might be. Why are you asking? You know them?”

She waited a few more seconds before answering.

“Did you know Menelaus was married once?” Bobby pensively fixed her eyes on the table between us. It was an unexpected question, and I wondered why she brought it up.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, he was!” She went on, looking at me now. “It was not a happy marriage, though. It seemed like a mistake, and I’ve heard his wife was a real bitch. They never lived together, and she even had an affair with his chauffeur—some Marty Cork. I think she just wanted DuPont’s money, but that’s a rumor, you know.”

“Interesting!” I said thoughtfully. “How do you know all this?”

She smiled.

“Well, my boss has started telling me things lately!”

“Was it a long time ago—the marriage?”

“Yes, the marriage happened a long time ago, but the affair with the chauffeur, I think, is quite recent. They may even still be together!”

“Then why don’t you warn DuPont about them?” I asked.

Bobby smiled mysteriously and turned around without saying anything else. She went to the door, opened it, and then pulled her jacket above her head to keep the rain off her hair. In this pose, she ran to her car.

I followed her with my eyes until she drove away. After a few minutes, I put ten bucks on the table, pushed all the gadgets and the photos into my pockets, and walked out, pulling my jacket over my head, too. I had absolutely no intention of falling for Bobby’s crap again. As far as I was concerned, neither of my cases existed anymore, and I wanted nothing to do with it now. Nevertheless, I was still afraid it was going to be me who would take most of the heat when everything became violent in the end. It was a terrible feeling, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about it.

©2016 S.T. Fargo
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