Read Online Katja from the Punk Band by Simon Logan - Free Book Online
Authors: Simon Logan
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tells her. “I have to meet with someone first. You don’t have any other plans do you?”
Katja sneers.
“Let’s just get this over with,” she says.
PART FOUR
KOHL
CHAPTER TWELVE
The thing is, when you’re summoned by Szerynski, you go to him. You don’t really have a choice in the matter. There is no, “Maybe later.” There is no “I can’t, I’m busy.” And there is certainly no “Fuck off, I’ve got better things to do be doing with my time.”
There is only:
“Yes, Mr. Szerynski.”
So Kohl, that’s what he says, into the phone. “Yes, Mr. Szerynski.”
And when he presses a button to hang up the phone, he adds this:
“Fuck.”
Then he picks up the phone again and puts it to his ear. He wants to make sure he hung it up properly and that Szerynski didn’t hear that last comment.
The line is dead.
He hits the on/off button just to make sure. Static hums in his ears and there is no Szerynski.
He checks once more, just to be absolutely certain.
Spread out across the table before him are dozens, if not hundreds, of little pieces of metal and plastic. There are coils, springs, washers, and ball bearings. There are round knobs and angular ones. There are little spikes and there are rods of varying length. Most of them are scattered around the surface but there are some that he’s already arranged into neat piles. He’s categorizing them by size and type and material, having emptied them from the dozens of little drawers of the cabinet that stores them. They were already organized before he took them out but he performs this procedure every once in a while anyway.
It calms him.
He moves the coils to one side, separates them out depending on size, but then he finds that there are some of different size to every other coil there and that will not do. He needs even numbers. That’s what makes sense.
Odd numbers are . . . odd.
He shoves all the coils back into the main pile, losing them again to the other pieces of metal. Decides he will need to find another method of organization.
Weight?
Shape?
Reflectivity?
Something that will fit them all into place. Something that will make sense.
But there’s no time, Szerynski has summoned him. He must go.
He tightens the red-tinted goggles over his glaucoma-shot eyes, then quickly pushes all the fragments on the table into a single pile in the middle. He adjusts the pile minutely until it is as close to a perfect circle as he can manage, pokes the final few pieces that stick out.
It will have to do.
He puts on an old biker jacket, the symbols and patches of which have become worn and tattered, tells Misha that he is going out for a while. She is stretched out on the couch in the hallway, her oiled and muscled legs draped over the couch’s arm as she performs crunching sit-ups. Grunts at him.
Szerynski’s hole is ten blocks away and by the time Kohl gets there, his legs are wet up to the calves from the rainwater puddling the streets. The hole is actually a multi-storey garage with automated shutters instead of doors, and instead of windows, hatches large enough to crane cars out of. Automobile corpses are stacked three high on either side of the entrance and Kohl knows from past experience that Szerynski will have one of his men hidden in them.
He hits a buzzer and a moment later a shutter is opened at eye level and then there is the painful grinding sound of the door being opened.
The man who greets Kohl is like a bagful of meat. He probably once had a firm, muscular figure but for whatever reason his body has relaxed now, giving the effect of a melting sculpture.
“My name is Vladimir Kohl. I’m here to see Mr. Szerynski. He is expecting me.”
And as he is led inside, Kohl finds himself thinking about the pile of arcade machine pieces lying on his workbench. He thinks of the errant pieces that stick out at the sides and feels a desperate need to return and fix them.
“This way.”
Melting Man leads Kohl through the
Katja sneers.
“Let’s just get this over with,” she says.
PART FOUR
KOHL
CHAPTER TWELVE
The thing is, when you’re summoned by Szerynski, you go to him. You don’t really have a choice in the matter. There is no, “Maybe later.” There is no “I can’t, I’m busy.” And there is certainly no “Fuck off, I’ve got better things to do be doing with my time.”
There is only:
“Yes, Mr. Szerynski.”
So Kohl, that’s what he says, into the phone. “Yes, Mr. Szerynski.”
And when he presses a button to hang up the phone, he adds this:
“Fuck.”
Then he picks up the phone again and puts it to his ear. He wants to make sure he hung it up properly and that Szerynski didn’t hear that last comment.
The line is dead.
He hits the on/off button just to make sure. Static hums in his ears and there is no Szerynski.
He checks once more, just to be absolutely certain.
Spread out across the table before him are dozens, if not hundreds, of little pieces of metal and plastic. There are coils, springs, washers, and ball bearings. There are round knobs and angular ones. There are little spikes and there are rods of varying length. Most of them are scattered around the surface but there are some that he’s already arranged into neat piles. He’s categorizing them by size and type and material, having emptied them from the dozens of little drawers of the cabinet that stores them. They were already organized before he took them out but he performs this procedure every once in a while anyway.
It calms him.
He moves the coils to one side, separates them out depending on size, but then he finds that there are some of different size to every other coil there and that will not do. He needs even numbers. That’s what makes sense.
Odd numbers are . . . odd.
He shoves all the coils back into the main pile, losing them again to the other pieces of metal. Decides he will need to find another method of organization.
Weight?
Shape?
Reflectivity?
Something that will fit them all into place. Something that will make sense.
But there’s no time, Szerynski has summoned him. He must go.
He tightens the red-tinted goggles over his glaucoma-shot eyes, then quickly pushes all the fragments on the table into a single pile in the middle. He adjusts the pile minutely until it is as close to a perfect circle as he can manage, pokes the final few pieces that stick out.
It will have to do.
He puts on an old biker jacket, the symbols and patches of which have become worn and tattered, tells Misha that he is going out for a while. She is stretched out on the couch in the hallway, her oiled and muscled legs draped over the couch’s arm as she performs crunching sit-ups. Grunts at him.
Szerynski’s hole is ten blocks away and by the time Kohl gets there, his legs are wet up to the calves from the rainwater puddling the streets. The hole is actually a multi-storey garage with automated shutters instead of doors, and instead of windows, hatches large enough to crane cars out of. Automobile corpses are stacked three high on either side of the entrance and Kohl knows from past experience that Szerynski will have one of his men hidden in them.
He hits a buzzer and a moment later a shutter is opened at eye level and then there is the painful grinding sound of the door being opened.
The man who greets Kohl is like a bagful of meat. He probably once had a firm, muscular figure but for whatever reason his body has relaxed now, giving the effect of a melting sculpture.
“My name is Vladimir Kohl. I’m here to see Mr. Szerynski. He is expecting me.”
And as he is led inside, Kohl finds himself thinking about the pile of arcade machine pieces lying on his workbench. He thinks of the errant pieces that stick out at the sides and feels a desperate need to return and fix them.
“This way.”
Melting Man leads Kohl through the
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