Gynophagia Chronicles: Samantha
Friday, October 2, 2218 7:30 am
101 California St. San Francisco, CA
Narrative Reconstructed by Peter Howard
Michael almost wanted... no, he absolutely wanted to punch the man. Bill Acres was as inept an administrator as there ever was. Thank god for Selma. The young woman was twenty two and had a head for business, a body for sin, and a strong desire for survival. She'd been out of college two years, and the salary she was drawing was double that which she'd been making at Applied Accounting in Kansas City. Recruiting her had not been a problem save that it was expensive to buy her contract. Anything less than Selma's ability to crunch numbers, manage the office and make things work would have been a disaster. Her primary job was to pretend orders came directly from Acres, and not from her.
Acres had been instructed by Michael to sit in any meetings and let Selma do all the talking. But Wednesday he'd managed to put his foot in his mouth when he was asked the most basic question about a small payroll account. Thank god Selma had been there to hep everyone laugh it off. The senior staffers, however, were quite reasonably suspicious and Michael was here to lay down the law with Acres.
You will keep your mouth shut. You will not speak except through Selma. You are a figurehead! Read me? You pull anything like this again and I'll send you back to where you came from and you can live your life out doing manual labour in a very cold part of Canada. Michael replayed what he had said in low tones in his head, but wanted to throttle the man and scream them at him again.
Frustration, Michael thought. I haven't seem or heard word one about Samantha for too many days. Professor's Rule 15, never let frustration get the better of you. Take a deep breath and approach the problem from a different angle. It wasn't working. He had no way of knowing what it was she was doing save that her stories were showing up in the newspapers. He had no way of knowing how to find her out there, and he certainly could never get into the Tucker compound.
The day of the fire, he'd gone to see Johnny.
“I warned you this was coming,” Johnny said.
“You did,” Michael told him. “Sorry it got botched.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Whoever you hired botched it,” Michael said. “There was nobody inside the house when it burned.”
“Bullshit! It burned last night while they were all asleep!”
“You should really turn on the news, Johnny. It burned today in broad daylight. The Wells family is now safely ensconced in the Tucker estate.”
Johnny's eyes went big. Yes, meat. Your man botched it bad. What are you going to do to save yourself?
“I take it there's a hit going on your head right now,” Michael said. “Want some advice?”
“What advice would you give me?” Johnny sneered.
Michael smiled, looked to one side. “You know, I don't know who it was that wanted this, but if you call Carmine and tell him it was ordered by whoever it was, and not you, and that the Professor will be displeased with the results, Carmine might call the Professor. The Professor will tell Carmine that the results are not in his best interest, and whoever screwed up needs to be eliminated. Carmine will call you and tell you not to worry. That it's all taken care of. He'll put a hit on whichever family it was, and you can go on with business as usual.”
“You have to be fucking kidding me, Michael! You really think Carmine's going to put a hit on the Russians? They're a big customer.”
“Who's more valuable to Carmine? The Professor or the Russians?”
“That's a no brainer.”
“So if the Professor tells him to chose? Which he will, have no doubt. There's a reason we're interested in this family, Johnny. Having our interests screwed with is unhealthy.”
At that point, Michael stood and left him there. The calls were made. The professor played his part. Being denied access to the Wells family was a problem, though not an insurmountable one. Having them wiped out would have been worse, of course, and Michael wished he could have eavesdropped on the conversation between Carmine and the Professor, and on the one between Johnny and Carmine. He could well imagine Carmine's fury over the prospect of losing his long association with the Professor. Johnny had come all the way to Santa Cruz Wednesday evening just to tell Michael in person that the Bukarov family was about to be liquidated.
That was happening this very morning. It was probably already done. Their bodies would never be found, according to Johnny. They would simply cease to exist. And Michael was expecting a call from Johnny giving him a location to collect the Bukarov books. Those need to be sent back to the Professor, and Johnny knew the Professor would not take no for an answer when Michael explained that to him. Michael would collect those himself. He just needed to know where.
Michael stood to leave.
“Remember,” he told Acres. “Don't screw up again, Bill. I can replace you quite easily.”
Michael turned and went out the door, his heart skipping a beat at what he saw. There, right in front of him, was Martin and Jake Tucker with Lord Grayson himself walking this way behind a very tough looking man with sandy blonde hair. Jake ducked into a cubicle that, thankfully, was empty, and let them pass. He gathered a stack of papers, and walked out of it once they had, keeping his back to them. That sandy blonde man, security, Michael surmised. He felt that man's eyes boring into the back of his head as he made his escape.
Christ! Michael's heart was hammering in his chest on the elevator ride down. Acres in the same room with Martin Tucker and Lord Grayson? What else could go wrong today?
As he rode the lift down, he fingered the thumb drive Selma had given him. She'd dumped the entire Mulsquevich-Arnold Payroll database onto it. Sorting through it would be a chore, of course, but the professor will be pleased. He had people for that.
On the way out of the building, his phone rang. It was Johnny.
“It's done,” Johnny said. “And there will be a summit. I need you to be there.”
“Where?”
“The club. Monday night. It's closed for rehearsals.”
“New episode? Is Penny still involved?”
“Of course!” Johnny said with cheer. “She gets herself raped nightly, poor girl. She's got quite a fan base now. DeCrux is having trouble dreaming up more creative ways for our Africans to fuck her. I keep telling him just do the double penetration deal we always did. The crowd loves that!
“I'm sure they do,” Gianni said. “So, Monday. What, six?”
“Six is fine. You'd better bring your A-game, Michael. These guys were not born yesterday. They will tear you apart if they smell weakness.”
“That's fine. I'll simply inform them that anyone who doesn't heed me will watch their sons or grandsons raped and roasted,” Gianni said. “That is what happened with the Russians, right?”
“Every kid under fifteen, yeah. They're all meat by now.”
Gianni nodded to himself. “Al right. I'll be there.”
Charlie made his way to Fed Ex to replicate he data on another thumb drive and overnight the copy. He'd keep the original just in case, but he needed that data in the Professor's hands immediately. He had a strange feeling he'd be sent to some other country quite soon and the dread that Samantha was now forever out of his reach.
There was some unfinished business, however. Part of him was thinking of her when he made the call.
“Dillon Kramer Headquarters, this is Cindy,” was the phone greeting.
“I'd like to volunteer. I'm in Danville...”