#4 - Chapter Four "It Hurts to Say Goodbye"

 

Chapter Four 

It Hurts to Say Goodbye 

Dimitri Orlov was a hulk of a man at six-foot-four and nearly two hundred and forty pounds, and he had a fiery temper. This afternoon, Orlov – known as Dima by his friends – exploded. He grabbed the wrist of his old friend and second-in-command, Kasbar Sargsyan, and pulled him toward the large pot of a boiling liquid atop the gas stove. 

      Sargsyan, called Kaspar by friends and business associates alike, twisted his body, dragged his feet and tried to struggle free. 

      “Surb Hisus, what’re you doing? Stop, you crazy or what? Holy Jesus!” Kaspar’s shouts echoed off the walls of the four hundred square-foot art studio. “Dima, what’re you doing? You gone crazy?” 

      Orlov was attempting to lift Kaspar up, off the floor in front of the stove. “Shut the fuck up,” Orlov hissed, his mouth twisted into a snarl. “Show you what cowards get.” His face was turning a blotchy red. He was a man of jet-black hair – his full beard, on his head and covering his muscular body. In consistent steps, he was forcing his old friend’s hand closer to kettle. 

      “What you talking? What’s coward?” Sargsyan succeeded in lodging his right foot against the cast-iron stove to slow Orlov’s progress. Kaspar was a smallish, delicate-looking man, and his small, black eyes shined with intense fear. “Surb Hisus! We’re working shoulder-shoulder. Dima, we’re friends. Holy Jesus!” 

      “You know!” Orlov shouted. “You know what I’m talking about. Now don’t lie to me.”

      “Let’s talk! Talk, you hearing me?” his friend pleaded. “Tell me! This crazy, look!” 

      Both men glanced up at the kettle. It was beginning to rock back and forth above the stove’s flame. The kettle contained powdered cocaine and ammonia. If the liquid spilled toward the two men, it would flood over Kaspar and burn him from head to toe, but the overflow would also burn Orlov. 

      “You’re number two here!” Orlov shouted. “I’m number one. You do what I say. You follow orders. Now we’re losing. We’re not keeping our promise!” Orlov’s deep, sonorous voice dominated the space and filled his friend with fear. 

      Something stopped Orlov, and he spoke in a lower tone. “This is shit. This is no way. Yes, talk, we should talk.” 

       Then, suddenly, Orlov was enraged again. He pulled Kaspar away from the stove and threw him sliding across the wet floor of the huge artist’s studio. 

      The sign on the door of the studio up in the North Philly converted textile mill said “Aunt Alice’s Candle House.”

      Inside the studio, there were open cartons containing artistic candles, and on the shelving on one wall were rows of candles any artisan would be proud of – stout with drippings down the sides in bright, attractive colors.

      But the studio was filled with large vats – two of them with bubbling liquids – copper and plastic tubing streaming across the wide metal tables, and cartons filled with small cellophane envelopes containing drugs in powder, crystal and capsule form. 

      For Orlov, the studio was just part of his empire, that had grown to meet the expanding market for illicit drugs in Philadelphia. Already, Orlov’s organization occupied five spaces in the five-storied former textile mill: three production labs, including the one run by Kaspar; one space in the basement to store chemical components; and the most luxurious space on the fifth floor for Orlov’s personal office. Orlov counted on taking over more space, thanks to the landlord’s talent for looking the other way. And Orlov sought to expand his accounting and sales staff, as long as new members understood the killer nature of the business.  

      Kaspar was prone on the wet floor. He looked up at Orlov with pleading in his small, black eyes. He held his hands up in the air, in front of his face, hoping to protect himself, not knowing what to say. He didn’t want to set Orlov off with the wrong comment. He remained silent. 

      Orlov stood towering above Kaspar. Then, Orlov looked down and took a few steps backward with his clunky, booted feet splashing the water. It hurt him to see his friend of many years in fear, begging with no personal dignity, no pride at all. Orlov’s thoughts were filled with sudden regret. He was just trying to make a point and didn’t mean to lose his temper. 

       “I don’t know what to say to you.” Orlov’s voice softened. “You just gotta remember what kinda business we’re in. It’s tough. It’s a killer business. Yeah, sure, we keep saying we’re modern. But sometimes, you know what? Sometimes things happen, and we gotta adapt, adapt ‘cause we gotta be tough.” 

      Sargsyan lowered his hands, all he could allow for the moment. The murky water from the floor was seeping into his jeans and his t-shirt, he shivered when he thought what could be in that water, but something told him it was too early to try to stand. 

      Just one small attempt, Kaspar decided, to test Orlov. “But, Dima, you know . . . ” 

      Orlov cut him off. “Come on, don’t shit me. Sure, we keep saying we’re gonna run this place like a model for entrepreneur success. Sure, that’s good to say, and good to try. And maybe sometimes, we can use what you learned at Wharton. You know, like we gotta expand our market share. We gotta win this game. It was your idea: Get the young crowd, the smart ones with cash in their pockets. Get’em hooked. How we gonna do that? More your idea. We gotta create consumer demand. We gotta market our product line. So now, we’re in the rough and tumble world of crooks, the criminal element.”

      Orlov stopped and pivoted, looking around at the huge space crowded with drug-production equipment.

      Sargsyan started to twist his body. Was this the moment to pull himself up off the floor?

      Orlov glared down at his old friend. His big face still a splotchy red. 

      No, Kaspar decided, not yet. He remained, immobilized on the wet floor, now feeling the cold seep into his body. 

      Orlov resumed speaking, this time ever more evenly. “My friend, that’s where you been missing the point. We’re criminals. Now we’re criminals. You didn’t know that? I’m so sorry, sorry for you.”

      Orlov felt a tinge of guilt, just the smallest touch, for Kaspar. “Yeah, sure, it’s hard to accept. But look, remember where you came from. You wanna go back there? Back to your village? You studied at Wharton, and you’re living the real good life. So, there’s stuff you gotta do. When someone makes a mistake, they gotta pay. We can’t let people make a mistake and then not pay. Sometimes we gotta be tough. Sometimes we can’t forget it’s a killer business. It’s not our fault.

      “Okay, look, let’s get to the issue. The issue is hiring. We been making some big mistakes on acquiring personnel. Wasn’t it called personnel management at Wharton? Now, we’re in deep shit. Really the deepest shit there is. So, now the question: You with me? You gonna adapt? Count on you?” 

      Kaspar started to twist his body and then put his hands in the puddle on the floor. He believed the time was right; use the question for cover. He pushed against the floor and straightened his back. Surb Hisus, that feels good. He could finally stand. He declared: “Okay, Dima, you’re have right. I agree.” 

      Orlov reached out to help his friend, grasping his shoulders with his muscular hands to make sure he didn’t trip. “So we agree, you agree; we gotta be tough, that’s both of us. Me, it’s no problem, my temper, I lose it like a brat, a spoiled child. You, I don’t know, you’re thinking too much. You’re the one who went to university, you went to Wharton; you’re always thinking.”

      Kaspar moved his shoulders and tested his back. Yes, it all worked. He stood straight and looked into Orlov’s now-pink face. “And you agree. No more crazy. That’s okay, Dima? If we have different ideas, we talk good. No more crazy.”

      “And me? No more brat, no more spoiled child,” Orlov said. “I’m not gonna go crazy with you.  You know, I mean that. I’m meaning it right now. I’m promising you right now. But sometimes, you know, I go crazy. I don’t know what’s happening. I lose it, I feel crazy. So, I can’t promise one hundred percent. Maybe, it’s ninety-nine percent. But that’s good, no? Just a little one-percent exception, that’s all. 

      “So, right now,” Orlov said. “You, it’s free-base cocaine. You just pump it out.”

      The words poured from his mouth before he thought. “You can’t do that,” Kaspar said. “You said no more crazy. You promised.”

      Orlov made an effort to sound reasonable. “You are right my friend. I promised. Never again, that’s a ninety nine-percent promise. That’s almost a hundred percent promise. What could be better? Just don’t make me mad, just that.”

      “No good,” Kaspar said. “You can’t do that. All this, this stock, this equipment, all this, it was my money. It was my savings. We didn’t write it all down. But this company, it’s mine. It’s really mine. It’s a hundred-percent promise. It’s a hundred-percent contract or I fire you. Good-bye my friend, Good-bye.” 

      Orlov answered. “Good-by, my friend. You try to fire me, and I kill you. I promise.”