reward for Shore’s head. Just his head, they did not bother for the rest of him. The murderers might have been after that jack pot. They didn’t have time to cut the head off though. Something had shooed them away.

A soldier from an MP patrol dropped in the ruins to take a leak and saw the body on the snow. Neither falling hot on the trail nor later investigation brought up a thing. Or, maybe, they just didn’t want to find it out…

And then I was sitting in the luggage car of express train over his zinc casket, wearing all black. 2 yokels from W Group sitting at a distance in their fatigues, harnessed with sidearms, just in case, because of the anonymous 4 MM prize for the head in the zinc box. Full of grim respect sat they over there as is appropriate beside the widow of the legendary warrior from the elite W Group seeing her hubby off from the battle grounds.

I was not keen on talking too. Under the hollow ramble of wheels beneath the floor swaying me too and fro, I smoked over the box caring for no yokels, feeling as that bitchy clot inside the belly began to dissolve little by little, spinning some idle thoughts, like, if, say, somehow wack these 2 assholes, could I find a way to veer off away with the head? 4 MM of green is not a thing to shrug away.

Then I recollected the book I read when in the 9th grade. Ninka gave it to me. What motherfucking fools we were! Naive book-reading virgins. Italian stories on sex. Her brothers stabbed her beloved, so she cut his head off and all her life kept it by her. In a big flower pot filled with earth. The flower turned real meaty. A! I remembered! The name was Boccaccio's Decameron.

Such recollections make you smirk. Books. Passing the folded message slips at the classes. At the parties in the school gym we played Brooklet. Lined in pairs, one behind the other, I and Ninka hand in hand raised up. He walks bent low in between the pairs, grabs your wrist and pulls after him in that narrow tunnel beneath the upshot arms from both sides. Laughter, shouts, you feel swoony, and in the tunnel’s end you straighten up, your hand in his warm palm, he smiles at you, and it’s so good, and all your life’s ahead, and no need to rush, and… Shit! Where the fuck is all that?!.

In short, I came to the HQ as arranged. You can’t miss the skyscraper building with a huge W over the entrance. Yet when I appeared in the said room, the bitch of a secretary began to squeal:

‘He’s at a meeting now’.

‘What the fuck! I’m on the appointment!’

So the slut says into her phone:

‘Victor Evguenich, here’s a visitor who’s on the list… Yes… Not quite adequate though’.

But the bitch was too dumb to switch the speaker off in her iPhone, and I could here:

‘Sorry, Evguen Pavlich, it’s the Shore’s cunt after to graze out her 50 G’s…’ The communication’s over.

Shit! I had to wait, what the fuck could else I do?

And those 2 yokels stayed by the casket till they took the body in at the crematorium, just in case. Saved 4 MM’s for the anonymous order-placer. Fucking guards of honor a sort of.

Shore’s daddy, a dried up ruin with the bold spot over all of his dome yet shaved to glitter and equipped with a tie kept his mug turned away from me. Then they brought out the urn and gave it to the man, a kinda cup for sport achievements, as if I was not there at all. Only when I was getting out a swarm of local paparazzi started to click me from all angles, my deep mourn and medium V-cut…

Now, comes the boar I had the appointment with. The jowl hanging down to his armpits, the belly to his knees. Went over to his office and when he’d seated his obesity there, the secretary let me in.

‘Let’s talk business. Can you flash a stamp in your papers to attest your marriage? Then take my healthcare advice and don’t stick out. You roger that?’

No odd words. He knew how to run business, that fat fuck. The memo which Shore left at the HQ no one had ever seen, $50,000 of the compensation went to the winner in the race.

With empty hands I left that the shitty HQ with their American W above the entrance. Fuck you, fucking motherfuckers!

And now what? Whatever! My tits and arse in no need of silicon improvement yet. The other day a Thrice Nominee at somewhat writers funny farm online texted me how gladly he would edit my memoirs about legendary Shore, the royalties split even.

Fuck you, moron! Shore’s “stash case” sits by me as well as the pinch of loot from a diamond mine somewhere in the middle Africa. He smoked yellows and blacks there. So fuck you, literary dumbo.

What’s up by Ninka now? Maybe, to call her?

Just a sec… My ipheezy squeaks. Another ugly&sexy wanna make friends with the juicy veteran of the Special Operation, huh?

* * *

16

The sudden landing was concluded with a few onward hops. After a split second pause the sparrow made turn-left, swung its stubby bill in abrupt jerks to scan for loot then in a quick thrust twisted about to survey the walk there. The sharp edge of a slow shadow moved closer to crawl the bird over. The momentarily take off left behind a tiny air whirl wing-whipped at the vacated spot.

‘May I?’

V raised his gaze from the shadow stopped on the walk to a middle-aged man in casual wear confronting his bench. He gave a silent nod then added one more as tacit