The Search for Juno

Chapter VI

Dolinski's office smelled like alcohol and canned sardines. The man himself lounged in a massive emerald arm chair, an annoyingly fluorescent pink smoothie in one hand, his head rested in the other. He was older, but not old, fine lines worn into his sallow face but his hair a bold and shimmering black.

    "Constantine," he said, over-pronouncing every syllable, like he always did. "You always so stiff. You are scared of me?"

    Conny, standing across the room from Dolinski with his hands interlaced behind his back, loosened his stance a bit. What he wanted to say was, You wish, you piece of shit. What he actually said was, "If respect and fear are one in the same, then yes, sir."

    Dolinski studied him for a long while after that, his face betraying nothing, thin mouth pressed into an even thinner line. For a moment, true fear gripped Conny's chest. There was always the chance that he could say the wrong thing, and end up with a bullet hole square between his eyes.

    He and Alex were some of Dolinski's favorites—a majority of his other underlings thought so. That did not, however, make Conny or Alex invulnerable.

    Dolinski's face crumpled into a bright smile as he let out a high, witchy cackle. He sounded like a dying rat, but Conny had long since learned to fight the urge to wince. "You amuse me, Tiny Twin! A ha ha! Never dull moment with you."

    Conny's lip started to curl, but he flattened it. This was just how it had always been. Conny was Tiny Twin, Alex was Tall Twin. The two of them were lucky Dolinski had even bothered to learn their given names at all. "Thank you, sir."

    "Why again is Tall Twin not here?"

    "He's in class." Just this once, Conny wished he'd gone to college, too. It would at least give him an excuse not to be here.

    Dolinski nodded his head, slurping audibly from his fat smoothie straw. "Oh, Alexander. How studious, that one. Like I said before—I am very grateful to you and your brother for taking care of Stanislaw—"

    "Just doing my job, sir."

    "Don't interrupt me," snapped Dolinski, something in the man's eyes turning suddenly to ice, and Conny zipped his lips. "But yes, it was delight to hear he was dead, toppled over on poker table like a fool. Ha! So poetic, you two. Now. There is something you came to me to speak about?"

    Relieved, Conny nodded his head, stepping into the light that filtered in through the dim office's single window. Dolinski ran his syndicate from a penthouse stationed above the brewery he owned, which meant two things: one, that it was not just Dolinski's personal office that smelled like alcohol, and two, both Conny and Alex had learned to hold their drinks at a young age. "Alcohol is the universal elixir," Dolinski had once told a younger, more impressionable Conny, hooking an arm around his shoulder. "You learn soon. It's Polish way."

    Conny wasn't convinced it was "Polish way" so much as it was just Dolinski's. But that was something he would never say.

    "My brother and I need tonight off," said Conny, watching Dolinski's wrinkled face carefully. "An old friend of ours has popped up and is causing trouble, but she'll be dealt with quickly."

    Dolinski's bushy eyebrows rose with punctuated interest. "She? Is she perhaps more than just old friend, young Constantine? I know Alexander tends to swing in other directions, but you—"

    "Uh," stammered Conny, and however hard he fought to maintain his composure, he could nevertheless feel his face start to heat up. "No, I'm afraid not. Just an old friend."

    Dolinski's beady eyes narrowed for a moment, but he waved it off. "Ah. First my lovely June says she has big party to attend. Then you and Alexander. I suppose this is what I get for hiring so many young souls."