A pretty clear indication of that which is truely evil in Frank. Thanks to Fionn for most of this...
Los Cardales
Following the rigid infrastructural architecture of Germany and the sophistication of the New York public transport network Frank was taken aback by the extreme casualness whereby the railway line here was defined by a slight decline, as if encouraging drunks or cycling children to roll onto the tracks. He stepped onto the orange earth and summoned a mozo to collect his luggage. He calculated that there was about an hour of sunlight left and the heladería was cut by sharp diagonal shadows; enormously elongated trees, buildings and people. Iglesias sat in a bright parallelogram, his three bodyguards suited and black on black beside him. “Venga, Frank, tomarás un mojito?” The silhouettes shifted stoically, and Iglesias spun a light aluminium chair into the suddenly pink light. The fat man’s cigar smoke dragged against gravity.
“Hombre, no tengo ningun idea por qué este cabrón quiera encontrarnos en esta cochambre, pero el cabrón y yo chingón..” Iglesias slapped a fly onto the table top and incinerated it with the end of his Cohiba. Frank was unfamiliar with the almost infinite richness of South American slang, but nodded in agreement with the general idea. “Qué tal el viaje?”
“Long, but interesting,” replied Frank. “The train had an almost imperial splendour, although faded, and the commission expected from even quite minor employees was… excessive.”
“If they knew it was Alejandro Iglesias paying their sobornos those tíos would keep their hands in their pockets.” He laughed and turned to his bodyguards to make sure that they had properly appreciated his joke, but at that moment all three tensed and slipped their hands inside their jackets. A long black Pontiac Grand Am sedan pulled up in a haze of dry orange dust, two less flamboyant saloons following and a slight man in his thirties, formally dressed, with a tight moustache and even tighter gelled hair emerged. He made a gesture to the vague but immense figures leaving the other cars and stepped almost casually towards Frank and Iglesias. Frank immediately realised that his party was outnumbered and despite the evening heat in this out-post of Buenos Aires he felt the Arctic in his blood and bones. The calming ice stilled his nerves; things were undoubtedly going to become extremely unpleasant but he was utterly confident in his ability to survive. He took his father’s geological case from his luggage as Iglesias stood and attempted a fraternal embrace of the new arrival. The bodyguards on both sides shifted their shoulders uneasily and let their fingers touch the reassurance of gunmetal or balls. Frank palmed two dice charged with the bone gas from his father’s case and then remove a bag of his genetically modified cocaine. At 100% purity as it was here it was almost instant death to ingest the white powder. Frank was confident that it would account for some of these new arrivals; the factor that he could not control was how much damage they would do to his plans before they died.
“Frank, I want you to meet Angel Corrales, he is interested in doing business with us,” said Iglesias, using perfect English due to the focussing nature of the terror he was feeling. For a second Frank considered altering his plans and letting Iglesias die in the inevitable blood-bath, but then his aesthetic sensibilities returned along with his greed. He had decided months ago that Iglesias was going to contribute the cerebral essence that would allow Frank VI to commence later in 1983 and he was not going to let a local gang-land feud get in the way. He conjured up the most offensive aspects of Iglesias’s character in order to convince himself that it was worth the extreme risks he was about to run in order to be the one who turned this fat criminal’s brain into a light grey foam. It was touch and go between his bravura use of castellaño and his lack of respect for Vega Sicilia, but in the end it was the memory of the man sloshing the red wine into the glass and then into himself without the slightest appreciation of the complex biochemistry that made it the pinnacle of Spanish viniculture that saved his life that day. Satisfied with his decision Frank shook Angel Corrales’s hand knowing it would soon be cold, and let himself be led into a back room. Iglesias followed but as they were about to enter the room behind the bar Corrales lifted his eyebrow and a huge bodyguard stepped out of the miasma of coffee and boiling oil. “I need to talk with Professor Kørner a solas.” Frank saw Iglesias slump. He knew what was coming; ever since Corrales had arrived with such a large party of armed thugs he had known that he was going to die, but he had clung to the hope that he could somehow use Frank to survive. That hope ended the second that Frank entered the room alone with Corrales.
The room was small. There were two stools and an antique card table with what was once inlaid baize but was now a brownish green depression, slick from the passage of every coin that had passed over the bar in the last thirty years.
“You are aware of course that Iglesias has already ordered your coffin, Señor Kørner.” It was a pathetic opening gambit and Frank had some difficulty in parading the appropriate emotions across his face. He took the die from his pocket and played with it as if he were contemplating life as a game of chance.
“If you were a gambling man, señor, I’m sure you would bet on Corrales rather than Iglesias at this somewhat difficult juncture.”
Frank breathed deeply, as if coming to terms with a tough decision, but actually to give himself the maximum protection from the gas. “I dislike chance,” he muttered, slamming the die down on the leathery table top, the one up, letting the invisible gas escape. He let his head fall into his hands, defeated and trusted to the latino character that Corrales would reach over with some physical expression of sympathy. There it was; the hand on the shoulder. Frank held his breath for a few seconds, felt the hand slip away, and then he looked up to see the eyes fall out of the gangster’s skull.
Following the rigid infrastructural architecture of Germany and the sophistication of the New York public transport network Frank was taken aback by the extreme casualness whereby the railway line here was defined by a slight decline, as if encouraging drunks or cycling children to roll onto the tracks. He stepped onto the orange earth and summoned a mozo to collect his luggage. He calculated that there was about an hour of sunlight left and the heladería was cut by sharp diagonal shadows; enormously elongated trees, buildings and people. Iglesias sat in a bright parallelogram, his three bodyguards suited and black on black beside him. “Venga, Frank, tomarás un mojito?” The silhouettes shifted stoically, and Iglesias spun a light aluminium chair into the suddenly pink light. The fat man’s cigar smoke dragged against gravity.
“Hombre, no tengo ningun idea por qué este cabrón quiera encontrarnos en esta cochambre, pero el cabrón y yo chingón..” Iglesias slapped a fly onto the table top and incinerated it with the end of his Cohiba. Frank was unfamiliar with the almost infinite richness of South American slang, but nodded in agreement with the general idea. “Qué tal el viaje?”
“Long, but interesting,” replied Frank. “The train had an almost imperial splendour, although faded, and the commission expected from even quite minor employees was… excessive.”
“If they knew it was Alejandro Iglesias paying their sobornos those tíos would keep their hands in their pockets.” He laughed and turned to his bodyguards to make sure that they had properly appreciated his joke, but at that moment all three tensed and slipped their hands inside their jackets. A long black Pontiac Grand Am sedan pulled up in a haze of dry orange dust, two less flamboyant saloons following and a slight man in his thirties, formally dressed, with a tight moustache and even tighter gelled hair emerged. He made a gesture to the vague but immense figures leaving the other cars and stepped almost casually towards Frank and Iglesias. Frank immediately realised that his party was outnumbered and despite the evening heat in this out-post of Buenos Aires he felt the Arctic in his blood and bones. The calming ice stilled his nerves; things were undoubtedly going to become extremely unpleasant but he was utterly confident in his ability to survive. He took his father’s geological case from his luggage as Iglesias stood and attempted a fraternal embrace of the new arrival. The bodyguards on both sides shifted their shoulders uneasily and let their fingers touch the reassurance of gunmetal or balls. Frank palmed two dice charged with the bone gas from his father’s case and then remove a bag of his genetically modified cocaine. At 100% purity as it was here it was almost instant death to ingest the white powder. Frank was confident that it would account for some of these new arrivals; the factor that he could not control was how much damage they would do to his plans before they died.
“Frank, I want you to meet Angel Corrales, he is interested in doing business with us,” said Iglesias, using perfect English due to the focussing nature of the terror he was feeling. For a second Frank considered altering his plans and letting Iglesias die in the inevitable blood-bath, but then his aesthetic sensibilities returned along with his greed. He had decided months ago that Iglesias was going to contribute the cerebral essence that would allow Frank VI to commence later in 1983 and he was not going to let a local gang-land feud get in the way. He conjured up the most offensive aspects of Iglesias’s character in order to convince himself that it was worth the extreme risks he was about to run in order to be the one who turned this fat criminal’s brain into a light grey foam. It was touch and go between his bravura use of castellaño and his lack of respect for Vega Sicilia, but in the end it was the memory of the man sloshing the red wine into the glass and then into himself without the slightest appreciation of the complex biochemistry that made it the pinnacle of Spanish viniculture that saved his life that day. Satisfied with his decision Frank shook Angel Corrales’s hand knowing it would soon be cold, and let himself be led into a back room. Iglesias followed but as they were about to enter the room behind the bar Corrales lifted his eyebrow and a huge bodyguard stepped out of the miasma of coffee and boiling oil. “I need to talk with Professor Kørner a solas.” Frank saw Iglesias slump. He knew what was coming; ever since Corrales had arrived with such a large party of armed thugs he had known that he was going to die, but he had clung to the hope that he could somehow use Frank to survive. That hope ended the second that Frank entered the room alone with Corrales.
The room was small. There were two stools and an antique card table with what was once inlaid baize but was now a brownish green depression, slick from the passage of every coin that had passed over the bar in the last thirty years.
“You are aware of course that Iglesias has already ordered your coffin, Señor Kørner.” It was a pathetic opening gambit and Frank had some difficulty in parading the appropriate emotions across his face. He took the die from his pocket and played with it as if he were contemplating life as a game of chance.
“If you were a gambling man, señor, I’m sure you would bet on Corrales rather than Iglesias at this somewhat difficult juncture.”
Frank breathed deeply, as if coming to terms with a tough decision, but actually to give himself the maximum protection from the gas. “I dislike chance,” he muttered, slamming the die down on the leathery table top, the one up, letting the invisible gas escape. He let his head fall into his hands, defeated and trusted to the latino character that Corrales would reach over with some physical expression of sympathy. There it was; the hand on the shoulder. Frank held his breath for a few seconds, felt the hand slip away, and then he looked up to see the eyes fall out of the gangster’s skull.
The bone gas had dissolved the majority of Corrales’ ribs as well as the skull and upper vertebrae before Frank had managed to leave the room. Outside things were worse than he had expected. Most of the body guards of both gangs were slumped over the tables, but one giant of a man remained standing, and he was at that moment engaged in the last seconds of the garrotting of Alejandro Iglesias. He had one more die loaded with bone gas, but it would not kill the thug before the wire had completely severed the victim’s head from the body. Already the blood was hitting the canvass with arterial force, obscuring the Quilmes Cerveza logo. Frank prized an Uzi from the stiffening fingers of the nearest minder and let approximately thirty rounds transform the assassin’s head into a creamy patina upon the further wall.
Iglesias was beyond saving by the means of conventional medicine. His throat was gaping and the jugular, although not completely sectioned, was emitting blood at a frightening rate. Frank reached over the counter and ripped a length of plastic piping from the Quilmes tap. He thrust it into the fat man’s windpipe, pushing it down into the lungs. The black blood frothed up. Franks sucked out a couple of mouthfuls and then began to pump in his own quickly inhaled air. His fingers pinched the jugular and as soon as the chest expanded, gasping for life, he flipped open his father’s case and extracted a phial of the nutriment. He smeared it around the edges of the wound, reflecting that such liberal use would mean revisiting Edgeøya three months ahead of schedule, and then fashioned a bandage from a ragged length of curtain.
He stood in the cooling air outside the heladeria and thought about paintings; vast abstract paintings with runs of paint the product of the artist’s will and Newton’s gravity. This was the nearest thing to happiness he could imagine: recollecting how in a hurt second he had killed millions just as he had risked his own life and given of the nutriment to save an Ecuadorean gun-runner and drug dealer he despised. Iglesias coughed and Frank let the moment go. They would return to Casa Branco in the Grand Am and they would be newly feared and respected.
