The Queen and I by Russell Andresen

to their next conquest; maybe they would finally turn their attention to Jacob writing again.
    He poured himself a drink and sipped it slowly as he listened to the back and forth between these two increasingly twisted and disturbed men.
    “Listen to me, Henry,” Mendel was saying. “If it is bothering you that much, call him in to handle it.”
    Jacob must have missed something, because he had no idea who him was. He sat silently on the sofa and hoped that a name would be mentioned so that he knew what was happening.
    “I don’t like to use him for such mundane tasks as this one,” Schultz replied.
    “Tsk, tsk, you can’t have it both ways, my dear friend. If you really want to make this man suffer, you are going to have to use all of the tools at your disposal to bring him into your possession, like all of your other toys.”
    Heinrich thought furtively about what Mendel had just said and realized that his friend was right, but he never liked using certain men for jobs like this, and even though he knew that this would be an easy assignment for him, he was reluctant to play that card.
    “Do you really think this is the best way to go?” Henry asked.
    Mendel lowered the binoculars and said to the window, “My, oh my, dear boys. It must be getting chilly out there.”
    “Mendel!” Schultz barked.
    The little man turned with a stunned expression on his face; he was obviously not used to being yelled at.
    “Is this my best option at finding Rothstein?”
    Mendel Fujikawa thought about it a moment, and then, turning toward the window, he lifted the binoculars again and said, “He has never let us down before. Make the call.”
    Heinrich pushed the intercom button and said, “Kathleen, get me Louis Grecko’s number.”
    * * *
     
    The music boomed in the small apartment of Louis Grecko. He was a lover of music, but more specifically, musicals. It was his true passion, that and dismembering people for Heinrich Schultz.
    Louis had been a very talented soprano when he was younger, and his size made that all the more impressive. A massive man of nearly seven feet tall and almost four hundred pounds of muscle, he was an intimidating sight to behold. When the mood struck and he started singing in those classic high notes that he was so adept at hitting, you didn’t know whether to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the scene or to tremble in fear of committing a potentially fatal faux pas.
    His face was pockmarked from severe acne as a child, his hands were raw and graveled from years of hard work in construction, among other things, and his knuckles were arranged like some sort of odd jigsaw puzzle that wasn’t put together properly. Across those knuckles were tattooed the words Cats and Rent , the names of his two favorite plays.
    He read the text and smiled to himself; it was from Heinrich. He loved working for Heinrich; it was one of those rare opportunities when he was allowed to use his special brand of talent that most people could not appreciate and let it bloom into the beautiful flower that it was. Louis did not just enjoy his work, he didn’t even love his work. He was his work; it defined him, it was who he was, and it separated him from the masses of blind and hopeless minions who wandered around through his world clueless as to what their real purpose was in this crazy game of life.
    He had discovered the talent at a very young age and was encouraged to explore his gift by his mother, of all people. She was his number-one fan and biggest supporter, and wanted nothing more than to see her son succeed at anything that he set his mind to, whether it was making lead soprano in the church choir or breaking the neighborhood bullies’ legs with his bare hands. “Everything worth doing is worth doing right,” she told him, and he took those words to heart.
    When he was six years old, his abusive father had left his mother and young Louis to explore his own passion of miming and left them with nothing. So