Page 107 of Violent Possession

“...Okay...” he says.

“Think Robin Hood with brass knuckles.”

“I got the beatdown part.”

“Right. So. The leader was a...complicatedguy. Charismatic. Disappeared years ago. I’m trying to find out if anyone from the old guard is still around.”

“And what does that have to do with John the Baptist?”

“Asaint, Marcus. The people—the ones who didn’t get hit with the crowbar—they’d say it was the work of a saint. ‘Thank God.’ ‘You’re an angel.’” I stare at him. “...Nothing?”

“Griffin, I don’t know what fucking anarcho-commune phase you went through back then, but those people don’t last.”

I ignore him. “They had a way of doing things. They solved problems no one else could. Brought the bourgeoisie to their knees. You’ve never heard of a group like that?”

Marcus rubs his face, looking exhausted. “Every now and then, you hear some weird stories. Unexplained things. A loan shark who disappears off the map, a blackmailed politician who’s suddenly left in peace...”

“You don’t know any specific stories?”

Marcus thinks. It’s a rare event, so I let him have his moment.

“Ah... there was Karpov. He was always getting into trouble. One time it was bad with some Albanians. A debt he could never pay off. Everyone was betting he’d turn up floating in the river.”

“And?”

“And nothing. That was it. Overnight, the debt disappeared.”

I lean back against the post. This is too vague.

“He didn’t pay? There was no money trail, no favor, nothing?”

Marcus shrugs, and then stops, his brow furrowed. “Ah, there was one weird thing. There was an old tailor, a German named Schmidt, who was about to lose his shop. The building owner wanted to kick him out, tripled the rent, wanted to sell the place to a construction company. Then Karpov, who hasnothingto do with the fucking neighborhood, called the building owner. No one knows what he said. But Schmidt’s lease was renewed for a few years at the same old price. Nobody understood a fucking thing.”

A tailor shop. The kind of place Alexei mentioned.

I stand up, throwing the cigarette away. “I think that’ll do,” I say to myself.

“Do what? Griffin, where are you going?” Marcus asks, panic returning to his voice.

“I have to go,” I say, already walking away.

“For God’s sake, stay away from the hospital! The place must be crawling with Malakov’s men!”

I don’t even turn around. The hospital is a noisy trap. The tailor, on the other hand...

“Why are you limping?!Griffin!”

I have a visit to make.

The pathto Schmidt’s tailor shop is a microcosm of the city. The asphalt looks like it was spit out on purpose, cracked and with the dignity of a forgotten battlefield, but maybe that’s just my projection. The place emanates a kind of miserable dignity.

I hear the rapid taps of my shoes against the concrete, the whir of the new arm synchronized with my heart rate, the pain from the bullet that hasn’t even had time to heal in my thigh, and the constant feeling that I’m going to find a piece of myself that was left behind on these streets. This is no man’s land, the purgatory of the wretched, the intermediate kingdom where everyone just wants to make it to the end of the day alive.

The progression becomes automatic, as if my body knows the route by heart—turn left at the graffitied alley, jump over the puddle of oil with a rainbow on the sidewalk, dodge the homeless man who always asks for a cigarette, even though he knows no one will give him one.

It’s impossible not to feel the eyes; the gaze of those who recognize their own kind. An addict sitting in the doorway of a ruined hardware store watches me with a priestly respect. An old prostitute with purple-dyed hair assesses my appearance and deduces in two seconds that I’m not a client. Here, my prosthesisand my bruises only make me more legible; I’m just another variant of the survivor.

The “Schmidt’s Tailor Shop” sign is unlit, the window covered in dust. The mannequin on display must have been white once—now it’s a dirty gray, and the suit it wears is so old that if anyone wore it, they’d be stoned for obsolescence.