“What’s with the Armenian?”
“We picked him up the other night. His file’s lying over there on the desk.”
The ginger-haired man in a flannel sports jacket ambles bow-legged over to the massive mahogany writing table and begins peeling off one 9×12 manilla envelope after another from atop a tottering foot-high stack that looks as if its distended and disjointed layers could topple over and disgorge an endless clutter of looseleaf photocopies, dogeared court documents, and black-and-white glossy mugshots onto the dirty hardwood floor of the small office.
But the man, whose small squinting eyes have narrowed machinelike in their attention to the rapid-fire movement of his nimble freckled hands, appears oblivious to such an outcome.
Each folder, coffee-stained, cracked at the corners, or split down the middle from the pressure of its bulging contents, is snatched up, tossed aside, or deftly nudged from its position in the stack with the skill of a magician or a casino croupier.
“Here it is –The Half Guinea.”
“Yeah, that’s what he apparently calls himself,” says the other man, whose face remains shielded behind the fully extended folds of a cheaply printed newspaper he sits reading, the soles of his leather-shod feet facing out across the desk top, while his dark-green fedora peeks just slightly over the top of the newspaper pages.
“Pandering and procuring of a minor for the purpose of prostitution, operating an establishment that sells alcoholic beverages without a license, attempted statutory rape…”
“Yeah, that was an African girl – the son-of-a-bitch tried to take her right outside a Catholic Church…”
“… vagrancy, writing bad checks, and the sale, distribution, and serving of contraband meat…”
“That might have been before your time. This joker used to be the grill man for a dive over on Yaroslavska Street, not far from the cinema.”
“It was run by a Jewish woman.”
“Yeah – so what?”
The ginger-haired man drops the folder onto the desk and carries the document with the list of charges – like a freshly printed manuscript that he does not want to smudge – over to the glass window beyond which sits a swarthy, middle aged Mediterranean man in a three-quarter length black leather jacket and green corduroy trousers.
Apparently sensing the presence of someone observing him on the other side of the glass, he removes his head from between his brown rough-hewn hands and attempts a knowing if somewhat self-conscious smile.
His large dark eyes flash brightly beneath the ceiling lamp dangling just overhead. Then, as if remembering something, he lowers his gaze and clasps his fingers together, as if to pray.
The ginger-haired man looks down at the rap sheet and then up again at the detainee.
“Says here the son-of-a-bitch lit some poor sap up at the mental institution on Frunze.”
“It’s called Kirilovska.”
“Huh?”
“Kirilovska Street – not Frunze. Got it?”
“So what? Of course I got it. But I don’t get him. Greaseball at a greasy spoon who bites on black chicks in his off hours.”
“They don’t go to the police…”
“Then one day, he walks into a nuthouse dressed as a priest and torches some guy in his bed clothes.”
“Dickerson – Dirk Dickerson. Read the file to the end.”
“Oh, I’ve read the file, and I’ve checked out the site, and I’ve followed the so-called reports of both Dickerson and Mr. so-called Half Guinea.”
“Strange brew, if you ask me.”
“Well, I’m not asking you. I’m not even going to ask him – not directly, anyway. Bring my case and those gloves. Does the old man know we’ve got him in custody?”
“No.”
“OK, then let’s get to work, before they file any more reports on that site.”
Hours later, the room goes dark as the two men, their coats swung over their shoulders and cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, shut the door behind them. A foul odor remains behind.
The swarthy Mediterranean, still bathed in the blinding white light on the ceiling lamp that hangs over him, appears to be mumbling, then praying, then reciting an incantation.
His face goes dark-red, his ears glisten in oil. His lips curl in pain and his chin twitches in response.
“Absit Iniuria! Absit Iniuria! Ab uno disce omnes … Acta non Verba, Acta non Verba. ADSUM!” *
And the ceiling lamp goes dim.
To be continued.
Filed March 17, 2025
* The Latin stands for something like the following: “No injury (harm) meant!” Perhaps the Half Guinea is saying something more like, “No harm, no foul.” But just because we suggest as much, doesn’t make it a certainty, so please don’t hold us to it. Likewise for the remainder.
And then, “From one instance understand (or “derive” or “adduce”) the whole” (or “all”). Again, perhaps the meaning is closer to something like, “Let the one thing stand for the many,” or even, “Understand the one thing as denoting, representing, or as a metaphor for, the whole,” much as Evil operates in more or less the same way throughout the Universe.
And then, “Deeds not words.” Here, the Half Guinea could actually have in mind something more like, “Actions speak louder than words.”
And finally: “PRESENT!”, as in “I am present!” – possibly as in answer to a roll call…
These explanations have been voluntarily provided by the Editors of Kyiv Unedited, as opposed to the Kyiv Unedited Secret Editorial Board, and are not officially part of the official story, which is to say, report. In fact, this may be a completely different operation from Kyiv Unedited altogether.