HOW SENKA SHOWED WHAT
HE WAS MADE OF
‘I need you, do I? What good are you to me?’
The Prince rubbed the dimple in his chin furiously and gave Senka a scorching glance from his black eyes. Senka cringed, but this was no time to be shy.
‘She told me, “Go to him, Speedy, don’t you have no doubts, you’ll definitely be useful to the Prince, I ought to know,” that’s what she said.’
Senka tried to look at the big man with fearless devotion, but his knees were trembling. The whole gang was standing behind him: Deadeye, Sprat-Sixer, the pair with the same face and another one with fat cheeks (it must have been him who was dozing with his devolvert in his hand). Only the cripple with no legs was missing.
The Prince’s lodgings in the Kazan were right at the end of the collidor that Senka had been led along the day before. From the room with the desecrated icons, where Deadeye flung his knives about, you just had to go a little bit farther and turn a corner, and there was a big room, with a separate bedroom. Senka saw the bedroom only through the half-open door (well, it was just an ordinary bedroom: a bed covered with a coloured counterpane, a flail – a spiked steel ball on a chain – lying on the floor, and that was all he could make out), but the Prince’s sitting room was really grand. The Persian carpet covering the whole floor, so incredibly fluffy it was like walking on moss in a forest; carved wooden chests along the walls (oh, there must be some fine stuff in there!); bottles of vodka and cognac in a row on the huge table, with silver goblets, a well-hacked ham and a jar of pickled cucumbers. Every now and then the Prince stuck his hand into this jar, fished out the cucumbers with the most pimples and crunched on them with relish, making Senka’s mouth water. The big boss’s face was handsome all right, but it looked a bit puffy and creased. He’d obviously done some hard drinking, and a fair bit of sleeping too.
The Prince wiped his mouth with the hem of his silk shirt. He picked up the note again.
‘Has she gone crazy, or what? As if she didn’t know I’ve got a full deck. I’m the King, right?’
He bent down one finger, and Deadeye said:
‘Soon you’ll have as many titles as His Majesty the Emperor. Prince by name and king by nature, and soon you’ll be an ace too. By the grace of God, Ace of all Moscow, King of Khitrovka and Prince of Piss-ups.’
Senka thought the bit about ‘piss-ups’ was too brazen by half, but the Prince liked the joke and roared with laughter. All the others chuckled along. Senka didn’t really get what was so amusing, but just to be on the safe side, he smiled too.
‘When I’m Ace, there’ll be no more banter like that,’ said the Prince, putting down the note and bending his fingers down as he carried on counting. ‘Death’s my Queen, right? You, Deadeye, are the Jack. Lardy’s the tenner, Bosun’s the niner. Maybe’s the eighter, Surely’s the sevener. This ragamuffin’s a sixer at best, and I’ve already got one of those. Right, Sprat?’
‘Yes,’ said the lad from the day before.
Now Senka realised what the Prince was on about. The lads had told him that real businessmen, the ones who lived by bandit laws, had gangs called ‘decks’, and every deck had its own set. A set was made up of eight bandits, and they all had their own position. The top brass was the ‘King’, who had a moll or ‘Queen’; then there was the ‘Jack’, a kind of deputy; and then came the gang members from tenner to sixer. And no one had more than eight in their gang, it had been that way ever since the old days. That must be where the name ‘Jack’ came from, because he often used a black jack.
Senka gave Deadeye a look of special respect: so you’re the Jack. On top of being the King’s right-hand man, the Jack was usually responsible for ‘wet jobs’ – killings, that is.
‘There are no vacancies available presently,’ said Deadeye, using fancy words as usual, but Senka understood what he meant, that there were no free places in the gang.
But strangely enough, the Prince didn’t throw the little squirt out. He just stood there, scratching his head.
‘Two sixers – what kind of deck’s that? Whatever will the Council say to that?’ The Prince sighed. ‘Oh, Death, my little darling, the things you do to me . . .’
And from the way he sighed, Senka twigged that though the Prince might grouse and grumble, he didn’t have the nerve not to do Death’s bidding, even though he was such a big hero. Senka cheered up, stopped feeling wary, straightened his shoulders and looked round at the bandits. He stood proud, as though to say: You can sort this little snag out yourselves, I’ve done my bit. It’s Death’s fault, anyway.
‘All right,’ said the Prince. ‘What’s your name? Speedy? You stay put for the time being, Speedy, without any number. We’ll work out where to put you later.’
Senka squeezed his eyes shut, he was so happy.
Maybe he didn’t have a number, but now he was a real bandit, and more than that, he was in the number-one top gang in all of Moscow! Now then, Prokha, now then, Mikheika, let’s see you choke on that! And as soon as he started getting his share of the swag, he could take Tashka as his moll, so she wouldn’t go lying with anyone and everyone. She could sit at home and lay out her flowers.
The Prince waved his hand towards the table, and everyone but Deadeye poured himself a glass of vodka or cognac and started drinking. Senka took a nip of the brown booze too, just to try it (it was horrible, far worse than any homebrew). Even though he was hungry, he didn’t take a single piece of the ham – he had to fit in right: play a lad who knew the rules, not a starving kid they picked up off the rubbish heap. He kept out of the way tactfully, watched and listened, didn’t butt into conversations – oh God forbid. And the businessmen didn’t even look at him – what would they want with a youngster like him? Only Sprat glanced at him a couple of times. Once he just looked, but the second time he winked. That was something to be grateful for, at least.
The Prince started telling the twins, the sevener and the eighter, about Death. ‘You haven’t been here long, Maybe and Surely, you still don’t know what the mamselle’s like. Sure, you’ve seen her, all right, but there’s more to her than that. When I tell you what I did to get her, you’ll understand. When her old fancy man, Yashka from Kostroma, took a dose of lead poisoning and she was free, I started to make a move. I’d had my eye set on her for a long time, but while Yashka was still alive, I didn’t dare do anything about it. Had great respect from the Council, he did, and back then I was just a simple robber. No deck, no decent den, I didn’t deal in wet jobs, or do any big-time stuff. Sure, I wasn’t exactly the lowest of the low in Khitrovka, but how could I compare with Yashka from Kostroma? But I still thought, come hell or high water, that doll’s got to be mine. That was the first time I did a pawnshop and clouted the watchman with my flail. People started talking about me, and the big loot started rolling in. I start sending her presents: gold, and all sorts of fancy china, and Japanese silk. She sends it all back. If I show up, she throws me out, doesn’t even want to talk to me.
‘But I’m patient, I understand I ’m not big enough for Death yet.
‘Okay, so then I held up this post wagon, beat two men to death. Took forty thousand.
‘I showed up at her place with a gypsy choir, at night. Forked out five hundred roubles to the coppers at the Myasnitsky station so they wouldn’t interfere. I left a satin box outside her door, and there was a diamond brooch in the box, this big it was.
‘And what came of it? The gypsies and their women sang themselves hoarse, and she didn’t open the door, didn’t even look out the window.
‘Well, I think, what the hell else do you want? It’s not money, it’s not presents, that much is clear. But what, then?
‘So I got the idea of trying a different approach. I knew Death was soft on kids. She sent money and clothes and all sorts of sweets to the Mariinsky Home, where the Khitrovka orphans go. Yashka the horse thief once gave her a hundred gold imperials in a basket of violets, and the crazy bint kept the flowers and gave the money to the nuns at the orphanage, so they could build a bathhouse.
‘Aha, I think to myself. If I can’t get you by hook, then I’ll get you by crook.
‘I bought thirty pounds of the very finest Swiss chocolate and three bolts of Holland cloth, and some calico for underclothes. I took it there in person and gave it to the Reverend Mother Manefa. Take it, I said, a present from the Prince to the orphans.’
Here the fat-faced man, the tenner, cleared his throat and interrupted the Prince’s story:
‘Uhu, a right royal present it was, we remember.’
The Prince hissed at him. ‘Lardy,’ he said, ‘don’t you go barging in and spoiling the story. Well, what happens? I go breezing round to Death’s place to see if she’ll treat me any different. She opens the door, only it would have been better if she hadn’t. She comes out, eyes blazing. Clear out and don’t come back, she shouts. Don’t you dare come anywhere near me, and all sorts of other stuff like that. She prods and pokes me out the door, after everything I’d done . . . I took offence real bad, that time. Started drinking –I was wandering round in a haze for a week. And while I was drunk the memory that really stung was the way I’d bought that lousy chocolate with my hard-earned money and even felt the cloth in the shop – to check the quality.’
‘Well, I still say they gave you that cloth for nothing,’ Lardy put in again.
But the Prince said: ‘That’s not the point. I’d tried so hard, my feelings were hurt. Right, I think, you’re too flighty altogether. This isn’t going right. Damn you for that cloth and chocolate. That night I climbed over the orphanage wall, took the window out, broke down the door of their storeroom and started hacking away. I tipped the chocolate out on the floor and stamped on it. I slashed the cloth to shreds – now let’s see you wear that! I cut all the calico to pieces. And I smashed up everything else they had in there. The watchman came to see what all the noise was about. “What are you doing, you bastard,” he yells, “you’re depriving the poor orphans!” Well, I stuck my blade straight in his heart, the blood splashed out all over my arm. I came out of the storeroom all covered in blood, threads hanging off me and my face as black as an Arab’s with chocolate. And there’s Mother Manefa coming straight at me, with a candle. Well, I did her in too. It’s all the same to me, I think, I’ve damned my soul anyway. So screw my soul and the life eternal. I didn’t want any kind of life at all without Death . . .’
‘Yes,’ said Lardy with a nod. ‘That set Moscow on its ear. You might have been drunk, but you didn’t leave any tracks or witnesses. In the end they realised it was you running wild, of course, but there was no way to prove it.’
The Prince laughed. ‘The important thing was that our lot found out about it straight away, and they told Death. When I got back from the orphanage I slept for two days straight, didn’t wake up once. And when I came round, they gave me a note from her, from Death. “Come to me, you’ll be mine” – that was what it said. So that’s what she’s like, Death. Just try to understand her.’
Senka listened eagerly to the story, and afterwards he racked his brains trying to make sense of it, but he just couldn’t.
But that day, he didn’t have time to rack his brains, so many different things happened.
After the Prince announced his decision and treated his deck to vodka and cognac, Sprat took the new boy back to his place (he had a little room behind a chintz curtain near the way in).
He turned out to be a mighty fine lad, with no side to him at all, even though he had a number in the gang, and Senka had just turned up out of nowhere. He didn’t put on airs, he spoke simply and told Senka lots of useful things, as if he was one of them, almost a card in the deck.
‘It’s OK, Speedy,’ he said, ‘if Death herself asked for you, you’ll be in the deck, there’s no way round it. Maybe one of us will get put away or done in, and then they’ll take you as sixer and I’ll move up to sevener. You stick with me, and you’ll be all right. And you can live right here. It’s more fun snoring together.’
(They never did get to snore together, but we’ll come to that later.)
Because everyone knew about the Prince, and Senka knew as much about Death as Sprat did, he started asking about the others.
‘Everyone’s afraid of our Jack,’ said Sprat, ‘even the Prince is wary of him, because Deadeye has these fits. Most of the time, he’s calm and quiet, though he’s always using strange words and talking in poetry, but sometimes he just goes berserk, and then he gets really scary, like a devil, he is. He’s a gent from a good family, used to be a student, but he stabbed someone to death over some candy cane and got hard labour for life. You keep clear of him,’ Sprat advised. ‘The Prince can smack you in the kisser, even beat you to death, but at least you’ll know why and what for, but that Deadeye’s a crazy man.’
The next one in the deck, Lardy, was Ukrainian, that was how he got his moniker, because they eat lard there. He was a key man, with big connections among the fences in other cities – all the swag passed through his hands and came back as ‘crunch’, that is, money.
Sprat told Senka that the legless Bosun had really been a bosun in the fleet, a hero proper, known all over the Black Sea. When he started to tell you about the Turks or the high seas, he was absolutely fascinating. His legs were crushed by a steam boiler on board ship. He had crosses and medals and a hero’s pension, but he wasn’t the sort to spend his old age in peace and quiet. What he wanted was something to test his luck, a bit of gusto and excitement. He almost never took his share of the swag, either, and a niner’s share was a fair size, not like Sprat’s.
The sevener and eighter were twin brothers from the Yakimanka District. A smart, dashing pair of lads. The Prince had been advised to take them on by a constable he knew at the First Yakimanka Station. He said the lads were real desperadoes, it would be a shame if they didn’t make the big time, a real waste. And they were nicknamed Maybe and Surely because they had more daring than brains. Maybe wasn’t that bad, that was why he had a higher number, but Surely was a total loon. If the Prince told him to steal the double-headed eagle off the Saviour’s Tower at the Kremlin, he’d start climbing without a second thought.
Then at the end Sprat sighed, rubbed his hands together and said: ‘Anyway, you’ll see us all in action on the job tonight.’
‘What’s the job?’ Senka’s heart stood still – how about that, straight into a job on the very first day! ‘Are we going bombing?’
‘Nah, bombing’s nothing. This is a really wild job. The Prince and the Ghoul have a meet today.’
Senka remembered that Deadeye had asked about the meet too.
‘Is that the one at seven o’clock? What’s it about? This Ghoul, that’s Kotelnichesky, right?’
‘That’s the one. The Prince and him are going up for Ace of Moscow, if you get my drift.’
Senka whistled. So that was it.
The ace was like the tsar of bandits, there was just one for all of Moscow. The ace used to be Kondrat Semyonich, a really big man, everyone in Moscow was afraid of him. They used to say all sorts of things about Kondrat Semyonich, though. That he’d got old and rusty, he didn’t give the young men a chance. Some condemned him for living a life of luxury, not in Khitrovka, like the ace was supposed to do, but in a house on the Yauza. And he didn’t die like a bandit, from a knife or a bullet, or in jail. He drew his last breath on a soft feather bed, like some merchant.
Anyway, the Council had decreed that the ace should be one of the two: the Prince or the Ghoul.
The case for the Prince was clear enough – he was a man on the make. He’d appeared from nowhere, and the jobs he did were breathtaking. But the problem was he was in too much of a hurry and he was obstinate, those were his only flaws. The grandfathers were afraid that power like that might go to his head.
The Ghoul was a different matter altogether. He was from the old guard – the less showy bandits who’d plodded their way to the top. The Ghoul didn’t have any famous jobs to his name, his deck didn’t fire any broadsides, but people were just as much afraid of him as they were of the Prince.
The Ghoul’s deck didn’t make a living from hold-ups, though, they had a new business, one that was kept very quiet: they skimmed from the grain merchants and shopkeepers. Their kind of businessmen were called ‘milkers’. If you wanted your shop to stay safe, and you didn’t want the sanitary inspector picking on you, or the coppers bothering you – then you gave the milker his dough and carried on trading in peace. But as for those who didn’t pay – who thought they could manage or were just plain mean –all sorts happened to them.
One stubborn grocer was hit over the head from behind in a dark alleyway, he didn’t see who did it. He fell down and tried to get up, but he couldn’t – the ground was spinning in front of his eyes. Suddenly he saw a horse and cart coming straight at him, and the cart held a great heap of paving stones. He yelled and waved his arms, but the driver didn’t seem to hear him. The horse stepped over the grocer, so its hooves missed him, but the wheels of the cart ran right over his legs and smashed them to bits. Now they pushed that grocer around in a chair on wheels, and he paid the Ghoul promptly. And there was an ice-cream seller too, they ambushed his daughter, who was engaged, put a sack over her head and violated her, and not just one of them, no, half a dozen thugs. Now she sat at home and never showed her face outside, and she’d been taken down from a noose twice. If only the ice-cream seller had paid, none of that would ever have happened.
But even the Ghoul wasn’t to the liking of all the grandfathers, Sprat explained. Those who were older and remembered times past didn’t approve of the Ghoul’s trade. Back then it wasn’t done to suck people’s blood like that.
Anyway, today was the day of the meet.
‘They’ll do each other in!’ Senka gasped. ‘They’ll stab each other, or shoot each other.’
‘They can’t, that’s against the law. They can break a few ribs or crack someone’s head open, but that’s all. You can’t take weapons to a meet, the Council doesn’t allow it.’
*
At five o’clock the mediators came from the Council, two calm, slow-moving ‘grandfathers’ who used to be respected thieves. They named the spot for the meet – the Cows’ Meadow in the Luzhniki District – and the time: seven o’clock on the dot. They said the Ghoul wanted to know whether his whole deck should come or what.
They sat the grandfathers down to drink tea in the front room, and all crowded round the Prince at the table. Even the Bosun trundled in from the street, afraid they’d settle things without him.
Maybe shouted out first: ‘Let’s all go! We’ll give the ghoulies a beating to remember.’
The Prince hissed at him:
‘Think before you speak, smartarse. Do we have a Queen with us? No. Death won’t traipse across to Cows’ Meadow, will she now?’
Everyone smiled at the joke, and waited to see what the Prince would say next.
‘But the Ghoul’s Queen is Pockface Manka. Last year she smacked two narks’ heads together so hard, they never got up again,’ the Prince went on, polishing his fingernails with a little brush. He was sitting with his legs crossed and easing his words out slowly – no doubt already seeing himself as the ace.
‘We know Manka, she’s a woman to be reckoned with,’ the Bosun agreed.
‘Right, then. So think on a bit. You’re a cripple, Bosun – no offence meant – what good are you at a meet?’
The Bosun bounced on his stumps and started getting excited.
‘Why I. . . I’ll smack ’em so hard with this mallet – that’s enough to double anyone over. You know me, Prince!’
‘A mallet!’ the Prince mocked him, biting off a hangnail. ‘And the Ghoul’s niner is Vasya Ugreshsky. What good will it do to swing your mallet at him? You see?’
The Bosun went all sad and started sniffing.
‘Now let’s take Sixer,’ said the boss, nodding at Sprat.
‘What about me?’ said Sprat, jerking his head up.
‘I tell you what. Their sixer is Cudgel. He can hammer a six-inch nail into a log of wood with that great big fist of his, and anyone can knock you down with a feather, Sprat. So where does that leave us, my brave gents? With this – at a meet, their deck will leave us for dead, as sure as God’s holy. And then they’ll say the Prince had his whole deck with him, they won’t bother working out who’s too small, who’s crippled and who wasn’t even there. That’s what they’ll say, oh yes they will,’ the Prince declared in response to their dull muttering.
The room was suddenly quiet and downbeat.
Senka was sitting in the corner farthest away, afraid they might throw him out. He wasn’t too upset about them not taking him to the meet, he didn’t much fancy fisticuffs, especially not against real fighters. They’d batter a youngster like him down and trample him into the ground.
The Prince admired his nails, then bit off another hangnail and spat it out.
‘Call the grandfathers. I decide. And not a word! Keep your traps shut.’
Sprat ran off to get the mediators. They came and stood just inside the door. The Prince stood up too.
‘Two of us should go to the meet, that’s my opinion.’ He looked at them merrily and shook his forelock. –The King and one other chosen by the King. Tell the Ghoul that.’
Deadeye sighed and the others frowned but not a word was spoken. It clearly wasn’t on to haggle in front of outsiders, Senka thought.
But even when the grandfathers left, there was no yapping. Once the Prince had decided, that was that.
Sprat winked at Senka: come on outside. In the collidor he sniffed as he whispered: ‘I know that spot very well. There’s a little barn there, a good place to hide. We’ll wait and watch them from there.’
‘But what if they see us?’
‘Then we’re for it, no question,’ Sprat said with a careless wave of his hand. ‘They’re real strict about stuff like that. But don’t you get the wind up, they won’t see us. That barn’s a great spot, I tell you. We’ll burrow into the hay. No one will twig, and we’ll be able to see everything.’
Senka suddenly felt afraid and he hesitated. But Sprat spat on the floor and said: ‘You can please yourself, Speedy. I’m running over there right now. While they’re dragging things out, I’ll get there ahead of them.’
Of course, Senka went with him – what else could he do? He couldn’t act scared like some girl. And he really did want to watch: this was serious stuff, a proper bandit meet, to decide who would be Ace of Moscow. How many people had ever seen something like that?
Naturally, they didn’t actually run there, that was just Sprat’s way of talking. The young bandit had a wad of cash in his pocket. They walked to Pokrovka Street, hired a cab and drove out of town to Luzhniki. Sprat promised the driver an extra rouble to drive like the wind. It took them twenty-three minutes – Sprat timed it with his silver watch.
The Cows’ Meadow was just that, a meadow – all yellow grass and burdock. On one side, across the river, were the Sparrow Hills, and on the other side was the Novodevichy Convent, with its vegetable gardens.
‘This is where they’ll have the meet, there’s no other option,’ said Sprat, pointing to a trampled bald patch where four paths came together. ‘They won’t go into the grass, there’s cowpats all over the place, they’ll get their shoes filthy. And that’s the barn right there.’
The barn was rotten – sneeze and it would collapse. It had been built once upon a time to store straw, but it wouldn’t stay standing much longer, that was clear. It was less than a stone’s throw from the bald patch, ten paces or maybe fifteen.
They climbed up the ladder into the loft, full of last year’s straw. Then they settled into the hideaway, pulling the ladder up after them, so no one would get inquisitive and come over.
Sprat glanced at his watch again and said: ‘Three and a half minutes past five. Almost two hours to go. Why don’t we play a hand or two, fifty kopecks a time?’
He pulled a deck of cards out of his pocket. Senka was so frightened his hands and feet were freezing, he had cold shivers running up and down his spine, and Sprat wanted to play cards!
‘I ain’t got any money.’
‘We can play flicks. Only straight ones, mind, no twisting, my head’s not that hard.’
As soon as they’d dealt the cards, they heard voices. Someone had come up from behind, from the direction of the railway.
Sprat put his eye to a crack and whispered: ‘Hey, Speedy, take a gander!’
There were three men walking round the barn. They looked like bandits all right, but Senka didn’t know them. One was huge, with big, broad shoulders and a small head, shaved clean; one was wearing a cap, but even from up there you could still see that his nose had caved in; the third was short, with long arms, and his jacket was buttoned right up.
‘The bastard,’ Sprat hissed right in Senka’s ear. ‘That’s what he’s up to! What a lousy cheat!’
The men came into the barn, but Senka and Sprat could still see them through the cracks in the ceiling. All three men lay down and covered themselves with straw.
‘Who’s a lousy cheat?’ Senka whispered. ‘Who are they?’
‘The Ghoul’s a lousy cheat, that’s who. Those are his fighters, from his deck. The big one’s Cudgel, the sixer. The one with no nose is Beak, he’s the eighter. And the little one’s Yoshka, the Jack. Ah, this is really bad. This’ll be the death of us.’
‘Why?’ Senka asked, frightened.
‘Yoshka’s no good in a fight, but he never misses with that gun of his. He used to work in a circus, snuffing candles out with bullets. If they brought Yoshka it means there’ll be shooting. But our two will have left their guns at home. And there’s no way to warn them . . .’
This news set Senka’s teeth chattering. ‘What’re we going to do?’
Sprat had turned all pale too. ‘Hell only knows . . .’
They just sat there, shaking. Time dragged by, then seemed to stop completely.
Down below it was quiet. Just once they heard a match being struck and caught a whiff of tobacco smoke, then someone hissed: ‘Cudgel, you ugly mug, d’you want to burn us alive? I’ll shoot you!’
There was silence again. And then, just before the clock struck seven, there was a metal click. Sprat mimed for Senka: that was the hammer being cocked.
Oh, this was really bad!
Two light carriages drove up to the bald spot from different directions.
Sitting on the box of one carriage – a classy number in red lacquer –was Deadeye, wearing a hat and a sandy-coloured three-piece suit, and holding a cane. The Prince was sprawled on the leather seat, smoking a papyrosa. He was done up like a dandy too, in a sky-blue shirt and thin scarlet belt.
Sitting on the box of the other carriage, which wasn’t as fancy as the first, but still pretty smart, was a woman with hands the size of ham hocks. Her fat red cheeks stuck out from the bright flowery shawl wrapped tight round her head. It looked as though two watermelons had been stuck down the front of her blouse – Senka had never seen breasts like that before. The Ghoul was riding behind, like the Prince. He looked pretty ordinary: stringy and balding, narrow snaky eyes, greasy hair hanging down like icicles. He was no eagle from the look of him, no way was he a match for the Prince.
They met in the middle of the bald patch, but didn’t bother shaking hands. The Ghoul lit up, and glared at the prince. Deadeye and the huge woman stood a bit farther back – Senka supposed that must be the way it was done.
‘Shall we kick up a racket, eh, Speedy?’ Sprat asked in a whisper.
‘But what if the Ghoul only put his men in the barn just in case? Because he was afraid the Prince might try something? Then it’s the shiv for you and me.’
Senka was really afraid of making a racket. What if that Yoshka started firing bullets through the ceiling?
Sprat whispered: ‘Who can tell. . . OK, let’s watch for a bit.’
The men in the meadow finished their papyroses and threw them away.
The Prince was the first to speak. ‘Why didn’t you come with your Jack?’
‘Yoshka’s teeth have been bothering him, his cheek’s swollen right up. And why do I need my Jack? I’m not afraid of you, Prince. You’re the one who’s scared of me. You brought Deadeye along. A woman’s a match for you.’
Manka chuckled in a loud, deep voice.
The Prince and Deadeye locked eyes once more. Senka saw Deadeye drum his fingers on his cane. Maybe they’d guessed there was something shady going on.
‘If you want to bring a woman, that’s your business.’ The Prince put his hands on his hips. ‘Lording it over women is all you’re good for. When I’m the ace, I’ll let you run the mamselles of Khitrovka. It’ll be just the job for you.’
The Ghoul didn’t rise to the bait, he just smiled and cracked his long fingers: ‘Of course, you, Prince, are an outstanding hold-up artist, a man on the make, but you’re still wet behind the ears. What kind of ace would you make? It’s barely five minutes since you got your deck together. And you’re far too reckless. Every last nark in Moscow’s after you, but I’m a safe pair of hands. Do the decent thing and stand down.’
The words were peaceable, but the voice was jeering – you could see he was riling the Prince, trying to wind him up.
The Prince said: ‘I soar like an eagle, but you scrounge like a jackal, you feed on carrion! You’re a fine talker but Moscow isn’t big enough for the two of us! You’ve got to be under me, or . . .’ And he slashed a finger across his throat.
The Ghoul licked his lips, cocked his head and said slowly, almost gently: ‘Or what, my little Prince? Be under you . . . or death, is that it? And what if that Death of yours has already been under me? She’s a handsome girl. Soft to lie on, springy, like a duck-down bed . . .’
Manka laughed again, and the Prince turned crimson – he knew what the Ghoul meant. And the Ghoul got what he wanted – he’d driven his enemy wild with fury.
The Prince lowered his head, howled like a wolf and went for the man who had insulted him.
But Manka and the Ghoul obviously had everything arranged. He jumped to the left and she jumped to the right, stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled.
Down below the hay rustled, a door banged and Yoshka flew from the barn, though the other two stayed put. He had a shooter in his hand – black, with a long barrel.
‘Stop right there!’ he cried. ‘Look this way. You know me, old friend, I never miss.’
The Prince froze on the spot.
‘So that’s how you operate, is it, Ghoul?’ he asked. ‘No respect for the rules?’
‘Quite correct, little my Princeling, quite correct. I’ve got brains, and the rules aren’t made for people like me. Now both of you get down on the ground. Get down, or Yoshka will shoot you.’
The Prince grinned, as if he thought that was funny. ‘You don’t have brains, Ghoul, you’re a fool. You’re no match for the Council. You’re done for now. I don’t have to do a thing, the grandfathers will do it all for me. Let’s lie down, Deadeye, and take a rest. The Ghoul’s condemned himself.’
And he lay down on his back, crossed one leg over the other and took out a papyrosa.
Deadeye looked at him, and trailed the toe of his low boot across the ground – he must have been feeling bad about his suit – and lay down too, on his side, his head propped on his hand and his cane by his side.
‘Well, now what?’ the Prince asked. Then, turning to Yoshka: ‘Fire away, my little sharpshooter. Do you know what our traditionalists do with rule-breakers like you? For a trick like this they’ll dig you out from wherever you hide, then stick you straight back in the ground again.’
The way this meet was turning out was weird. What with two men lying on the ground smiling, and three people standing there, just watching them.
Sprat whispered: ‘They don’t dare fire. They bury you alive for that, it’s the law.’
The Ghoul’s moll whistled again. Then Cudgel and Beak came dashing from the barn and pounced on the men on the ground: Cudgel dropped the entire weight of his carcass on the Prince, Beak turned Deadeye face down and neatly twisted his arms behind his back.
‘There you go, little Prince’ The Ghoul laughed. ‘Now Cudgel’s going to beat your brains out with his great big fist. And Beak’s going to smash your Jack’s ribs. And no one will ever know about the shooter. Simple as that. We’ll tell the Council we beat you up. Shame you couldn’t handle the Ghoul and his woman. Right, lads, smash ’em now!’
Suddenly there was this fierce yell – ‘A-a-a-a-gh!’ – right beside Senka’s ear.
Sprat launched himself up with his elbows, got to his knees and leapt straight down on to Yoshka’s shoulders, screeching as he went. He couldn’t hold on and went flying to the ground. Yoshka swung the handle of his gun and smashed it into Sprat’s temple – but that brief moment, when Cudgel and Beak turned towards the noise, was enough for the Prince and Deadeye. They pushed off their enemies and jumped to their feet.
‘I’ll let them have it, Ghoul!’ Yoshka shouted. ‘It didn’t work out like you planned! We can dig the bullets out afterwards! Maybe that’ll work.’
And then Senka surprised himself by screeching even louder than Sprat and jumping on to Yoshka’s back. He clung on for grim death, sinking his teeth into Yoshka’s ear. He felt a salty taste in his mouth.
Yoshka swung round, trying to shake the kid off, but he couldn’t. Senka bellowed, and kept ripping Yoshka’s ear with his teeth.
He couldn’t have held on for long, of course. But then Deadeye snatched his cane up off the ground and shook it, the wooden stick went flying off, and something long and steely glittered in the Jack’s hand.
Deadeye bounded towards Yoshka, bent one leg and stretched out the other, straightened out like a spring, and elongated himself, like a viper attacking. He snagged Yoshka with his blade – right in the heart – and Yoshka stopped waving his arms and tumbled over, with Senka underneath him. Senka escaped, and looked round to see what would happen next.
He was just in time to see the Prince tear himself out of Cudgel’s great mitts, take a run at Manka and smash his forehead into her chin – the enormous woman went down on her backside, sat there for a moment then collapsed. But the Prince had already taken the Ghoul by the throat and they went tumbling over and over, off the well-trodden path and into the grass, setting the dry stalks swaying furiously.
Cudgel was about to go and lend his King a hand, but Deadeye came flying up from behind, his left hand tucked behind his back and his right hand holding that pen – it was more than two feet long – swish-swish, backwards and forwards through the air, and there were red drops dripping off the steel.
‘Oh, do not leave me,’ he recited, ‘stay a while. I have loved you for so long. Let my fiery caresses scorch you . . .’
Senka knew those lines – they were from this song, a real tear-jerker it was.
Cudgel turned towards Deadeye, fluttered his eyelids and staggered backwards. Beak was quicker off the mark, he’d scarpered straight off. And then the Prince and the Ghoul came tumbling back on to the bald patch, only now you could see who was getting the best of it. The Prince twisted his enemy round, grabbed hold of his face and started hammering his head against the ground.
The Ghoul wheezed: ‘Enough, enough. You win! I’m a punk.’
That was a special kind of word. When anyone said that at a meet, you weren’t supposed to hit him any more. That was the law.
The Prince thumped him another couple of times, just to round things off, or maybe it was more than a couple – Senka didn’t watch the end. He was squatting down next to Sprat, watching crimson blood streaming out of the black hole in the side of his head. Sprat was as dead as a doornail – Yoshka had smashed his head in with his shooter.
*
After that the grandfathers spent four days trying to decide whether a meet like that could decide anything. They ruled that it couldn’t. Of course the Ghoul had cheated, but the Prince had blotted his copybook too: his Jack had come with a blade, and there were the two lads hiding in the barn. The Prince wasn’t fit to be ace yet, that was the verdict. Moscow would have to manage a bit longer without a thieves’ tsar.
The Prince went about in a fury, drinking all the time and threatening to put the Ghoul in the ground. There was no sign of the Ghoul, he was holed up somewhere, recovering from the treatment the Prince had doled out.
All Khitrovka was buzzing with sensational talk about the meet in Luzhniki.
And as for Speedy Senka, you could say these were golden days.
He was the Prince’s sixer now, all fully legit. For his heroism the deck gave him a handsome ration and total respect–you can imagine how the lads in Khitrovka treated him now.
Senka went round there about three times a day, as if he had important secret business, but really just to cut a dash. All of Sprat’s clothes went to him: the English cloth trousers with a crease in them, and the box calf boots, and the boulanger pea-jacket, and the captain’s cap with the lacquered peak, and the silver watch on a chain with the little silver skull. The lads came running from all over to shake hands with the hero or gape from a distance as he told his story.
Prokha, who used to teach Senka what was good sense and put on airs around him, looked into Senka’s eyes now and asked him in a quiet voice, so the others wouldn’t hear, to fix him up as a sixer somewhere, even with a really feeble deck. Senka listened condescendingly and promised to think about it.
Oh, but it felt good.
True enough, his pockets were as empty as before, but surely that would all change when the first job came along.
It came along soon, and a real hotshot job it was too.