Seven Demons Aidan Truhen (reading an ebook TXT) 📖

la la la and then the cops who were present arrested the shit living shit out of me.

Because it was not the right finger.

I do not know why or how and I do not want to.

But this is the moment that I understood the depth of the world I guess for the first time. I sat in a green triage room on a gray office chair with worn patches on the lumbar support and a tiny wiry cop motherfucker told me that I was holding some other fucking finger and please to give it to him now and I saw the walls disappear and time unravel all the way back to the moment when I picked up.

The wrong.

Finger.

An old cold murder finger.

And I felt the whole world come back together exactly the same as it always was but I was new.

Then I spent forty-eight hours in jail instead of at my momma’s house and finally Uncle Teague came to get me and we rode all the way home in his truck and he did not say a word until a mile from my house and then he said:

“So now you know.”

And I said:

“Yes sir.”

Teague is a Scottish name it means poet and that was the only poem he ever said to me.

—

In the arcade on the Ahornweg the air hockey goes zip zap clack and it’s sort of another poem I guess if you are inclined to the metaphysical it is a synesthetic poem about details and the world unfolding and exploding in your head and coming back exactly the same like the finger because Hans Eiger did not smell of rose water and nor does Evil Hansel. Not rose water and not chocolate and not air fresheners.

They have been in a room with Mrs. Van der Zee and her nasty signature perfume and that changes everything because in crime there are no coincidences.

So now it turns out there are things I have to do.

—

I sit in front of a computer and I lie to Charlie.

“Hey boss whatcha doin’?”

“I am looking at the golfs Charlie.”

“Golf what?”

“I like the golfs they are happening in Dubai they have made a whole golf in the desert out of I do not know I assume space science and I am watching on the interwebs come watch too!”

“Uh no thank you boss I am robbing a bank over here with Doc.”

“O good of course sorry my bad.”

I am not watching the golfs I am murderizing people in futurity. The sort of murderizing this requires is not improvisational it is process-driven it is downstream complexity made simple by stages. Of course it helps that I had planned to do some serious murderizing and so I was already preparing for it infrastructurally speaking but still. But that is my modus: you break it into manageable tasks and you make sure that you assign—

Yeah.

Yeah fine it’s how I do. I am doing it the way Karenina taught me to I am finding friendships and connections and names and place I am finding Mrs. Van der Zee and here she is, O and there is Jort also this is his website but now we are looking where are we looking we are looking at…O here is the launch of VDZ-Hatterstadt-Klemp’s new housing project in Dresden how nice and the gang is all here that is to say this is Mrs. Van der Zee and who should be one of the contractors on that project but the young and thrusting firm of Schempp Kosterlitz AG and of course there is no Kosterlitz and only about ten percent of a Schempp they are a shell for another company and another and another all set up by a law firm in Bermuda for use by a firm run out of another shell in London which is owned out of an office in Martinique and la la la la and—

VoIP outgoing call ring ring.

“Hi this is Carla at Zebedee Bogotá Reception how may I help you today?”

“Hi Carla MY but that is quite some voice hello Carla gosh.”

“Hello sir that is charming of you to say I am sure.”

“Carla this is Jack Mahboubian I was there at the hotel a little while back it was a LOVELY stay.”

“Why thank you again sir.”

“Carla I have to ask you a question and I want a straight answer for which I will pay a great deal of money.”

“Oh—”

“No Carla listen I am not even slightly kidding I will give you a million dollars American for usable information and it is not even particularly secret it is just gossip but I need to be sure.”

“…Are you fucking with me Mr. Mahboubian?”

“Carla right now I am sending an email to the reception account with a number put that number into your browser window and you will find an account with your name on it with money in it. I will give you the access details the moment you tell me what I want to know.”

“I—”

“Carla are you aware of the existence of a rich old Dutch lady who smells like someone sexually molested a coffeepot with a violet cream?”

“O shit her yes sure she does not stay at the Zebedee but—”

“But she is so fucking rich every hotelier in Bogotá knows when she is in town.”

“Yes sir.”

“Million-dollar question Carla when was she last there?”

Carla tells me and of course it is the same time as Frankie Leclerc and his emeralds. That would not hold in a court of law but I am not one and I already know. If you join the dots in the money you find the same thing that is in the picture: the guy in the nice suit standing a little way off and behind Mrs. Van der Zee and totally not her date or her friend he just happens to be in proximity…why that is François Leclerc.

This is not about me at all.

(I know weird right?)

It is not about me at all.

And most specifically this whole thing—this whole thing is not about money or even politics. Volodya