The Boss certainly took on the enemy, though not in an overtly aggressive fashion. He was more discreet, more subtle, more specific in his methods. He had always known, even as a child growing up—or more like existing—in the cold cabin outside the town of Minsk in Belarus, that he was destined for better things. No forest cabin for him, no logging trees, risking life and limb with a power saw; no dragging great lumps of wood still oozing sap onto a tractor so old it no longer functioned and was pulled instead by two donkeys with long faces like biblical animals in Renaissance frescoes. There was just something about those donkeys that made Boris think that, like in the paintings, they should have golden halos over their heads. Sometimes there was an unexpected tenderness in him, odd in such a brutal man.
The donkeys worked hard, were obedient to his commands, alert when he gave them food, drank from the stone trough when he permitted them to stop, thin sides shivering, ribs sticking out. Until one day they were not pulling hard anymore, their heads drooped with weariness, too weak to go on. He shot them where they stood, butchered them, sold the meat door-to-door in the town as fresh venison. Nobody knew the difference, or if they did they never said because Boris was intimidating, with his height, his massive build, his intense dark stare.
It wasn’t long before he realized the power that stare and his very presence brought to any scene, whether it was the local market or the city streets. He was from a poor family who’d given him a brief education and strived to elevate him in society. He would certainly have become moderately successful, a big fish in a small pond, but the one element in Boris’s character that no one perceived but himself was that he was capable of doing anything. Anything at all to further his ascent into the larger world he knew existed and that he wanted to be part of. More than part of; he wanted to own it. As he wanted to own the women in his life. Besides, he enjoyed intimidating women, liked to see fear in their eyes. It pleased him. There was only one way to leave, and it was not out the front door.
It had taken several years existing in a number of Ukrainian towns, then on through Poland, Hungary, Croatia, and ultimately France, before he achieved his goals. And the place where he was most comfortable, of all the homes he owned, was the sprawling villa overlooking the Mediterranean in the hills in the South of France. Which is where he was now, in Antibes, at the café, sipping a lemonade iced just sufficiently to his taste, awaiting the arrival of the man known merely as “the Russian.”
Everybody in the Boss’s world had a name that was not the one they were given by their parents at birth. Those were long forgotten, buried like their enemies, or their victims, long ago. The Boss had given up carrying out any such distasteful tasks himself. Now, he employed men like the Russian to do them for him.
But the Russian was late. The Boss tapped his fingers impatiently on the table and the waiter popped up immediately next to him. He waved him off as he saw the Russian wending his way through the tables to where he was sitting.
He was a plain man, undistinguished in any way, which was crucial to his job. Nobody ever recognized him, nobody so much as remembered him. Medium height, medium hair, maybe receding a bit, glasses sometimes with wire rims, sometimes horn-rims, sometimes no rims at all. Often a Panama hat, open-neck shirt, never a tie unless it was a city job. Inexpensive jacket but not too obviously cheap, after all he made good money doing what he did. Didn’t like to flaunt it on the job, was all.
He took a seat opposite the Boss, offered his hand, which the Boss did not shake. Stung, the Russian called over the waiter, ordered a dirty martini, two olives. It was barely eleven-thirty A.M. and the Boss did not like it. A man who drank could be a dangerous man. He waved the waiter back, canceled the order, said to bring a double espresso and be sharp about it.
The Russian made no complaint, he knew better. He sat quietly, listening, as the Boss told him what he wanted done.
“There is a house in the hills nearby. In fact you can see it from here.” He pointed across the arc of the bay to the greenery beyond, and a glimpse of a pink stucco villa. “In that house is a painting. Small. The artist’s name is Turner. The woman who owned the house died recently.”
The Russian nodded. He knew about Jolly Matthews’s death.
“I immediately made an offer to buy the whole property, the hectares of land adjoining it, plus the contents, including artworks, most of which in my mind are worthless, but that the old woman enjoyed all her life. She was a social acquaintance, known to all as Aunt Jolly though her real name was Juliet Matthews. When she passed, I made contact with the legal representatives of the heir, a woman by the name of Mirabella Matthews. A writer of some kind of entertaining novels.” The Boss was a snob about both art and literature, though he scarcely read anything other than the local newspaper, the Nice-Matin, and the Wall Street Journal.
“The heir, through her representative, has refused to sell. I wish to build a fourteen-story condo on that property. I increased my offer considerably. Meanwhile, through subtle means, I found out the details of the contents, and that the one piece of real value is that painting. I want it for my collection. I cannot get it by legal means. Therefore, I am asking you to take care of this task for me.”