It was a quarter past twelve, and I was still nervously sitting in my car, wondering what to do. Some twenty minutes ago, a black limo and a jeep came to the Red Dragon and stopped at the curb. The limo was still quiet, but a bunch of eight people—all of them armed—poured out of the jeep and started ransacking the area around the restaurant. They almost turned over every pavement tile in search of anything that would be a threat to their boss. Then they lined up along the sidewalk, blocking it for pedestrians who were not present, by the way, and they waited without moving.

Shortly after that, I tried to park my car closer to the red telephone booth across the street, which was about ten meters away from the restaurant, but unfortunately, some jerk made it there before me. His vehicle was a new model of Hondsu with a ball and socket wheel transmission, and he slipped it sideward into the only vacant spot before I even shifted my old-fashioned Beijing into reverse. I had nothing else to do but curse him and return to my former place, thirty meters up the street. It was too far from my observation post if anything with my mission went wrong, but I had no choice.

I waited a few more minutes for the situation to change, but it didn’t. The driver of the Hondsu didn’t move. Eventually, I sighed with despair, grabbed my ridiculously bulky cameras, and reluctantly stepped out of my car. If the gadgets were digital, they would have been the size of a cigarette lighter each, but unfortunately, they weren’t. I walked down the sidewalk, feeling like a dockworker trying to steal a refrigerator under his jacket when his shift was over. Naturally, I ditched all the zoom lenses back in the Ford because I would have looked even more suspicious with them. I tensely passed by the jerk who stole my parking spot and glared at him for a second. He was smoking stolidly in his car without doing anything in particular. When he noticed I was staring, he glanced back at me at first, but afterward, he quickly turned his head away and started picking his nose.

I moved on, wary of the thugs across the street. Luckily, there was a line of trees along the curb, and the backside of the booth was turned toward the restaurant, so I was shielded from them. When I slipped into it, I nervously looked around. Nobody was paying any attention to me. The side window provided a perfect view of the Red Dragon, and the glass was so dirty that I felt perfectly safe inside—just as Sharon had promised. I just had to use my finger and draw a little dot to serve as a peephole, and I was good to go. My only problem was deciding which camera to install for the first session because I obviously couldn’t operate them simultaneously.

I had just finished my technical preparations, carefully arranging all of my spying equipment, adjusting the blends, and everything else, when I saw the front doors of the limo suddenly open and two more thugs leap out—each with a machine gun in his hands. One of the men looked anxiously around and then cautiously opened the car’s back door.

A tacky crocodile-skin shoe appeared out of the vehicle, promptly followed by a fancy gray trouser leg. The combination surprised me a lot because it was eclectic, and I wondered what type of person might think they constituted a stylish outfit. After a brief moment, when the second shoe came out, the effect of the mismatch was immediately doubled, and I feverishly raised one of my cameras, adjusting it to the peephole—ready to shoot.

The man who soon followed his tacky shoes out of the limo was actually quite a character! The fancy slacks that had already appeared turned out to be part of a luxury silver-gray suit the guy wore over a Hawaiian shirt. A pair of sunglasses hung balanced on his nose, and around his neck, a ton of gold jewelry dangled as usual. The man was Ernesto Chavez in all his glory, and his appearance was almost identical to the photo Bobby had shown me. There was a slight difference, however—the big shot clearly knew he was going to a business meeting now, so he had his shirt buttoned up. I quickly snapped pictures through the hole, changed the cameras, and snapped again.

The boss of Greenspace slowly went around the giant front hood of the limo, closely followed by his thugs, who were nervously looking around, and then the three of them cut through the line of gangsters guarding the sidewalk. By the time they reached the restaurant’s front door, three massive Chins had already come out of there to meet them. They, too, had machine guns in their hands. The six men paused for a short moment in front of the door to scrutinize each other’s weapons as if to reassure themselves they were heavy enough for the occasion, and it gave me enough time to snap a whole lot of pictures. After that, the guys stepped inside—the guests were first, and the hosts followed behind.

The thugs who stayed outside promptly turned their backs to me, facing the restaurant windows, so they could keep the meeting inside under close watch. The shades were wide open, and their task was easy enough. Incidentally, I had never seen mafia bosses meeting in the presence of so much heavy weaponry before. In my experience, they usually had it the other way around, assuring themselves there were no weapons on the table. This one was different, however.

I nervously snapped a few more pictures, entangling my straps completely as I switched between devices. I should probably say here that I didn’t expect operating two cameras to be so hard. I mean, I knew it would be difficult, but it exceeded all my expectations, and I had never felt so awkward in my entire life. Besides, I wasn’t even sure the shots would be good enough without the zoom lenses. The distance to the restaurant was about ten meters, and it was likely too much for delicate details, like faces and expressions, to show up. At some point, I hesitantly turned my head back to my Ford, but unfortunately, I could do nothing about it. The Beijing was too far, and it would have looked suspicious to the thugs if I had gone outside to grab them.

Meanwhile, the meeting in the restaurant continued. Chavez sat at a table near one of the windows and assured himself he had visual contact with his thugs outside, just as Bobby had promised. Then, a very short Chin appeared and sat across the table from him. It was Li Jin Tao, I gathered—the main character in the GBI file I had read in the morning. He looked just like every other Chinese gang member in Nuuk, wearing a sports outfit and a pair of sunglasses. I didn’t know why it became such a fashion all of a sudden, but after their motherland disintegrated, local Chinese started copying the style and behavior of Bruce Lee—like in the old times. Mr. Tao was no exception, and he also carried something in his hands—a bunch of paper sheets of photos, maybe. I snapped them with my cameras.

The meeting continued, and the two parties just talked for twenty minutes or so. The thugs with machine guns stood alert and upright, each group behind their boss. Very soon, I grew accustomed to shooting pictures with two devices and even figured out the best tactics for operating them simultaneously. I drew a line on the dirty glass instead of a dot to be more effective. The trick was to hold both cameras pressed together and watch through the viewfinder of one of them. Having it this way, it was relatively safe to shoot blindly with the other because it retained just a slightly different angle than the first. After a few minutes, I really unleashed myself, feeling sixty grand already crawling up my jeans into my pockets.

There was one minor problem with this technique, however. Since I was snapping like crazy and trying to compensate for the lack of quality with an abundance of quantity, I eventually lost track of which camera belonged to Sharon and which one to Bobby. They looked absolutely the same, and I completely entangled their straps. On the other hand, it didn’t matter that much because the sole difference between the two was the picture of Sharon, and since both my clients were going to be mad at me anyway because of the quality of the photos, I just didn’t care. I was simply going to say I had accidentally snapped a picture of a strange woman if the problematic camera went to Bobby in the end.

After a couple more minutes, I noticed a change in the restaurant. Chavez discreetly waved his hand toward one of his guards out on the street, and the latter promptly went to the jeep, where a black briefcase was handed to him from the inside. I gathered it contained samples or something else of this sort because Chavez wasn’t supposed to pay any money for this deal. It was supposed to be the other way around. The thug outside took the briefcase to the restaurant door, and one of his colleagues, accompanied by one of the Chins, took it from him there. I quickly put my double-snapping machinery together and got ready for a session of almost identical pictures, feeling the money overflowing my pockets now. Unfortunately, as it usually happens when I’m overly optimistic about something, at this moment, my good luck abandoned me without warning. In fact, it betrayed me so severely that, at first, I didn’t even realize it. I found out just a few seconds later when it was too late.

Suddenly, I heard a sharp knocking horrifyingly close to my ears, as if someone tapped his fingers on the glass window. I jumped up, scared, and dropped one of the cameras. Thank god the straps were fastened together because I would have lost the gadgets for good. When I looked outside, I noticed an old Chinese person standing there, trying to talk to me. He seemed pretty angry about something and obviously wanted to get in. I looked at him, baffled. Even in my worst fears, I hadn’t expected to see a person who would want to use a wired telephone in the twenty-first century, and less had I expected he would like to use it while I was still in there! The situation was highly unpleasant because Chavez’s thugs stood only ten meters away from us across the street with frighteningly big guns in their holsters, which they lovingly caressed every now and then.

I cautiously opened the door and asked the guy to wait for a while, even though I knew it was useless because I wouldn’t be able to take more pictures if he did. At that moment, however, I couldn’t think reasonably. To make things worse, the fucking bastard refused to speak English, and he was way too noisy at that. He started screaming something in Chinese, and his high-pitched voice was so loud that I had no other option but to try gagging his mouth by giving him my cell phone. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t take it. He wanted to use the booth, which I desperately needed for shooting pictures and hiding.

It all suddenly became very complicated. It felt like a Mexican standoff in some fucking Hollywood movie! The jerk was out and wanted to get in; I was in and didn’t want to get out; the thugs were across the street, and even though they wanted to come here and see what was going on, they couldn’t because they weren’t supposed to leave their boss behind. Nevertheless, one thing had the potential to break this stalemate very quickly, and that was if the racket reached the big shots inside the restaurant. When that happened, I was just doomed!

Soon, everything escalated into a hideous quarrel, and I completely forgot about the briefcase and the need to snap pictures. Instead, I focused entirely on hiding the bulky cameras under my tiny jacket because I suspected it was crucial if I wanted to live. The only problem was that my mission was simply impossible because I couldn’t detangle the fucking straps anymore. And just when I thought the situation couldn’t get any worse, it actually did! I heard a bothersome noise again—only it wasn’t so close to me now—and since I was already a bag of nerves, it made me jump up, sending unpleasant shivers up my spine.

I sharply turned around and looked at the other side, trembling. Between the awful shrieks of the Chinese, I had caught the sound of a car door shutting, which made me remember the jerk who was sitting in his vehicle nearby. The possibility that he might not be any jerk after all, but an undercover cop flashed across my mind and terrified me to the very core of my soul. His idling suddenly made perfect sense, and if my presumption was correct, more cops would probably appear very soon, making a terrible mess out of my stupid case.

I anxiously thrust my head outside because the glass window was too dirty to see anything, and I scanned the area. It really was the guy in the Hondsu who had made the noise—he was out of the car now—but interestingly enough, he wasn’t coming my way but going up the street instead, toward my vehicle. When he reached the Beijing, he stopped there, looking furtively around himself and inside the car. At that moment, I already knew what was happening. He was not a fucking cop but a damn thief!

I simply couldn’t believe my eyes. I sharply pushed the door open, shoving the Chinese away just in time to glimpse the stupid jerk getting into my Beijing and starting the engine. Then, he slowly drove down the street with my beloved beauty, not even complaining about it. She betrayed me like that, without a cough, a puff, or any other form of reluctance! I was so shocked that I couldn’t make a single step before the damn bastard almost reached the restaurant. Only then did I suddenly come alive.

Without thinking at all, I jumped out on the street, trying to block his way as if I could stop him with my bare hands and my hatred alone. It was too late, though, even for such desperate measures. The thief peacefully drove by without looking at me, and the only thing I could do was snap a picture of him. Then, when he leveled with the restaurant, he slowed down a bit and, to my amazement, pointed a handgun out of the side window, shooting randomly at the Red Dragon’s windows. Following that, the man sharply stepped on the gas, and the car zipped down the Thirty-Sixth before Chavez’s thugs had any chance to grab their weapons and shoot at him.

In the next second, I found myself in a really horrible situation. I was standing there, totally unable to move, without even realizing the scope of the mess I had gotten into. I was in the middle of the street, a few meters away from eight heavily armed thugs, in very threatening proximity to the place where their boss was having a secret mob meeting, and I was holding not just one but two cameras in my hands. I was wholly and thoroughly fucked!

As soon as I realized that, I stopped breathing. I wasn’t the only one surprised by the unexpected situation, though. Chavez’s bodyguards were frozen, too, their eyes popping out, and although their hands held the guns now, they were clearly not sure what they were supposed to do with them. It all had happened so quickly that they weren’t able to assimilate the events and decide if I had any connection to the shooter or if I was just a stupid pedestrian. The stalemate situation lagged for a while, but I knew it wouldn’t last forever. At some point, I just had to react, and somewhere in my blurry mind, I was aware that if I responded by running, it would be practically an admission of guilt.

In a few moments, I slowly crept out of my stupor and began to move, but without any idea what I would do. I tried to walk away, but with the cameras in my hands, I looked rather like a safari idiot who had picked the wrong savanna. I must have walked quite weirdly, too—like a paparazzi who needed to take a shit, which was probably due to my muscle soreness—because the thugs pointed their weapons at me, still uncertain. Now that I think about it, given the situation’s intensity, I realize I had incredible luck. Looking so unbelievably stupid bought me a couple of seconds, and after that, another sudden change stopped the thugs from pulling themselves together and shooting me.

Suddenly, the restaurant side door leading directly to the kitchen loudly burst open, and thousands of glass shards flew in every possible direction like shrapnel. A bunch of Chinese promptly jumped out, their voices shrill and their arms and legs swinging so wildly in the air to illustrate their hostile intentions that they looked like crazy ballet dancers from the Beijing Opera, staging a play praising the Revolution. They all carried various kitchen utensils, and although the latter looked a bit funny in their hands, they were still harmful enough.

In the following moment, I found myself staggering and unable to move for the third time that day. Chavez’s thugs, who were still looking at me with guns in their hands, sharply turned to the newcomers, and then some of the goons turned their heads back to me. Eventually, all the guards found the Asians far more dangerous, and the Asians, in turn, wrongly took the thugs for shooters at windows. Right after that, more bodyguards with weapons poured out onto the street from the main restaurant door, and this next change immediately made the group with the kitchen utensils even more nervous. Just carrying the “weapons” suddenly wasn’t enough, and they assumed threatening poses, making scary faces and screaming appropriately. The situation quickly spiraled out of control because more and more people were coming out without anyone knowing how many enemies he was about to fight against. This confusion actually saved my poor ass.

In the commotion, I quietly turned around unnoticed and ran like never before. I ran like hell! I didn’t know where I was going, and I didn’t care. I only wanted to be as far away from that place as possible because, very soon, the first gunshots echoed behind me. Fortunately, they weren’t for me—the thugs were just exchanging a little fire before grasping the simple fact that they were all on the same team and the shooter had actually been from a completely different party.

Meanwhile, I was already through half of Nuuk, breaking Olympic records, exceeding speed limits, and violating other traffic rules. I couldn’t stop running, and I didn’t until I found myself home with my head buried under the bed cover, trembling. Even then, I kept running for a while longer, still quivering.

©2016 S.T. Fargo
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