Flashback

An old, black-bearded hajji was holding up one of the longer and more expensive black T-shirts. The 3D image of Jeffrey Dahmer (an old serial killer who’d been having quite a resurgence of public and scholarly interest since the HBO series starring Gillie Gibson had started streaming) ran full length down the back of the black T-shirt. The cannibal (the real Dahmer, not the actor) was in the act of fucking one of the empty eye sockets in the skull of one of his victims. As Gene D. approached the offered shirt, Dahmer stopped his frenzied motion and, still holding the skull against his crotch, looked back over his shoulder at Gene D., Dahmer’s head seeming to emerge from the black cloth like a face rising out of a lake of oil, while the AI in the fabric said in a voice from hell, “You… yeah, you, the kid with the pimples in the red shirt… I got an eyehole free here. You want to join me?”

Gene D. jumped backward and the seven other boys and twenty or thirty nearby shoppers roared with laughter. The old women in burkas chuckled and turned away modestly while lifting their veils higher. The hajji holding the shirt showed missing teeth through the black barbed wire of his beard.

“This is the one I’m interested in,” said Coyne and pointed to a T-shirt in the back. One of the hajji’s teenaged assistants, a kid no older than Val with wispy attempts at a beard and wearing a coolshit hajji hat and bandolier over his vest and khaki shirt, held up the shirt Coyne wanted to see.

There was just a speck in the center of this T-shirt. But the speck grew larger—became a shirtless man walking toward the viewer—and pretty soon you could see the rapidly approaching man’s face. Vladimir Putin.

“Oh, chillshit sweet,” hummed Sully.

“Shut up, Sully,” said Coyne.

Putin continued walking toward Coyne until just Czar Vladimir’s powerful bare upper body and muscled arms and head filled the back of the shirt. Then just Putin’s face. Then just Putin’s narrowed eyes.

“God, he must be about a hundred and fifty years old,” said Monk, his voice hushed in the presence of the world’s longest-reigning strongman. And “strongman,” with Putin, could be interpreted literally as well.

“Just eighty,” said Val without thinking about it. “He was born in nineteen fifty-two… six years before my grandfather.”

“Shut up,” said Coyne. “Listen.”

Turning its head to squint more directly at Coyne, the Putin image said, “Moio sudno na vozdušnoy poduške polno ugrey.” Each syllable cracked like a bullet.

Coyne laughed wildly.

Val’s head snapped around. Does Coyne really understand that Russian shit? Was Billy the C’s mother Russian? Val couldn’t remember.

“What’s it mean, Coyne, huh?” asked Monk. “What’d he say?”

Coyne waved the question away. To the Putin eyes, he said, “Vladimir Vladimirovich, skol’ko eto stoit? Footbalka?”

Putin’s head and powerful shoulders suddenly came up and out of the shirt. Val jerked back a step. In some weird way, this was scarier than the Dahmer cannibal.

“Eight hundred thousand bucks,” said Putin in thickly accented English, smiling thinly at Coyne while shooting glances at the other boys. Toohey, Cruncher, Dinjin, Sully, Monk, and Gene D. stepped back with Val.

“New bucks,” added Putin. Then smiling even more thinly, he asked Coyne, “Are you trying to hang noodle soup on my ears, droog?”

“Nyet,” said Coyne with another manic laugh. “Davajte perejdjom na ‘ty,’ Vladimir Vladimirovich.”

“Poshjoi ty!” snapped the Putin AI, laughing nastily.

Risking a brush-off from Coyne, Val said, “What’s that mean?”

“It means Fuck you,” said Coyne. His laughter was strangely like the Putin AI’s.

“What did you say to him?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Coyne turned to the bearded hajji. “I’ll take the Putin shirt.”

The hajji scanned Coyne’s NICC and looked at the boy with something like respect. The teenager with the bandolier folded the T-shirt and was getting out a paper bag to put it in.

“No, I’ll wear it,” said Coyne. Unbuttoning the blue flannel shirt he was wearing and tossing it toward the trash, the tall boy tugged on the new black T-shirt. Val noticed the 9mm Beretta tucked into the back of Coyne’s jeans, but he wasn’t sure if anyone else did. Coyne didn’t seem to care.

“Some krutoj paren’,” said the Putin face that now filled the front of the shirt.

“What’s that mean?” whined Monk.

“Tough guy,” answered Coyne. Pulling the fabric of the shirt up a bit so he could look down at the face, Coyne said to Putin, “You’re kljovyj blin, old dude. Real coolshit. And a real shishka. Now shut up while we finish our shopping.”

The gang of eight guys spread out so as not to be so conspicuous. Also, they were interested in different things.