No Rest 4 Wicked Botniks Chapter 12
Bobby Malone #7: An Oddly Convenient Truth
CHAPTER 12
Bobby Malone #7:
An Oddly Convenient Truth
Bobby tried one last desperate tactic: “Wait. Wait! This ain’t my side of town. I’m not from Moscowtown. I’m from Hoyleside!”
The Russians paused across the threshold. The men were still barely visible, but he could make out pale, smoky faces, tracksuits and real suits, dirty, moosed-up hair, and large damn guns.
Bobby ducked lower behind the bar and continued, “I owe MR. HARRY HOYLE HIMSELF! From Hoyleside, Natives’ White Town. I owe HIM the sum of 45,000 Bluebacks! 45,000 in soft blue Stars. Ok? Okinawa? Are we Okinawa yet, you fucking bunch of Brats?!”
Their leader, short, lean, but toned, clean-shaven and handsome, looked and sounded unimpressed yet again. “Our money is no blue here, boot,” he said. “Our money is red, like the old days. Merica an’ Russia bloody days. Red like old dead commies, da?”
But the feet didn’t move any farther. Their leader was stalling, but most likely he just wanted a clear shot.
Bobby was getting annoyed. His Rothbauer shifted toward the leader fractionally. “Hey!” he said. “Can any of y’all count to ten or twelve, you Stalin cocksuckers?”
BOOM. Another shotgun blast from their direction. He ducked down by poor Dmitry. Thankfully, the spread had missed most of the bar... like his point, apparently.
Bobby responded with a roaring CRUNCH from his massive revolver, but he was aiming at a lackey, not the leader. The gunshot hit center mass or brain. A low thud, someone’s long sigh, and curses. Then an actual corpse at the door.
If they killed him, he would make them pay. Dearly.
“I mean,” Bobby explained, rising slightly, “45,000 Stars is like 70K in Pelosis or Bamma Dollars or whatever silly Peso you wanna use here, and probably closer to 100K in your Putins. That makes it almost thirty grand in New New Yen, you stupid, brother-loving sons of bitches. 30,000 round, in brand new Yenbucks. I don’t even know the math for the HKD exchange. I ask you earnestly. Do you realize how big a DEBT that is? You… just can’t afford… to kill me. The Prince of Darkness himself probably couldn’t either. Satan can’t put a hit on me, unless the Professor clears it.”
Bobby lowered himself behind the bar, where the bullets had missed, and shifted Dmitry with him. “I don’t care which boss you work for,” he said. “Kruglov, Roman, or Vitsin the Butcher himself. None of them can afford to kill me unless Hoyle clears it on his end.”
He paused for dramatic effect. “Otherwise… it’ll be y’all that pay the Big Fish Fine for breaking the hot dang Sixty-Gang Truce.”
He saw it. The warning actually went through to them. It shook them more than a little. But the Russians were clearly just stalling until orders from the higher-ups arrived.
Even a bald-faced lie about another member of the Big Six would stall them, and Bobby’s enormous gambling debt to Mr. Harry Hoyle was no deception of any kind. It was, for the time being, an oddly convenient truth.
The Russians huddled together for a private argument in their own language.
The huddle lasted only about fifteen seconds, because then it happened that…
–An incoming call came. Through the leader’s cheap comm-watch.
A call came, and the leader answered it.
A call came, full of white static noise, over the Bratva gangster’s oudated device, and the first words were:
“Listen to me, Alyosha.”
END OF CHAPTER 12
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