To Kill the Duke (41 page)

When Boris’ secretary came in with the cable, Boris’ eyes lit up.

“Read it to me,” he ordered.

She took a deep breath and read the message that Alexei Alexandra and Ivan Viznapu has sent him.

“A fish with no eyes is fsh,” she stammered, because she had no idea how one was supposed to pronounce fsh; not to mention having no idea what that message meant. For in a world of spying, where messages were many, this one made absolutely no sense to her.

“Dismissed!” Boris yelled out as he waved her out of his office. “Leave the cable, though.”

And she placed the cable on his desk and quickly exited her superior’s office.

Toughski shitski
he thought. He knew the cable was bad news all around. “Lousy pun means lousy results at killing John Wayne.” He said softly. Now he had to go to Mr. Zavert and inform him. He gathered up the message and went to his file cabinet. He pulled out the incredibly large file on the operation that just wasn’t going nearly as well as everything else he had touched since he was promoted, and he headed upstairs to Mr. Zavert’s office. At this point, the only good thing about being Boris Gila was that he didn’t have to make an appointment to see Mr. Zavert. Once inside Mr. Zavert’s huge office, it would only be a few seconds before Boris was allowed entry. About half way to Mr. Zavert’s, Boris decided to try to convince Mr. Zavert to scrap the mission to kill the Duke, call back Alexei and Ivan and find something a lot easier, productive and less expensive for his two men.

He arrived in Mr. Zavert’s office and sat down. The secretary nodded to him and pushed a button on the intra-office telephone.

“Go on in, comrade Gila,” the secretary later motioned to Boris.

“Someday, I will figure out how you two communicate so quickly and silently,” he said to her with a smile.

“No you won’t,” she replied.

“Comrade Gila,” Mr. Zavert said as he rose from behind his mammoth wooden desk to greet Boris. He grasped both of Boris’ hands in his own and pumped them up and down.

“I have failed you. I have failed the party and I have failed Russia,” Gila said softly.

Mr. Zavert stopped pumping Boris’ hands, but gripped them tighter.

“Anything I love more than winning is someone who takes responsibility,” Mr. Zavert said. “You know if this were ancient Rome I would be telling you to go home and fall on your sword.”

“I know. I know,” Boris said. “Would that make it easier?”

“Of course not, comrade. Just idle talk. I see you have brought something. Care to share?” Mr. Zavert asked.

“Trying to kill John Wayne isn’t working and won’t work,” Boris said directly.

“I know they failed. But they have only tried once, comrade. I trained you to be patient… so be patient. The mission stays on as planned,” Mr. Zavert said coolly.

“How do you know they failed? No one else has seen the cable,” Boris said.

“I am not like everyone else. Besides, I didn’t read an obituary in
The New York Times or The Washington Post
about Wayne being killed. Furthermore nothing came over the BBC or any of the wire services. Tell our boys to hurry up. My superiors are itching for this to happen and I’m telling you to
make
it happen. Do not even try to get me to scrap this mission,” Mr. Zavert said.

Boy, is he good,
Boris thought.

“Keep up the good work, Boris, and bring me the pun that we both long for,” Mr. Zavert said.

“Yes, comrade,”
I will
, Boris hoped as he walked back to his office remembering that he now had to send a pun back to Alexei and Ivan that would be coded, but would mean that the mission was to press on.

This is the pun that Alexei received when he returned to the international cable office: “A new type of broom came out, it is sweeping the nation.”

And Alexei knew this meant to keep on trying. He walked to the nearest phone booth to call Ivan at
Seven Zeros
. As he was entering the phone booth he heard someone yelling in his direction. He turned towards the direction of the loud voice. Surprisingly, it was the leader of the boys he had taught a lesson to. A lesson they had obviously learned. For you see, the boys were all wearing aprons and either sweeping up in front of the grocery keepers’ store, stocking items to be sold out front or washing the
windows. Alexei turned and saluted them. He then retired into the phone booth and called his partner to tell him about the pun.

“What do we do next?” Ivan asked Alexei.

“Continue to work on our gangster movie and put together another mission to take out Wayne. We underestimated what was going to happen on that prank and overestimated our own clout,” Alexei said.

“I am depressed Alexei, really depressed,” Ivan said with a sigh as they met for the day at their production office.

“I know. We should have been able to carry out our duty to Boris, Stalin and of course to Mr. Zavert,” Alexei said.

“Not about that. Our movie is going to be a real piece of shit,” Ivan said.

“I forgot about our movie,” Alexei said.

“Let’s go to the set and see if we can’t turn it around,” Ivan said.

“While we are there, let me tell Johnny Stomp we need another favor from his girlfriend,” Alexei said.

“Can’t we just stake out Wayne and kill him?” Ivan asked.

“I think the only thing more difficult than that would be trying to stake out Mr. Zavert and kill him,” Alexei said as he ushered his partner out the door.

They arrived at the set; immediately Ivan went to find Barney, and Alexei went to find Johnny.

Ivan was lucky and Alexei was not. Barney pointed out all the things that were going wrong with the set, not to mention the people that he was being forced to work with, and of course the disappearing costumes and props.

“At least the food budget hasn’t been ransacked,” Ivan noted.

“That’s because I got smart, Ivan,” Barney said. “After the first few days of eating high-end Italian specialties, I had the caterer stop those delicacies and just bring in tuna fish, egg salad, peanut butter and jelly with potato chips.”

“If Boris knew that…,” Ivan joked to Barney.

“It was good pay-back,” Barney said.

“Toughski shitski for
their
taste buds,” Ivan joked. “Is Stompananto around?”

Barney shook his head.

“Let’s get shooting,” Ivan said to Barney. They both walked back to the set and started going over the scene that Barney was working on.

Alexei was shocked in more ways than one when he couldn’t find Stompanato on the set… especially since it was a scene that Johnny Stomp had written especially for their movie. After looking around and asking Johnny’s friends where he was, a rather tough looking, well-dressed but short man asked about his interest in Johnny Stompanato. Alexei had never seen this man before and thought he might be someone they didn’t want nosing around.

He was right on that, which is what shocked him.

“My name is Mickey Cohen,” said the man extending his hand. Johnny has nothing but nice things to say about you, Alexei.”

Alexei shook his hand and said “And Johnny has said nothing but nice things about you, Mr. Cohen.”

Mickey Cohen: If Alexei Aleksandra would have been living in America in the early 1950’s he would have watched the television news’ live broadcasts of the Senate Select Committee on Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, better known as the Kefauver Committee from Washington, D.C., and he would have found out that most Americans
didn’t
say nice things about Mickey Cohen. And, why should they? Except for a few bouts as a prizefighter in his early teens, Mickey Cohen was the epitome of an American mobster. From running liquor for his brother to enforcing for Al Capone and setting up big-time gambling operations in Las Vegas — Mickey Cohen had done it all. And doing it all for the Mafia meant killing, cheating, lying, maiming, robbing, extorting and evading. Believe it or not, it was the evading that got Mickey in trouble after he succeeded Bugsy Siegel as the head of the West Coast mob. But it wasn’t evading trouble that got Mickey thrown in jail — after all, when he had found out that Bugsy was dead and received a tip where the hit-men where, Mickey tucked two .45 handguns into his waist and went to the lobby shooting up the place — demanding that the killers of his friend come down and face him. For obvious reasons, they didn’t and Mickey went to prison for evading his taxes.

The American Mafia works very efficiently, especially when one of its bosses is in jail. Mickey Cohen still ran everything from his jail cell, because he trusted captains like Johnny Stompanato to look out for everyone’s best interest.

But now Mickey was out of prison and checking out how Johnny Stomps’ movie-making venture was going.

“Lots of broads around here,” Cohen said to Alexei.

“Hollywood is full of broads… lots of them,” Alexei agreed.

“I don’t like a business that has so many broads around, unless it’s a whorehouse,” Mickey said with a laugh. “Let’s take a walk where we can talk.”

And Alexei automatically knew that he was taking on a new partner. Because in big-time Hollywood, the mob and movies were as close as peanut butter and jelly, and no one knew how to work it better than Mickey Cohen.

The mob knew unions. The mob owned unions. The mob knew movies couldn’t be made without unions, so they extorted money and favors, but mostly money, from the men who ran the studios. If they gave out Oscars for mobsters who knew how to do the aforementioned, Mickey Cohen would have won many Oscars. However, Mickey Cohen was interested in making money, not winning awards, and like many American mobsters he loved his money so much he never paid his taxes, so he was sent to prison where, with the help of Stompanato, he kept control but lost a ton of money.

“Know what the worst thing about being in jail is, kid?” Cohen asked Alexei.

Alexei knew jails, because of what he was back in Russia. He knew that no matter how much Americans complained about their penal system, that it couldn’t even come close to being as horrific as the penal system in Communist countries. He shook his head no.

“When you come out, they are watching you,” Mickey said.

The famous “they” that Americans are always referring too
, he thought as he continued to keep a watchful eye out on his investment, on Ivan, and on finding Johnny for setting up the next hit on Wayne.
Amazing that even a powerful man like this believes in conspiracies
, Alexei mused.

“The fucking Feds and the IRS won’t leave me alone!” Cohen shouted to Alexei.

And Alexei now knew that Cohen wasn’t a conspiracy buff. He was literally being watched by the government at every turn, because the government wanted every penny that was owed to them by any man like Mickey Cohen.

“I need to make some money,” Cohen said with a shrug. “Legit money,” he added.

“That’s the only way it would be with us, Mr. Cohen,” Alexei said.

“Call me Mickey,” said Mickey. “Can we walk down the street and find a nice, quiet bar that has a nice, quiet booth where we can have a nice, quiet talk?”

“Lead the way, Mickey,” Alexei said, obviously knowing that Cohen had thought this out and had a place in mind.

“Johnny has learned his lessons well,” Mickey said as they arrived at a bar and he gestured to the booth he wanted Alexei sitting in.