Seven Demons Aidan Truhen (reading an ebook TXT) 📖

your confidential shit. I just want to know about my confidential shit namely who WHO sent a tiny evil Sound of Music–looking motherfucker and a dude with a long gun to do me wrong Sharkey WHO?”

“Not me—”

“Of course not you or you would be on a fucking magic hideaway island somewhere hoping I cannot track you like a bloodhound, which I can. From now on always I can.”

“You can like forever?”

“Once I have tied detcord around a scrotum Sharkey I can always find it again. Unless I have exploded it then basically it becomes a concept scrotum more like a concept piece than something you could hang.”

“Fuck it Jack FUCK IT this is precisely what I was saying with reference to your team being weird that kind of statement is—”

“Sharkey. Say Yes Jack.”

“I do not—”

“SHARKEY.”

“Yes Jack.”

“I am prepared to accept provisionally that you are not enough of a stupid fuck to send a prepubescent to stab me with an oyster knife and leave me alive although also too I am blessed with an exceptional team of persons and it is possible you just messed up your knockout in some way. But seeing as you are going to be super-duper frank with me—and bearing in mind always that there is detcord around your man apples—I am gonna go with the idea that you are not at fault here.”

“Okay.”

“For now.”

“Okay.”

“But that then creates a problem Sharkey because then we touch on the tender area of your professional connections.”

“O shit.”

“Yes. We do.”

“O shit Jack.”

“Yes Sharkey here is the problem it was you or it was one of mine or it was Mr. Client.”

“Okay Jack can I say something?”

“Yes Sharkey.”

“I don’t wanna disrespect nobody at this point in time Jack but someone has to say this.”

“Go ahead man I will be indulgent.”

“You gotta be real calm.”

“I will be motherfucking papal.”

“Did you consider it might be Volodya?”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“Please don’t explode my balls.”

“What—oh—naw man I was not thinking that.”

“Okay.”

“That suggestion more than anything Sharkey is reassuring to me that you are really giving this some thought.”

“It is?”

“Yes it is because that is an intelligent suggestion and it is left field. You are thinking that he fakes getting shot then slips out of the mail truck while I am unconscious and he dumps some vagrant or what have you into the mill engine and now he is invisible and he is coming for me for whatever fortune and glory or just because he is an evil old fuck?”

“I do not know what any of those things are in the middle but yeah I guess something like that.”

“It is a classic and you got to respect your history.”

“Yes?”

“Even if that history is largely like eighties movies. But there is a problem with your theory Sharkey.”

“There is?”

“Yeah man I saw half of his face in a basket before I left this morning. Brain still somewhat in the factory-standard housing.”

“…Oh.”

“Yeah so while I completely respect that you took a risk there and that was very cool of you under the circumstances it does not really get us anywhere. But kudos man that was—”

“…”

“I was going to say ballsy but it seems in poor taste.”

“Yeah okay I hear ya but then Jack you know there’s the doctor and Charlie and—”

“Sharkey I see what you’re doing here and again I got to respect the attempt man because I get that confidentiality is your all but—”

“Jack—”

“There’s no help for it Sharkey you’re going to have to tell me who Mr. Client is.”

“I—”

“Otherwise I will be subject to a reciprocal negative obligation in regard the aerosolization of your ballsack.”

“Balzac?”

“Jesus Christ Sharkey answer the fucking question.”

“…It was a shell Jack I swear.”

“Of course it was a fucking shell we are crime people we do not—”

“It was a shell is what I’m saying so I DID NOT KNOW or I would have never—”

“You know now.”

“Now I’m putting it the fuck together Jack I know something okay SOMETHING but I don’t know how much of it is right and I was honest-to-God wondering whether I should call you today but I—”

“Sharkey.”

“Yes?”

“Papal-fucking-indulgence Sharkey. I am pissed with you but so long as we can get through this conversation I consider actually hurting you a waste of resources.”

“You do?”

“I do and Sharkey this is also the point I am making to you and the world: I am Jack. Fucking. Price. I am not some cowboy I am a professional I like things to BE CALM. That is my fondest hope and in furtherance of things being motherfucking calm I will trade you your fondest hope, which I assume to be retaining your scrotum in non-aerosol form am I right?”

“…You actually did shoot a guy with a severed head that time.”

“And it was huge fun Sharkey and it made a hellacious mediapathic attention-getting mess but my point is it was appropriate and it was proportional to need, okay? Sadly it did not function as a prelude to sensible discussions but that is because other parties who should have known better became needlessly emotional about the whole situation and I cannot legislate for the behavior of others. However exigent fucking circumstances obtain right now, that is to say I have been shot in the Ukrainian and there are—you know Sharkey there are rules and conventions but above all this one, which is we provide a service and we do so according to the norms established by time-honored criminal practice and, you know, all that shit. Okay? We are a service entity and I just want the information necessary to carry on my business in all the relevant directions.”

—

Sharkey says he does not know like know like something you could use in court, and I have grown as a person in the last few days and months so I do not blow him up by the balls right then. Instead I say: “O RLY?”

And Sharkey says that he thinks it may all have been Hans Eiger all along.

—

Hans Eiger owns the Kircheisen Festung. Obviously it would be not unheard of for a guy