Crime fiction Friday: The Promised Land (Part 1)

***

            The hands—that’s what you remember. No matter the deal, no matter the technique, you always remembered the hands. Furtive, darting. Cutting and dealing and dividing. This during the kukulis, of course, this during that moment of the bribe when nobody but nobody looks the other in the eye. And later he would think of this, how the others focused on the money while he watched their hands, the Latvians speaking bad Lithuanian and the Lithuanians translating for the Austrian and the Estonian and the Pole.

            “These are your coupons,” said the Austrian. “They have no names, need no signature. For all practical purposes, these coupons function as legal tender. But they are only redeemable in person, only payable on site.”

A murmur of agreement. Then the mutual grumble of irritation of needing to travel to an Austrian bank—this followed by the de rigueur shit translation, the ripple of nods and grunts until it was clear all understood.

            And the Pole had said: “Lapowka. Lapowka.”

            Shrugs all around. The Pole had seemed the simplest yet the most sure of the bunch. So later the minister had made a point to ask about the meaning—the Polish word sounding so much more foreign than kukulis or the kysis of the Lithuanians.

            “Lapowka,” said the Lithuanians. “Bribe in Polish. What did you think it meant?

            “Yes, yes. But what of its origins? Just where does it come from.”

            “Lapa,” came the answer. “Paw.”

            Ah yes. Of course.

Hand of an animal.

            And suddenly it did not sound foreign in the least.

 

***

He descended the ravine, fingers splayed and freezing, clawing through new growth of pine and black alder and wondering just how he had strayed off the path.

What had she told him? Twenty meters from the road marker. A sharp left and two-hundred meters east. And that’s how he’d walked it, ankle-deep in snow, burrowing under the first purples of sunrise and now lost-as-fuck in the trees and brush so that maybe three-hundred paces in he’d glanced back and up and had stopped cold, his heart skipping, his feet submerged in the spring runoff of the slope.

Holy--

Sentinels on the ridge line, Silhouettes of Kalashnikovs and military fur hats.

Kaspars’ jaw clenched. His breath came short. It seemed an eternity before he raised his hands out to the side, first his fingers then his wrists and elbows—movements telegraphed, executed in millimeters—as the border guards stared him down.

Holy—

Two soldiers and a civilian. Well-fucking armed. But no shouts, mind you, no commands—the soldiers resolute, the civilian smoking a cigarette.

And Kaspars all but praying. Thinking move slow. Whispering little steps, eye contact, as he backtracked down the slope.

And they were indeed little steps.

Make that tiny, toe-to-heel steps.

Until he’d slipped a second time—until he’d stumbled hard and sideways against terror and tree roots and ice.

SHITE!

Out zinged his feet, the flats of his street shoes parallel as he struck the side of the ravine hard with his face. Then came the microseconds of bare terror as he flailed against the five-centimeter current and tried stupidly to call out “from the Ministry. No cause for alarm.”

Which was absolutely not true. For at least in Kaspars’s mind there was plenty cause for alarm. There was kuce bitch maita dead carcass as hell cause for alarm. As much cause for alarm as he had ever seen in his laiza dirsus kiss my ass you mauka whore sixteen years as a Riga cop.

For it was at this moment, precisely—half drowning and slobbering in the runoff and dead leaves—that Kaspars looked up and saw the body.

And that, he knew to the depths of his grizzled soul, was cause for alarm.

It lay at one-o’clock, just above him and half under a mound of sticks and earth. It was a wonder he spied it, a wonder he’d almost missed it coming down. A wonder for that kuce bitch murderously bad job of it—the legs exposed, straight and stiff for a coffin. The unnatural blue of jeans and tennis shoes disgorged by snow.

Kaspars struggled to all fours, desperately aware. Wet to the bone in his grey business suit and coat and just staring at it, then jerking his eyes up at the soldiers on the ridge, not believing it really, this loss of dignity, this abject fear—this first day on this bastard of a new job.

Whispering:

But where the hell’s the guard box?

And if this is the border, where’s the other damn border?

Or make that:

Those are Russians, not Estonians.

God bless…

Then:

Do not get your fool self shot. 

 

Yep, just the beginning. If you would like to continue reading Part 1, please hit the Patreon link on the main page and sign up (and support the cause of fresh crime and political journalism, press rights, and a bit of lifestyle as well!). A new part will be posted each Friday--on the Patreon site!