Vladimir Anderson - Rimanoa

His appearance is the last thing many people will see before they die.....

The dark figure reached the middle of the room and turned toward the bed, where a man in his thirties and a pretty girl dwelt in deep sleep.

The unknown man pointed a gun in their direction. He didn't want to take the girl away at all, and he shouldn't have: according to the latest data, the object was alone in the apartment.

But in fact, there was a stranger in the room. A stranger who could easily be a witness. The old thought of success stabbed into my head like an arrow, "No witnesses."

His finger pulled the trigger six times, and there was one less living thing in this world.

With a shriek, the girl instantly woke up, "Don't kill me, please. Don't kill me, I beg you… I want to live…"

She's so young and beautiful, she's got her whole life ahead of her. Why kill her?

She's not gonna tell us anything anyway.

"Nowitnesses!!!" – rumbled a terrible thunder in the killer's head.

"Noooooo!" – wailed the victim, noticing the bottomless abyss in the shooter's eyes.

The bullet flew into the forehead, tumbled in it for a couple of moments and, flying out of the back of the head, crashed into the wall along with pieces of skull and drops of blood …

11:14 p.m. July 21.

"Where are we going?" – Giuseppe asked me as the back door of the Skoda Fabia slammed shut.

"To the pay phone," I replied and thought. – One more incident like this and I'm going to be a total paranoid freak. No, seriously, I can't even walk into a regular bar anymore. Or maybe I'm just getting too old for this job…"

We drove down Wilsonova Street, turned left, stopped, and the chauffeur's upraised hand showed me a pay phone.

54 year old Garibaldi is our 4th level employee in Prague (under the supervision of Jean Carlo LaScoltz ("Ambassador" of the Family in the Czech Republic)). A long time ago he worked as a cab driver, but after accidentally saving the life of one of our higher-ups, he joined the organization, went where it was "quieter", and now he drives people like me around the city. From the point of view of work, he was perfect: he didn't know much, didn't want to know much, had no memory for faces and names… And what else does a good driver need but good driving with good knowledge of the city – nothing.

"Hello."

"This is Faust (my call signs in the underworld)." "You're in Prague?"

"Yes."

"When by the way did you pri…" "Weren't you warned I was here?" "No, why?"

Robert Emerson was talking to me, you could understand it not even by his poor pronunciation (he could hardly speak Italian), but by his "smart" head (no one really had to know that I was in the Czech Republic), it's not clear how he got to Koza Nostra in the first place, perhaps because of an old friendship, though I doubt it – hell knows. "Yeah, nothing," I smiled into the phone.

"So. The Ambassador is sick…" "That's a real problem…"

"Yes. And we have a meeting…" "With who?"

"Some Morten…"

"Morten? The butcher who (with my dog job I managed to keep my sense of humor)?" "I don't know… Maybe…"

"So, what does he want?" "Meet…"

"That's it?"

"I don't know…"

"Ah…" the cell phone rang, "Okay, bye. "But…"

I hung up the phone, stepped out of the booth, and moved toward the car. "Hello."

"It's Richard."

Richard "Lionheart" (we all have weird nicknames) was sort of my personal dispatcher and his call was almost always a sign of a change of plans.

"What?"

"The ambassador is sick…" "That's news."

"He was supposed to meet with some goods carrier (felons talking on the phone sometimes resembles the chatter of toddlers in kindergarten)."

"Let me guess, he can't get out of bed and you want me to replace him…" "Yes."

"Where? In bed?" "No, at the meeting…"

Despite the fact that Richard had never killed anyone, he had no sense of humor at all. "Where do I have to go?"

"The ambassador will tell you himself. Everything." I turned my phone off.

"To the Ambassador, Jos."

"Whatever you say (he never argued, he just liked to ride)."

After getting a chance to sleep, I laid my head back on the seat and closed my eyes.

11:41 p.m. July 21.

"Faust, stop snoozing. We're here."

I opened my eyes and saw the driver in front of me and Nerudova Street outside the window: this was where LaScolza lived. When I got out of the car and crossed the road, I pressed the bell. The door was opened by Jarno Galanzio (he didn't need a nickname), one of the landlord's ten bodyguards (he hadn't changed at all in the six years I hadn't seen him).

He was still as tall, muscular, with fire in his eyes. His most terrible disadvantage in the physical sense was a slight lethargy at those moments when the situation at the

"shooters" was heated to the limit and the shooting started. So he was the last to know about the fact that everything had gone wrong… But he opened fire with a frenzy. You should see it. A big "eagle" fires like a man possessed, screaming all over "Ivanovskaya" and never hits anyone: all the bullets seem to fly in the wrong direction on purpose. And it's not that he didn't want to hit and aimed too badly, it's just that during such "eruptions" of emotions and adrenaline, his hands shook a lot, and consequently the weapon in these hands. In general, he is not a bad guy, but he takes his work too close to his heart and considers Koza-Nostra his direct family, probably because he has no family of his own. The organization simply pulled him out of the orphanage when he was seventeen and made him their "son".

He led me down a long corridor, stopped suddenly and pointed to a small door on the right: "The boss has moved in there for a while. I opened it and saw Jean Carlo lying on a disassembled sofa.

Usually a very formidable and strong-willed man without a single trace of insecurity in his voice, who always gave the right commands left and right, was now lying in bed almost helplessly. LaSkoltza knew how to find the right "warm" approach to each of his subordinates, so that he not only did a good job, but put his heart into it (possessing a wonderful talent – finding the "golden mean" between "carrot and stick"). He was very often directly involved in some cases, thus encouraging the guys. Three times the Ambassador was in critical condition after shootings, and each time, when his life seemed to be over, he had a second breath. Such people can be "waterboarded" for the rest of their lives, so the fact of his illness surprised me very much.

"Oh, I greet you Faust, come closer. – I entered, closed the door, and approached the sofa as requested. – That's it… well – he coughed, along with rusty wheezes and extraneous noises, it was clear to a fool (I emphasize, only to a fool) that it was pneumonia – at the hour of the meeting… you see… I can't, you see for yourself.... – he pointed to his throat – and you are the highest rank after me in all Bohemia at the moment – a smile spread on his face – yes… I remember myself the same way… Well, go… Cepino will explain everything – the cough was coming out of him.