Read Online Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) by Justin Robinson - Free Book Online
Authors: Justin Robinson
Tags: Humor, Fiction, detective, thriller, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Murder, Noir, Occult, conspiracy
Ads: Link
it was time to get a little more hands- on.
I drove back across town to V.E.N.U.S. headquarters, a big Craftsman mansion on Mount Washington, to warn them about what might be coming their way. Memories being what they are, it was tough not to smile a little, since that’s where Mina first realized I was something more than just a creep hitting on her. Of course, it caused her to beat me up, but what are you going to do?
I pulled up at the gate and the grin vanished. Out front was a Realtor’s sign. V.E.N.U.S. headquarters was abandoned.
[4]
NOT CONTENT TO JUST ACCEPT MY DEFEAT, I actually looked around a little, wandering around property I had once broken into. Gone. Even the garden, which had once been a series of terraces mimicking different environments, had been torn up and replaced with local plants. The concrete porch where the leaders had once lounged was bare. The house was cool, dark, and echoey. I kept thinking if I walked around the whole place, the command structure of V.E.N.U.S. would emerge from hiding, although having a hiding spot large enough for all of them seemed a bit of a stretch.
Served me right. I had been retired for a full year. Not exactly shocking that a secret society might pull up stakes and move after the place had been turned into a shooting gallery, even if it was hard to picture one of those terrestrial cetaceans V.E.N.U.S. called leaders actually moving. I got back in my car and stared at the gate, trying to will a conspiracy into existence.
I had been trying to ignore what the evidence was saying, mostly because it was too scary to really entertain, but I’d foolishly thought of V.E.N.U.S. as a bunch of whales, opening up the free association floodgate. There was another connection between the name “Nicky Zorotovich,” Neil Greene, Mina, Oana, and this place: Russian Mob boss Vassily “the Whale” Zhukovsky. Other than once trying to hire me to kill Mina, he also knew Neil and Oana from their time in a short-lived cabal whose purpose seemed primarily to betray one another. Vassily didn’t like me much after I tricked him into getting ruthlessly probed by the Little Green Men, and he hated Mina just as much after she led him to this place and a date with a firing squad.
Even though he must have eaten sixty bullets from V.E.N.U.S. guards, he didn’t go down. The guy was plain impossible to kill. There were legends throughout the Information Underground about his resilience. The bear-punching incident. The atomic wrestling match. The bomb-eating contest. I was there for the raygun shootout. Half of them had to be made up, but from the sheer size of the guy, you believed the stories. No one had yet figured out the way to kill Vassily, and personally I suspected it would have something to do with Mecha-Vassily.
Mina’s frame-up and Neil’s murder seemed a little too subtle to be one of Vassily’s plans, but maybe he’d turned over a new leaf. The fact is, I didn’t know enough about Mina’s case to make a determination. That was a situation I had to rectify and I hoped I knew how.
I dialed a number. “Hey, it’s me. I need a favor. A couple police reports.” Joel’s voice was quiet and a little surprised, but she was as helpful as ever. We arranged to meet at a bar not far from where I was. It was getting on toward the evening, so the regulars would give me a little protective coloration.
On the stereo: “Strychnine” by the Sonics.
Considering the name, you might think it’s all about the Assassins, or with the “water, wine” rhyme scheme, maybe the Merovingians. Nope. They’re talking about a crew of narchemists from down south who were big shit in the early ’90s. They were a combination of CIA psych-ops, turncoat DEA, corrupt local Mexican law enforcement, and cartel chemists. If there was a designer drug you heard about messing up heads, they were ultimately behind it, all for some weird claptrap about enlightenment and a
I drove back across town to V.E.N.U.S. headquarters, a big Craftsman mansion on Mount Washington, to warn them about what might be coming their way. Memories being what they are, it was tough not to smile a little, since that’s where Mina first realized I was something more than just a creep hitting on her. Of course, it caused her to beat me up, but what are you going to do?
I pulled up at the gate and the grin vanished. Out front was a Realtor’s sign. V.E.N.U.S. headquarters was abandoned.
[4]
NOT CONTENT TO JUST ACCEPT MY DEFEAT, I actually looked around a little, wandering around property I had once broken into. Gone. Even the garden, which had once been a series of terraces mimicking different environments, had been torn up and replaced with local plants. The concrete porch where the leaders had once lounged was bare. The house was cool, dark, and echoey. I kept thinking if I walked around the whole place, the command structure of V.E.N.U.S. would emerge from hiding, although having a hiding spot large enough for all of them seemed a bit of a stretch.
Served me right. I had been retired for a full year. Not exactly shocking that a secret society might pull up stakes and move after the place had been turned into a shooting gallery, even if it was hard to picture one of those terrestrial cetaceans V.E.N.U.S. called leaders actually moving. I got back in my car and stared at the gate, trying to will a conspiracy into existence.
I had been trying to ignore what the evidence was saying, mostly because it was too scary to really entertain, but I’d foolishly thought of V.E.N.U.S. as a bunch of whales, opening up the free association floodgate. There was another connection between the name “Nicky Zorotovich,” Neil Greene, Mina, Oana, and this place: Russian Mob boss Vassily “the Whale” Zhukovsky. Other than once trying to hire me to kill Mina, he also knew Neil and Oana from their time in a short-lived cabal whose purpose seemed primarily to betray one another. Vassily didn’t like me much after I tricked him into getting ruthlessly probed by the Little Green Men, and he hated Mina just as much after she led him to this place and a date with a firing squad.
Even though he must have eaten sixty bullets from V.E.N.U.S. guards, he didn’t go down. The guy was plain impossible to kill. There were legends throughout the Information Underground about his resilience. The bear-punching incident. The atomic wrestling match. The bomb-eating contest. I was there for the raygun shootout. Half of them had to be made up, but from the sheer size of the guy, you believed the stories. No one had yet figured out the way to kill Vassily, and personally I suspected it would have something to do with Mecha-Vassily.
Mina’s frame-up and Neil’s murder seemed a little too subtle to be one of Vassily’s plans, but maybe he’d turned over a new leaf. The fact is, I didn’t know enough about Mina’s case to make a determination. That was a situation I had to rectify and I hoped I knew how.
I dialed a number. “Hey, it’s me. I need a favor. A couple police reports.” Joel’s voice was quiet and a little surprised, but she was as helpful as ever. We arranged to meet at a bar not far from where I was. It was getting on toward the evening, so the regulars would give me a little protective coloration.
On the stereo: “Strychnine” by the Sonics.
Considering the name, you might think it’s all about the Assassins, or with the “water, wine” rhyme scheme, maybe the Merovingians. Nope. They’re talking about a crew of narchemists from down south who were big shit in the early ’90s. They were a combination of CIA psych-ops, turncoat DEA, corrupt local Mexican law enforcement, and cartel chemists. If there was a designer drug you heard about messing up heads, they were ultimately behind it, all for some weird claptrap about enlightenment and a
Similar Books
