Chapter 11

The following character appears in this chapter:

Clifford Lomidze (Cliff)

The Closer, assassin, 5’-10’’ tall (1.77 meters), 180 pounds (81 kg), 46 years old, dark brown hair, blue eyes, medium Talent and regular Magic

Yuryi still has the Narrative

The one thing that we still needed to do was to remove the rest of Yvonne’s furniture and things from her apartment. We had stopped there two additional times to pick up a few incidental items. The remaining furniture and appliances would need to go into storage for now, but we still had a few weeks before her lease was up.

I hadn’t really done any moving in a long time and had consulted a few friends about who to hire to do the final moving and storage of her things. While I received several recommendations, one company in particular was recommended as being the best by a number of those contacted.

I called the firm and arranged for them to pick up and store her things five days before the lease expired. I also arranged for a cleaning team to go over the entire apartment after her things were moved out.

On moving day, we were both up early and following a good breakfast, I drove the SUV to the area near her apartment. We parked a short distance from her building, as the moving van would take up a lot of space while loading.

Yvonne was there to ensure that everything got loaded, and it was still in good condition. I was there because I still had wards around the apartment. I transferred both of us from the SUV to her apartment. After dropping the wards and checking the apartment, I started checking the surrounding area with my Magic senses and wasn’t happy with what I found.

“The movers will be here shortly. Is there anything that you need me to do?” I asked her.

“No, I think everything is alright. They are sure to know how to dismantle and pack everything. Is there something you need to do?” she asked.

“I thought that I would check the area and see what is going on while I get a little air,” I told her.

“Problems?” she asked.

“No, just a feeling that something is up,” I told her before leaving.

Casting the Invisibility spell before exiting the building, I again checked with my Magic senses to be sure that the individual who I had sensed hadn’t moved before transferring to a location just behind him.

“You really are getting sloppy, Closer,” I told him, startling him badly enough that he actually jumped.

“Don’t do that...,” he started to say before realizing who was behind him. “Ah ... shit!” followed that before he turned to look at me.

“What are you doing here, Yuryi?” he said before the answer occurred to him. “Ah ... shit!” he said again in a really upset voice.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” he asked in a resigned voice after a sigh.

“That depends on why you are here. You are a little out of your normal territory,” I said.

“These three bozos hired me to cap some guy who they ’said’ was a minor Wizard. Apparently, he had ’removed’ their boss and ruined their plans to trash some stores. They never gave me his name, which was fine with me. Instead, they said he would be here today when some broad moved out of the building across the street. I take it that ’you’ were the intended victim,” he finished in a bit better voice.

“How did they pick you?” I asked, curious.

“Actually, they wanted ‘the Fixer’, but nobody has seen or heard from him in the last couple of years. They came to see me in Minneapolis with what now appears to be a bullshit story. I wanted $50k for the job, but they only had $35k. I took the job anyway. Things have been tight lately. Now, it turns out that ‘YOU’ were the supposed target, and I’ll be out even that,” he finished in disgust.

“Not necessarily,” I said, as I considered several things and then smiled.

“How would you like to get even with those turkeys and still make your $35k. As a bonus, I’ll even throw in an additional $15k to make your $50k,” I told him to a shocked expression from him.

“What do you have in mind?” Cliff asked in an interested voice.

“Let’s do a little planning but not here. There is an empty apartment in that building on the third floor. Meet me up there in ten minutes. I need to talk to someone first,” I told him before transferring back to Yvonne’s apartment. My sudden appearance there startled her.

“You keep doing things like that,” she said in an upset voice on recovering.

“Sorry, hon. A problem has developed, and you need to know about it and what to expect,” I told her before outlining what I knew so far. Yvonne was a bit shocked.

“What are you going to do, and how do you know this guy? Can you trust him?” she wanted to know.

“Yes, I can trust him. Cliff knows exactly what I am, and he knows what I am capable of. He also wants to get even with those men and collect his money. As for how I know him, we met about fifteen years ago when one of his contracts went wrong, and I pulled him out of the problem. I even finished the contract for him. We’ve seen each other off and on over the last fifteen years but only socially. We need to work out exactly how we are going to handle this little problem, so I’ll be busy for a time. The movers should be here shortly. Call my cell if you have a problem. We’ll be up in an unoccupied apartment on the third floor,” I told her before giving her a long passionate kiss. I was almost late to meet Cliff.

Appearing in the hallway on the third floor, I just had time to move to the apartment door before Cliff arrived. I passed both of us to the other side of the door. The apartment was empty and had been cleaned before being ready to rent.

“How did you know that this apartment was empty?” Cliff asked looking around.

“I checked all of the apartments around my friend’s apartment with my Magic senses. I couldn’t sense the presence of any furniture or other things in this one,” I told him.

“Ley Line users,” was all he said in disgust.

Clifford Lomidze (Cliff) is about 5’-10’’ tall, 180 pounds or so, and about 46 years old. He has dark brown hair and blue eyes. He has a medium Talent for regular Magic. He had worked as ’the Closer’ for some 20 years.

Since there wasn’t any furniture or much of anything else in the apartment, we leaned up against the wall for our discussion.

“How do you figure to do this?” Cliff asked.

“I’m fresh out of ideas,” I told him after a few seconds before laying out the obvious.

“Obviously, they will want to see a dead body. Since you wouldn’t be able to drag a body to their location, it makes sense that you would have a camera or use a cell phone to take the pictures. The problem is we don’t want to involve the police in this, as they would disapprove of us removing those three.

“We will therefore need to use something that won’t draw the attention of the police or the media. I’m not exactly sure what that will be,” I told him. Cliff smiled on hearing this.

“I just happen to have brought with me the solution to the problem. I have this high-powered air rifle. It fires a poison ice needle. The ice needle is clear and difficult to see as it’s clear ice. It melts after hitting the victim, and all that is left is a bit of innocent looking water. The poison is very fast acting,” Cliff told me.

“And how is this the solution?” I asked, seeing several possible scenarios.

“I fire just a regular practice round at you. You look confused for about 30 to 45 seconds and then fall down and play dead,” he told me before I interrupted him.

“You have practice rounds?” I asked, a bit amazed.

“Yeah, that poison shit is expensive and dangerous. You need to handle it with rubber gloves. For regular sighting in the rifle, I use just plain water for the needles. It wouldn’t be good to leave any of that poison just lying around,” he told me before continuing.

“Anyway, I’ll record the entire thing and even get a close-up of you lying on the pavement. Look dead for that. I show the video to the clients and collect my $35K. Then we take the bastards out,” Cliff said with a nasty smile.

“Oh yes, keep your wards tight around you. That ice needle can really sting if it actually hits you,” he told me.

“Where do you meet them and when?” I asked.

“That’s already set up. There is a restaurant where we are to meet and finish the transaction in a private dining room at 8:30 tonight,” he told me.

“That sounds good. We’ll need to remove them from the dining room to dispose of them. No one will ever know what happened to them. They will just disappear,” I told him.

“How will you arrange that?” Cliff asked.

“It would be better if you don’t know that. That way you can say that you were paid and left. They were fine when you left them in the room,” I told him with just as nasty a smile as he’d had.

“And the $15k?” he asked.

“I’ll give it to you in the room before you leave,” I told him to another smile. Now though, I needed to inform Yvonne about what would be happening, and what her part in it would be.

“Oh yes,” Cliff said after a minute or so. “You need to remove your coat so the needle actually looks like it hit you. The coat would slow it down or stop it. Can you make it look like you were helping the movers with the heavy stuff?” he asked.

“Sure, not a problem. I’ll have Yvonne out there too. She can look like she is frantic about what happened,” I told him before we left the room on our individual assignments.

Yvonne was less than happy when I explained what Cliff and I had worked out. She was even less happy when I started to explain her role in this.

“You will need to be outside when I fall down and play dead. You will need to look very upset. The thing is we don’t need to get the fire department, or the police involved in this, as it would be very difficult to explain. I’m not sure how to do that, as we need to move my body quietly with as little public notice as possible,” I told her to a frown.

“Heart attack,” she said after a minute or so of thought. “Stephen had a heart attack shoveling snow. There was no notice on the radio or in the news. I don’t know if the police were involved or not, but it was done very quietly,” she reminded me.

“Yes, now that you mentioned it, that is a great idea. Make sure you shout about your boss and act upset when this happens,” I told her.

“How are you going to get your body moved from the scene?” she asked following that.

“I know a couple of veterans who work for an ambulance service. They stayed at the building for a time while they got their heads straight. I’ll call them and see what I can arrange,” I told her, as I pulled out my phone. I was on the phone for a while before hanging up.

“Okay, everything is set up. When I get shot, you raise a commotion and call this number,” I told her and gave her the number. She put it on her phone.

“Just tell them, ‘Yuryi has had a heart attack’, and they will be here quickly. When they load me on the ambulance, you get on also. Just tell the movers to finish up and not to worry about locking up the apartment since a cleaning crew will be arriving this afternoon,” I told her. She wasn’t happy about any of this, but that was when the movers arrived, and we were busy for some time.

The movers were pretty efficient. They had brought boxes for packing the dishes and other things in as well as for the mattresses on the beds. They also had covers to put over the furniture and the appliances. They dismantled the beds and soon started moving the furniture and then the boxed items down to the moving van. The last items to go were the refrigerator, and the washer and dryer. This was because it was all going into storage, and the heaviest items would go to the back of the storage area.